Journey to Excellence

Do you live in Oklahoma, or near Oklahoma? Our state has a FREE educational opportunity through Oklahoma's Oil and Natural Gas (OERB). And I found out today that their kits and classes are available for home educators as well. The OERB site for Educators says: The OERB is committed to education in Oklahoma. Providing free training, materials, educational trips and in-class presentations, the OERB is helping Oklahoma teachers reach their students through entertaining activities and experiments. From safety at well sites, to seismic activity and energy conservation – OERB gives teachers the tools they need to teach students about the oil and natural gas industry. Petro Pete is the mascot. There are curricula for Little Bits (K-2), Fossils to Fuel (3-5), Petro Active (6-9), and CORE Energy (9-12). To receive the free educational materials, you must attend an all-day workshop. The workshop is free. There is a workshop in Yukon, Oklahoma, on July 19th, and one in Tuls...

Yeah, I've been doing that ... planning for next year. There are going to be some significant changes in our homeschool next year, so I am trying to figure some things out. We have decided to bring Eli home from public school to begin homeschooling next year. We feel like he has probably gained everything he can from public school and is now ready for our kind of learning. I am also talking with a good friend of mine (who happens to be Eli's speech pathologist at his school) about a partnership whereby I will help in the schooling of her 15 year old son while she helps with speech needs for Eli. Her dad is also a science and math whiz who loves to teach, which would come in very handy! Generally speaking, I am thinking of going to schooling SIX days a week, with five of those days being what we do now and adding time on either Saturday or Sunday for in depth science study. This would allow us to take some big breaks in the year. I am thinking of starting the first Monday in...

We start school on Thursday (with our public school schedule). On Sundays I write out our weekly lesson plans on individual lesson plan pages. Last year it would take me well over an hour or so to get it all together, searching through each subject and searching for additional activities. Today I planned both kids' lessons for the two days in minutes! Why? Because I have spent a good part of the summer planning each subject, writing out a general schedule, and putting all required worksheets and instructions (with books lists, dvd lists, activities, etc.) in individual subject binders. So all I did today is grab each binder as I got to that subject, flipped it open, wrote down on the planner what I had pre-planned for that day, and put it away. Oh, I am so glad I am prepared this year! I don't know what I would do if I had to prepare from scratch. It's going to be a great one! A good plan is like a road map: it shows the final destination and usually the best...

We start school one week from today. Are we ready? Kyndal is at the high school right now getting her schedule. She has English III, Algebra II, and Chemistry, then she will leave each day and go to Tech to her Cosmetology classes. We ordered her backpack (she's one of those kids that looooooves a new backpack every year) and got her favorite binder, the Mead Hybrid Flexible. We'll pick up her favorite mechanical pencils and then wait to see what other exhorbidant school supplies we need. For Tech, we purchased her black smock. She still needs to get black or khaki pants and black shoes. I even bought her a little blinged out pair of scissors pin to wear on her smock. And the girl's ready. Dawson has been sick this whole week, on the couch. Hopefully he'll get to feeling better so he can enjoy his last few days of freedom. I'm still waiting on his Teaching Textbooks Algebra I materials to get here. Should be just a couple more days. I've got his first Ame...

When we started homeschooling last year, I just knew that I wanted to have a schoolroom. I honestly thought that Dawson would not be able to concentrate or settle down unless he was in a school setting. I honestly wanted to be able to "put school away", out of sight, out of mind, when the day was "done". I honestly wanted a teacher's desk. I honestly wanted our schoolroom to look like the place where we did school and the rest of our house to look like the place where we lived. I honestly thought it was the way to go. And I spent a ton of time on it. NEWBIE!   hee ... hee ... Here's what we had. Then we brought Brynne home after about six weeks of public school and added her schooling area. And then after about two weeks or so we gradually starting taking our schoolwork one room over to the upstairs t.v. room to do our learning on the comfy chair and couch. It was more comfortable and we were starting to realize that we might have a more laid-back ...

I have to admit ... I have been enticed by all the pretty planners that are out there! I have visions of going to our weekly Co-op meeting/activity with my pretty planner looking as though I have it all together, in the prettiest way possible. I highly considered purchasing The Well-Planned Day spiral planner. I poured over it on the website and got out my credit card. But, then I really thought about what works for me. And I decided not to fix what's not broken, even if it's not the prettiest thing on the outside. My system works for me, and for my kids. So, I'm going to stick with it. Here's what I do ... I am a wall-calendar freak fanatic. I always have been. In fact, I have the wall calendars stored from the past 10-12 years, just in case. My wall calendar is above my desk in the kitchen and contains every single thing we are doing. I used to have a separate meal calendar, but my husband designed me a calendar that is all-inclusive and he prints it out for ...

I had fun yesterday with Brynne's Co-op Playgroup moms discussing the differences in how we schedule our homeschool days. All of these moms have early elementary, and mostly kindergarten, aged children. Their days aren't quite as scheduled as mine is. If I was just schooling Brynne, mine would probably be a little more lax, too. (Or maybe not, because I am a schedule freak). But, having a high school student tends to kick you in the rear when it comes to getting everything done every day. Based on what we realistically did last year (it being our rookie homeschooling year), what we have to accomplish this year (from a high school perspective), and the priority of our reading goals, here is what I have come up with for a schedule: I feel like this is a very doable (and necessary) schedule. I do plan to have Dawson participating in "school" from 9:00-3:00 (or until his work is all done) every day. If he completes an assignment set before the next scheduled block, h...

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed right now. School starts in just over a month, and I have much preparation to do! Finish American History curriculum (3/4 way done) Make IEW notebook Make reading genre requirements list and reading notebook Finalize Apologia Biology schedule Make art notebooks Plan Brynne's first science unit Yikes! I need about a week somewhere alone with my computer, the internet and my printer, with tons of notebooking supplies. Since I won't be getting that, I just need to get diligent in setting aside time to get these things done. Anyone else feeling the pressure of a looming starting date? UPDATE: As of August 11th, I have now completed the crossed-out items! I feel so much better! Almost done!

To celebrate Brynne completing the entire study of a letter-of-the-week curriculum, we will be doing a week-long lesson on The Zoo from A-Z . How will we do that? My amazing bloggy friend Stacey at BrainInTrainin (I get so many of my ideas from her) posted about a website for the Indianapolis Zoo. You can download the materials by going here . (It's the 3rd grade program.) I printed off the relevant materials for our study and put them in a binder for a full week of activities. Many of the items in the materials can be used, no matter where you live and no matter how old your kids are. We will do the following: sort and diagram the provided animals using a Venn Diagram to plot animals with claws, beaks and tails sort and chart habitats of the animals (grassland, forest, ocean, swamp rain forest, tundra and desert) choose three animals from our animal fact cards and discuss the different ways they all do the same type of activities, like eating, foraging, moving, protectin...

Because Brynne came home from kindergarten after school started, I didn't purchase any formal curriculum for her. I already knew she was advanced in many areas, so I really just used this year to let her teach me! I wanted to get a good feel for what she already knew, what she was interested in and what style of teaching worked best with her. I already had an interest in the Charlotte Mason method, which worked especially great since I didn't have any formal curriculum to use. We stuck with the 3 R's and did science and social studies units based on her interest, doing lots and lots of reading! And with all of the reading we did she learned to, well, read! In math we used a 1st grade book that the school gave us, but it was boring to her so we incorporated as much hands-on math as we could. We tried to work off of our social studies and science units and do math activities related to them. She liked that! In public school she would be in 1st grade next year, maybe e...

Wow. This school year is all but over! I can't believe it! Between now and the end of the school year, we will be doing the following: Dawson ~ 8th Grade Exploration Period, focusing on Swiss Family Robinson (for 17 days of school) Renaissance and Restoration periods, until the last day of school, with an end-of-school trip to The Renaissance Festival . Lots of pre-algebra, language arts reviews, typing, spanish and science units going along with the above-units. Brynne ~ 1st Grade Our last week of For the Birds , with focus book The Perfect Nest . Three week of Easter studies. Since Earth Day falls the Friday before Easter, we will study Earth Day the last week of April with some really fun books and activities. We will spend April 30th making May Baskets to deliver to Brynne's friends, in cognito, on May 1st. The Month of May ~ a study on the Milly-Molly-Mandy series. We will be doing a couple of weeks of study on both Time and Money and will also be focusing...

This was another abnormal week. Brynne woke up on Monday morning with a cold, so we did a lot of school that morning just sitting on the couch. By noon I realized she was running a fever, so school was over for the day for her. On Tuesday she had a cough, yucky nose, headache and fever all day. There was no school that day at all, for her. Although she woke up Wednesday morning fever free and almost miraculously healed, things ran pretty slow for her on that day. Thursday and Friday we had a lot to catch up on, so we kicked it into high gear and got as much done as we could. Here's all we did get accomplished this week. Brynne ~ 1st Grade She did some awesome things this week, and I hope I can get them all documented here. In reading we have moved onto grammar and we started this week with nouns. It amazes me how she immediately picked up on it! She can easily classify if it's a person, place or thing. On one of her noun worksheets she was asked to pick one of the ...

As I'm preparing for Dawson's next unit on Ancient Rome, I thought I would provide the steps I take to build the unit for free (or mostly free). We are using A World of Adventure by Dorian Holt. It is a unit study based loosely on Charlotte Mason's philosophies of using Living Books. (I don't know if that's what Ms. Holt intended, but it is certainly the way it worked out.) So to start each new unit I go through the entire 30 days and jot down notes about the topics we will cover, the science experiments she has provided and the Fine Arts projects she suggests. Some we use and some we don't. Then I do this ... 1.    DVR. The very first thing I do (and I actually do this about weekly) is a DirectTV search on the topic. I just put in "Ancient Rome", for example, and set our DVR to record every show or movie on the topic. I usually end up with about 5 or 6 things for us to watch. 2.    Library. Then I hit our library website. We are part of t...

Brynne's desk fit perfectly into our school room. It was as though she was always meant to be there. Here is her desk with all of her supplies. She sits right behind my desk so I can just turn around and work with her, and its right next to my shelf of books and supplies. It works perfectly! We plan to put some type of bulletin board up, or even just hang a clothesline, for her work and art. But for now we are just sticking it to the wall with sticky tack. She loves to have her work right there in front of her. When we need to do whiteboard work, she moves over to the antique desk and watches as I instruct. Sometimes she even stands up to it and does her work there. Here are some features of her areas: She has her sight words and letter bag hanging next to her desk. Once a week she takes the letter bag and finds three objects that start with our letter-of-the-week. Then we stamp the letter on the bag. When we are done with all 26 letters we will have a full alphabet bag. ...