Journey to Excellence

 If you have read my Weekly Wrap-ups for the past nine weeks, you have probably seen a trend of cramming a lot into one week! This week, however, I have noticed myself being much more laid back in the area of schoolwork. I am pretty certain it has had something to do with my newfound interest in the Charlotte Mason method. But, on top of that I have seen that with two children at home, learning two completely different sets of things (being 9 years apart in age), I am quickly overloading myself! This past Fall Break was a great one for me. It gave me some downtime and some time to reflect on the past quarter. I realized that I was beginning to pause much more frequently to notice the education that was occurring all day long, without the aid of any school books ... the aha moments ... the learning from doing things they had interest in ... the application of things learned in books to real life! I would stop myself from hurrying Brynne along to go upstairs to resume workbox as

Dawson is a terrible eater! Always has been! As part of his study on Ancient Greece, he is doing a science unit on healthy eating. Of course that includes use of the Food Pyramid. Have you ever gone to MyPyramid.org ? It's an amazing site that not only allows you to input your height/weight/age/exercise level for a customized food plan, but it also has a PyramidTracker link that allows you to input that information with your daily food intake so you can track how you are doing! That's a project I am having Dawson do, starting today. First he is using a food plan based on his information. It tells him how many ounces or cups of the certain foods he should be eating. Then he used his recommended food plan to come up with a list of foods he would eat in those categories. I told him to concentrate on breakfast, lunch and snacks. I'll be doing my two-week grocery shopping on Friday, so I'll be sure to buy the foods he said he would definitely eat. Then I am goi

I never thought I'd be a homeschool mom. I didn't think I could do it. Heck, I didn't think I wanted to do it! But I find it to be one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. I am proud to tell others that I homeschool two of my children. I never really thought I would homeschool any of the kids but Dawson. I especially never thought I would have the stamina for Brynne. We are so much alike. I just never thought we could do it together .. all day .. every day ... But I think I am loving it as much, if not more, than she is! All I know is public school and doing things the public school way. And, that's how I think!   I am a read-a-text-and-memorize-the-material-then-regurgitate-it-back-onto-a-written-test-after-you-have-done-two-weeks-of-multiple-busy-work-problems kind of girl! I had heard of unschooling and eclectic and Charlotte Mason and other homeschooling terms. And since I am a non-conformist on my best day, I wasn't planning to conform to

This week was a different one for us. Dawson's 14th birthday was on Monday. Although I let him sleep in, we still had school that day. We tried to keep it as fun as possible. Our public school's Fall Break was Thursday and Friday, and continues until school resumes Tuesday, so we took/are taking those days off, too. We still got lots accomplished this week! Brynne ~ 1st Grade The 3 R's ~ R eading, w R iting and a R ithmetic Brynne started her weekly journal pages by finishing the sentence, "I like to eat ..." She put "Mackrone and ces" (macaroni and cheese) and drew a picture of it. She did her workboxes full of daily phonics, mini readers, math pages and others. She continues to amaze me with how much she knows. Since we use my public school 1st Grader's homework for her lessons too, it has become very apparent to me that I am going to need to order a good Saxon Phonics instruction book. Sad that I don't know phonics rules well enough to t

Our day didn't turn out the way we had expected ... it was better!! I had intended for us to skip Lesson #2 and go straight to this week's topic on Apples. The kids and I planned to drive an hour away to a working apple orchard, pick apples, buy many varieties, have a picnic, go through the pumpkin patch, buy a couple more pumpkins, come home and bake some applesauce and cobbler. I just happened to remember that last year the orchard was not open for picking because of the previous winter's ice storm. So I decided to call before we left. Guess what ... the orchard is not open this year either!   Ohhhhhh how disappointed I would have been {not to mention the kids} if we would have driven that hour for nothing! I suggested we go to a park today instead and have a picnic there. And sweet Brynne said, "I know, we can take apples!" My little problem-solver. It was here that I decided that we would do Lesson #2, as we should have done anyway. Lesson #2 is as

I am very excited that we will be participating in The Outdoor Hour sponsored by Barb at Handbook of Nature Study . I am currently reading Pocketful of Pinecones by Karen Andreola, as recommended by Barb. It has certainly prompted my interest in being involved in a nature study. I am looking forward to ordering the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Comstock, the recommended field guide to use in our study. Barb recommends that new participants do the first five lessons, then jump in with the whole group on their Lesson 6. That is what we did this week. We did Lesson 1 which is as follows: 1. Read pages 1-8 of the Handbook of Nature Study . Highlight or underline anything that you as the nature study teacher find will help you in your guiding your children. If you read a sentence that you agree with, mark it so you will remember to come back to it when you need some encouragement. 2. "In nature-study the work begins with any plant or creature which chances to interest

I've decided to abandon the "Dawson Says" posts because he really doesn't have much to say every week and it's a struggle to get him to do it with a positive attitude {and I doubt anybody wants to hear attitude from a kid at the end of their own long week of, possibly, having attitudes of their own at home to deal with.} Soooooo ..... here's this teacher's viewpoint of our week: Brynne ~ 1st Grade The 3 R's ~ R eading, w R iting and a R ithmetic Brynne started her weekly journal pages by finishing the sentence, "I don't like to eat ... Mostar." Can you guess what that is? Hint .. she drew a yellow bottle, upside down. When you look at the picture straight on it has a capital "W" on it. (It's Mustard and, cleverly, the "W" is really an "M" since the bottle is upside down.) Every day we got out the workboxes and completed workbook pages having to do with ABC dot-to-dots, sequencing, alike vs. different