The Spelling/Vocabulary Box

Sorry I didn't get the chance to post last night.  Thursday night has now become my coupon planning night so I was working on my battle plan for the weekend grocery shopping.  I did however have a idea of what I wanted to post, but my tired eyes sent me to bed rather than type a new blog entry.

Before I get into how we wrapped up our week I wanted to share with everyone the way that K12 helps there students keep up with their spelling words... I just think its genius and thought that some of you that are school teachers might like to share the idea with your parents.  The spelling box is simply a index box with number tabs in it and index cards.  At the beginning of every week I go through Tommy's spelling words with him and we discuss the meaning of each word and we go over the "tricks" of spelling the word.  After we have discussed the word list I call out each word to Tommy one by one.  He writes the word on a dry erase board and I tell him if he makes a mistake.  If he makes a mistake, we discuss again the proper way to sound out and spell the word and then he writes the word on a index card.  This card gets filed under file tab 1 - for current spelling words.  We use these cards through the week to study his spelling words and he thinks of it more as a game instead of learning.. simply because the words are written on a card.  After he takes his spelling test we move the words to tab 2 - Review words.  The words will remain here until I feel like he really knows them (not just memorized them for the test).  Once he really knows the words we move them to file tab 3 - retired words.  I've even taken this a step further and had him use the same system for his vocabulary words each week.  He loves it because it helps him to study better on his own and it feels more like a game.  I love it because he is learning so much faster this way and I know he is learning each word and not just memorizing it for the week.  It is also easy to pick up and review the words anytime, rather have him search for some piece of paper.  All in all WE LOVE THE SPELLING BOX :)

This week I have allowed Tommy to develop his own schedule.  Thursday we struggled a bit.  Tommy was having a hard time staying focused and drug the day out a little longer than I would have liked.  So last night I had him sit down and plan out today (Friday).  He wrote out what time he wanted to start his day and how long he was going to allow each subject.  He knew where he should be at each time of day.  This really motivated him to stay on task today and he even managed to finish his day an hour early!  So we ended the week on a good note. 

This weekend I plan to let him create some of his banana recipes.  We plan to make banana smoothies, muffins and banana pops.  Its all from our cooking club teaching Tommy about health snacks.  Knowing Tommy I'm certain we'll come up with some interesting contraptions. 

Tommy is growing more and more confident with each day that passes.  He even told me today that he was super smart and that he knew he was improving his writing.... I didn't even have to tell him, he is starting to believe in himself and his work shows it.  Even though there were a few times this week I could have pulled my hair out, I know this is the best thing for Tommy.  The difference so far is night and day. 

Have a great weekend everyone!!

Rough start... good day

What a wonderful day!  Tommy and I had so much fun.  It started off with a little melt down though.  Tommy (so motivated about his assignments) set his alarm to get up early so he could start a lesson before I got up.  I got up surprised to find that he was up before me and already dressed.  I had to tend to Connor and found it unusual that Tommy wasn't right on my heals nagging me to start our day.  After changing Connor's diaper I sat down to nurse him and called Tommy into Connor's room.  Much to my surprise his face was full of tears and he was terribly upset!  After much probing to find out what was wrong he told me he wanted to get a head start on one of his lessons, but he couldn't get the computer to work right.... awww poor thing!  I felt terrible for him.  I quickly assured him that it was OK and that we would get through our lessons together, but I appreciated his effort to get a head start.  I also quickly turned the experience into a time management lesson.  I discussed with Tommy what he could have done to be productive since he couldn't get the computer to work... such as, eat breakfast, make his bead, study spelling words, read his story for the day ect. I explained to him how all of these things would have made me super proud of him.  After the conversation he felt much better and was ready to dive into our material. 

Over this past week I have realized that time management with home schooling is critical, but it is something you have to learn.  Its almost the same as having a new born in the house.  You have to learn to manage the new baby while keeping up with your normal everyday responsibilities.  With homeschooling I have started to let Tommy manage his own schedule.  He decides the order of the subjects for the day and when and how long his breaks should be.  So ultimately he is deciding how long his day is and I have to say he loves having control over this.  I, on the other hand, am learning to manage laundry, schooling, house work, wife work and new baby work all in the same day.  I feel very accomplished today as I was able to check many things off of my many list... now if I can just somehow figure out how to work back in my knitting.... hmmm.

Another great thing I've figured out that I love about home schooling is I can let Tommy just be... well... Tommy.  I find that he often needs to talk himself through his lessons... he just works better this way.  I've even listened to him sing while doing math and he actually scores better when he does this.  He also has the need to wiggle a lot.  If he is made to sit still he just simple doesn't think as well.  In public school Tommy wouldn't be allowed to release his energy this way.  I'm convinced that it is helping him learn.  It is helping him be more relaxed and enjoy education.

Today I saw Tommy connect several subjects together as well.  He used some of the facts we learned in history about the scientific revolution in his spelling sentences.  He also use some of the punctuation rules we learned about titles, capitalization and punctuation in his spelling sentences.  Every time he would connect the subject he would tell me that he achieved this accomplishment in a very matter of fact way.  He is very proud of his new found knowledge.  I even find myself giggling to myself at the dinner table when Tommy ask his Daddy "Do you know how many capitols South Africa has? And what there names are?" or "Do you know what the deadliest disease was during the Revolutionary period?"  He loves stumping his Dad and he loves learning about these things every day.  You just simply see it in his eyes and that warms my heart. 

We wrapped up today with art.... Tommy's all time favorite subject.  Today he learned about the color wheel and all the different color types.  He learned the difference between shades and tints and how to properly mix paint.  There was so much in this lesson that even I didn't know and Tommy thinks he is going to be the next big thing.... lol.... I hope he is or at the very least this joy stays in his heart. 

I never thought of using egg crates as paint cups before... loved the idea!

For those of you who know me you know I love photographing hands...

Tommy finished the assignments on colors, but didn't want to put down the brush.. so he used the left
over paint to paint another Pokemon.

Monday - Holland School Open Despite Weather

While the local schools were closed due to the freezing temperatures outside we were OPEN for education.  Another great bonus about home schooling... I control the schedule... not the county.  Anyway it was a great day of study.  Tommy turned in some great writing assignments today and made a 100 on his 5th grade spelling test.  We still struggle with time management because Tommy wants to drag out any lesson that involves any form of writing... his least favorite thing to do, but he is learning that he is in control of how long his day is.  He is realizing that, unlike traditional school, we will not move on to the next subject until he completes the current one... So he can either be "out of school" for the day by 1:00 or he can still be working at 6:00 pm.... it truly is all up to him.  He is also learning that mommy will only accept his best and nothing less.  This is why I came up with our "School Creed":

I am a smart special valuable person
I respect myself
And respect others
My words and actions
...Are kind and honest
I except only my best in what ever I do
I AM PROUD TO BE ME!!!!!!

I honestly believe that allowing him to manage his time will lead to him becoming more timely on his writing assignments.  Especially, when he wants to get to the fun parts of his day. I also made a deal with him that if he finished the lesson in the time allowed I would reward him with 30 minutes of game time at the end of the day.  This should be a huge motivator since Tommy loves his DS. 

No exciting experiments, but we did have another art project.  Tommy learned about abstract/realistic art and representational or nonrepresentational art.  He had to draw a picture and tell me about it.  Of course Tommy's favorite subject is Pokemon so he added a few to the mountain scene that he drew.  Here is his finale picture and of course a few of him working on the picture.

Tommy thinking about how to lay out his picture.

He decided to sketch in pencile first and then add color.

The Completed Art

After he completed the project we discussed his pictures and the techniques he used.  He decided that the picture was nonrepresentational since it was a mountain scene with Pokemon.  He then insisted on explaining to me that the ONLY reason it was nonrepresentational was because Pokemon are fictional characters, but if he could have his way they would be real.  I just loved it. 

This weekend we will be conducting an experiment with seeds to see what types of environments they will grow in... such as in the freezer, sun, dark or light.  We were suppose to start this project with today's science lesson, but I was missing a few of the materials we needed to complete the project.  We will also be making some of our banana recipes... yummy!

Our First Week.... Complete!

So our week is now complete and how exciting it was.  So much happened this week I'm sure I'll forget to write some of it down.  Moving forward I will do my best to record our adventures daily.  Let me start by saying Tommy LOVES home schooling.  There has been a dramatic change in him already.  He laughed more this week and was more relaxed than I've seen him in ages.  He even told me this week that he was so happy that I was taking the time to home school him.  He has been so sweet that it has brought tears to my eyes several times.  Despite improvements attitude wise, I have seen dramatic improvements in his school work.  I can tell that Tommy has developed many bad habits in public school over the years, but we worked hard on breaking those this week.  For instance, Tommy struggled with hand writing.  Often times you couldn't read what he wrote and he often misspelled words in his work.  He would also have poor sentence structure, not because he doesn't know how to write, but because before this week he always hated writing.  Now, handwriting STILL is NOT his favorite subject, but he enjoys it more as a one on one lesson rather than sharing his teacher with 20 other students.  Here is a couple of examples of text he wrote this week about folk tale's we read.  One is about "Salt and Bread" and the other is a letter he had to write to the poor man in "The Magic Stew". 

On top of the improvements we made in handwriting we were able to cover 10 sections of math because math is something Tommy is accelerated in.  We had fun with hands on learning with math and not only doing physical math on paper, but also learning about mental math - or doing math in our head.  Tommy is like a sponge and he is absorbing the world so quickly around him and it is so exciting to me.  We also are working on the ecosystem study in science and learning about the green house effect and how to build a compost pile.  If it wasn't freezing outside we would have started our own compost pile, but instead we decided we would set aside this project for the summer time.  In history we broke out the globe and maps and learned how to properly read maps to navigate and about the different types of maps.  Next week we will move on to the Industrial Revolution.  We also had fun with words in vocabulary and spelling and I'm finding the ways that Tommy learns best and realizing that he has a remarkable memory.  In Language arts we learned how to properly use commas, periods and how to properly document titles and references.  In almost every subject Tommy would remark, yes we went over some of this, but they left out this and this.  He was very excited to be learning each subject in more detail. 

Also this week, Tommy was able to participate in a world wide cooking club.  Tommy loves to cook and was very excited to participate in this group.  He will be making about six different recipes with bananas this month.  We'll be using our math and science skills in those projects as well.  Its wonderful to be able to integrated real world activities into my son's education.

In our bible study we are studying about the apostles and the many wonderful things the did with Jesus and also after Jesus' death.  And why it is important that we as Christians are fishermen for men and why it is important for us to be fed daily by the word.  Tommy LOVES his bible lesson and usually wants to do a couple a day instead of one... but I hold the little man back....lol.

Last but not least there was Art.  Tommy LOVES Art.  I love the fact that this art lesson is not only drawing and art activities, but it also teaches the student about different types of art and art history.  This week he learned about the different types of art such as paint, sculpture, landscape, pastels, still life, ect.  His favorite painting we studied this week was a Monet.  His project was a self portrait.  I stepped back on his art project and didn't give him any guidance and this is what he came up with. 

So, my over all thoughts.  Home schooling would not be for every parent.  It takes time and lots of it.  The majority of my days this week were spent directly with Tommy and Connor.  I had to sacrifice some of my normal daily life to be able to spend quality time with him especially in Language Arts.  After seeing his achievements and the glow he had about his work the sacrifice is will worth it.  I was tired at the end of the week and it was work, but in just these few short days I saw a change in my son that was priceless.  In just a few short days we grew closer.  I can't wait to see what the future holds for us. 

COMING UP THIS WEEK:  Science projects, More Art, More Writing and of course Bananas!

How we chose our curriculum...

So here we were called to home school Tommy, so we rushed home and started looking at curriculum.  All I can say is WOW!  I had no idea there were so many options.  We had discussed several different types of curriculum with the couple from our church, but there was so much information that we quickly became overwhelmed.  So we sat the computer down and discussed why we were doing this and what was important to us about home schooling.  Here is what we came up with.

• The curriculum we choose must be challenging to Tommy and be flexible enough for him to accelerate in the subjects that he had a natural talent in.
• It must be organized.  There was no way in my busy day that I was going to be able to come up with a daily schedule that would keep him at pace or ahead of his peers.  So what ever we picked must have a daily schedule that would automatically update as we progressed. 
• Must be a Christian study or be able to easily have a daily bible study of our choice enter grated into it.
• Must not souly revolve around Christian beliefs.  We feel that Tommy needs to know world views as well as Christian views.  He must not be sheltered from the real world, instead he must understand it so he can combat himself against it in the future. 
• Since we were starting in the middle of a school year it must be easy for us to do this year.
• It must use a variety of means of learning: books, computer, self and parent taught instruction.
• It had to fit into our budget.
• It must use some form of grading system for positive reinforcement
• And finally, it must have an assessment test so that Tommy is placed at the correct learning level from the beginning and will be allowed to advanced if needed in the future. 

We considered many curriculum:  Sonlight, Alpha/Omega, ABECA, K12 and several more.  It basically came down to Sonlight and K12.  Sonlight is an excellent program and it met most of our requirements.  It is however very expensive, but you get a lot of material for your money.  We did not like the fact that they did not have set grade levels or assessment programs.  They also did not keep grades and you were responsible for making your own grading system if you wanted one.  K12 is not a Christian based curriculum, but it matched almost every other criteria we had on our list.  It offered a wide range of education options, it kept your weekly schedule up to date for you and it gave detailed instruction for both the teacher and the student.  When we move back to Georgia it is a state funded program so the materials will be free to us and Tommy will have a teacher that he meets with on line for his instruction.  They schedule field trips for the students and they also give one on one time with the students if needed.  They have a wide variety of clubs for the kids and they have a positive reinforcement system.  We selected this program, with a Alpha Omega bible study for Tommy and I have to say after looking at the material I don't think we could have made a better choice.

Tommy's school supplies the day they came... 100 lbs.



I know our choice is not for everyone, but please feel free to contact me if you have any questions and I will do what I can to help you out.  Tomorrow I will be giving a review of our first week (very busy) to let everyone know how it went and what Tommy's thoughts of being home schooled are.

How this happened...

For a long time Jonathan and I have considered home schooling.  The timing just never seemed right and then when the timing was right we had our fears and doubts about the whole process.  I ran (and still run) my own photography business that kept me very busy with photo editing during the week.  Then I was pregnant and felt like the hormones wouldn't allow me to have the patience and then there was a newborn.... and well if you've ever had a new born you know what I'm talking about.  We were always afraid of taking our son's education into our own hands because if we messed up there would be no one else to blame but ourselves.  But the bottom line was that the public school system was NOT meeting the needs of our son.  Our son is very smart for his age.  I'm not just saying that because he is my child, I'm saying that because he is a year or two younger than all of his classmates and smarter than most of them.  School simply didn't challenge him enough on a daily basis and this led to one behavior issue after another with each of his teachers.  Very few of them wanted to acknowledge the fact that he was much younger than his peers and therefore was not on the same maturity level - I was even told he had ADHD by one teacher and that I should consider medicating him...I didn't know a teaching degree came with a psychology degree as well.  And by the way, my son was tested and he has no form of ADHD.... he just wasn't challenged enough.  So even though my son was very smart he wasn't eligible for the gifted program because he wasn't mature enough... in other words he didn't fit the cookie cutter mold of our current education system.  None of this is to say he didn't have a couple of good teachers along the way, because he did, but in today's world our most of our teachers are just too over worked or they have lost the desire to care because they have been beaten down by the system.  We had other issues with public education such as the bad behavior problems that Tommy was learning from some of his peers that we had to deal with at home, the fact we had to talk to him about sex before he was ready because the school insisted he was sexually harassing a girl by pushing her on the play ground swing, the lack of communication between the parents and the teacher about what was going on in the classroom and the fact my son was loosing his passion for learning.

So here we are.  For Christmas we ate lunch at our church and sat next to a couple from our Sunday school class.  We were talking causally and suddenly the subject of home school came up.  I sat and talked with this couple through the entire lunch and felt as though God was talking straight to me about all my fears about home school.  With every sentence that passed I became more and more convinced that this was the path my son needed to be on.  This was the answer to my prayers about my son's education.  The answer could not have been more clear.  My husband and I sat in the car after lunch and looked at each other and said, "We are going to do this."  After four days of research we picked a curriculum (K12) and a bible study for our son.  We unenrolled him from school (they treated us very nasty by the way) and he never went back.  Our school supplies arrived a few days later and it was like Christmas in our house.  It was SO good to see my son excited about learning again.  He was ready to dive in and that is exactly what we did the very next day.... and so our story begins... its our new beginning.