Teaching a TWO

Ellison's 1st Day of TOT SCHOOL

Ellie began Tot School today. I found a great program on the 1+1+1=1 website that I really like and was SO excited to start it with her. She always wants to be included in the big kids stuff. In fact, last year, I had to make her little velcro tabs for her workbox bins and put her toys in them as she was so jealous of the kids getting school books out of theirs. I knew at newly 2 that she would most definitely want to do school with the big kids. 

What I hadn't planned for was her liking it TOO MUCH! LOL!

Every single thing I have read about tot schooling talks about the short attention spans and not to be discouraged if you print all these awesome sheets for them to do and they want to do them for about 5 minutes if at all. I wasn't nervous about that and since I have 3 other to homeschool, I was totally fine with her doing school for 5-10 minutes then going back to playing or follow me around.

She decided that she wanted to do more, more, and more. Here is how we spent over an HOUR this morning. The kids kept needing odds and ends of help, so I tried to switch her to crayons and markers instead of paint daubers! She likes sitting in her high chair because she can do her own buckles, so I pulled her desk over to it and that is her favorite place to do school.

 Dotting the "A"s with do-a-dot paint daubers. Her FAV!

Doing a worksheet from a do-a-dot art book:

I convinced her to color it with crayons after she dotted all the circles. That lasted about 5 minutes before she wanted the do-a-dot paint daubers back:

Here she is coloring with markers. Blessings on whomever it was that invented the washable ones!

When I finally got her to get down, she climbed up at her desk and wanted MORE!

Here she is coloring again:

A huge part of Ellie's TOT School is reading! She LOVES books! Nanny stopped by with a few items and of course read Ellie some more books while she was here:

P.E.- A girl and her bike:

 (She thinks she needs a bike helmet, because, yep, you guessed it, the big kids all wear one!)

So that is a day in the life of a toddler in Tot School.

First Day Photos 2013-2014

Today was our first day of homeschooling for the 2013-2014 school year. Here are our "not-back-to-school" back-to-school photos!

Ellison - Tot School

 Most of her photos looked like this, but I did get one of her face showing:

 Zoe - K4

Cian - 2nd Grade

 Grace - 4th Grade

All the kiddos:

 

Where Do We School?

Thanks to a fellow homeschool mom I have found the iHomeschool Network's blog hop. I have added my Curriculum for 2013-2014 to last week's. On last week's, I'm blog number 289, lol! The next topic is School Room Week and I loved the topic and decided to post on where we school!

Here is a link if you want to check them all out! Lots of great blogs and ideas!

iHomeschool Network Curriculum Week

Where we school:

We do lots of field trips and adventures so my 1st answer is to say the world is our classroom! :-)

However, we use a lot of our home to school as well so I thought I'd show some of what we do in pictures.

-UPSTAIRS-

DINING ROOM:

We spend quite a bit of our time working at the dining room table. The kids have a great routine of clearing their spots for breakfast, snack and lunch then using it in between for school. Also in our dining room are our charts for morning calendar:

 AND

This pic is from last year so it has lots of COAH's Letter of the Week on it!
Also, the state we did each week, the Saint of the week, etc..

 In our dining room is also our workboxes:

My now newly 2 year old wanted to be included last year, so I made her Dora ones for hers ;-)

 We also begin our day with the Bible and/or a story of a Saint. I keep these books on top of my china cabinet so they are near my charts. 

LIVING ROOM-

Also upstairs is our family computer. It's so messy right now getting ready for back-to-school, but here's a pic from last year of that work area: 

-DOWNSTAIRS- 

KIDS' BEDROOMS:

The kids have desks in their rooms in case they want to have a quieter work area. This is my 6 year old's, I found this at a re-sale shop- it is an old school classroom desk. 

FAMILY ROOM -

I have a couple book cases downstairs that are full of my homeschooling stuff. One is all books in alphabetical order. Another is curriculum and books by subjects (such as math books like counting M&Ms etc..).

 Next to that, I have a new addition this year! Trofast shelves and bins from IKEA! These are so great! I organized them this summer. I have one for each school month and the extras are odds and ends of subjects such as science, music, etc..

 I bought a second Trofast system this summer. The other design I chose was this one:

I plan to use this like I would use busy bags. I have puzzles, games, puppets, magnetic letters, legos, etc... These can be used by my 4, 6 or 9 year old if they need a break or I need one-on-one with one and the others are done. I call this my Busy Time Center.

-THE GARAGE-

Okay, we don't actually school in the garage! :-)

But, we have balls and games and items for PE time, so that counts!

Also, I have to mention the van!

THE VAN

The final area that we do school is in the VAN! We have become pretty great at carschooling! When driving to tumbling or YMCA PE or whatever fieldtrip we have that week, the kids bring along some independent work in their backpacks. They love that they can "knock out" some work before we get home. My now 2 year old was so used to seeing the kids with their backpacks that she INSISTED that she "needed" to have a Dora backpack. I let her use some of her birthday money and buy one we found at Walmart. It is about as big as she is:

So, that's where we school at Teach Academy!

Busy Bag Exchange

Yesterday, I attended a busy bag exchange with my local homeschool group. I have loved the ideas of busy bags and have randomly pinned them on Pinterest to my Homeschool board, Tot School Board, and K4 board, until realizing I should try and combine them into their own board!

Here is what I have moved together so far, and of course while doing that I got sidetracked and searched for new ones, until I remembered I was trying to write this post during naptime! Lol! It's a small board so far, but after yesterday, I am super excited for busy bags and I am sure it will continue to grow ;-)

-Click here for a link to my Pinterest Busy Bag Board-


For the exchange, each mom attending makes the total number attending of the same bag. For example, this one yesterday there was 9 moms, so each mom made 9 of a busy bag they either found an idea online, on Pinterest, or created themselves. Then, at the exchange we basically trade with every other mom one of the ones we made, so that we come with only one of ours and 8 different ones! It's such a great idea!


I am super excited about all these great bags! Both my tot and my K4 kiddo will enjoy these. Here is a look at what we each left with yesterday. (One awesome mom made 2 so we would have 10 bags!)

1. Animal Sorting - this is SOOO cute! This mom used velcro sticky back dots to have a sorting busy bag. I adore this! 

I could NOT get over all the work these moms put into their bags! I love them all and am so excited to use them!!

2. Funny Faces-  this one is too cute! You can arrange them to make funny faces or sort by like items! Great ideas! PLUS- she put magnets on them and gave us the magnetic tray! SO awesome!

 3. Pizza Place- This one is going to be a huge hit with all the little pizza fans! What a great idea! This mom used felt to make pizza ingredients! What is even cooler than just playing pizza maker, (which is already pretty awesome!) is the booklet has menu requests for the kids to practice numbers!

4. This was a Dollar Store score that the awesome mom who organized this exchange found these and decided to make us all a 10th bag to even out our school weeks with the busy bags! Above and beyond! She is such a sweet, amazing person!

5. Color Sort Busy Bag - This is SO fun! I love all the little pieces for the color sort! Mine will probably sit and just play with all the little fun pieces too! This mom used 1/2 an egg carton, colored it the 6 colors, then added TONS of little pieces to sort! I love how they are all different kinds of items too!

6. Marble Maze- seriously! I am so impressed! This mom MADE this herself! She sewed the maze and a marble is inside! The kids move the marble through the maze. This is SO cool! I am in awe of anyone who can sew successfully, lol. I can fix a button, the end.

7. Pool Noodle Threading and Patterning - These are so bright, colorful, and fun! My kids all wanted to know what these were as soon as they saw them! I am so excited for these for Ellison, as she will actually be able to grasp these well! Awesome idea!

8. Rainbow Fish Number Game -  this game has pretty little sequins and little kids can put them on the fish and bigger kids can use the addition and subtraction cards to the fish. For example, your fish has 3 then you get the -1 card, they remove one and count how many they have! We love the Rainbow Fish book, so I am sure we will incorporate this game with that too!

9. Shades of Color - the kids put the colors in the correct column for the correct hue of the color. This will be great for my K4 also as she can do them in darkest to lightest too!

10. Clothesline Busy Bag -  This is the one I brought! I mentioned that the ones above were either ones the moms invented or found online or Pinterest etc. so I couldn't say where they were from, but this one I can! I found this on Pinterest and you can see it on my Busy Bag Pinterest board. (The link is at the top of the post.) The link I used had the print out, clothing outline and instructions. It was just SO adorable!

This was so fun! I can't wait for hours of fun for the kids with these bags! I can't wait until the next exchange!

Subjects 2013-2014

We are getting ready for our 2nd year of homeschooling here at Teach Academy! As you probably saw on my last post, I have purchased Homeschool Tracker Online. I finally finished adding all my courses for all the kids and am SO excited about how much easier it will be to keep track of everything. Last year, I did Lesson Plans every Sunday afternoon :-(
I am very excited that my Lesson Plans are DONE for the whole year!!! YIPPEE!!!

Here is a look at what we are using this year. I still really recommend the Cathy Duffy book 101 Top Picks for Homeschooling Curriculum, as I had to change only a few things from last year. For the most part, the picks from her book I made based on the kids' learning styles were right on. My only real changes were in Math and Religion (not even chosen from her book).

For Math, we ran kicking and screaming from the Spiral-Style learning! Both Grace's Saxon and Cian's Horizon were spiral-style learning. This is where you learn a new concept, then it switches back to another, than something different yet, repeat, repeat, repeat. While doing that you see the new bit added into your review. We had two problems with this:
1. Grace got very frustrated with it. She thinks like me, "lets make a list of things and do it in order." This math was like skipping all over an ordered, sequential list in her (and my) mind(s)!
2. For Cian, the Math 1 from Horizon was very easy, and for him the constant review was not needed. He got very bored of doing the same thing over and over. He is a "do it and I know it" guy.
Both kids have been switched to a Mastery Style Math companies. I chose Math Mammoth for Grace. It has gotten great reviews, is very cost friendly, and seems to be right on track for the grade level. Most importantly, it starts with one topic, finishes it, THEN moves to another one. The tests throughout provide plenty of review without overkill. For Cian, I chose Singapore Math. I went to a HUGE homeschooling conference and my Homeschool Idol, Cathy Duffy, presented on learning styles using MATH as the example! Perfect! I attended it and was pleased to hear that Singapore is both Mastery style AND challenging. (As I type I am realizing I never did a post on what I learned at that conference! Will have to do that in August!)

For Religion, I wanted a series that was a little more challenging and incorporated more Scripture so I switched from the company I used when I taught High School, and am now going to try the "Image of God" series by Ignatius Press.

Okay, enough of that!

As I entered them into my HST Online I added them to this pile!

  Here are their subjects for 2013-2014:

Grace - 4th grade:

Religion - Image of God- Grade 4
Math-  Math Mammoth 4A and 4B
Grammar- Easy Grammar - Grade 4
Spelling - Building Spelling Skills - Book 4
Reading- Reading Detective & Book Report weekly

Writing- Spectrum Grade 4

Typing- Jump Start Typing
Science- Noeo Science - Chemistry II & Science Detective CD-ROM
History- Portraits of American Girlhood, American Girl Historical Series, (2/3 done from last year)
History- A Child's History of the World

Geography- World Geography; I am using a combination of Confession of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth AND Galloping the Globe book. They are actually VERY similar and cover almost the exact same things. I have merged the 2 curriculms into one that works for our family.
Spanish- La Clase Divertida
Critical Thinking- Building Thinking Skills Level 2; Mind Twisters Grade 4
Art- "How to Teach Art to Children" and an art class; will be using Global Art and Geography Through Art in our Geography courses also
PE- YMCA Classes and weekly Tumbling class
Music- Piano Is Easy series & "Boom-a-Tune" book 


Cian - 2nd grade:

Religion- Image of God- Grade 2
Math- Singapore Math 2A & 2B

Grammar- Easy Grammar - Grade 2

Phonics- Phonics for Young Catholics

Spelling- Building Spelling Skills - Book 2

Writing- Writing Grade 2 (Spectrum)

Handwriting- D'Nealian 2 - It starts with print, then moves to cursive.
Journaling- 1st writing prompts

Science - Noeo Science - Chemistry II
History- A Child's History of the World

Geography- World Geography; I am using a combination of Confession of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth AND Galloping the Globe book. They are actually VERY similar and cover almost the exact same things. I have merged the 2 curriculms into one that works for our family.
Spanish- La Clase Divertida

Critical Thinking- Mind Benders, Mind Twisters, Building Thinking Skills I

Art- "How to Teach Art to Children" and an art class; will be using Global Art and Geography Through Art in our Geography courses also
PE- YMCA Classes and weekly Tumbling class
Music- Piano Is Easy series & "Boom-a-Tune" book


Zoe - K4:

Religion- Image of God- Grade Pre-K - B 
K4 from Confessions of a Homeschooler (MOST of this is good, using over half of this and supplementing with challenging Preschool Packs. I found some I really like on 123Homeschool4me.com that have packs with pages from tot level all the way to 1st grade etc.. )
K4 Packs

My Preschool Learning Book Worksheets & other Supliments 

Let's Go Read - CD-ROM

Math- Jump Start Math CD for K

Critical Thinking- Mind Benders; Arthur's Thinking Skills CD-ROM

Handwriting- D'Nealian K 

Journaling- Journaling the Rebus Way
History- A Child's History of the World
Geography- World Geography; I am using a combination of Confession of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth AND Galloping the Globe book. They are actually VERY similar and cover almost the exact same things. I have merged the 2 curriculms into one that works for our family.
Spanish- La Clase Divertida
Art- "How to Teach Art to Children" and an art class; will be using Global Art and Geography Through Art in our Geography courses also
PE- YMCA Classes and weekly Tumbling class
Music- Piano Is Easy series & "Boom-a-Tune" book

Ellison - Tot School:

Tot School Tot Packs on the 1+1+1+1 website.

My Summer Organization Goals and Homeschool Tracker Online

Organization

Those of you who know me well know that I kinda like organization... Okay, that's not true, I LOVE organization. I like labels and lists and have a post it note app on my iPad I can't live without ;-)

I organized my summer into "To Do" projects and made a list about that. Actually, I made a blog about it too. See it here! I know, I'm kinda an organization dork, LOL! I'm pleased to announce I have accomplished all but one of those summer goals and am working on the last one as we speak! I will admit that I had a little extra motivation to get #2, 3 and 5 done as my father-in-law decided to come visit from Ireland for 3 weeks and I thought it might be good if he didn't have to trip over boxes of homeschool books to get to the downstairs bathroom, lol! I'm also super pleased with my yearbook and so bummed that I can't get it to share online :-(

Anyhow, onto the last goal which, as I mentioned, got bumped out of order- #4 Purchase Homeschool Tracker Online! I have purchased it and am currently logging in ALL my school subjects for this year (this is where not being an eclectic homeschooler [which I am] would have made it much easier!) I have literally spend about 20 hours in front of the computer logging in lots of little details. Please note, one does NOT have to be this detailed oriented, but it is how I wanted mine. I am probably about 1/2 to 2/3 done entering all my subjects for the kids. Here are some reasons why I picked this particular program, why the online version and why I am getting so detailed:

• I picked the Homeschool Tracker Online (HST Online). Here is their website if interested.  I looked at lots of different ones out there including the My Well Planned Day online (since I used their paper book one last year). I heard from other homeschooling moms and read the best reviews about HST Online by a landslide! The other ones don't seem to measure up for the features this company has to offer.
  
• I went with the online version. It would have been much cheaper to get the desktop one, however I have been putting a TON of time into this and want it to not get deleted, lost or trapped in my computer. You tech-savvy folks probably could update and move all your data from one PC to another. I probably could not. So instead of a one-time $49 for their desktop version, I am choosing to spend $60 a year. I know that sounds like a lot, but it breaks down to $5 a month and it is SO worth that to me. I like that it is stored in the cloud and can't be lost or deleted by me. Also, we don't switch PCs often, but given that I will be homeschooling for the next 17 years or so, I'd imagine at some point we will. I especially like that I can get it on my iPhone as I am on the go a lot and this way our lesson plans can be too. Grace has been saving her allowance to get an iPod touch and she when she has enough money, she will be able to see her assignments on it as well.
  
• My main reason for this one over some others I looked at was that it saves your lesson plans so they can be used for your other children. I made detailed lesson plans last year in my Well Planned Day book, but I realized that at some point I might be looking at 3 different lesson plan books at a time trying to find old lessons for younger siblings! With HST Online they are all saved and I can just assign them in years down the road. So, yes, that is why I am doing all the detail now! It is like making one lesson plan for Grace, grade 4 then knowing it is done for Cian, Zoe and Ellie when they are grade 4. Obviously, there will need to be minor adjustments and some subjects I do different publishers for the different kids based on how they learn or how strong they are in the subject, but barring all those things, it will be a HUGE time saver for me across the years.
  
• I am able to get all the lessons entered now during the summer then can either assign the whole year or take a couple minutes each week or month to sit down and assign them! Awesome! I spent lots of time writing out lesson plans each week last year and that is gone forever! Yippee!
  
• I heart organization and this gives me plenty! I am now an oh-so-experienced 2nd year homeschooler, but what people that don't homeschool don't understand is that with multiple kids at multiple levels and sometimes multiple "grade" levels even per kid on the different subjects it is a lot to organize and keep track! When I was a high school teacher I had roughly 150 students each year. I taught usually 3 different subjects and taught 7 periods a day. I thought that was a lot until I began homeschooling last year! What I explained to someone last fall was now I am only teaching 3 [this year, 4] different kids, but teaching a bazillion subjects. ;-) Here is last years' course load - click here- I haven't even written out this year's yet. It'll be posted before August 19th- our start date though! HST Online will have all my subjects broken down into the number of lessons I wanted and I can assign it with a few short clicks. LOVE IT!

So that's my 2 cents for the day for what it is worth. If anyone is interested in getting their homeschool organized and want the lessons to be saved for future siblings I recommend this program. 

Best of luck to all my homeschool teacher and classroom teacher friends for a great new school year. I can't believe that later this week is AUGUST! Summer has flown by!