Abby's Homeschool Show and Tell

Christmas Break!!

2009-01-09T11:50:00.000-08:00

This was the best Christmas we've had in a long time! I dreaded it this year, with concrete floors and all the mess, but I guess I found out how much Christmas is NOT about decorations or presents, or anything else but Jesus and family and kindness and love!

Christmas morning at our house:

Abby bought and wrapped her own presents this year! She was very proud of herself and very giving.

She couldn't wait to try on her new tights and slippers from Grandma Davis:

And she got an EasyBake oven this year!

After our morning with just the four of us, we went over and had Christmas with Marmi and Pappi:

Later that evening, we went to Nana and Papa's house for another family gathering. Abby adored her ballerina dress:

This is my all-time favorite picture:

We stopped by our house in the middle of the day, to let the dog out and have some fun on the new bikes.

Over Thanksgiving Break

2008-12-02T15:01:00.000-08:00

We had a whole lot of fun over Thanksgiving break. The only school we did was keeping up with readers. Daddy built them a cardboard playhouse out of the big box we had sitting in the garage. Abby and Abram LOVED it!

Abby made the cheese ball this year for Thanksgiving. Mama only helped a little. She also helped me make the Green Bean Cassarole. She was delighted with herself.

We put the cheeseballs in a dipping bowl--so they weren't exactly balls, but were still just as yummy!

Today Abby read her Fun Tales book up on the kitchen counter while I fixed lunch. Abram wanted to be up there, too, and it turned out to be a whole lot of fun. They were occupied with something instead of bugging me about when lunch would be done, and I was able to listen to Abby in a more relaxed setting. She really enjoyed doing her readers this way, so I think it might stick with us. I'll start planning on her Readers being during kitchen time, whether cooking or cleaning. On another note, she is almost all the way finished with Fun Tales!! I am requiring her to read each 5 times in any order she wants. She's up to reading 5 different Fun Tales in a row and will finish in the next few days with what I'm requiring. She is already beginning her 1st grade readers at a different time each day and is doing very well on them also.

School as a Part of Life

2008-11-18T15:00:00.000-08:00

My favorite part of homeschooling is when I really see learning and life combine in a sort of free dance. There are always times when school seems 'school-y', but the most rewarding part is when it flows together. The last few days have really been like this for us! Saturday, we visited the Science Museum and were able to see the special Dinosaur exhibit. The children really enjoyed this time--the Houston museum has really taken extra effort lately to make the exhibits child-friendly (they even had a sand pit where the children could 'uncover' dinosaur bones).

At home that night, the kids sat with Daddy at the computer playing ABC games on starfall.com. They stayed up a little later enjoying the game after shedding clothes here and there around the house for me to pick up later.

This morning while I was cooking breakfast, Abby and Abram sat at the table working on math. Abram's putting the numbers in order with Abby's help, and Abby's working on some workbook pages in her Singapore math workbook. This work continued even during breakfast as they ate toast and eggs. Learning and life really do smear together very nicely.

Then, later that day, after reading about the clothes that people in Medieval times wore, we watched a movie that portrayed the clothes nicely. We ate lunch during that time, and afterward Abby and Abram dressed up to match the movie the best they could find. How Fun!!!

Not all school that we do ends up this fun and natural, but when it does flow this nicely, I realize why I do this--why I will stick with it to the end! My hope is that when they grow up, they will not separate learning from life, but see life as a continual process of learning, a gift from God to us.

I thank God for the wonderful days that He's given me to encourage me in my efforts to please Him!

Art "lesson"

2008-11-11T16:00:00.000-08:00

We have a book that teaches young children to draw very basic pictures using shapes. It's called Draw Write Now, and Abby's loving it. I don't actually have time to work with her on it, so I just hand her the book and let her do what she wants in the book while I'm reading poetry or some other 'light' material. This has been her masterpeice thus far!!!! Isn't it great?!! I thought she did awsome. Just wanted to show her work off a little.

Map Work

2008-11-10T08:25:00.000-08:00

Abby loves map-work this year. Every history story, some bible stories, and even some of the Read-Alouds have maps that go with them. I make a copy of this map (allowed under Sonlight's IG copywrite), and let her color it with markers. First, before she free-colors, we identify the state, country, etc. that is a part of the reading. She colors that in red, and then freely colors the rest of the map as she wishes. She does this while I'm reading the story to her, looking up every now and then for a picture. This is one of her favorite activities right now.

The maps we have completed so far are:

The life of Martin Luther

The life of William Tyndale

The life of William Tell, The Apple and the Arrow

The life of John Chapman, Johnny Appleseed

Abby's 6th Birthday Party

2008-11-04T07:11:00.000-08:00

Abigail's Birthday Party was a BEAUTIFUL day! We all had a wonderful time enjoying the early fall weather outside. Abby had several friends come to the party and she had a blast!! What a great party!

Here's my little 6 year old, helping prepare to make cupcakes. She helped to make them and ice them too, although we didn't get any pics of that:

As you can tell, we had a Barbie themed party this year. We saved quite a bit of money making our own creative cake and buying all of the decor, including mylar balloons at the Dollar Tree! We were giving her a BIG present this year, so we HAD to be thrifty.

And her BIG gift was???????

Daddy thought ahead and bought a grey one, and added plastic stick-on flowers, so that we she outgrows her truck, Abram will also be able to enjoy it. She really loves it!! Her and her friends had a great time driving it around Nana and Papa's back yard, taking turns on who got to drive and ride along, etc.

Time to blow out the candle. Happy Birthday, SweetyGirl!!!! She really enjoyed being surrounded by friends to open her gifts. She loved them all and was excited about each and every one. She even got a new ballerina barbie that I bought especially for her cake.

And now, at home, she enjoyes dressing in her new shirt, and "flying" her new butterfly barbie around everywhere. That barbie was the biggest hit this year, doubtless.

Language Arts 1

2008-10-29T04:36:00.000-07:00

Our Language Arts and Reading 1 package arrived yesterday! I stayed up until almost 1:00a.m. absorbing the material and what it requires. Where the K program was just too easy, I can see that this years material will be a good challenge. We will be taking it at her pace, so I'm not worried about it taking more than a year to complete. There are still a few remnants of the K program left before I can say she's graduated from L.A. K (like there are still a few more short stories and poems to be read, half of her very last Go For the Code workbook, etc), but she has finished all level based parts of the curriculum, like the copywork. I feel free to go ahead and start L.A. 1 at a slow pace while completing the last bits of L.A. K--kind of a rounding the corner thing.

I am so excited about what I see ahead in the Language Arts 1 program. Flipping through it, I'm drawn to the logical way in which it's organized. It keeps with basic phonetics, while still allowing for memorized "sight" words where phonetics doesn't help. It incorportates spelling that matches the level of reading that week. Copywork matches with the reading material and fun games and activities round out everything to mix and match hard work with fun learning. I really LOVE what I see. I am truly looking forward to experiencing this Language Arts 'year', or however long it takes her.

I can't hardly believe my little girl is becoming so grown up. This program goes all the way from cvc words (consonant, vowel, consonant words), which she is very familiar with, to reading short chapter books. We're in to new territory now, and I'm nervous and excited all at once to see how it goes.

My SweetyGirl is 6 years old!

2008-10-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

Good morning, SweetyGirl! It's your BIRTHDAY!!!! Her party's going to be on next Sunday, so I went ahead and gave her one present now. A dozen pink roses and an outfit for her special day out with Papa and Nana! I know you can't tell very well from the picture, but these are sparkly jeans.

Papa and Nana took Abby to Claires to get her ears pierced. She suprised us all when she chose the blue earings instead of pink. She didn't cry even one tear, and was so excited. I half expected her to have one pierced ear when we finished, but she was SO brave!!

Nana with Abby, in her new blue earings. Even though she surprised us with blue, she hasn't regreted it at all! She loves them. And they match everything, which is very important to my girly-girl.

Papa admiring Abby's new look.

Mama is very proud of how bravely Abby handled the whole thing. Abram's popping his head in for a better look.

Today's Copywork Assignment

2008-10-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

I usually don't think much about reporting Abby's copywork stuff, cause it really makes for a boring picture. Today, however, she gave a really cute answer to one of the questions, so I figured now was a good time to write about Copywork.

Today's Copywork:

Tom rubs the van's hub cap.

(She copy's the sentence in her own handwriting).

Then she does the excercises for that sentence. Today's were as follows:

1. Circle the apostrophe. What does it mean? (she answer's orally--"That it belongs to him.") I'm not about to correct her that a van is not necessarily a him/her.

2. Why do you think Tom would rub the hub cap? (What I was expecting: "To make it shiny." What she actually answered was way cuter: "Because maybe they're going to a show to see who's cars the prettiest!" TOO CUTE!!!!)

3. Underline the wrods with the short u sound. (rubs, hub)

Fun Tales with Abby

2008-10-16T10:43:00.000-07:00

Mama listening in as Abby reads me her book:

We're going to have to work on short "e" (she pronounces it "ih" a lot).

Abby's doing very well on her reading! She goes through anywhere from 3 to 5 of these little books throughout the day. The first one we read in the day is the one for the week we are on, than I let her choose any one she wishes to read. She can read all of them with no problem, she just needs practice in fluency. I make sure she reads each of the books at least 5 times before checking it off as done. By the 5th time she comes across it, she can easily read the sentences. Sonlight's K reading program doesn't get into many memorized words (other than 'the' and 'is', etc.), so Abby is really beyond this level. It gives her good reading fluency practice, but I'm looking forward to getting the Reading 1 from Sonlight so that Abby can go on to the next level of know-how in reading.

Hurricane Ike

2008-10-15T09:24:00.000-07:00

I have been putting off blogging after Hurricane Ike, simply because I am overwhelmed by the amount of info I could put on here to explain what all we did. I think, instead, I might just load some pictures, and let them speak for themselves. We are fine, although I have shed plenty of tears (more for family and friends that were effected more than us). We are finally caught up with school. I was SO GLAD that we were ahead in math and Language Arts, so that all I had to do was focus on the subjects that we were behind on because of Ike. After almost a month of not doing hardly any school, we were only a week behind on the core, and after really looking at my instuctor's guide, I was still ahead on most of it. Abby was already half done with L.A. K and Math K! I hadn't realized that before the hurricane. Wow! I guess I just didn't think with how much playing and watching cartoons that they do that she could possibly be that far ahead. I was really, seriously worried about being behind until I took a hard look at where we were. Now I'm more worried about how I'm going to find the money for more math and L.A.s stuff to either suppliment or go on ahead. (I'll probably just buy a different kind of math, since I want her to be well rounded in the different approaches--she already has Horizons and Singapore. But the language arts for Kindergarten is just too easy for her, so I'll probably just go on ahead with that. I need to find out where she actually needs work, other than just fluency practice.) Anyhow, on with some pics:

Evacuation--all we took was a suitcase of toys for each child, necessities for our stay with Mamaw, files, and pictures:

Our stay with Mamaw was crowded, but very peaceful overall. We played games, watched the news, and let the kids play outside when they got stir-crazy.

On our way back to the house, we saw some really surreal sights. These are within 2 miles of our home:

Our next door neighbor's swing set was scattered all over this field. The guys pulled all the peices they could find back, but some of the peices (including the slide) could not be found. The children entertained themselves on the peices until they dragged it around to the front for trash pick up. Sad!

This is the inside of our home. Everything in the living room got wet, except the things up off the ground, like the tv and fishtank (laugh!). Our couches still smell musty, although they may be able to be steam cleaned, but the other furniture deteriorated near the bottom where the water sat against it for days. The carpet all molded and had to be taken out before we came back.

There was still a lot of work to be done once we returned. The kids had to stay upstairs in their room for a couple of days while we pulled up tackboards and anything else we didn't want them playing around. After that, we could no longer keep them back, and they helped with little tasks like sweeping and carrying out pillows. They got to see what the inside of a wall looked like and what sheet rock really was.

All of our food was ruined because of electricity outages. We went to the grocery store, but that was a joke. We found peanut butter and jelly, but not bread. It looked so bare! Then what we had in the basket we ended up not being able to buy because we had no cash. We ended up driving to the nearest distribution center and getting a box of MREs and some bottled water. It didn't take but another 2 days before some sausage and milk from nearby places started ariving at Walmart, and we got some cash out, but the MREs were a fun experience. I feel for the soldiers who have to eat that nasty stuff!

Math on a Holiday

2008-09-03T19:37:00.000-07:00

Daddy was home on Labor Day, so we just relaxed and played most of the day. When they did get bored, however, I brought out some of their math toys to play with. Abby and Abram both love the pattern blocks, and ask to get them down pretty often.

First Day in Elementary Sunday School Classes

2008-09-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

Abby is now in the Elementary program in our church's Sunday school program. I can't believe she's getting so big. They have a small group of about 10 children who meet together for 20 minutes, then they go to a K through 5th grade collective worship service, than back to their small group for Sunday school class. She really liked her first day, but was a little dissapointed that she couldn't stand beside her Aunt (9 year old aunt) during the Elementary worship service. I would guess that the children's program from K through 5th at our church is about 100 students, but I really don't know for sure. I just recieved the information on the program they use, and it sounds awsome. It's called "252 Basics" and you can check it out at http://www.252basics.com/.

Here are a few pictures of her first day:

Abby poses for a picture with Daddy at the K classroom's sign-in table.

Our Children's Minister's assistant (on the far left) moves from room to room to make sure everything is moving smoothly in every class from the infant room to the 5th grade classroom. She is a very busy person! Abby's trying to decide where in the circle she wants to sit. She knows most of the children in this classroom, so the transition was easy on her (she's a little shy with new people).

She feels most comfortable between one of her friends and her new teacher. The woman in blue is the K teacher and the young man is the class's assistant. This is the Sunday right before Labor Day, so a lot of people are out of town. I would expect a normal number in Abby's class to be closer to 10 children. Abby's Sunday school class is where she gets most of her structured 'socialization', but she has plenty of friends both in and out of class. (Don't think I am worried about socialization, however. I know she's going to be fine in this area with how many people we are around all of the time, but I know other people are concerned).

This School Year's Curriculum

2008-08-29T10:43:00.000-07:00

It would take me all day to describe Abby's entire curriculum, so I decided to just take a picture of all of it instead. More than 90% of these books we've read before in the last couple of years, so we already know we love the books we will be reading. We're adding in map work and worksheets this year, and we'll be doing more math and language arts (L.A.), but otherwise it will be a review of the last couple of years.

Abby insisted on having the picture taken in her princess dress! Isn't she adorable? I think so.

Oh, and Abby's little brother, Abram insisted on getting a picture taken with all of his "school" books, too. We had to buy him a workbook to color in so that he wouldn't feel left out. He can't wait to start school--but I can, lol. I actually want Abby to be a pretty fluent reader before I start officially schooling Abram.

Kindergarten Officially Starts for Abby

2008-08-28T16:24:00.000-07:00

Kindergarten officially started for Abby this Monday, August 25. Why I say 'officially' is because I've been teaching her at home, well...since she was born. My husband Josh and I have been discussing homeschooling since before Abby was big enough for others to see my stomach swelling. Josh was homeschooled from 6th grade through graduation, and I sampled homeschooling in upper elementary, when my mother homeschooled us. We prayed and talked and studied for years, and have come to know that homeschooling is God's will for our family.

Research and practice have been my primary concern for the past 5 years. We have asked around, searched the web, read many books on homeschooling and teaching philosophies, etc, and tested out a few approaches. We have come to love Sonlight curriculum and will be using it in our home. And even though we have already gone through Cores B and C, now called P4/5 and Core K, we will be repeating them this year as her first official year in school. The primary reason we are repeating is to give her a solid foundation. She has already learned to read basic 3 letter words and can write legibly, but we want her to complete the worksheets and map work we skipped last year. She is now ready for formal schooling, where before we just read to her a lot and taught her to read in very small sessions. I believe this will be a great year and can't wait to see her growing in knowledge and wisdom before my very eyes!

I am very excited about this school year--and a little nervous. I am excited to see her grow up right in front of me, seeing every ah-ha moment, knowing that I taught her to read and write and how to understand math. However, it's a heavy responsibility to know that if any one's to blame for her education not being the best, it's ME! I can't point to some teacher in 1st or 4th grade, and blame all my children's educational problems on them. I am responsible for the successes AND the failures, the joys and the pains. That humbles me. If I didn't know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was God's will and path for us, I don't think I would be brave enough. But God has given me a peace and joy when teaching my children that it seems easy until I step back and look at it from a different perspective. If you read this blog regularly, you will start to think everything we do in school is easy for me. That's not true. There's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on--cleaning house in between subjects, wiping down dry erase boards and maps, cooking and wiping peanut butter faces, planning the following day's school, in addition to actually teaching. It's work! But it's FUN work. I LOVE my vocation!!! But don't think because you see the easy side, that there's not a hard side.

We are starting this blog to keep our family updated on Abby's education, so that they can peek in the schoolroom, so to speak. However, we welcome anyone in to read and enjoy our journey with us. We would love to answer any questions or comments you have about what we do.

Now, to introduce my 1st student: Abigail

She is just precious, as you can probably guess. She is our little princess and is more girl than I ever was. Every morning she comes down our stairs in a dress, and wonders why in the world I don't wear dresses all the time like she does. I have to push her to wear pants if we go climbing on the monkey bars. Abby's a little shy, but just loves her Sunday school class and teacher. She is as smart as a whip, in my opinion, and I am really going to have to work hard to keep a step ahead of her. I love her with all my heart, and I am so looking forward to teaching her for the next 13 years!