School update

School work on an ordinary day, Isaac supervising!

Here's another very late homeschool update.  We've been doing well, plugging away each day.  Well, in the perfect world it would be every day!  We usually do 4 days each week, as the 5th usually ends up a town day or an appointment day or a play day or a tired day.  And that's okay!

Luke is in 2nd grade (grade 2 for you Canadians!).  His day looks something like this:

-Math 15 min

-Phonics 10 min

-Journal 10 min (spelling, grammar, sentence structure are included here, Charlotte Mason style)

-Reading/English comprehension 20 min

(total 55 min work, with 5 min breaks jumping on the rebounder in between)

During quiet time in the afternoon he reads science, history and other learning books.

James is in kindergarten.  He does work 2-3 days per week, and his lessons are:

-Math (orally only) 10 min

-Penmanship (writing out his memory verse from Sunday School) 10 min

-Play working in random "learning" coloring books (math, shapes, time telling, etc) from the Dollar Tree

-Learning to read -10 min

We have been reading aloud every evening to the kids.  Since Christmas we've read Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan and now we're working on Farmer Boy (second time through for the family, as James can't remember reading it)

James and Elise help me with morning chores and take turns keeping an eye on Isaac running rampant throughout the house.  We then go for a walk after lunch, then quiet time and then Luke is supposed to practice a piano lesson although he rarely remembers!

I should note that we have stopped going to our old homeschool group and have begun a new one.  I'll write about that in a separate post, as it is a rather lengthy story.

What curriculum do we use?  We went to the homeschool conference and looked a bunch of them over.  The criteria I was looking for was: affordable, very little teacher prep and not too many consumables.  Many of them looked good, but didn't meet all of those criteria.  We ended up using Rod & Staff  since I had found a bunch of teacher's manuals at the Goodwill and so we already had them.  They are a Mennonite/Amish based curriculum so we don't use anything with doctrine in it.  Just their math and reading/phonics.  For science I love Apologia, since it's Charlotte Mason style and is Bible based.  We're planning to go through one book each year and then repeat for the little kids.  The neat thing about them is that you can do everyone's science at once instead of separating the kids out for it.  It can be a family thing even.  We have spent less than $100 for all our needs this school year (to give an idea how affordable it can be).  We use Eclectic Readers for learning to read.  And Ray's Arithmetic for oral math (which both boys do).  I bought as many books used as I could (half.com usually).  I try to buy books that can be used for all the kids so there will be less cost overall.  Math and phonics have consumable workbooks, but the rest are all real books.