Our school routine, May 2016

I thought I'd put this down here, so I can look back and see how far I've come....
Or maybe to solidify the habit I'm trying to make this!

At the table, when we're done eating breakfast: Leading little ones to God, or accompanying Scripture passage.
We practice singing one Psalm.
We do a memory verse (lately, we put a whole bunch together, in the Lord's Prayer).
We pray.
Then we do breakfast cleanup for 15 minutes.

 After breakfast: Explode the Code writing and reading; one page (less if it's frustrating to K, more if she's whizzing along and secretly does an extra page while I'm finishing the dishes!)
Mep math

Then we have chore time for 15 minutes, which I am including because it is an important habit that makes life easier.

After that, we head on over to the couch for some reading practice in actual books. I am very excited about this; K is reading books she hasn't learned all the phonics rules for! I had been very leery of memorization in learning to read because of a family history of dyslexia, but I haven't found that this has kept her from continuing to learn and understand the letter sounds and combinations in Explode the Code.

Outdoor time (or downstairs playtime, depending on the weather) comes next, and I have a chance to attack my to-do list, my honey-do list, make phone calls, and pay bills.
If all goes well, I get outside for a while with the children. But if that doesn't work out for me, they generally play well together outside for an hour or two until lunch.

After lunch, while at the table, we practice our French phrase of the week, read a selection from "The Story of the World," (I just read the good bits, not all the long explanations, because my goal for year 1 is that my children discover that history is awesome) and sing our folk song. We've actually run out of folk songs, having learned "Oh Canada," "Land of the Silver Birch," and "Something to Sing About." I'm going to have to hit up YouTube for some ideas! Who knew I knew so little!

That concludes our regular routine.
We're still finding a place for piano practice and lessons. We've almost dropped our Monday morning drawing time, so I'll have to figure that out. We are not faithful about our music and artist study, though the few times we have done it, I have been impressed by how much the girls remember when we pull out the picture the next week.

Sometimes, we read Winnie the Pooh at bedtime; we are about a 1/3 of the way through the complete collection.
We also read books at random times during the day, usually when someone is hurt, or needs a snuggle, or both.

I still have a stack of AO recommendations to get through, but they stay on the shelf. I think that a bedtime reading routine would be the best for those, but sometimes I just want to talk to Kevin!

Reading and Writing and Erasing

We just bought Explode the Code for K. She has been reading 3-letter words for almost a year, but we haven't had the 'aha' moment when it all gets easy. I attribute this to our too-early start.
At any rate, with a sudden surge in busy-ness, and now that she will be  6 (tomorrow) , I decided to buy ETC. She really likes it, so far.
Except... today she erased and rewrote the letter 'a' for about 10 minutes before I realized what she was doing. "It doesn't look right." she explained.

Picture Post!

Daddy on a rare day off

Rather than buying all the books on the Ambleside Online book list we're using for direction, we've been getting them from the library. We use the (simply fabulous) NB library app to order books at home, and pick them up at the library in one nice tidy stack. This keeps us safe from books with good pictures but bad plots (a serious hazard you face when your kids help choose books)! Clifford, anyone? 

E, adding glitter to her drawing. 

K's leaf to copy was green, but she painted her drawing red.

This week we combined nature study with art. Even baby O joined us, colouring away on his paper w enthusiasm.

Nanny

My leaf

You may be noticing that I love to post pictures from Drawing Monday. It's partly because I love it so much, and partly because math and reading are not nearly so photogenic!  Imagine it with me:
"Here is a photo of K showing which hand is her right hand." "And over here, we have K counting beans. Notice the pinto variety..."
And reading, well, we do our reading after naptime, on the bed. K is usually upside-down or backwards or underneath a pillow.  "And here is a picture of my unmade bed; notice K under the pillow on the left..."

The girls have been sewing a little bit, too. I find it is a very good way to keep them from exploring the sewing box while I do my mending! If I add handicrafts to our curriculum, we'll probably start with something like this.

Midweek Math

We are about 7 lessons into our MEP math, reception year. I had reservations about this math because it was free. Download for free, online? Sounds legit. Hah.
This review from the afterthoughts blog helped convince me that it was worth a try.

So, I printed it off, and we've been doing a lesson every week. We're learning shorter vs taller, distances, shapes, and colours. It seems too easy for K, actually, but I'm afraid to jump over half a year. What if I miss some important step and cripple her mathematical ability forever?
 Maybe, when I'm a veteran homeschooler, I'll have the confidence to skip, but for now, we are just breezing through. Hopefully K doesn't get bored and hate math because of my fear of missing something.
 One issue that I have is that the math is as much work for me as it is for K. I had this idea that math should be set up so that you progress from problem to problem in a very natural, intuitive way. MEP is designed for teachers with a classroom full of learners, so it instructs me to "praise, question student 1, then student 2," etc. If MEP is like this all the way up through the grades, I might look for something else.
I think we would do better with a small amount of instruction at the beginning of each lesson, and then letting K work through things without constant feedback and what-to-do-next cues from teacher mom. Don't misunderstand me. I do the complete engagement thing with reading, because that's what you need at this stage in reading, but I just think it's not necessary for math. Plus, K is pretty independent, so hovering doesn't appeal to her, either.

Learning French

I've been thinking over what we are going to do about language study in our homeschool.
Teaching our kids the French language is very important to my husband, as he sees the bilingual way in which our New Brunswick economy functions, and also the workplace restrictions that being unilingual place on a person. And so, it has become important to me, too.
Loving the Charlotte Mason method as I do, my first thought was to find out what she would recommend. This is not as easy as it sounds, because there is no universally recognized and loved French curriculum among CM educators.
I did find some recommendations for the Pimsleur method, which looks really good to me.  This method teaches you a phrase (audio, so there is no confusion about pronunciation), and then another phrase, with review along the way. It felt very good to me; so good, in fact, that I looked up the price. *cough* I think it is more suited for older children. Older, rich children.
I kept on looking, and then found Speaking French with Miss Mason and Francois. This method seems to be very close to what CM recommends (this link goes to a blogger who has read CM, since I haven't, yet!).  I will be taking a closer look at this, even though it isn't free (I'm trying to homeschool for free this year, but that's another post).
A few things that I think are the important aspects of language learning for my girls at this point:
1. Correct pronunciation

"The child speaks with a good accent, pronounces correctly, when his nurse or his mother speaks with a good accent and pronounces correctly. Where, indeed, can he acquire a bad accent if he never hears any other than a good accent: How should he be likely to pronounce badly when he has never heard anything pronounced other than well?" (136)

Similarly, he claims, an improper accent may "falsify pronunciation" for good. (58)  As Miss Mason would say, a word spelled incorrectly creates an incorrect visual image in the mind that may never be undone. Better for a child to listen, listen, listen until he is ready to speak correctly:

"Talk yourself, talk continually. At the commencement let the pupil speak as little as possible; it is in his ear and not on his tongue that it is important to fix the word or the phrase. When the spring is abundant it will flow of itself, and the liquid supplied by it will have the advantage of being pure. Let us not forget that the little child listens for two years before constructing a phrase, and that he has possession of both the sound and its idea, that is, the spoken word, long before attempting to produce it himself." (140)

(Quote from  the 'CM recommends' link above)

This is easy for me, because I hope to have a native French-speaker teaching the initial lessons, with my role being review at home. That is, if she is on board with this method and book, because otherwise, I'll have to adjust to suit us both!

2. Being able to talk in French first. Learning to write in French is something for a few years down the road.

3. Learning sentences that have meaning to the child (sentences that speak about daily life, like "I love my daddy.") rather than learning random words (you know, like those books you get at Costco. Dog picture. "Chien." Cat picture. "Chat." "Yes! I am speaking French!!"  Euh, non. )
I realized, incidentally, that I know a lot of random French words, probably from that high school French course, as well as living in a partially French province. What I do not know is how to put everything together.

Looking at all the blog posts, sorting through the information, trying to find out what method is most effective for learning French, but also for keeping things simple and blending language study into daily life, I find myself really excited about this. I think I might learn to speak French, too. Just as a matter of course.  Awesome.

Winning Nature Saturday

Reading other people blogs about nature studying has been giving me an inferiority complex about the whole affair. All I do is put the kids out into the backyard. I'd like to call it masterly inactivity, but it is more like just regular inactivity.
And then, as we were hiking in Fundy this month, I realized, this qualifies! And we do it all the time! I'm winning!


I did adjust my actions a bit, once I had this revelation. Every time we go, I plan to learn one species from the informational placards on the trails. That way, if my kids ask, I'll be able to say, "Oh, yes. That? It's bladder-wrack. See what happens when you squeeze the pods?"

(Dixon Falls trail)

Just a helpful reminder that my homeschool doesn't have to look like so-and-so's homeschool in order to be properly educational. 

drawing monday

We tried something simpler this week, to get E re-interested. And it worked! Her attention span is still shorter than I like, but she is only 3, after all.

 Top picture clockwise from top: Nanny's, E's, mine, Charlene's (Nanny's current home care).