One month down...

We have a little over one month under our belts this year, and I have to say things are going well. My adaptation of the Workbox System is working well for us, my tweaks early on to make the most of attention spans has proven to be the correct move, and it's amazing the amount of information the kids are retaining... all of them! Three year old Bud has been pulling our random facts about the states in the northeast we're studying and amazing those that hear him. The Bug beat her grandfather in a game of "What's the Capital City?" It's fun to see the things that stick in their brains adn the strange times they sometimes come out. It truly proves that they are paying attention, even when you don't think they are!

We've gotten through the first several lessons of Math U See Alpha. The bug is doing really well with it and loves the format, as I thought she would. So far it's really pretty easy for her, but we are also going quicker through some of the lessons I know she can do pretty well already. I have bought my teacher's books for Beta already as I plan to start that at some point this year since I know Alpha won't last us all year. I also hope to stick in some supplemental time telling and money lessons as we go to get her more up on those.

Our reading is working well for us. We both like how it is set up. It is better suited for a classroom, but I'm finding she enjoys it. I am looking into fast-tracking some of the material though as it is all pretty easy for her. She's reading at a pretty high level already so I hate to bore her too much waiting until we get to more challenging material.

For spelling she's doing really well. We started out the year with some themed lists which were a bit challenging for her (we took a couple of the tests 2 or 3 times) but now that I've gotten into the regular lists, she's doing really well with them.

Science is going well. I'm enjoying it as well. So many things I didn't know about that I'm picking up from her book as we read it and do the activities. We're at a fun part right now as we have finished the reading in the chapter about the sun and will be doing activities such as play with UV beads and make a sun pin viewing box.

Writing was a subject I was frightened by but it's also going well. The Bug is the type of person who hates being wrong. She's very creative but when given a writing prompt, she is looking for exact direction so that it is completely correct and isn't too big on the "write what you think" type of thing. It's starting to come out, but we have to get her out of her fear that it's not perfect zone!

Geography is going well. We're really enjoying our Roadtrip USA and looking forward to an upcoming trip when we'll be able to see some of the things we've been talking about. I'm even throwing in some extras of interest to them so that we can talk about them when we're actually in that area of the country.

For art so far, we've been doing some letter crafts. Paste together type of activities. I'd like to do a bit more, but for now, this is all I have the prep time for and I'm tying it to the letter the Bug and Bud are working on at school (and thus at homeschool on their days home).

I started out with some computer basics with Bug, and we're now working on typing. I'm amazed at how fast she's picking that up. She'll be typing better than Papa Goose soon!

The younger ones are having a great time with the letter of the week activities and doing really well keeping busy while Bug does her work.  It's a challenge keeping up with who is home on which days and it does actually limit us some.  There are many more times I wish they were home more and home at the same time than wishing they were not here, which is a good.  I have Clifford magazines from Scholastic that I would like ot do with the younger ones but am actually trying to find a good time to get them done!  It seemed like such a great idea to get them and they are so cute and fun that I'm excited.  However I only have enough for Bee, Bud and Bird so it's hard to find a time for them to do them that Bug won't get upset because she doesn't have one! 

So far I'm finding homeschooling is so much easier when you have time to prepare and plan (go figure!).  This is a far less stressful year and I am so thankful to be able to do this for and with my children.  The time we're spending is invaluable and the time we're getting as a family is even better!  What started out as a last ditch effort last year and as a we have no other options for this year, has been one of the greatest things to happen to us!

... And Go!!!!

We are 2 days into our new school year and things are running as smoothly as I would expect from a new year. I feel more confident as we have one year of homeschooling under our belts. I've spent my summer planning and preparing, coming up with ideas and revising plans. Yesterday all 4 kids were home for our first day of school. Papa Goose was also home as he worked the late shift last night. I'm so glad he was home to offer a helping hand. Especially since I ended up kind of overloading our first day when I found out what the preschool schedule was and that they were not starting next week, like I'd figured but today. I had a lot of things they'd all enjoy as we're starting our year studying colors (a launch off the first homeschool program's class of colors). I learned a bit of how things would flow yesterday and rearranged the rest of the week accordingly.

We started our day with inspecting our new school room and seeing all the hidden supplies I'd tucked into the desks. We said the Pledge of Allegiance and took first day of school pictures. The pictures then went into "Star Student" frames we made. We then decorated posters I ordered that are all about the things the kids currently like- favorite color, what they want to be when they grow up, etc. It was a classroom-sized pack of posters but will be a fun thing for the kids to do year to year and see how their likes change.

We started on the Colors of the Rainbow Project Pack from In the Hands of a Child. The differences in how dilegently the kids work and attention spans really showed! We had a special snack of Smarties and M&M's for the first day. It was supposed to be Lucky Charms in a bag with a cute label that said "Lucky to have you in my class" that I found as a free printable online. It was really going to be cute until we found we were out of Lucky Charms! On to Plan B (OK, create plan B).

We did the first lesson in Roadtrip USA from Confessions of a Homeschooler. The kids aren't too into for right now. When we get to Washington DC and the states, it's going to grab their attention far more!

We did our first PE lesson, assessments, from Family Time Fitness. We did leave off some of the assessments (really, we have a 6, 4, 3, and 2 year old so there are some things that are just a bit beyond them!).

Bug finished her day with her first reading assignment (using Scott Foresman reading books bought used online. Yes, they are for classroom use, but I really liked the cross-curricular components of them and am finding ways to make most of it work for us) and spelling (spelling list #1 consists of color words).

It was a busy day, and the first day we used our workboxes which are really metal magazine holders from Ikea. We liked that they were metal and sturdy, fit nicely on top of the kids Ikea PS desks, and are magnetic, like they're desks.

Today we started our second day taking Buddy to preschool for the first time. He did great, being super-excited and all smiles from drop off to pick up. He can't wait to go back. We started school a bit late as I misjudged how long it would take me to get lunches ready and in the fridge before we started class.

We are off now to do one last activity that I wanted to wait for Buddy for. So far, so good. The new school year has begun and is off to a great start!

Get Ready, Get Set,...

So, the private school we found and really liked didn't work out. No big deal, just apparently wasn't the right time. So I have spent my summer preparing curriculum, turning Papa Goose's and my office into our new school room, trying to enjoy these wonderful years in my children's lives. I'm not ready for it to be August and to be starting our school year next Monday. Somewhere in the tball, VBS, Girl Scout day camp, soccer lessons, playtime, 4-H fair, nad countless other activities, our summer is quickly drawing to a close as I try to hang on for dear life to it's last fleeting moments. We're all excited for our new adventure in homeschooling this year, but we're all sad summer is ending. The school year will be a hustle and bustle of activity as Bug will be doing 1st grade homeschool as well as monthly homeschool classes at the children's museum. She is also involved in Girl Scouts, 4-H, soccer, and now ballet lessons (what are we thinking with this schedule?!). Bee will be attending preschool with the preschool teacher we've grown to really love 3 days a week while going to a monthly museum class. We're contemplating tumbling classes for her but are wondering if we're more insane than anything for considering one more activity. Buddy will be going to preschool on the 2 days a week that Bee doesn't (more insanity, I tell you!). Baby Bird (who, at 2 years old, is not so baby anymore) will be doing what I'm going to refer to as Tiny Tot school at home- coloring and little activities to keep her with the big kids and busy and feeling important while absorbing some of what she's being exposed to by being in the same learning environment as the others. Please wish us luck and offer us your prayers for a successful homeschool year as we start out on this journey again, although better prepared this time. And hopefully I will be posting pictures of our new school room soon as I am proud of the hard work Papa Goose and I have put in to make it a special place for our kids that they are all so excited about!

Kindergarten Graduation and End of the School Year!

I am happy to post that this morning we finished up our planned activities and held a small, family kindergarten graduation where we presented the Bug with her report card and a Kindergarten Diploma that I made her. Her smile was one of the biggest I've ever seen, and she's telling us we can call her our first grader now! I'm so proud of all she, and we, have accomplished this year. It's been quite a road, but we did it and we're prepared to do it again next year, depending on what happens with the school we have found and liked. I feel a huge weight off my shoulders, a lot of pride in my daughter (and myself!), and a bit of sadness as I can't believe she's in 1st grade already. Your children really do grow up in the blink of an eye!

Gardening Update

Here at the Goose Nest, not much gardening has happened. Our lawn hasn't even been mowed yet (although it needs it desperately!). The Goose Nest has been plagued by a yucky cold/flu combination that was made better by an outbreak of pink eye (which really does spread through a house like wildfire, in case you were wondering). For the better part of the month of April someone in our house has been feeling not well, most of the time multiple members of our family. Combine that with the heavens above opening and dropping rain upon rain (thankfully no severe weather). Our lawn resembles a fully saturated sponge and the local farm ground is littered with unwanted ponds and lakes. Thankfully I had scheduled the week before Easter to be our homeschool spring break week so we used that time to rest and recouperate and watch the rain drops hitting the windows.

So while there hasn't been a lot of gardening done in our house, there has been some. The Bug went to an Earth Day homeschool program at the children's museum earlier in the month. She came home with a pot she had painted and planted cosmos in as well as a little "grass head." I am pleased to say we have succeeded to sprout cosmos and our grass head has needed a couple of trims already so apparently we've got bits of green thumbs! The Bee went to a different Earth Day program at the museum, coming home with a tin can she had painted and planted seeds in. I am afraid her seeds won't sprout as she was a bit too dutious with the watering for a while. I'm currently trying to dry out the soil and maybe I'll stick some new seeds in there so she can have something sprout. Here's our cosmos sprouts, grass heads, and soggy soil tin can! :-)



Before Easter we did a fun little Easter and spring unit using In the Hands of a Child's Peter Cottontail project pack as well as some other printables I found here and there or made up on my own. On one of the days we planted seeds in little pots I found in the dollar spot at Target. The Bug and Bud planted forget me nots which are sprouting nicely. The Bee and Bird planted coneflowers. The Bird's have sprouted in the last day or two finally, but we're still waiting to see if the Bee's will sprout or if we need to replant those.



Otherwise the seeds are patiently waiting for our full recovery and a nice dry out in the garden. With a forcast for more rain this week, I believe we'll be waiting a while longer. The kids made out well in the seed department for Easter. Their aunt gave them each a pack of seeds and one grandma loaded their baskets with seed packs as well. To top that off, the Bee came home with a pack of lettuce seed from her preschool teacher and the mail box had a package or two of seeds that Papa Goose ordered. After the Easter baskets were sorted through, Papa Goose's brow furrowed as he realized just how many seeds there were and that he has to replan what's going where so he can try to make the most of what we have! I think he's thankful for the wet weather to buy him time to replan the garden!

The Easter seed bounty:


This week in our homeschool we're studying gardening and things in the garden. We're using In the Hands of a Child's In the Garden project pack along with Homeschool Creations' Garden Preschool Pack and some various other resources. The kids are having a great time learning about flowers and bugs and seeds and will be planting yet more seeds yet this week. We have planter boxes

they all made at the last Home Depot's kids workshop to fill (and I believe we'll have more to do in a little over a week as it appears May's kids workshop project is another type of planter!)

And if you didn't notice in the first picture, we also have 2 picket fence planters the Bug and Bee made at a kids workshop a few months ago. Looks like Home Depot will be keeping us with lot of pots of things growing at least until Mother Nature cooperates and lets us plant outside!

Happy gardening all!

Where has time gone?

I started out with such great intentions, and then, well, life got in the way. We've been busy learning around here. Working on letters that correspond to the letters Bee is learning in preschool, doing a unit on St. Patrick's day, going to the zoo, going to the local gymnastics academy, etc.

The Bug is doing fantastic and flying through work. She's actually working on 1st grade work right now. She's worked so hard this year and progressed so much and learned a ton. Starting next week, we're going to be doing a lot of special studies until the end of our school year in mid to late May. Starting next week, we'll be doing a lot of Easter and spring activities and lessons. We'll take the week before Easter off to correspond with the Bee's schedule and the local schools'. There are several activities going on around here that week since few will be in school so we're going to try to take advantage of that. After Easter I have one special unit after another.

While we do all this, Papa Goose and I are contemplating whether or not to send the Bug to a small private school we just discovered and really enjoyed our visit the other day. We know she would love to go, but we also love our homeschooling adventure thus far. We're trying to weigh everything and pray about it. If you would pray for us in this decision-making process, we'd appreciate all the help in figuring out His way for our family that we could. Thank you!

Getting Ready to Garden

Here in our neck of the Midwest, spring came briefly. Basically for about a week. It's now retreated from winter again for a bit. Papa Goose is the gardener in our house and he's been working with the Goslings to plan out this year's garden. With several early spring colds cycling through the Goose Nest right now, planning is not going quite as, well, planned!

After Easter, I am doing a gardening unit with the children where we will plant some seeds, but really we don't have a lot of gardening in the works quite yet.

The seed catalogs have been arriving for weeks and are getting beaten and abused in our house. We've had to file several in the bottom of the recycle box as they've just been loved to pieces. The children have lots of ideas of what they want to plant in our garden this year. The nominations include everything from corn to peppers to watermelon to lemons. Papa Goose is trying to weed through the long list to figure out what we'll be most likely to use once it grows as well as what we have room for.

When he has been able to get out and work in the yard, Papa Goose has been trying to tame the fruit trees in our back yard. The Goslings find the abundance of sticks to run around with fascinating!



This is the garden plot we have:

And this is our back patio. We do have little tiny bulbs starting to poke through and we have another small plot there in the back where we can plant some of the more "rambling" plants: watermelons, cucumbers, etc.


Wish us luck as we get closer to actually getting our garden going and pray for the weather to turn nice so we can get our gardening started!

Hands of a Child

As is pretty obvious from previous posts, I really like the project packs from In the Hands of a Child. I've really been loving them this week as I've purchased several more. In the Hands of a Child is celebrating it's 400th (wow!) project pack with a sale. There's a giveaway for the 600th order, and if you use the code 400thPP you'll get $4 off any project pack. This is a great sale!

Valentine's Day prep

Be prepared for lots of links to fun Valentine's Day activities. I can't believe I've put this much into essentially one day, but I've found such fun things. I can't wait to get to them!

Week 4

Week 4 was our first week in our penguin unit. We're doing penguins on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of these weeks due to Bee's preK schedule. Most of the content was from the In the Hands of a Child Penguin Project Pack. We covered (at preK and K level) most of the information in there.

We are learning a bit about each of the 17 species of penguins as well. Bug thinks Chinstrap penguins are really cool, and Bee is partial to Macaroni penguins. We do about 2 or 3 each day we study penguins and I give them the cards in this material from Sea World . We'll be doing more with the Sea World information next week but they think it's great to collect their penguin cards.

One of the favorite things of the week was trying to waddle like a penguin while balancing a large plastic egg on our feet. It was funny to watch everyone try to figure out how to make the egg stay on. They, however, had more fun when we played penguin follow the leader. We'd waddle through the house in a line and then flop down to our bellies to slide like a penguin. Lots of giggles were heard around here. They even had to demonstrate for Grandma and Grandpa when they saw them during the week.

Much of our content for the week aside from the project pack, came from this site.

Most of our other material comes from here. We did the About Penguins worksheet, the easy version of the Labeling an African Penguin worksheet, My Penguin book, the Penguin life cycle sheet, the Penguin Connect the Dots, and the Penguin Dots.

The kids loved this song. However, this song was the most popular:
I'm a Little Penguin

(sung to tune of "I'm a Little teapot.")

I'm a little penguin black and white,

I waddle to the left and I waddle to the right.

I cannot fly but I can swim, so I waddle to the water and jump right in!

I found it here. Acting it out is lots of fun!

This week we're continuing the penguin theme but taking a break on Tuesday to talk about groundhog's day.

Week 4 & 5 Preview

Weeks 4 and 5 will be spent working on penguins. We're doing penguin activities on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (again due to Bee's preK schedule). We will do some groundhog day activities on Feb. 1 (I know, not Groundhog's day, but I had my days mixed up and I think it'll work better for them to do it the day before so that hearing about it on the news the morning of will make more sense.). After that we will do a special day on Valentine's day and then go back to workbooks.

The Bug is really doing well with her reading. She has mastered all of her sight word cards, and I'm working on creating new lists of words that seem to pop up in her books a lot that she's a bit slower on. I'm also thinking of making a sight word game similar to one I saw to purchase.

We're also working hard on getting Valentine's ready for friends. The Bug is so very into puzzles, I was excited to find Valentine puzzles to color at Hobby Lobby so she is busy coloring the puzzles and writing her friends' names on them to give them out at her next Girl Scout meeting.

Week 3

Well, here is the rundown on Week 3- Under the Sea week:

This week was actually quite slow after the last couple. I didn't have so many things jam-packed in there, even though I only did the Under the Sea things on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday due to Busy Bee's preschool schedule. I also didn't have all the extra add-ons from other places like I had the past couple of weeks. It really helped that we just did the basics and had a relaxing time though.

Our main curriculum for the week was In the Hands of a Child's Under the Sea Project Pack. We stuck with the activities in the Project Pack and only added one thing: 1+1+1=1's Coloring Ocean Animals book.

I could've found so much more, but we have a pretty heavily packed 2 weeks of penguins coming up and we just came off a very full week with Nemo and coral reefs last week so it worked out nice. We also decided to take a weekend away as a family so I was busy preparing for that amongst other things.

Here are some pictures of our "Oceans in a Bottle" and our sea creature collages:

The Bug hard at work coloring her sea creatures.

The Bird's Ocean.

The Bug's Ocean in a Bottle

Budder's Ocean.

The Bee's Ocean in a Bottle

The Bee's sea creatures, left abandoned while she pouted! She did eventually come around and do the work, but she threw a tantrum when she found a fish bead she wanted in her Ocean but couldn't put in because I'd already sealed the lid shut. Thank goodness Dad was home to help us that day!

The Bird's artwork!

Update on Week 3

Today we will finish Week 3- Under the Sea. This unit hasn't been the hit I thought it would be thus far. It also has been a terribly crazy week around this house that is getting capped off with a terribly crazy weekend. I arranged this week so that we did our Under the Sea unit on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday due to Busy Bee's school schedule. She's in preschool on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and gets upset if we do fun school stuff without her so when I was scheduling 5 days a week, I was finding things to keep the Bug interested and busy during the day then waiting until after naptime to do the special unit (because Busy Bee NEEDS her nap still!). It's been nice to not be doing school work so late in the day because I really do like to get it out of the way in the mornings as uch as we can, but the timing of everything else this week has been kind of crummy. I most likely will not get my Week 3 wrap up posted until later in the weekend or early next week. It has been a much calmer, less activity filled school week than last week's Nemo unit (and will be followed by 2 week's worth of penguin studies!). Now I'm off to start our last day of the week. Have a blessed weekend!

Week 2 Wrap Up

Well, week 2 is done. Our Finding Nemo week was a lot of fun, both for the kids and for me. I was fascinated with the information I found and with the things the kids picked up. The primary focus of our studies were from In the Hands of a Child's Clownfish Adventure. That would be where the idea for making the anemones (pictures in previous post) came from. We also used some of the printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler's Clown Fish Lapbook and Homeschool Share's Coral Reef Lapbook. We had so many things when we glued it all in our lapbooks today, that it hardly fit! We had our folders folded and added extensions to the top and botto and still had to cram and even trim a little here and there to get it all in!

Next week we'll be doing a unit on "Under the Sea" followed by one on penguins after that and then I think we'll start getting back to workbooks and a little more structured curriculum rather than fun units with learning in them.

Week 2 Preview

We just started our Finding Nemo unit. Today we talked about clownfish and anemones. We made our own little anemones. Didn't they turn out cute?

This one was done by DD#3, Little Bird or simply Bird as we'll call her. She loves to scribble, although it doesn't come through on the picture. She's not quite 19 months old.

This one is DD#2's, Busy Bee or Bee is what we'll call her. She just turned 4 this week and loves the color orange (as I'm sure you'll bear witness to!).

Next up is DD#1's, Bug or Buggie is what she goes by. She's 5 1/2 years old, our kindergartener, and her innocense and love of learning is our primary reason to jump on this homeschooling ride.

And lastly we have DS's. We'll call him Budder or simply Bud. He'll turn 3 next week and is full of 2 year old spirit (and strong will!).

Second Semester, Week 1

We started out homeschooling on the fly. We really had no plan other than to get our DD into a safe environment before something terrible could happen to her at school. We had no curriculum, no guidance, no time to plan. We started out with some kindergarten workbooks from Walmart, an online curriculum (Time 4 Learning), and a lot of prayer. We muddled our way through it, and DD has thrived. She gobbled up any information we gave her. She begged to keep going when we said the day was over. So we finished off last semester with a couple of unit studies cobbled together from various online resources and a trip to DisneyWorld! After a relaxing (?) 2 weeks off (so, Mom was sick for a chunk of it, we hosted Christmas dinner, tried potty training DS, but it could've been relaxing!), we're ready to get back to work.

Our first week back, I decided to do a unit study on winter and snow. We had previously purchased the Let It Snow! Project Pack from In the Hands of a Child and did it as a group- 4 kids, 1 mom, and occasionally a dad when he was home! It was a lot of fun for all of us. Unfortunately for us, all the snow we had here pretty much melted on an unseasonably warm New Years Day, but the kids didn't care.

We supplemented our project pack with Itsy Bitsy Printable's Frosty Days unit and Winter Fun unit (sorry, can't find a link right now), this great winter unit from Musings of Me, this fun pin the nose on the snowman game and create a snowman craft from Spell Outloud, and some of the winter printables from the Winter Fun Totpack from 1+1+1=1. On Friday, we finished off the week by using bread heels that we'd saved all week, spreading peanut butter on them and then sticking birdseed to the peanut butter. We have yet to see any birds trying our birdfeeders, but we did have a lot of fun doing it and have driven our dog nuts trying to figure out how to get them down! We then watched the movie Snow Buddies. As movies are a rare treat in our house, this was a huge hit!

Our birdfeeders ready to be eaten!




Since we do still send DD#2 to 3 year old preschool which is Tuesday and Thursday mornings, we used this time for DD#1 to do some work on Time4Learning. This is in addition to the daily work we do with her sight words and reading.

This week we are going to do a week-long unit study on the characters of the movie Finding Nemo. We'll cap the week off with another movie... Finding Nemo, of course! The kids are all terribly excited to learn about Nemo, especially after our December vacation to DisneyWorld and SeaWorld!

Welcome

I am a stay-at-home mom, part-time college math instructor, and homeschooling mom of my four wonderful blessings. Homeschooling wasn't in the grand plan, but after some really terrible happenings at the public school and no good private options, we chose homeschooling for now. It's amazing how at peace this decision has left us and how much of a blessing it has turned out to be for our family. This is my blog, mostly for my memory and records, to keep track of what we do here at "Mommy School." If we can be a blessing to someone else, that will just make this adventure all the better!