The Good and the Not-So-Good

The good news is that I got the kids' CAT test results back.  Haylee scored 99th percentile for her 2nd grade test, and Hayden scored 95th percentile for his 7th grade test.  He has never scored below 98th percentile before so that was a bit of a surprise.  But he did the whole test in one day instead of breaking it up.  It's possible that he was just tired.  It looks like his lowest score was in Study Skills, so I will have to look at that section next year and see what kinds of things are in that.  I didn't even look at the content of his test before I gave it to him, so I have no idea what was on it.  In any case, they both did well, and I'm so glad to have it behind us for yet another year.

The not-so-good news is that we've decided Hayden must re-take Algebra I this next school year.  That's a real bummer to have lost a whole year of progress.  He was way ahead, and I think it was a mistake to skip Algebra 1/2.  He went right from Saxon 8/7 to Saxon Algebra I this year.  His placement test was right at 85%, which is the minimum to skip Algebra 1/2.  I gave him the choice, and he said he felt comfortable moving on.  But clearly, it was a mistake.  He was caught cheating several times on his tests, and when asked about it, he said it had just gotten too hard for him.  It was enough that it made him cry.  So long story short, I gave him the placement test for Algebra 2, and he couldn't even begin.  It was like he hadn't retained a single thing from this whole school year.  I see two problems with how math went this year.  One, he refused to show his work on each problem, and we told him at the beginning of the year that this step was essential to mastering all math from Algebra on up, but he didn't take it seriously.  Two, he never used the Saxon Teacher DVD that I bought him.  Every day, I'd ask if he had any problems with his lessons, and he'd say no.  But in truth, he wasn't fully understanding the lessons, and this realization didn't come to light until the END of the school year.   This makes me really frustrated.  If he was having problems throughout the year, he had ample opportunity to bring it to my attention and did not.  He had the teacher DVD to help him through the lessons and the problems, and he didn't make use of that resource because he said it was too "slow and boring."  Sigh.  Thus, here we are, at the END of the school year, having made ZERO progress in math.  I'm very frustrated.  The up side of this is that he was 2 years ahead in math, and he'll still be a year ahead of average, so it's not a major crisis, but I still feel like this year was a total failure.  I'm not wanting to have this happen again. 

Another not-so-good side to this is that in all of this coming out last night, hubby decided to play a bit of the blame game with me.  I am NOT happy about this.  I totally have my hands full, and they get fuller every year.  He said if time is a problem, then the kids need to go to school.  I said fine, MY life would sure be a whole lot easier!  But we all know we're not sending the kids to school!  There are a myriad of reasons not to do it.  Homeschooling is hard, and that's a fact.  It is eating up my whole life right now, and that's a fact.  The kids have a sorry attitude towards completing their work and have been that way for months...that's a fact.  I'm ready to pull my hair out.  What I need is some partnering in changing their attitudes and getting things back on track.  I'm open to suggestions on how to make schooling go better.  What I'm NOT open to is somebody who does not participate in the schooling telling me it's all my fault.  That is SO NOT COOL!  Okay, now I've gotten that off my chest.  I feel better.

New day, new chance at doing things better.  Hello, Monday!  Give me what you've got!

School planning

Okay, so I'm a bit late working through my plans for this school year compared to my usual January posting of my plans.  But at long last, here is my plan for the 2012-2013 school year:

HAYDEN, age 12, Grade 8

Sonlight Core 100
Glencoe: Civics & You 2002 (Social Studies Supplement)
Sonlight Science 100 (Apologia Physical Science)
Glencoe: Physical Science 2002 (Science Supplement)
Saxon Math Algebra 1 No-Nonsense Algebra
Saxon Grammar & Writing 8
Wordly Wise 3000 Book 9 (new 3rd edition)
Switched on Schoolhouse Secondary Spanish (2nd half)
Beyond the Nine-Note Recorder Method for Alto (we didn't keep up with this last school year)


HAYLEE, age 7, Grade 3

Sonlight Core D (3) with Advanced Readers
Sonlight Science D
McGraw Hill Science 3
Lyrical Life Science Volumes 1 & 2
McGraw Hill Language Arts 3
McGraw Hill:  Our Communities
Houghton Mifflin Spelling & Vocabulary 4
Saxon Math 5/4
A Reason for Handwriting D
Wordly Wise 3000 Book 4 (new 3rd edition)
Everthing Kids' Learning Spanish
Everything Kids' Puzzle & Activity Book
Harcourt Health & Fitness 3
Silver Burdett Music 3
Abeka Art Projects 3
Scholastic News 4


HOLDEN, age 4, grade PK

Sonlight PK 4/5
Sonlight LA K
A Reason for Handwriting K
Saxon Phonics K
Get Ready, Get Set, Go for the Code series
Saxon Math K
Usborne Opposites and Shapes Workbooks
Character Development:  Help Me Be Good book series + Right Choices
Abeka K4 Art Projects
Tot Tray Activity Center
Scholastic "Let's Find Out" Magazine

Box Day...Sort of...

The kids are already starting to feel the excitement of "Box Day," a treasured day known by all Sonlighters. Haylee's Box Day was sort of yesterday, as I went out to the shed and pulled out the sacred storage tub that contains Core 3 (now Core D). Hayden read me the titles while I made a list to have ready to compare with the new version of the core when it comes out in a couple of weeks so I ca...n order the newly inserted books and upgrade the IG on April 2nd. It was really cool to hear him exclaim the title, closely followed by "I remember that book...I loved this story" after nearly every book. Then the excitement was catching to Haylee with comments like "really, what's it about?" And then she wanted to know all about the books, but we were calling them out much too fast to linger over any one. Hayden fondly remembered his own Box Day with this core...I remember his own disappointment that year that "every single book was about Indians," as this is the first core that correlates readers with the history content. But in the end, he loved each and every book, much to his surprise. And he fondly remembers grabbing the science books out of the box and curling up with them on the spot. I swear, it seems like yesterday when I was reading those books to him. It's almost startling to think it's been 4 years since we cracked them open...the memories are so vivid that it just doesn't seem possible. Aaaahhh. These feelings we shared as we went through the books are *truly* what Sonlight is all about. :)

My Epiphany About Next School Year

I had an epiphany this week!  As I've begun to think through and plan this next school year, it dawned on me that things should get a lot better for me in our homeshool!

Hayden will be in 8th grade, but he'll be moving into Sonlight's Core 100.  That is technically a high school core, so he'll be moving to entirely independent study!  So no more read alouds for me with him, which frees up about an hour of my school day.  I will only need to do comprehension questions with him at the end of the day.

Haylee will be finished with the phonics program, so that frees up an hour with one less subject to cover with her.  She'll be doing Virginia history in 3rd grade, but that won't take up much time at all.  In addition, she'll be moving out of elementary fmath and into middle grades math with Saxon, so as she goes into Saxon 5/4 next school year, her lessons will become self-instructed.  That frees up another hour of my time.  Yay! 

All I could think to myself as I came to these realizations is that this means I will *finally* have some time for poor Holden's school!  But then I realized, too, that it's a good thing, because now HE will be starting Saxon Math and Saxon Phonics!  And he will be doing a lot more school work with the Developing the Early Learner books and learning to read this next year.  So that freed up time with the other kids comes just in time to shift it over to Holden. 

So in the end, my school day will likely be just as long...it will just be allocated differently amongst the 3 kids.  Sigh.  I *almost* got excited!  LOL.  Oh, the life of a homeschool mom!  It never ends...

Summer Vacation "World Explorer" Activity Kit

I found this awesome kit to "make and decorate crafts from around the world" at the Goodwill thrift store today for a mere $3.25. It was new, sealed, totally unused. It's called the Summer Vacation brand "World Explorer" Activity Kit (ISBN 1585539783).

It has a guidebook with little lessons about each country. Then it gives instructions and supplies to make a craft from each country. It has:

USA & Canada: Make a Dream Catcher

Mexico: Make a Pinata

Chile: Make a Rainstick

Japan: Make Origami

China: Make a Chinese Lantern

Kenya: Make an African Mask

Morocco: Make Castanets

Italy: Make a Carnival Mask

France: Make a Stained Glass Window

Australia: Make a Propeller Boomerang

Continents: Make a Jigsaw Puzzle of the World

The jigsaw puzzle looks cool. It has the oceans in blue and then all of the continents outlined in white. You get to label it and paint and marker on it to decorate it as you please.

Then it also includes a World Explorer "Passport" book. This is pretty cool, too. It has maps and worksheets for each country with questions to answer from the lessons. When the child has made the craft and completed the worksheet and map for each country, they get to put a sticker that pictures the craft they made onto the passport. Then there's a travel journal in the back of it where they can write about a trip they've taken and also write about what they'd like to see in one of the places they've learned about. It seems like it will be a lot of fun! I got this with Haylee in mind, as she loves crafts. It says it's for ages 7+ targeted at 3rd grade. I figured I'd just pull it out as we study one of the listed countries. Very cool!

They had another one targeted at First Grade for the same price. Had things like decorating letters of the alphabet. It was the same price, so I might go back and pick it up for Holden, just for fun.

Have I mentioned how much I love shopping at thrift stores? My favorite is the Goodwill Outlet Center where you pay for everything by the pound. Pretty much everything is 59 cents/lb., except clothes are $1.29/lb., and books are 25 cents each.

Reviewing Shapes with Resist Art / Our Ladybug Story

It's been a while since we worked on learning shapes last year, and Holden has forgotten a couple of them, or gets them backwards sometimes. So on some scrap cardstock, I used a white crayon to draw some shapes and fun pictures. He couldn't see what I'd drawn, and I asked him to stamp all over the paper with Do-a-Dot markers. Then I took a damp paper towel and swiped over it to reveal the images! He had fun identifying the shapes in this way. It was good practice and held his attention. I could see his anticipation building as he stamped all over the paper and waited for me to swipe it with the paper towel! Here's a sampling of what we did.

For his Abeka craft, he got to glue Baby Moses in the basket and finger paint the cattails. He likes fingerpaint! He also made Dexter Donkey and Ellie Elephant for his letter crafts (we're on letter F for Freddy Fish this week, but we were behind on his letter crafts and had to catch up! LOL).

Over the last couple of weeks, Haylee has anxiously watched the transformation of the larvae in her Ladybug Land into beautiful young pink ladybugs. As luck would have it, they emerged on Saturday...the day hurricane Irene dropped 10 inches of rain at our house. Luckily, you can keep them for up to a week before releasing them into the wild. If you don't release them, they sadly only live for a couple of weeks.

The weather is now beautiful, so this morning, Haylee invited her little girlfriends over to watch her release her ladybugs. There were 13 in all.

We put a stick inside the habitat so they would crawl onto it, and then we removed the stick and held it up to our holly bushes to allow the ladybugs to crawl off. Unfortunately, however, we didn't realize until after we'd released 5 in this way that there were tiny spiderwebs all over the bushes! We didn't see it until one ladybug got caught and eaten! We tried to find as many as we could and knock down the webs, but it was no use. Haylee was very upset.

So then we found one flowering Black-Eyed Susan and released the remaining 8 onto there. They seemed to like it very much and have happily made it their new home!

May you live long, beautiful ladybugs! We hope to visit you often!

THE END.

Neat Alphabet Worksheets for Preschoolers

I've been finding lots of cool resources to help Holden learn his letters, both upper and lower case. We're working on both simultaneously, which is not the approach I used with either Hayden or Haylee. It seems to be working well with Holden so far.

In the process of looking for some activities that work on both cases, I found these super cool FREE printable worksheets. I've been having Holden find and mark the correct letter of the week using a Do-A-Dot marker. At the bottom of the worksheet, it says to print the letters in the boxes. We're not writing yet, so instead, I gave him a set of capital letter stamps I found in the Dollar Spot at Target and letting him stamp the correct letter in each box. He loves that!

Here's one he completed recently. He really enjoyed this activity, and I could really see his little brain working as he hunted for the right letters. I was impressed that he did it right all by himself!

I also got lucky and scored a brand new, unopened Grasshopper Preschool Prep Kit - Getting Our Hands Ready for $5! This retails for $30, so that was quite a score. I found it on Craigslist for $10 and offered her $5, and she went for it. I so love my negotiating skills! LOL. Anyway, I ran out and picked it up on Friday before Hurricane Irene made its appearance. We survived an earthquake and a hurricane, all in the same week. Sheesh! We've had a chance to try out most of the activities in the kit, which really are cute and useful. I must say, though, that I would never pay $30 for its contents...$5 was more appropriate! Feeding the froggy was really cute, and he loves stamping the bugs in the weird lightweight dough that feels like air. I laid out the crayons and coloring sheet for him, but he hasn't tried that one yet. He's never been big on coloring. He seems to only enjoy the Crayola Slick Stix. But I'll keeping coaxing him to try out those mini crayons in the kit so he can practice his pencil grip.