Singing and Grace

I woke up this morning with this song going through my head...

I can go directly to my Lord in prayer.

He has told me I may boldly enter there,

And He listens as His promises I plead.

I find grace to help and strength for every need.

I grew up in a family where we listened to lots of hymns and classical music. I'm so glad for all the hymns I have memorized because of this. They are such a comfort and encouragement to me. I like waking up with a song in my head (if it's a good one ☺), because I think about it all day. It helps to set the tone for the day. This one was so good for reminding me that I don't have to do this day on my own. The Lord will help and give grace for whatever my needs. 

I have been so thankful that this school year is going so much smoother than last year. I posted earlier about how burned out I was last year. Honestly, I was trudging through school every morning, taking a long nap in the afternoon and then somehow muddling through the rest of the afternoon until supper. 

I know one thing that has helped is my toddler growing up just a little more so that he is more easily occupied while we do school instead of crying because there is no one to entertain him. I'm going to do a post soon on the activities we've been doing with him. 

But I also know that I have learned to pray more - to ask the Lord to help me. Being a mom is hard work - having help is essential. I'm thankful that it is so easy to say a quick prayer when situations arise in my parenting and trust God to send the answer. Sometimes it's something as simple as me stepping back, taking a deep breath and starting over. It's not always that easy, but I'm not as easily overwhelmed these days. 

So life has been good this fall by God's grace. "Grace" - the word leads me to another song - one of my favourites...

Oh to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be

Let Thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering soul to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.

Prone to leave the God I love.

Here's my heart, oh, take and seal it.

Seal it for Thy courts above.

Do you have a favourite song that can really lift your spirit? You can check out my daughter's favourite songs on her blog - Ramblings of a Janeite.

Flying Teenagers and Buttoning Toddlers

 

 

This has been a wonderful week. Three weeks in and school is still going smoothly. I've finally found a way of arranging our school week that makes things less stressful. My two year old has also started to learn how to occupy himself a little better although we still do use Baby Einstein on Youtube when I really need him to leave me alone so I can teach something - usually phonics to my five-year-old son.

 

So far this fall we've dehydrated, canned and frozen two bushels of peaches, frozen ten heads of cauliflower (chopped up) and tomorrow I'll be doing about six squash. I think I'm going to bake them, puree them and freeze it for adding to muffins, soups, etc. I'd like to get a pressure canner so I can can vegies and meat. I wasn't going to can peaches but my middle daughter really wanted to. We ended up with only four jars since we dehydrated and froze so many. We're saving them for something special - maybe have them with homemade vanilla ice cream.

 

This week was a major step forward for me as a mom. We sent our thirteen year old son off on the plane to visit my sister and her family. Let me tell you, for this terrified-of-flying mom it was a huge step forward. Everything went well and my son enjoyed his first time flying. Now he's enjoying time with his cousins.

I was happy to see him happy and safe.

For my Pinterest project this week, I made felt strips that button so you can put them together like a paper chain. These are for my toddler to play with during school. He can learn his colours, counting and how to button. I saw several variations of this. Most used Velcro. One used buttons which is what I decided to go with. They don't really need instructions. You can see from the pictures how easy these are to make. I hope to add more toddler activities this year as his attention span lengthens.

 

 

 

 

So do you have any suggestions for activities for my toddler who does not particularly like toys?

Learning and Hiking

It's been a great back-to-school week - I think our best ever. We've started a new routine and new chore chart. I don't know if that accounts for how well everything has gone, but it's been good.

 

We also had our first (of what we hope is many) hikes in the Rouge River Valley. We left the house at seven this morning and drove to the entrance. We were on the trail by 7:15. It was a bit chilly but the exercise quickly warmed us up. I used the new mai tei wrap I made for myself and it was great. My oldest daughter even ended up trying it with our toddler for the last ten minutes of our hike. It worked great for them too. Half way through we had breakfast - muffins, cheese and hard boiled eggs. It was great. We hope to make this a weekly event. I love walking/hiking and so does my husband.

The baby wouldn't co-operate and look at the camera.

These two have a special bond.

We have a lego party planned tomorrow for some family friends and four of their five boys. I may do a post about that. Ever since my sister gave our two oldest sons an old Lego set last year our life has never been the same. Any parent of children with Legos knows exactly what I'm talking about.

 

My oldest child turned fifteen years old this week. All I can say is - How did that happen? It doesn't seem that long ago that I was holding her in my arms and crying while she nursed because I was so happy to finally be a mommy.

I hope your back-to-school week went well. Do you like to walk or hike?

Homeschooling Elementary

This week I'm going to be doing a lot of work to get organized for school. The neat thing is that I've done this for so long that a lot of the work has been done already. The bulk of my time will be spent organizing my daughter's high school classes which I'll talk about another day.

For the elementary grades I use Rod and Staff textbooks and workbooks almost exclusively. These books are very thorough and well laid out. I do admit that I no longer buy the spelling workbooks. I just use the lists from the teacher's manuals. From those lists we do various exercises to help them remember how to spell the words. I just personally found that the exercises were a lot of work without a noticeable difference in my children's spelling abilities so we've gone to something simpler.

As I said Rod and Staff books are very thorough. I do not feel obligated especially in math and grammar to do every problem/exercise for every lesson. I usually assign somewhere between one-third and one-half of the exercises depending on how much I think my child needs to do to master the lesson. Then if they get 85% or higher they are finished. Anything lower and they have to do corrections. If they are still struggling - and this usually happens most often with math - we go over the lesson again and there are fresh exercises for them to try since we didn't do them all in the beginning.

There is also a ton of worksheets you can get on any subject from the internet. I particularly like the Enchanted Learning website. There is a $20 annual fee that I think is well worth it. I designed a world geography course for Junior High using worksheets from this site. I also use a lot of worksheets from them for my Grade 2 Canadian Geography. This is a hybrid course that I put together from a similar course my mom did.

Teaching lots of grades can be challenging but several years ago I stumbled on a plan that makes it easier. Someone gave me three boxes of homework books. These are spiral bound books that when you open up to a two-page spread have a place for every subject for the week. Once my children reach Grade 3 (at which point their reading is very well established) they get one of these books. At the beginning of the week I fill in each child's assignments for every subject for the week. Now they can work their way through each day handing in assignments as they finish them. I don't mind if they want to get up early and do all their work before breakfast. This has never happened, but sometimes they will get one or two of the "easier" subjects out of the way. If they don't understand something then they come to me for help. Otherwise, I can give my time to those who are still learning to read or to helping a toddler clean up a mess he just made or to changing a diaper. A homeschool mom is never bored or wondering what she should do next. ☺

I hope this has been a help to you. If you have any questions please contact me healthypreservation (at) hotmail (dot) com.

 

first day of school 2011 - everything is neat and tidy and fresh

 

 

Teaching Littles

It's that time of year when my thoughts start to turn to the next school year. I've had about a month off of school and it's been fun - sewing, gardening, visiting with family. I was feeling burned out from school, but the break has started to renew me. I'm starting to look forward to next year and the work we will do.

 

Today I'm going to talk about what I use to teach my preschoolers and kindergarteners. I'll talk about the other children later.

 

I was so excited to start teaching my oldest daughter that when she was two I started using a colouring book she was given about numbers and doing a page every day as well as going through a set of alphabet cards. It took us 10-15 minutes and we were both happy.

 

Most of our curriculum for junior high on down comes from a Mennonite company called Rod and Staff Publishers. They are not on the internet themselves although if you do a search on their name you will find companies that sell their products online. You could also call them at 606-522-4348 and they will send you a catalogue. The quality of their products, I believe, is second to none - very thorough and high quality.

 

Now I generally wait until our children are 3 or 3 1/2. By then they WANT to do school like their older siblings so I have a set of four books that I use and they all love. It's their schoolwork and they take it very seriously. We do one page every day. They don't quite last a school year, but by then they are ready for the next set that I order. In these books they learn how to draw a straight line, begin learning the concept of left to right eye movement on a page, count to number 5, cutting and pasting (a huge favourite), trace curved lines, etc. It takes us about 15-20 minutes.

 

 

The next set of books I use for their K-4 work. It builds on what they've already learned and adds more numbers, the alphabet, sequencing, more cutting and pasting practice, how to print their name, logical thought (Don't all four year olds need help with this?). I don't use the brown book that you see in this set simply because whatever we're doing for Bible study for the big children we make it so the little ones can join in.

  

This company has now come out with some more books to continue this series. We love this addition. These books continue to build on what they know. Each book is themed on a different climate. All the exercises involve the animals, insects, and plants of that climate. We do a 2-3 pages per day in these books plus continue to learn the alphabet by going through a set of cards once per day. This takes about 30-40 minutes per day.

 

  

 



 K-5 gets a little more serious. Our work can take up to an hour to get done, but we don't do that all at once. It usually takes 2-3 sessions with breaks to get through that hour of work. We really get down to the business of learning to read. By now they generally know the names of all their letters and the sounds they make. I have changed my reading curriculum. I now use a reading programme that my mom wrote for learning to read using the King James Bible as the textbook. My children love this because they get their own Bible and we colour words in it as they learn. The textbook can be purchased directly from my mom (416-445-1611) or you can order the CD of the textbook here. My mom has also made a set of alphabet cards to go with the book. These are the cards we now use for learning the alphabet.

 

We also do more concentrated work in math. By the end of kindergarten they will be able to count to 999 (if you want ☺) add and subtract, count by 2's, 5's and 10's, work with pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters and know a little about cups, pints, quarts, etc. There is also a set of extra practice sheets in case you need more work in a certain area. I have done everything from making them do almost every sheet to just doing it on an "as needed" basis. This is a very good math foundation.

 

Of course, with all of this we do lots of reading. It's so fun now to watch my older children read to their younger siblings. All of my children love to read and/or be read to. I think being read to is something we never outgrow enjoying - think audio books - adults love it too.

 

If you have any questions about what to teach your little one, I hope this has helped. Please contact me if you have any further questions.

 

What do you plan on teaching your little ones this year?