More on our first year of homeschooling

Yesterday I attended the Southwest Missouri Home Education Convention. Each hour there were several different workshops to choose from. I attended Three Simple Goals for the First Year and Kindergarten 101: The Three R's and a little bit more. One of the main things that I took from it is that homeschooling the first year really is more about the mom then the child. This first year was really a time for me to test myself and see if homeschooling would really work for us. There were points where I wondered if I would be disciplined or structured enough in the home environment. As this school year is starting to wrap up, I am so proud of Lily's progress and also so proud of myself for really instilling in Lily a love for learning.

Lily was 4 years and 2 months when this school year started. I decided that we would call this year kindergarten even though she was still too young by public school standards. She already was writing her name and all of her letters (although not all of them correctly). She also was counting and knew her letter sounds.

I started the year with a themed unit approach. I wanted to really make sure that learning was fun. We would do a theme each month and bring all of her lessons around that theme. This was a lot of fun. We did an apple theme, a Fall/leaves theme, a pumpkin/Halloween theme, a Valentine's theme, and a St. Patrick's Day theme. We also had some small themes like community helpers and snow. As I started on different curriculum, sometimes we did take breaks from our themes.

At the beginning of the year, I focused on simple sight words and sight word books with Lily. She really picked up on it quickly. Through her reading, she learned about finger spaces and punctuation. This all carried over into her writing.

Starting in Jan. we moved on to doing Hooked on Phonics and it really is a great program. Lily is reading so well and so independently. I can't believe that she is reading at a beginning of first grade level and she isn't even 5 years old yet. That has been our biggest success. Also the fact that Lily begs to read with us and to do school work is a great sign that I am instilling that love for learning in her. :)

Writing is a harder area for Lily. She is left handed and so sometimes I think her brain works backwards in writing, but her print is getting much more clear. She is also writing one to two sentences every time she writes in her journal. She writes independently which is wonderful. However, if I am not right next to her, she will start writing faster and less legibly. She also mastered writing her whole name now. She writes Lily Peters on all of her papers. It is so cute!

In Math, she is counting to 100 and counting by 10's. She also knows her months of the year and days of the week. She mastered that very early in the year. She knows all of the shapes that I have taught her including 3-dimensional shapes such as the cylinder and rectangular prism.

I really am so proud of her. Lily is such a quick learner and really loves it. She is constantly trying to discover knew things! I have already been picking out different curriculum for her first grade year of school. I am also going to continue with some thematic units.

Our first year of homeschooling!

It is the end of April and I am starting to think about my homeschool journey this year. Yes, we do still have a month left. However, we have covered a lot this last year.

I have known for probably the last 6 or more years that I planned to homeschool. I decided that after my own educational experience. My parents had me attend public school, a fundamental school, a Christian school, and homeschool. This allowed me to experience several different theories on education. I then started working at a public school as a teacher's assistant and going to college to gain an education degree. Both of those experiences, just increased my desire to homeschool.

I worked as a teacher for several years while Lily was little and I loved it. However, I knew more than ever that I wanted more time with my kids.

I also found that as I prepared for this, God opened doors for me to meet some other amazing homeschool moms. I love that my friend Kelly is starting homeschooling this year because her daughter Boston is just 6 months younger than Lily and we will be able to do many activities together.

I also learned of an amazing co-op that was only 5 miles from my house. Faith co-op has been such an encouragement for me as I started on this journey. Besides making great friends, I have been able to learn about different curriculum and what other moms have experienced in homeschooling. Also this is a great social activity for my girls. Co-op allows the girls one day a week to be in a classroom. They do all sorts of group activities. Lily's class consisted of one hour of physical education, one hour of science, one hour of art, and one hour of drama/music. She loves it and all of her friends. Her class has seven students in it which also makes for a nice group of friends. Lily also loves any chance she gets to be with the older girls. I really love her having positive influences in her life. I also love that the girls get to go on a field trip every month and they have a Christmas and Spring program. They also have year books. It is a great asset to our homeschooling.

I also joined MOPS which gives me a break and time to spend with other fun moms. Lily and Valerie love their Moppet classes. They use a curriculum there called Bozz the Bear and it is a Christian curriculum.

Since this is getting long, I will probably take a break and continue with more of this later. Before I take a break, I want to share the top 10 reasons that one of my friends homeschools because I love how she wrote this.

Although not everyone is able to homeschool, here are 10 reasons why we do:
1. We feel obedient to the Lord for our family.
2. Education is not limited to a classroom...the community/world becomes a living classroom.
3. Education is not limited to a grade level...the children can advance according to their readiness.
4. Based on research, the smaller the ratio of students/teacher the better the results...especially when the child is greatly loved by the teacher.
5. More time to enjoy our children.
6. More time to influence and train our children.
7. They socialize with all age groups not just their own, including witnessing in a variety of venues.
8. We are in control of our schedule...travel, sleep, field trips, grandparent time ect.
9. The children learn the importance of family and long term relationships.
10. We are in tune with the children and can keep their hearts more effectively.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!
I really do love all holidays so we have been having fun getting ready for St. Patrick's Day. We started out this month with a fun photo shoot. Lily and her sweet friend, Hailey got their pics taken together. Aren't they adorable?!

St. Patrick's Day can not be celebrated without Lucky Charms cereal. This is the only time of the year that I buy that cereal so Lily was so excited. Ofcourse, I made her do some learning activities with her cereal first.

Here is Lily showing Valerie how to sort the cereal by shapes.

Then Lily worked on graphing her Lucky Charms. We have been practicing our graphing a lot and I was amazed that Lily really did not need my help with the graph.

At the bottom of the graph, there were questions about which one had the most and the least, etc. I helped Lily with reading this, but she did a great job at knowing all of the answers!

And our main activity for St. Patrick's Day is..........trying to catch a Leprechaun!!!!

Lily made a box that is being held up by a toilet roll. She decorated with stickers and she put a peanut under it. She is checking it often to see if she has caught a Leprechaun!

However, we had one little mess up. We forgot to tell Valerie to stay away from the peanut. Yes, she did set the trap and eat the peanut. We are trying again. If the peanut doesn't work, what do you think we should use to catch a Leprechaun?????

Everyone wish us luck! We will update if we catch one!

Oh and ofcourse, I am making corned beef and cabbage for dinner to celebrate the holiday!
Happy St. Patrick's Day from all of us to you!

Baby Daphne

As of right now, I have about 14 1/2 more weeks until we all get to meet our precious third baby girl! I have only really written one blog about my pregnancy so I decided to update.

At 18 1/2 weeks pregnant, we had our ultrasound to find out the sex of our baby. It was definitely a family affair! Jason and I took Lily, Valerie and our foster daughter with us so that they could see the baby. On the way there we talked and Jason said that he 100% new it was a girl. I said that it felt just like being pregnant with Lily again, but that I really wasn't sure either way. Lily said, "I think it is a girl. I can't wait for them to show us if it is!" When we got to the ultrasound place, the lady saw us with our swarm of girls and said so are you hoping for a boy? We said, "No, we are just excited to add to our family." She asked us what Lily thought and we told her that Lily was saying "girl". She said that the sibling is almost alway right. Two seconds later, she said, "Yep, it is a girl!" I was like are you 100%. She said definitely!!

She even showed us multiple times that it was a girl! Lily was very excited. The two little girls didn't really get it, but Valerie was saying, "baby" and we were showing her the pics on the screen. Jason ofcourse thought he was pretty awesome for having already known that it was a girl. :)

Jason had actually felt very strongly about getting to pick the name this time. When we had traveled to Destin Beach last Spring, Jason saw a street sign for a Daphne Rd. He had decided then that would be our little girls name. Daphne is Greek for Laurel Tree. We like that it sounds very pretty with Lily and Valerie. We really love feminine names.

Picking out the middle name was harder. We always do bible names for the middle names. Jason's is Matthew, mine is Esther, Lily's is Abigail, and Valerie's is Hadassah. We love for our girls to have someone from the bible to look up to. However, we couldn't find a bible name that we liked for Daphne. Finally a friend suggested Moriah and Jason loved it!!! It isn't a bible character. Instead it is a mountain in the bible, but I agreed that it is beautiful. Moriah is Hebrew and means the Lord is my teacher.

I am now 25 weeks pregnant and although, I don't think the third pregnancy is nearly as exciting as the first two, we are loving our little Daphne. She is in a posterior position meaning that her spine is against my spine (not especially comfortable). This is the position that Lily was in also. We are trying to get her to move. However, this position make it very easy for her to kick and hit with great force. Jason and I both agree that she is the most active of our girls. She kicks so often and very hard. At my last appt. they had a hard time hearing the heart beat because Daphne wouldn't stop kicking the stethescope. It was very cute! I can't wait to meet our newest girl in less than 15 weeks. :)

Just a little recap

I finally posted yesterday with some February stuff. I just wanted to do a little re-cap of Dec. and Jan. It has been a very busy winter. As for Lily's schooling, we decided not to do our thematic units for those months and kind of for February. We wanted to just focus on her phonics and writing with just a little bit of math in there too. Lily really has been making great leaps in her reading and writing. She learns so quickly and loves school time.

Dec. was mainly busy with Christmas and family time. There are just so many community events that we always have something fun to do. Jan. we got lots of snow days and that was fun. We also had a new little foster child come live with us. That was a lot of change, but such a great time with us. Our little foster child stayed in the toddler bed in Lily's room and she was two weeks older than Valerie. She was just a sweetie and the girls really enjoyed her. She left the first week in February and we miss her, but we know that God has her in his hands. Jan. was also fun due to Jason and I going on vacation to Las Vegas!!!! We went for four days away from the girls who stayed with Grandma and Grandpa. We had so much fun being tourists and just having time alone. I really love my husband and just spending quality time with him. :)

Overall, I could talk about alot more things, but I will leave it at this!

February Fun!

It has been a very busy last few months. I haven't had a chance to write about Dec. or Jan. I will come back to that soon. Right now I will focus on the fun month of February! The most important thing is that my sweet Valerie turned 2!!!! She is getting so big. She has a very big sweet tooth so her party was A Candy Land delicious party. :)

Here is her cake that Mommy made for her. It really took a lot of candy...expensive cake. lol. But well worth it. Val loved it!

To tell just a little bit more about Valerie....She is my joyful little bundle of love. She is extra clingy to her Mommy. I have to admit that I love it. She also is a great little follower to her big sis. She just loves to do whatever Sissy wants to do. She is talking more and more in sentences. My favorite sentence of hers is "Here you go, Mommy." She also started sleeping in her toddler bed this month. She is now in the same room as Lily. I was shocked that she transitioned to this very quickly. After a few days, she actually saw me go into her old room at bedtime and started crying b/c she thought I was putting her back in there. She was saying, "No, Mommy. I go in bed. " It was cute!

Now on to some of Lily's school work for the month of Feb. I have not been very good at taking pics at all!!! I just keep forgetting.

Our first theme of the month was Valentine's Day.

Lily used candy hearts for her math activities. She first worked on estimating by guessing how many hearts would fit inside the big heart. She then checked her answer by putting them in there and counting. She was very close!

She also worked on sorting the hearts by color. She was a little upset that she didn't have all of the colors!

The last step was to use the sorted hearts to make it easier for her to do a graph of how many hearts she had in each color. Lily did great at these activities! She is such a smart girl!

I have a few more Feb. pics that I will add later....hopefully!!!

November