Jon-Ira the "GEET-BOT"
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Happy heart
Becca beat her "by Thanksgiving" deadline of counting to 100. Next step, counting by tens, fives, and twos to 100. (10/16/2013) As of 10/29 she now knows how to count to 100 by ones and by 10's.
Jon-Ira keeps going around saying "aaaa aaaa aga aga" (alligator). And now that he has begun working on the letter Bb he goes around making ;p sounds as he thinks that's the right way, and for 2 years old, I'm okay with that.
Jon-Ira keeps going around saying "aaaa aaaa aga aga" (alligator). And now that he has begun working on the letter Bb he goes around making ;p sounds as he thinks that's the right way, and for 2 years old, I'm okay with that.
All of my babies on the slide :)
Jon-Ira has fallen in love with these videos! He will just watch them over and over and over and they have a beat that's fantastic for getting some moving around done too! I sent another picture from my phone and can't figure out how to bring it to this post, so it looks like I will be having two posts back to back again. *sigh*
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
People are noticing...
Apparently the girls and I weren't the only ones noticing the stress that SCVCS was causing our family. Katie Grace had an appointment on Monday, and I was told that I looked like I was actually feeling peace again. I have to say, Easy Peasy has truly allowed me to exhale much more often. It really is Easy Peasy! The girls, I admit started off a little slower than they should, but I totally expected it being that it was a change of pace.
Becca is the closest to getting caught up, but she is also doing three different grade levels, so it's really almost complicated to say an exact grade level for her. Jon-Ira really wants to be included, especially when we are doing more of the hands on activities, I have started working with him more on the preschool level of Easy Peasy than the ABC Jesus Loves Me, simply because we are already in the Easy Peasy site, but he is still doing lots of coloring activities from ABC JLM. Lydia, is still super excited with her lapbook, and absolutely loves working on it, and almost gets upset the days that her history lesson doesn't lead her to work on it. She is also enjoying working on her "wall body," where we traced her on the yellow paper, and as she learns about a body part she draws, and labels it. So far she has drawn and labeled biceps, quadriceps, tibia, fibula, radius, and ulna. Katie Grace says that the history is her favorite so far, especially since there are so many games and interactive activities to help her grasp the concepts. Her favorite activity so far this week has been a timeline where she was given four important events from the Bible, she was to look up the approximate date that it occurred and label the lower portion of the timeline. She then was to find Ancient Egypt events from her lesson that were around those same times and label them on the top of the timeline. (She used this website for Bible dates reference)
We will be headed to the park shortly and all the kids have on their Britt Academy shirts. I hope to get a cute picture while we are there.
(I was asked if there will be a schedule of posts; most likely not. There may be days that there are more than one, like today. Then there may be times that I go a week or two without any posts at all.)
Until next time.... happy learning!!
Becca is the closest to getting caught up, but she is also doing three different grade levels, so it's really almost complicated to say an exact grade level for her. Jon-Ira really wants to be included, especially when we are doing more of the hands on activities, I have started working with him more on the preschool level of Easy Peasy than the ABC Jesus Loves Me, simply because we are already in the Easy Peasy site, but he is still doing lots of coloring activities from ABC JLM. Lydia, is still super excited with her lapbook, and absolutely loves working on it, and almost gets upset the days that her history lesson doesn't lead her to work on it. She is also enjoying working on her "wall body," where we traced her on the yellow paper, and as she learns about a body part she draws, and labels it. So far she has drawn and labeled biceps, quadriceps, tibia, fibula, radius, and ulna. Katie Grace says that the history is her favorite so far, especially since there are so many games and interactive activities to help her grasp the concepts. Her favorite activity so far this week has been a timeline where she was given four important events from the Bible, she was to look up the approximate date that it occurred and label the lower portion of the timeline. She then was to find Ancient Egypt events from her lesson that were around those same times and label them on the top of the timeline. (She used this website for Bible dates reference)
We will be headed to the park shortly and all the kids have on their Britt Academy shirts. I hope to get a cute picture while we are there.
(I was asked if there will be a schedule of posts; most likely not. There may be days that there are more than one, like today. Then there may be times that I go a week or two without any posts at all.)
Until next time.... happy learning!!
A few pictures...
As I mentioned in a prior post, we decided on the name Britt Academy as the name of our school. We also decided on school colors of purple, blue, and yellow. After the girls made tie dyed shirts for girl scouts, we decided that's how we wanted to do our outing shirts. I wasn't sure if Travis would want one or not, but after seeing how well they turned out, he now tells me he wants me to make some for he and I as well. We look forward to wearing these when we go out on outings. Hey, it will either increase or cease the "Are all of these yours?" comments, right?
Jon-Ira may not "do school" all the time, but he really enjoys it when he does. Yesterday he colored Abraham the alligator, he says "aaaaah."
As Lydia took her body down to label the biceps and quadriceps, Jon-Ira took the opportunity to lay on it while she grabbed her coloring pencils :)
Becca had fun with coloring addition, and is getting better daily with her reading. Hopefully I can get either audio or video of it soon.
Lydia was labeling biceps on her wall body. Labeling is so much more fun and engaging when it's your own body. (She had to lay on it to see if she had changed any in the last week, lol)
Katie Grace was in deep with history, learning about hieroglyphics. She loves those headphones, whether her lesson is online, or offline, with or without audio/video, she loves to wear them.
As I am about to publish this (for the second time, as the first time was from mobile, and I wanted to edit it to make it easier on the eyes) I noticed that my picture of Becca didn't even include her, but only a portion of her work. We have hopes and plans to go to the park today, maybe I can get a few extra pictures of her today.
Friday, October 11, 2013
First Full Week
First Full Week
We left SCVCS October 1, and I spent the remainder of the day that day going over what I expected of them, and what they could expect of me, and how the generic day would play out. We then eased into the daily work the next day. Therefore, this week was our first full week using Easy Peasy as our primary curriculum.
It has been a very busy and hectic at times week. We went to Anderson for dentist appointments twice, and went to Greenwood twice, once for supplies for Lydia's science lessons and for shirts for tie dying for Girls Scouts and for Britt Academy (pictures to come soon), and once for my sewing class on Wednesday.
Melissa enjoying the play area at Kool Smiles
Katie Grace enjoying the games
Lydia and Becca, never overlooking an opportunity to say Mommy, take our picture :)
I don't think Melissa is enjoying that as much as Lydia, lol
Now, that's more fun!
Sunday, October 6, 2013
A New Adventure
A New Adventure In Our Life
We have decided to embrace on the life of homeschooling. Through lots of back and forth and praying, and thinking and considering and reconsidering we have decided to school our children through the Easy Peasy curriculum. Even if for just this year, we feel this is what is best for our family at the current time. We have registered with the homeschool accountability association of our choosing, and decided on a name for our homeschool, we even came up with our "school colors."
We have decided that our school will be called Britt Academy. We have voted and it appears our colors will be BLUE, PURPLE, and YELLOW. We look forward to making shirts as an Art project one day to display our new colors. We decided on these colors mostly due to Jon-Ira needing to be able to be included, as our first choices that were voted for were blue, purple, and pink.
As I previously mentioned we have chosen Easy Peasy as our curriculum of choice. This seems to be the best fit for our family even if just for this first year of homeschooling. This curriculum offers preschool through high school, and can be worked on in different grade levels at once if need be.
This is new to us in some aspects, as now we don't have so many teachers to "report to" as we had with the virtual charter school, however it is not as much of a change as we were already at home. I will be using this blog to document some of the things we are doing throughout the year. There may be times that as part of a writing assignment one of the older ones may create a blog post.
Becca, while in the virtual charter school was constantly bored, and was actually over half way through the year in her math book, but this curriculum is very reading heavy, so therefore I have backed her up to the reading portion of the preschool level (called Getting Ready 1 McGuffey Primer) for the reading portion and she is doing the rest of the daily work from the Getting Ready 2 section. She was reading so well the other day that I facetimed my Mom so she could see/hear her reading, and about halfway through she looked at me with the biggest smile and squeaked... "I'm ACTUALLY reading!!" She is also working hard towards being able to count to 100, so far she can make it to 50 on her good days. She is buzzing through at quite the pace to keep up with. Becca is such a joy to teach, and her enthusiasm is enough to make you smile from ear to ear on the toughest of days. Becca is currently 5 years old and in regular public school would be in kindergarten, but most likely would be bored as fast as she likes to move forward.
Lydia, currently 9 years old and doing Fourth Grade level, was the absolutely hardest to convince in the virtual charter school to do her written work, yet so far between the two oldest she is having the greatest success in that area with this curriculum. Lydia was the first one to have a lapbook as an assignment and she is head over heels excited about it. She and Katie Grace both love that their history lessons are tied into their Bible lessons. So far, Lydia's favorite thing about her math is that there are lots of online games. I think what's so great about that is that she is learning even when she thinks it's just for fun. I wish I could bottle the excitement from her on working on her lapbook and spread it evenly across her other areas of study, but for now we will embrace each struggle as a challenge, and hey, if it takes making lapbooks to create an interest, I see tons of lapbooks in her future.
Katie Grace, currently 11 years old and doing Sixth Grade level, is the typical pre-teen as far as attitude goes. She doesn't really want to do anything. However, once you get her started, and especially if there is a video or other extension activities to go along with her lesson, she's like a rocket you can't stop. She has been my biggest struggle. Why is she a struggle? Well, when she was in kindergarten, she was in one of the highest reading levels of her class, but was ashamed of her smarts because her best friend was in not the lowest, but one of the lower levels, and so her shame soon turned into trying her best to fail just so she could be with her friend. This continued through the years, and gradually got worse over the years. The more she forced herself to have shame in her intelligence the lower her self esteem became. So, now I have her here under my wing, and she is competing against nobody but herself, and sometimes that's an awesome motivator, others it just makes things that much more of a challenge. I'm up for the challenge. It is hard, and I know it is. She is so full of compassion it will shock the pants off of you. This child loves the Lord, and loves people.
Jon-Ira, currently 2 is mostly in the potty training stage right now. I do try to implement some of the 2 year curriculum (from this site) whenever he wants to "do school" like his siblings. Most often that not though, he just will get on Starfall and just play around with the letters and sounds they make. I started all of my babies on Starfall at around that age.
Melissa, being only 8 months old of course is mostly just learning how to handle solid foods, pulling up on furniture and "furniture walking," and crawling around being quite the explorer. The older kids thought I was crazy because when I give her Cheerios I count them to her. But, I told them, you are never too young nor too old to learn.
Travis' greatest excitement with homeschooling the kids is that he wants to teach them about honeybees, and have them have their own beehive. If this works out the way he is wanting, they would be in charge of them, would learn about how they do what they do, and would be in charge of bottling and selling the honey as well as part of their science and math.
My greatest excitement is being in control of when to speed up and when to slow down. There were times that they may need to spend 2-3 days on one topic and doing so in the virtual charter school would mess up their percentages. Likewise there were days that they "got it" much quicker and needed to push forward, and with the virtual charter school we would have to have permission to do so otherwise would be given points that after so many would get the whole family kicked out of school.
We have decided that our school will be called Britt Academy. We have voted and it appears our colors will be BLUE, PURPLE, and YELLOW. We look forward to making shirts as an Art project one day to display our new colors. We decided on these colors mostly due to Jon-Ira needing to be able to be included, as our first choices that were voted for were blue, purple, and pink.
As I previously mentioned we have chosen Easy Peasy as our curriculum of choice. This seems to be the best fit for our family even if just for this first year of homeschooling. This curriculum offers preschool through high school, and can be worked on in different grade levels at once if need be.
This is new to us in some aspects, as now we don't have so many teachers to "report to" as we had with the virtual charter school, however it is not as much of a change as we were already at home. I will be using this blog to document some of the things we are doing throughout the year. There may be times that as part of a writing assignment one of the older ones may create a blog post.
Becca, while in the virtual charter school was constantly bored, and was actually over half way through the year in her math book, but this curriculum is very reading heavy, so therefore I have backed her up to the reading portion of the preschool level (called Getting Ready 1 McGuffey Primer) for the reading portion and she is doing the rest of the daily work from the Getting Ready 2 section. She was reading so well the other day that I facetimed my Mom so she could see/hear her reading, and about halfway through she looked at me with the biggest smile and squeaked... "I'm ACTUALLY reading!!" She is also working hard towards being able to count to 100, so far she can make it to 50 on her good days. She is buzzing through at quite the pace to keep up with. Becca is such a joy to teach, and her enthusiasm is enough to make you smile from ear to ear on the toughest of days. Becca is currently 5 years old and in regular public school would be in kindergarten, but most likely would be bored as fast as she likes to move forward.
Lydia, currently 9 years old and doing Fourth Grade level, was the absolutely hardest to convince in the virtual charter school to do her written work, yet so far between the two oldest she is having the greatest success in that area with this curriculum. Lydia was the first one to have a lapbook as an assignment and she is head over heels excited about it. She and Katie Grace both love that their history lessons are tied into their Bible lessons. So far, Lydia's favorite thing about her math is that there are lots of online games. I think what's so great about that is that she is learning even when she thinks it's just for fun. I wish I could bottle the excitement from her on working on her lapbook and spread it evenly across her other areas of study, but for now we will embrace each struggle as a challenge, and hey, if it takes making lapbooks to create an interest, I see tons of lapbooks in her future.
Katie Grace, currently 11 years old and doing Sixth Grade level, is the typical pre-teen as far as attitude goes. She doesn't really want to do anything. However, once you get her started, and especially if there is a video or other extension activities to go along with her lesson, she's like a rocket you can't stop. She has been my biggest struggle. Why is she a struggle? Well, when she was in kindergarten, she was in one of the highest reading levels of her class, but was ashamed of her smarts because her best friend was in not the lowest, but one of the lower levels, and so her shame soon turned into trying her best to fail just so she could be with her friend. This continued through the years, and gradually got worse over the years. The more she forced herself to have shame in her intelligence the lower her self esteem became. So, now I have her here under my wing, and she is competing against nobody but herself, and sometimes that's an awesome motivator, others it just makes things that much more of a challenge. I'm up for the challenge. It is hard, and I know it is. She is so full of compassion it will shock the pants off of you. This child loves the Lord, and loves people.
Jon-Ira, currently 2 is mostly in the potty training stage right now. I do try to implement some of the 2 year curriculum (from this site) whenever he wants to "do school" like his siblings. Most often that not though, he just will get on Starfall and just play around with the letters and sounds they make. I started all of my babies on Starfall at around that age.
Melissa, being only 8 months old of course is mostly just learning how to handle solid foods, pulling up on furniture and "furniture walking," and crawling around being quite the explorer. The older kids thought I was crazy because when I give her Cheerios I count them to her. But, I told them, you are never too young nor too old to learn.
Travis' greatest excitement with homeschooling the kids is that he wants to teach them about honeybees, and have them have their own beehive. If this works out the way he is wanting, they would be in charge of them, would learn about how they do what they do, and would be in charge of bottling and selling the honey as well as part of their science and math.
My greatest excitement is being in control of when to speed up and when to slow down. There were times that they may need to spend 2-3 days on one topic and doing so in the virtual charter school would mess up their percentages. Likewise there were days that they "got it" much quicker and needed to push forward, and with the virtual charter school we would have to have permission to do so otherwise would be given points that after so many would get the whole family kicked out of school.
Part of what makes the switch from online public school to this curriculum so easy, is that this is a completely free curriculum!! This lady felt led from the Lord to make it available for other families other than hers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)