Warning: This is a long post with details about the books we use and how we use them. Read on if you are interested. There are a few pictures of the girls on their horses from this week's lesson down at the bottom is you choose to skip down!
I write out the girls' assignments in a small journal I picked up from B&N. I put very basic information since they know what they have to do in all the subjects. This helps them keep track of what they've done and will also serve as an attendance book at the end of the year. At the bottom of the page I write in the activities for the day. We usually have at least one dance class, playgroup, coop, lessons, or something and so they can see what is scheduled for the day. This is the first year they've had their own little planners and it's been great so far.
I get most of my ideas for curriculum and schedule from a book called
The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jesse Wise. The mother, Jesse, homeschooled the daughter, Susan, who homeschools her children now. The book that they wrote together is a manual of detailed instructions on how to homeschool every subject from kindergarten through high school. I don't follow everything that they recommend but it has given me great ideas and helped me figure out what it is I do want to do.
Our homeschool focuses on math, reading, and musical instruments. We spend the most time during the day on these 3 things. For math, we use the curriculum
Math U See. It is a program that comes with DVDs so the girls and I can watch the 5 minute teaching segments before each new lesson if needed. Ellen is finishing the 5th book, Epsilon, which is mainly fractions. Arianna is in the middle of the 4th book, Delta, division.
Reading consists of 30 minutes of structured reading out of a "chosen" book. I have a list of books that the girls can choose from for this portion of their school work. Daniel and I came up with the list together and they are mainly classics. Arianna is in the middle of the Chronicles of Narnia series. Ellen just finished Little Women. Other books Ellen has read include George MacDonald Fairy Tales, Tom Sawyer, and Huck Finn. Before Chronicles, Arianna was reading things to build her fluency so this is her first time reading classics by herself.
They also spend 30 minutes every morning practicing their chosen instrument. Ellen is still playing the piano and Arianna the violin.
We also spend about 3 days per week on grammar. I use
First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind series by Susan Wise Bauer. We do the lessons all together and are on level 4.We work on diagramming sentences, memorizing definitions, lists, and poems and recognizing parts of speech, etc.
This year we are also using Bauer's writing textbooks. Arianna is on
Writing with Ease level 3. Ellen is on Writing With Skill (Level 5). This text is not published yet but she offers a download of the the first 10 weeks on
her blog. They do 4 lessons a week. These texts teach writing in a very structured system. For example, Ellen is learning how to outline passages and Arianna is working on finding the main idea from a passage (4-5 paragraphs long) and summarizing it into 2-3 sentences.
We've also added some logic into our days. We use
Mind Benders workbooks. It is a small workbook with only about 50 pages. The girls had so much fun with the problems that we finished it in one week. Now I've got to order some more:)
For spelling the girls each do a couple of pages (10 mins) of
Spelling Workout books 4 days a week.
They are also asked to do 30-60 minutes of extra "fun reading." They can choose whatever they want for this time (except comics). Ellen's reading the Warriors series and Arianna is on the Judy Moody series. They read in most of their free time so this is not a hard thing to check off the list.
We will be starting our coop in September. This year we have a lot of new families involved and we'll be doing History, Science and Art. For History we are using the
Story of the World volume 3. Science is Zoology for the first semester and
engineering for second. For art we are using
Artistic Pursuits.
We are members of a homeschool support group called REACH. This year I'm on the administrative board and work as the webmaster. Check out the new website
www.reachgroup.org. These new responsibilities are the main reason I haven't been blogging as much over the past few months. The blog may continue to suffer as I spend my computer time on REACH. I don't want to spend any extra time behind this screen than I have to.
The girls have been taking horse back riding lessons after getting a great deal from a Groupon over the summer. They will get a total of 10 lessons each. Today we had our 5th lesson and Ellen trotted off the lead rope with no hands on the saddle for the first time. Arianna got her hands off the saddle in a trot but the instructor is still leading the horse. The girls are learning how to be more assertive. It's hard to get "Big Ugly" (that's the name of that beautiful horse) to do what they want him to do. :)
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| Ellen off the lead |
Here's a picture from one of our field trips this month to a nature program led by the rangers at the Columbia Canal. The kids learned about soil composition. 
Here's one of the girls' ballet classes practicing their dance from the Nutcracker. We had a parents night out at the studio where the girls read the Nutcracker story, made crafts and played games. Their class did the spanish dance for the rest of the crowd.
This was my favorite thing--free kayaking with the rangers at the Columbia Canal. They taught us a few things about how to paddle and what to do if you fall in. The water was gentle and the weather turned out perfect at 60-65 degrees and sunny for both of our trips. We are scheduled to go out on the river in the spring. We loved being on the water. It's so relaxing and the perspective from down at the level of the ground is so interesting. Can't wait for the next trip.
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