Journey to Excellence

Today we started our FULL daily schedule. The reality of homeschooling Eli and Brynne together hit early. Eli gets distracted very easily, so I had to spend a lot of time getting him focused. Brynne, on the other hand, finishes her work quickly and is ready to move on to the next lesson. Since they are doing the same work, I need for them to be working on the same subjects at the same time. That is going to be a challenge for me. Eli also had two weeping spells before lunch, and I had to excuse him to his room to pull himself together. After he came out the second time, though, he seemed ready to work and was much happier. A Charlotte Mason education with Eli is going to be so important, I think. And I am going to need to be sure to follow her philosophies of short lessons and living our learning in order to keep from overwhelming him. I need a refresher on this style of learning. I'll leave this post with a photo of them happily working on their math assignments. We are c...

In my life this week ... The kids and I are settling into the new house and our new routine. We, well I, have been really busy unpacking, decorating, etc. One thing we have really enjoyed is walking or riding our bikes everywhere. We are within blocks of anything we want to do. In our homeschool this week ... Dawson started back to public school on Thursday, so we officially started on that day as well. I had grand plans of a school year that would allow us to take off from Thanksgiving to New Year, but that isn't going to happen because of the move. So, now we'll just follow the public school schedule, for the most part. On Thursday, the kids worked hard on spelling, math, reading, and we started our new unit on Caves by reading some books and doing some activities from our unit study from SchoolExpress. On Friday, we went the library to get our library card and check out all of the available services. The kids were thrilled to be the only ones there for the ...

Where do you DO school? Some homeschools have designated classrooms (that are SO COOL, often times very color-coordinated and such). Some don't. We have done it all. When we started, I just knew we were "school ROOM" people. I like structure, consistency, order. And, I always wanted to be a school teacher when I was little, so I would get to have a teacher's desk. But I was surprised to learn that I hated being confined to that desk and that room. There was no creativity, freedom, fun. It was ... well ... school. Blech! So now we do school wherever we feel like it, with some exceptions. With moving into our new home, I had to put some thought into how we would do things. I just piggy-backed off what we have been doing that has been successful, and this is what I have come up with ... This is our dining room. It has the most light, the most room, and is central in our home. My desk is in the dining room. It is an antique teacher's desk (so I still...

You remember doing it, right? ... writing endless vocabulary words on one side of your notebook paper that was folded in half lengthwise with the definition on the other half. Then the night before the test you would write the vocab words on one side of an index card and the definition on the other side so that you could drill yourself. You'd have a pile of words you knew and words you didn't. And, if you are a parent, you have held those index cards up for your kids so that they could regurgitate the answers back onto a test. BORING! And how many of those words did you really remember to be used in real life? Enter Vocab Videos , an entertaining way to learn the possible 500 vocabulary words that will be on the SAT. Vocab Videos was developed by experienced educators looking for a better way to teach vocabulary. The system combines memorable videos — featuring 500 key SAT vocabulary words—and cutting edge learning tools to offer an engaging and highly effective vocab...

In my life this week ... I've been back in Oklahoma this week to pack up for our move. I spent every evening running errands. Brynne's birthday was Wednesday, so we spent the whole day celebrating her. We got the moving truck last night and started loading it up at 1:00 today (after Brynne's bowling birthday party), finishing at about 10:00 p.m. I am now in bed wearing a pair of sweats and my husband's t-shirt because everything else, including pj's, are packed. In our homeschool this week ... Monday afternoon I declared that we would NOT be doing any school until next week. Really, we can only do so much. Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share ... When "my yearly schedule plan" doesn't work out already in the first couple of weeks of school, I just need to adjust it and move on. We can take a long Christmas break next year. I am inspired by ... the joy of 7 year olds bowling. My favorite thing this week was ... Celebrating Brynne...

Talk about a GOLD MINE! A Thomas Jefferson Education's This Week in History by Rachel DeMille is her "labor of love" ... and I absolutely LOVE it! " This Week in History is a daily resource that brings your home school or classroom to life." For just $9.99 per month, you can log onto TJEd.com and click the "This Week in History" link to obtain many, many, many resources tied to specific events that occurred in the upcoming week in history. Or even better, you can receive the summaries and links to ALL resources right in your email Inbox each week! It doesn't get any easier than that! What does this really look like in real life? Each week, I receive an email from Rachel DeMille that sets out each date of the coming week. Under the date, there are listed anywhere from one to several events that occurred in history on that date. THEN there are ALL kinds of things to do related to that event, such as books to read, websites to visit, ac...

My kids (ages 7 and 8 1/2) have LOVED Math Made Easy's "Addition Teaching and Learning Made Easy" by Glenda Brown James . They have truly enjoyed it. And, for a summer schooling experience, especially in math, that is certainly saying something! The author states, "The initial step in this teaching method is to eliminate certain addition facts easily learned ... The elimination or early learning of 0's, 1's and the repetitious/duplicate facts gives way to only 36 facts left to be learned ." That's a great concept! Although I feel like my kids have a pretty good handle on their addition facts, I plan to have them complete the entire book before we move on to more complicated addition with our regular curriculum, and then multiplication (at which time I will be purchasing the Multiplication Package available for homeschool . The program is set up for six consecutive weeks. "The children are introduced to six facts per week. The random ...