Raising Kingdom Trained Champions: 2012 Curriculum

It's been awhile since I've posted, so here is an update of what we have been up to along with some of our curriculum choices. The boys are doing so well. I'm extremely happy with their progress and I love homeschooling more and more everyday. It's been such a blessing to be able to be apart of what they are learning. It's a little long! Sorry!

C: He is two and a very stubborn two year old at that. We do what we can with him, but I have put no pressure on him to learn too much at all. He loves the Leap Frog Videos right now and has learned many of his letters from this already. Scout is his favorite character and he asks often to watch "Scout". He's even figured out how to get it started on my IPad.

He's learning to count pretty high too. He randomly leaves out numbers, but I'm really impressed at how close he is to actually counting to 20! I think the mixture of Leap Frog Math Circus and playing hide and Seek has been a huge factor in that.

(<----Yes I'm crazy)

He has learned most of his basic shapes, but one area he does not seem to have any interest in is learning his colors. I know he is two, but I would think that by now he would know at least one. I have tried several things to teach him these, but so far no luck. I think he is just so involved with learning everything else, that this will come later. I'm not too worried about it, but will continue to find new ways to make it exciting for him. We do focus on one color a week and he enjoys running around the room to touch objects that are that same color.

BIBLE:

I originally bought this curriculum in which we spend two weeks on one story from the Bible. There are several activities that help reinforce what God is trying to teach us from each story. I'm still planning on using it this year (will eventually pick something else, but for this age I like it), but right now we have put our focus on Awana. The boys have just started this back up a couple of weeks ago and I haven't gotten into the groove of incorporating them both. For now, what they read and learn from Awana is perfect.

Here they are all comfy and ready for Bible together. I love this time together.

READING and SPELLING:

I absolutely love this program. It's very similar to the way I taught my students in Kindergarten so I was very familiar with it and I believe it is very effective. What I love most about the two books is that they work so well together. Instead of doing them both each week, we focus on a topic in Reading one week and then learn to spell those words the next week. It's worked out really well that way.

T: For a very active and ornery four year old, I have been really impressed at how well he has behaved and chosen to sit and listen to lessons that really are too old for him. He enjoys doing what K is doing so much that I have decided to include in his daily lessons some Kindergarten activities at a slower/lower level.

He started out the year already knowing his letters and sounds so although we do learn one letter a week and review the sounds and words it begins with, his primary focus is on writing and reading. His reading is taking off much more quickly than I thought it would. He loves it so much that he will randomly call out words from the back of the car that he has read off signs. We have several books that we spend time reading through daily. I've been really impressed with his progress. In the beginning, he would struggle with the fast letters such as in the the word "tag". Putting that "t" with the "a" is always harder than saying "man". I finally created a chart that we read almost daily that has those beginning sounds which has helped him tremendously. He can now read through them pretty quickly.

He has learned to spell and read some sight words. His favorite one to read, spell and find is "the". He gets pretty excited when he discovers it on a billboard or in a book. Pretty proud of himself.

K: I chose to skip through some of the program this year because we had worked through some of it last year and I knew he was ready to move on to something more challenging. With preschool and all the work we had done at home, he was ready to move past the CVC words.

His biggest challenge so far has been reading words with "th". He wanted to say "f" or "v". We spent a little more time on this area, but after looking at the position of his tongue in a mirror and practicing daily, he has finally mastered it.

The past couple weeks he has been learning to read and spell words with beginning and ending consonant blends such as the word trash. Reading the words was a breeze for him, but it did take a bit for him to spell them. He sometimes misses that second consonant. I chose to include these consonant blends (tr, br, gr, ect..) on our chart which we read through daily. This has really helped him to hear the blends and spell the words more efficiently.

He is breezing through reading several sight words. We still need to work on spelling some of them, but that will come with time. We focus on one or two words a week with activities from many different blogs and Pinterest I have found. We use several different items such as puzzles, play dough, tiles and books to help them read, write and spell their words.

WRITING:

I love this curriculum's organization of letters. The first four letters are o, a, c and d. The idea is that these letters all require the same beginning motions when writing them. I believe that it makes it easier to learn how to write each letter that way.

We also practice writing during our spelling and in our journals. For the most part, I give the boys an option to write about whatever they want to write.

T: is starting with book K. In this book, he is practicing each letter of the alphabet. We use this as a guide to which letter we learn for the week. He also practices his letters during spelling when we sound out and write our words.

I really don't expect too much from him in his journals, but I do work with him on sounding the words out for at least one sentence. It wasn't until a few days ago, that I realized how much he's truly starting to understand it. My mom was visiting and he came in to ask her what month it was. After being told it was September, he left and returned with this paper. I was pretty impressed with him, for being 4!

K: With K, we moved on to book A this year. We hadn't finished book A with him last year, but he was definitely ready to move on. Overall, if he chooses to take his time, his handwriting looks pretty good. In book A, he practices words from a specific verse and then he ends the week with writing the full verse out on blank paper. It's a great way for him to practice writing sentences as well as writing God's word so that it might be written on his heart.

<------Here he is practicing spelling and writing words with beginning consonant blends.

Here is something I found on the board. -----------------------------------> It says: I (it got erased a bit) can be nice for my brother (the letters on the bottom are all of our beginning initials as well as G for Grandma at the end). Looks like I need to discuss spelling the words "be" "for" and "my" again. We are also working on spacing and punctuation during our journal writing. He is required to write two sentences.

VOCABULARY:

Although they will learn vocabulary from the daily conversations we have with them, I'm so happy that I have decided to purchase this curriculum. I find it important to enrich their vocabulary daily and this has been a great opportunity to learn some new words that we might not use frequently. I have already heard both boys using the new words we've learned within conversations with Kirby and I or among each other.

Here they are coloring their student books. Each week they are asked to color the picture showing the word that I have given them.

MATH:

Our Math curriculum is a mixture of Singapore and Math U See. I'm really liking the combination of both books together. We also use some math activities from the blog confessionsofahomeschooler.com. She has a some really great preschool/pre K stuff that I purchased. We also love playing games during math time. It's a really fun way to bond and learn our math skills.

T: He is currently working on patterns, counting, recognizing and writing his numbers. He's a pro at counting and recognizing the numbers, but we are continuing through the books. There are a couple of numbers that he is still struggling to write the correct way, so that has been good practice for him. He definitely needs some more work on patterns. He understands the ABAB pattern, but throw in some other patterns and it kind of throws him off.

K: is working on mastering counting by 5's (he's so close..usually just misses 15 for some reason) and 2's, place value to the hundreds and continuing to work on addition.

SCIENCE:

Our main curriculum, Elemental Science: Intro To Science, has been great. We have done some really fun experiments. Our main topics have been our senses, using our observation skills in nature and just a couple of weeks ago when we had rain, we were actually discussing rain. We "caught" rain to find out what shape it was.

Here is K trying to catch some drops. It ended up not being enough rain to really get what we wanted so some of it was done from our sprinklers. They got the idea. I'd never done this experiment before. It was pretty neat.

I also tie in Science activities from our monthly themes. Our Bible curriculum includes a few science projects as well. Last week, we saw that when yeast eats it makes gas which made a balloon "grow". K really enjoyed that experiment.

PE:

Our main curriculum is Family Time Fitness. Although we do follow this for the most part, we also include sports outside the home and playing at the park as our PE time.

WORKBOXES:

Have you ever wondered how in the world we homeschooling mom's manage to teach each child on different levels effectively? I definitely wondered this same question while making our decision to homeschool when I came across the Workbox system on confessionsofahomeschooler.com. This system was most definitely sent to me by God. I love it!

Every day, I put activities in each of their boxes. After Calendar, we head over to the boxes and get started. They work through the boxes at their own pace as I monitor and help where needed. After they finish a box, they remove that number and place it on their mats which are on the wall to the right.

On three of their boxes, there is a picture of a mom to the right (I eventually want to actually have my picture there, but for now this works). These are the boxes in which they must work with me (spelling, reading, math). If I'm working with someone when they reach that box or if they come across a box that they need help on, they have a "help" tag in which they stick in place of the number on the mat. Once I'm free they come back to it and can remove the "help" tag once they have finished working with me.

I have also placed other activities such as art, reading, computer and chores on their mats that they must do outside their boxes. This system has worked out so great for us. It keeps them from interrupting me while working with one of them too often as well as wondering what to do next. Organization also makes me very happy, so to have a place for each of their daily assignments makes things very relaxing for me. :) I highly recommend this system for those who are homeschooling multiple younger kids. As they get older and need less help, this system may not be needed, but for now they as well as I LOVE it.

When we first started incorporating this last year, the boys would beg me every day to do their boxes. This is still their favorite part of each day. Box number 6 (Snack) is definitely their favorite!

LETTER OF THE WEEK ACTIVITIES:

Most of our curriculum for our letter of the week comes from confessionsofahomeschooler.com. I purchased her LOTW curriculum. To end our weeks, we sometimes throw a LOTW party. Here are some pics of our M Family night in which we celebrated with our Aunt and Cousins. Some of our activities included dancing with Mickey Mouse, Marble Race, Matching game and the movie, Monster's Inc while eating Monster Munch.

THEMES:

After we finished up our week about our bodies, we moved on to fives senses, eating healthy and community helpers/strangers. Here are several pictures from those few weeks.

FIVE SENSES:

FOOD GROUPS:

We cut pictures of food out of
magazines and placed them in the
right food groups.

COMMUNITY HELPERS:

This is an excellent book about how a boy learns to trust in God's plan for our lives rather than listen to what those around him were trying to push on him. The only hat that fit perfectly, was one that was created by his Maker. It was perfect for our Community Helper weeks.