What's New With Us?

We have been busy as always. But I thought I would give you guys a short run down of what we are studying these days. 

History:

*The Pilgrims escape to Holland and their move to Leiden. 

*The Pilgrims traveling to America.

*King James translates the Bible into English.

Science:

*Canals

*Migration

*Life Cycles

*The Human Heart

*Light Waves

*Dikes

*Water Tension

*The Horizon

*Making Cloth from Wool

*Insulation

Reading:

*We are making our way through Starfall to solidify Eli's reading skills. He is doing great and has earned a certificate and a free meal from Texas Roadhouse for finishing his first five books and the corresponding workbook pages. He is working on his next five books now. 

Language Arts:

*We are reading through an adventure chapter book titled, "A Lion to Guard Us." [See Photo] They are really liking it and it's a classic! They have to give oral feedback on what we have read and we are learning about the different parts of stories such as character, plot, conflict, suspense, etc.

*We have read and discussed several poems. Some of which are "Daybreak" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Song for a Little House" by Christopher Morley, and "The Months" by Sara Coleridge among others. We are starting "Mother's Jewels" by Eugene Field this week. 

*Eli continues to do well in spelling. He is really good at it. 

*In grammar we have been learning basic sentence structure, punctuation, and types of sentences. 

Geography:

*The Oceans

*Holland, England, and the other countries of Europe

Bible:

*We have had several memory verses such as: Psalm 4:8, Galatians 6:9, 1 John 4:15, Matthew 6:19, Psalm 139: 13, Psalm 119:9-11

*We have been learning about two different character traits so far this year: responsibility and fearing the Lord

Math:

*We are plowing through Eli and Lydia's math program, Math U See. They are BOTH doing well! Eli is finally counting to 100, and way beyond, and doing addition and subtraction finally. After he struggled with this for so long it is so great having this program with it's hands on features. It has been awesome for him with his Asperger's! Praise the Lord for finding what works and seeing those light bulb moments!

Lydia is learning her letters quickly and has picked up on letters that we haven't even learned yet! She knows all her numbers from 0-10 and almost has them down to 20 as well. She is even showing some knowledge of addition already. She constantly surprises me. She'll be ready to read soon I have a feeling! 

The holidays have been a busy time. We had three celebrations one month apart from each other. We had the annual weenie roast at the end of October, Thanksgiving at the end of November, and of Christmas. We also had our 11th wedding anniversary a little over a week ago. The kids and I made a birthday cake for Jesus together and a few other fun school/family activities to keep our focus on Christ this CHRISTmas. Merry Late Christmas from our family to yours! 

Until next time, happy learning!

Busy, Busy

It's been awhile since I have posted once again. I tell you, keeping up with my blogs is becoming pretty difficult. I always have the best of intentions with them but then I end up posting a measly one post a month or something like that. 

Anyway, school is going well for our little students. Just yesterday Eli told me that he used to not like math, but now he does. We swapped to a new math curriculum this year and it's going great! His spelling is still great! 

Lydia is moving VERY quickly through her pre-k stuff and is doing more kindergarten stuff than anything else. She's a little sponge. 

Hannah is just along for the ride but it definitely picking up on her shapes, colors, and letters as as go along.

We are studying the pilgrims right now and at this point in our lessons they are in Holland after escaping King James. Soon they will be making their way to America as we learn about the first Thanksgiving! 

Science has been full of  lessons on the horizon, directions, water tension, filtering light, dikes, etc. It's been fun! I am including some pictures of our little nature walk we had the other day. We collected several types of fall leaves and took notes about all the things we saw and smelled. We pressed our leaves and looked them up in the encyclopedia to figure out what trees they belonged too. We took all our information and our pressed leaves and created a fall lapbook. We made crayon rubbings and charts and labeled all of our leaves. The kids enjoyed it, especially the crayon rubbings. And they learned a lot in the process!

We also made a trip to Disney World the first week of October. It was a fun trip as always and the kids actually did learn some things there! Imagine that! Especially Eli. He loved Epcot and Spaceship Earth! So I also included one little picture of us with Mickey Mouse! 

Hope everyone is enjoying the fall and is ready for a blessed Thanksgiving as we remember ALL the MANY blessings God has given us as individuals, as families, and as a nation! Enjoy the pictures and God bless!

O Pioneers!

Eli and Daddy after Eli caught his VERY FIRST fish! Awesome!

Hannah looking like a big girl!

Daddy fishing with the kiddos.

Lydia with her friend Julia.

Mommy and Daddy enjoying the morning.

Eli and his friend Sam.

Eli in his "pioneer" hat.

Hello all! Sorry it's taken me a little while to post again. We have been busy, busy! 

Right now in history we are covering the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia. We are discussing a lot about what it was like to live there and work there. And what it was like to travel by ship, farm, make soap, hunt, etc. We are creating a timeline as we travel through the years and learn about the discovery of our nation. Eli is fascinated as always and wears a park ranger-like hat that his uncle Bill bought him at the Arch when they visited. He calls it his pioneer hat. Our theme for the year, after all, is Pioneers and Patriots. And he insists he wants to be a pioneer when we go trick or treating. Silly, silly boy. But that is not a battle I will fight. If the boy wants to be a pioneer then so be it. =) 

Eli is still struggling a little in math. But he is still making progress and much more progress than he was making in the other curriculum. Many more light bulb moments these days, praise the Lord! Lydia on the other hand is flying through her math. She can count to at least 20 and is beginning to recognize her numbers as well. Hannah even counts a little.

Eli might be a little behind in math, but he is a total whiz in spelling! I am floored every time we start a new list! He flies through it and aces the final test at the end of the unit! He has no problem in this area. He continues to grow in the area of reading as well and is definitely performing at grade level there. Lydia loves learning her letters. We have only learned 2 so far. But she knows them well and can now write them. She recognizes them and knows their sounds. Since she is only 4 I am just gradually adding one letter at a time. We are now working on C. Hannah even knows them! She loves to do school with her big sister. She can't write them yet, but she consistently recognizes them and tells me the sounds.

The kids really love their handwriting this year! I am THRILLED with that! They don't complain at all and actually enjoy it! Hooray!

As for some of the other language arts....the kids love poetry and we just finished "Father in Heaven We Thank Thee" by Ralph Waldo Emerson. And Eli is learning some basic grammar this year. We have covered sentence fragments and run ons, punctuation, and a little about sentence structure. He is picking up on it really well. I see him being more literature, art, and music inclined over mathematically inclined just like his mother! =) 

Our memory verses and character studies are always great! They enjoy them and they are hiding God's word in their hearts every single day. And not only that but they are discussing it and learning how it applies to their lives. I feel incredibly blessed to be able to be here with them through that! So far we have memorized a verse in Psalms and a verse in Galations. And we have studied some verses in Thessalonians and 2 Peter. The character trait has been responsibility. We will be working on another character trait in a couple of weeks.

Science has been on different parts of God's creation. We have learned about several sea creatures and flying squirrels and other small rodents. We have learned about the location of different countries and their cultures and climates. We have learned about the seasons a little more. We are breaking down the days of creation. Lydia is learning about science as it applies to history beginning with creation and we are now up to the Tower of Babel.

The kids started their Master's Lyceum classes a few weeks ago and those are going well. They always love to go! They also play soccer on Tuesdays. And they both have Royal Rangers on Wednesday nights at church. They love to earn their little patches and what not. 

So we are busy, like I mentioned. But it's the awesome busyness of children learning and growing. It's the busyness I was called to. Nothing like it! I will upload a few pics. One is a pic of Eli in the aforementioned hat and the others are from a recent camping trip that we made with friends. Enjoy! 

Just a few pics....

Pictures from top to bottom: Eli "meeting" William Clark (of Lewis and Clark) at the Westward Expansion Museum; Eli thinking what to write next while working on his spelling word sentences; Lydia walking the letter A as we learned what it looked like and the sound it makes (her stuffed animals "walked" it too!); a pic from our visit to the St. Louis Arch; Eli and Lydia doing an experiment on blubber for science.

(Please forgive the unorganized post that follows. I was just too tired to group topics and paragraph.)

Today was the first day of school. Well, technically yesterday. It's VERY late. But we had a great day. Eli is memorizing Psalm 4:8 this week. And he is reading his very own Bible all by himself. We learned about sailing ships and what it was like to travel by ship back in the 1560's. 

We learned about the seven continents. The kids created a masking tape map of them and did some fun activities with it when we were done. They learned two new songs. Eli began his new math program today and he has already had a light bulb moment with it. Awesome. The girls are learning the letter A this week. And they are learning about creation. Lydia started her own math program today and she actually really enjoyed it and did well. They both started new handwriting programs too and they LOVED them! Eli blew me away with his spelling words today! He did a great job! We learned about biographies and gathered items that told a little about ourselves. We started reading Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin. They enjoyed it. The rest of the week we will be following some stories of a little boy named Pedro and a little girl named Catalina. We will learn about their adventures as they travel by ship from Spain to North America. We will be learning about some sea animals in science to go along with our ocean travel studies. And of course we will be learning about the oceans of the world. There is a lot more that we will cover just this week. The kids both told me today that they LOVE school. How precious is that? I would definitely say that today was a good day!! We will end the week with a visit from Meme and Papaw and Aunt Peggy and Uncle Bill. We'll be going to the zoo and to see the Arch again. And while we are there we will see the Expansion Museum which is great because we we focusing on Pioneers and Patriots this year. And we briefly covered discovering the west last year and touched base on Lewis and Clark. So it's a great way to kick things off! Stay tuned everyone! It's going to be another fun year!

Eli's math. This is Decimal St.

Lydia's math.

Eli working on his copywork from the poem "The Storm"

Eli standing in "North America"

Making a masking tape map of the seven continents.

Hannah, pre-k

Lydia, K-4

Elijah, 2nd grade

Ready to roll.

Ready, Set, Go...

First day of the new school year. Stay Tuned!!

Portfolios

I thought I would post a little something about how I do the kids' portfolios for the year. The state of Illinois does not require us to keep a portfolio or records. But I keep them anyway. It's a great way to create physical memories of the kids accomplishments and memories of school projects and what not. And it's a wise thing to do if we ever move to a state that does require it. I will already be in great practice!

I know when I first started homeschooling I didn't have a clue how to do all this or what I needed to include. Some of it just comes natural like creating a daily plan of objectives and goals in a plan book and collecting their school work; keeping the pieces that show improvement and accomplishments. And other parts are not so natural like school attendance records. But after lots of reading and picking the brains of other homeschool moms I have managed to create portfolios that are functional and would withstand scrutiny from critics or a state whose regulations are more stringent. 

So here is how the kids' portfolios are broken down. I place them in three ring binders and place a current picture on the front cover along with their name, grade, our home school name, the current school year, their date of birth, and age.

The first section is the Attendance Section and it contains a calendar of the school year that I print from www.printfree.com. It's the entire year on one page with small blocks. I simply mark the days on the calendar with one of five letters. P for present, F for field trip, H for holiday, I for Illness, or V for vacation. 

The second section is the Health Information/Official Information/ State Home School Laws Section. It contains miscellaneous information such as the kids' immunization record, school physical form (that I get done even though we home school), a copy of the Illinois state home school laws (that I print from the HSLDA web site), and any other information.

The third section is the Curricula/ Course of Study/ Resource List/ Extracurricular Activity Section. It contains a brief list of curricula and other resources used by subject. And it notes how many days a week we do each. I note in this section to see the curriculum itself to see exact objectives etc. And then there is also a list of extracurricular activities that I add to throughout the year that show the kids' outside activities. 

The rest of the portfolio is divided by subject. I put samples of their work to show their progress throughout the school year. 

Each of the above sections has a title page with a bold title and brief description of the section placed in a page protector. The contents of each section are just hole punched and placed behind the title page. The school work sections are divided with actual dividers and labeled.  

I included some pictures of last year's portfolios. You can see the kids' pictures on the cover (great way to see how much they grow from year to year) and you can see how FAT the portfolios got over the year. There are some bigger projects as well as the workbooks they complete in a storage container where these portfolios will be stored. The container is labeled with what school year and what child's stuff is inside. You can see the pictures of the this year's portfolios as well. They are divided up and ready to be filled. Hope that gives some of you some portfolio help and ideas. Have a great school year!!

Some Summer Fun!

Since the name of our homeschool is Chrysalis Academy, I thought I would start with some pictures of the kids study on butterflies this summer. They studied the life cycle of the butterfly. We learned about metamorphosis and created crafts and read books. We watched our caterpillars turn into chrysalises and then we waited patiently for them to emerge. And in 10 days they did! We had 4 Painted Lady butterflies. We kept them for a few days and observed them. We fed them oranges and sugar water on flowers that we picked from the flower bed. They did well. And when they began to get very active we let them go free. We all loved it and the kids are already asking when they can get more. It made for some great lessons! We made crafts, read books, created projects, etc. that were all tied into our unit on butterflies. And it was a great opportunity to teach them of the amazing transformation Christ makes in us when we give our all to Him. We will be doing it again for sure! 

A field trip to the Butterfly House is coming up soon to wrap it all up! 

Enjoy the pictures! They are little crazy on here because I really needed to use Firefox to update the blog today, but didn't. 

So please excuse the unorganized mess that they are.

Attempt Number Two

Okay, well it's been about a year since I started this sucker and I didn't get very far did I? I am going to try and change that as I try to get this thing going. This first post is going to cover what curricula we will be using this year. That is usually one of the first questions asked between two conversing homeschool families. The choices are truly endless! And each family varies greatly so you will hear a lot of different responses. There is no one right answer and that is a great thing! As homeschoolers we are able to really customize our children's education. So this is what we have chosen for our children this year. 

Elijah is heading into 2nd grade and we will be using Heart of Dakota again this year for our core curriculum. We really loved it this last year and are excited to continue using it! He will be working through the "Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory" level this year. It includes "American Pioneers and Patriots," "Stories of the Pilgrims," and "Boys and Girls of Colonial Days" for the history portion. It uses the "Early Reader's Bible," "Morning Bells Devotional," and the "Hide 'Em in Your Heart Volume II" to tie in the Bible throughout his lessons. It includes Christian Liberty Press's "God's Wonderful Works" for science. And we will be supplementing the science with a three prong Answers in Genesis curriculum. The Heart of Dakota core recommends Singapore Math and we used them this past year. We like it, but with Eli's special needs he needed a change of pace so we are using Math U See this year instead. He will be working in the "Alpha" level to start and will probably be in the "Beta" level by mid year. We'll see. Math U See is a great multi faceted, multi sensory program and has done wonders with lots of special needs kids as well as kids who are gifted. It gets rave reviews from every one I have asked about it. So we are excited to try it! The language arts portion is a combination of classic poetry with great classic read-alouds like "King of the Wind," "Charlotte's Web," "The Railway Children," "A Lion to Guard Us" and more. He is in the emerging reader category now and will be reading a number of books independently this year like, "Frog and Toad Are Friends," "Amelia Bedelia," Buffalo Bill and The Pony Express," "Tornado," and "The Christian Liberty Nature Reader" among many others. Elijah will have handwriting through the language arts portion of the curriculum obviously, but we are also incorporating some extra practice in this area. He needs extra fine motor skills practice. So we are also using "Handwriting Without Tears" this year. He used this program some when he was in occupational therapy and it was really effective. We tried some traditional handwriting practice this year and it literally created tears. So we are going to try this one and see how it goes. He will be in the "Printing Power" workbook for second grade.

Lydia will be working partly with pre-k material this year and also some kindergarten stuff as well. She will be using Heart of Dakota too and will be in the "Little Hands to Heaven" level with Hannah participating some this year! It includes a children's Bible, "The Singing Bible" by Focus on the Family which sets the stories to music, and "My ABC Bible Verses" again this year for the core. And then tied into all of that will be lessons on letters, early math, etc. She will also be starting a phonics program this year as well called "Reading Made Easy." The same phonics program that Elijah used. And I already see a strong interest in math with her so I am also using Math U See with Lydia alongside the Heart of Dakota lessons. She will be in the "Primer" level in that. I know beyond a doubt that she will either be really prepared for kindergarten by the end of the year (honestly I think she already is) or will be already partly through kindergarten by then. Maybe she will even be reading. She will be 4 after all and is showing signs that she is ready. 

Lydia and Hannah will have most of their school time together (except for phonics) and Elijah will be doing more independent stuff this year except for Lydia sitting in on math some and of course she will be with us during some science and history stuff as well. Hannah will be napping or playing with her busy kits during this time. And Lord knows she will be in my lap through some of it too! 

I will try to consistently post pictures of our projects and field trips as well as some every day school pics to keep everyone included and informed of our adventures! Most of the information and pics from this past school year ended up on the family web site instead so if you want to see those you will have to journey over and check it out. 

I hope you will enjoy watching our children grow and learn as much as I love being here with them to participate in their learning and to see it all myself first hand! It is beyond wonderful to have been the one who taught my son to read and to be the one who gets to watch his eyes get wide as we learn something new in history or science. It's just so rewarding and so thrilling to be with my kids during this time of growth and change! I wouldn't trade it for the highest paying job or anything else in the world! God called me to this, when I wasn't all that willing, and He has equipped me for it and created a love for it that I never thought was possible! Heath and I really feel like we have been given the perfect opportunity to raise our children up in the way that they should go. They are our God-given responsibility and it is a privilege to raise them! And according to Luke 6:40 my students will become like the teacher when they are fully trained. So thankfully that teacher is one that loves them like no other and has their very best interest at heart. She also is doing her very best to create a love for the Almighty in their hearts, minds, and souls. That part of the job is of utmost importance and nothing can take precedence over it! And no offense, but Heath and I are very glad that someone else isn't doing our job for us in this area. It's just too important to allow that to happen! 

I look forward to sharing with all of  you as we give to God what belongs to God in the educating of our children (Mark 12:17) so that Godly children will be the result of our union (Malachi 2:15). As we teach our children "at home," as we "are on the road," when we are"going to bed," and when we are "getting up" as in Deuteronomy 6 we know God will continue to bless our efforts. Our current school system teaches that there is no God and God's word says that they are fools (Psalm 14:1-2). "Fear of the Lord is the FOUNDATION of TRUE knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline" (Proverbs 1:7). "Walk with the wise and become wise; associate with fools and get in trouble" (Proverbs 13:20). Romans 12:2 says, "Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you THINK. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect." We have been called to be good stewards of our children's minds, hearts, and souls. And teaching our children at home is one of the biggest ways that we do that. The one on one education, the flexibility, the freedom to explore and be children, the opportunity to make friends of all ages, the chance to REALLY learn the things that matter to them individually, etc. All of those things are just icing on the cake! It's an awesome adventure that I never saw coming in my little dreams of mommyhood! I am SO glad that His plans aren't always our plans!  We would be missing out on the time of our life if that was the case!