Journey to Excellence

This product was another one I chose as part of the CSN offer I recently accepted. Unfortunately, my review of this product is not a positive one. (This will be my only negative review of the products I received.) Let me start by first saying that Brynne will love these when she is wanting to draw on the white board. They are fun crayons that do wipe off (with some work) and she can do some creative artwork with them. For me, however, I would not use them for school work. They did not write as smoothlly as dry erase markers. This is a sentence dictated by Brynne. The top one in green is with an Expo marker. The bottom one in blue is with a white board crayon being reviewed today. And, erasing them was too much work! Wiping a white board eraser down the sentences one time. Rubbing the white board crayon with an eraser several times. Wiping across it one time with a paper towel. Residue left after erasing "completely" with a paper towel. When I am wo...

With us being snowed in I have had lots of time on my hands. What better time to start thinking about next year's curriculum? Since this was our first year homeschooling, we have totalling winged it. What we have done has been very successful, but there are some changes I would like to make based on many factors. Here is what I have tentatively planned for next year, so far: Dawson ~ 9th Grade (next year) Language Arts: Easy Grammer Ultimate Series 9 Science: Apologia Biology Math: Life of Fred: Pre-Algebra with Economics and then Beginning Algebra Social Studies: American History by using "America: The Story of Us" video series from The History Channel with Notebooking using Advanced History from Hold that Thought! Literature: Every three weeks we will read a Living Book based on our history topic Writing: IEW (Institute for Excellence in Writing) U.S. History-Based Writing Lessons Volume 1 Art: The Usborne Art Treasury ~ study one artist per ...

We only got in one day of school before the record-breaking snows hit Oklahoma. Our rule is that if there is no public school, we don't have school either (because we have two public school children.) There was a slight exception, however. Next week Dawson and Rick are going to Tahoe to go snowboarding and Dawson will miss four days of school. He had to make that up. So, on Monday we did four days worth of Bible, Language Arts and Pre-Algebra. It was a long day! And even though we had a "snow day" on Tuesday, we still had four days worth of Social Studies and Science to accomplish, and an essay to write. My student was reluctant, but put in the time to get it done. Now we only have one more day to make up, and we'll do that on our next day of school. Our A World of Adventure curriculum has us starting a new unit, The Middle Ages and Plant Science . As a reminder, with this curriculum all of our Bible, Language Arts and Literature will be related to these two to...

I mentioned previously that I had been contacted by CSN to review of some of their products. It was difficult to decide what to order, but I ultimately decided to take advantage of some free educational materials. I have six different products to review, and I will review one each Monday for the next six weeks. I had always seen "dot markers" and thought they looked cool, but never bought them. I took this opportunity to get some because I knew Brynne would love them. And, she does! I got the Picture Me a Princess Creative Activity Book to go with the Sponge Tip Applicators. It's just fun to color a picture with dots! As much as she likes to just have fun playing with them, I really wish I would have gotten them for her when she was younger. They would be so great for learning to write letters and numbers, and when she was first learning to write her name! I plan to have her use them in math assignments, for addition and graphing and grouping numbers. The quality ...

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 ...

Next week's focus book will be A Mother for Choco written and illustrated by Keiko Kasza. Choco wishes he had a mother, but who could she be? He sets off to find her, asking all kinds of animals, but he doesn't meet anyone who looks just like him. He doesn't even think of asking Mrs. Bear if she's his mother-but then she starts to do just the things a mommy might do. And when she brings him home, he meets her other children-a piglet, a hippo, and an alligator-and learns that families can come in all shapes and sizes and still fit together. Keiko Kasza's twist on the "Are you my mother?" theme has become one of the most highly recommended stories about adoption for children. Discussion ~ Brynne and I will discuss what a mother is, what she does, characteristics, etc., and then read the book discussing each encounter she has and why she thinks each character is or is not Choco's mother. Compare and Contrast ~ We will make a Venn Diagram about th...

Things have been a little quiet at our school this week because Brynne has been sick. We are hoping to do some things today. But I had to share a **smile** moment from my older daughter who attends public school. If you were to know her you would know that she is the master procrastinator! She's been working on a research project about Carrie Underwood. While watching her two favorite DVR'd shows yesterday afternoon she paused it and said, "I think I'm going to go ahead and get my report done and turned in now and I'll watch t.v. later." Huh???? What have you done with Kyndal???? And that's exactly what she did. And she turned it in electronically at 7:30 p.m. (when normally she would have stayed up all night doing it and turned it in at 7:56 a.m. this morning when it was due by 8:00 a.m.). Later she said, "Wow, it feels good to be all done with it early so I can just relax." Duh .... (I didn't say that.) And, the paper was five pages inste...