wow its already fall.....

It was a long and crazy summer, I can't believe its already November! This summer we took a few vacations to visit the boys. First we were off to Georgia to see Mike graduate from basic training. We traveled with my parents, Kyrstie and Selena in my parents RV. Before we picked up Kyrstie and Selena in SC we stopped in PA. We went to Zoo America and the Hershey factory. Samantha had so much fun.

Then we were off to WA to see Mike and his family in their new place. This was Samantha's first time flying. She loved it! Mike is stationed in WA. They live in Tacoma. We had fun there. We went to Point Defiance Zoo, Seattle, shopping and the Seattle Aquarium. We went to see Mike before he was deployed to Iraq. It was a bittersweet visit. .... I can't find the pictures from this trip on my computer so once I do find them I will post them.

During this Summer my Memere passed away and Samantha learned more about death, dying and heaven. She learned about nursing homes and sick people and missing the ones you love. She still tells me often that she misses her Memere. Some pictures of my grandmother to honor her memory.

We also said good bye to Nick as he went off to the army. Sam misses her brother alot. We then went to KY to see Nick graduate from basic training. It was hot there! On the way there again traveling with my parents in their Rv we went to a zoo in Ohio and one in KY. One of the best things I ever purchased was my membership to Buttonwood Zoo I have used my pass to get into all the zoo's free during our travels this summer. Samantha enjoyed all this traveling.

So now we are settled in this fall with learning our abc's and maybe learning to read a little. She is doing math, science, history, art and much more. Its amazing how much learning you do each day without even realizing it. We are doing a mix of prek and kindergarten work. She has such a curious mind. She asks questions that sometimes I don't know the answer or how to answer. Thankfully we have the internet and I can look up anything that I am not sure on. Like recently she want to know what a turtle ate. Not a big question but an interesting answer... some eat meat and others eat plants. We have fun on this little side trips of knowledge. Its fun to explore what your interested in. She wanted to know what an anteater looks like and boy did we find so many funny stories and pictures of them on the internet. Don't think I want one in my home anytime soon they can reek havoc in your home very quickly looking for trouble. LOL

Math and more

In the car the other day Samantha told me she had many boo boo's. So I asked her how may boo boo's? She counted and told me she has 4 boo boo's. So I told her wow that's a lot and I have only 2 boo boo's. She then tells me well then we have 6 all together! Math at a preschool level.

Lately she has been really interested in writing words. But she wont copy them if I write the word down. I have to spell them out as she writes each number. Its exciting to see her learn how to write words even though she can't spell or read yet. She also is into trying to find words that rhyme.

Ok so I haven't kept up with the blog that much...

So I will try really hard to keep on posting. Problem is I have limited time on the computer. I try not to be on for long periods when Sam is awake and when I try to go on once she is sleeping usually Steve is on. So then we both want to use it and we have to share the time.

This drives me crazy....... when adults think what a child has to say is not important. Example.. today at work Sam was talking to me telling me about something she was coloring. So my client just starts talking to me while Sam is still talking. She knew Sam was talking. This sends such a message that what she has to say isn't important. So I finish my conversation with Sam. Then turn to my client to hear what she has to say. I try hard to teach Sam to wait her turn and interrupting isn't nice. But how will she get the message if adults do this all the time. This isn't the first time this has happened. Sam was at a persons house visiting and she was talking to another child and again an adult just talks over her when he knew she was talking. She turned to him and said I was talking. He got very upset and said she was being fresh. Sorry but why is what she has to say so unimportant??? Is this what our children learn when this happens? I see it happen with other kids not just Sam so what message does this send to our children? Ok enough of a vent. Just had to put this out there as it really bugs me. Maybe I am wrong but why is it that it is ok for an adult to do this but when a child does this its considered rude?

Learning....
She does this every day. She learns. She has so many questions. She thirsts for knowledge. She wants to know why things happen, how they work and why something is.

We have continued to work with numbers. Somewhat a review as I bought a new book what every preschooler should know and I want to reinforce how to write her numbers. Although she finds this book a little boring as its mostly review for now but she does love to do school work. Also its not in color. It has them color the pictures on each page and she is not into coloring right now. She will scribble. She loves to paint and draw but give her a crayon and unless she really wants to color she scribbles. She has done a lot of work with sequences, patterns, numbers, simple addition, spelling her name, rhyming words, beginning sounds, mazes, shapes, colors, cutting and much more. She does write a lot of her numbers backwards and then writes them right too. I have read its common for a young child to do so.

In God's World and Me book she was working on emotions and we have moved onto our 5 Senses. She caught onto this quickly. We are working on Touch right now. It was fun I got a bag and filled it with different things and asked her to identify the object through only feeling them. Only using her sense of touch was fun. I am going to try and find something in braille and talk about how blind people read. We did a texture page and she had so much fun with this one.

We also are working on a nature alphabet. On another blog I happen to stumble on this family went around and took pictures of nature in that resembles letters. When we complete this I will post all our pictures here. She is having fun looking everywhere for letters. For example an acorn cap is the letter O. Here is one example of it. ..

Can you guess what it is???? Its the letter U we originally thought it would make a good W but we found a better W and will use this as a U since the outer limbs form the U

Ok so I will do better from now on updating this blog. Updating on all Sam is doing and learning.

The Earth! School work

Samantha has been asking a lot of questions about our earth lately. Why do we have day and the other people have night? How does that happen? How does the earth spin? Where is the sun and moon? Things like this. So I set out to find a book with answers that are her level of understanding. I found one at the bookstore called What makes Day and night. I also wanted some kind of craft to do with this. Well the one I was looking for has been recalled, no wonder why I couldn't find it. Something to do with lead paint. Anyway. I read the book she really seemed to understand what I was saying. She notices a lot too. She looked at pictures of the earth, she commented that there is so much water everywhere. I pointed out where we live and she was so excited to make it look like it was daytime for us with our made crafts. We made the earth out of a styrofoam ball and the sun was a pom pom. So I demonstrated when we have day and night. She did an awesome job of making the earth. Then she wasn't ready to be done with painting so she made a big picture of the earth and sun. Its amazing how quickly she learns something. Today was a real fun day. We played at the playground, outside on the sidewalk tracing our shadows, and then inside to do some more learning. We worked from one of our work books talking about families and how you help each other out. Lots of fun learning today. Samantha has been watching some of the flowers in our yard grow and every day she will comment if it has grown or not. Next I need to find a book or some resources to show her why the moon doesn't always look like a ball. That is one of the questions that didn't get answered in the book. I tried to explain but I think she will get it more if I show her pictures. Off to search the internet!

Samantha riding her bike outside for the first time...

Samantha got a bike for her birthday this year. Since Sunday was a very nice day we went outside to teach her how to ride it. She had ben riding it in the house.

Well when she was done we played ball and then Samantha noticed something................. the first sings of spring is coming...

field trip

On Sat. after dance class we ended up going to the zoo. We had so much fun. Fun that a normal trip that I would have taken without thinking of school can become a field trip! We walked around and learned about different animals. Found out that they have some chickens waiting to hatch. Noted the difference in shape of eggs compared to the ones we buy in the market. Watched some ducks swim under water. She looked at the pictures of the water creatures and tried finding them in the tank. It was fun. Most of the animals were all out as it was a beautiful day.Of course we took the train ride! LOL Again a lot of learning in every day life.

Testing....

My sister brought up about the standardize testing. How a home school group her pastors wife is a part of is trying to get someone to come and give the kids the the mcas test. I heard on the radio that Massachusetts is trying to push a bill to add more subjects to those test. I for one am totally against those tests. I am glad that as a homeschooler in MA Samantha wont have to take those tests. As of right now its optional for children who are home schooled and private schools. I was against them when the boys took them as many of their teachers were too! How can intelligent people actually believe this is a test of a child's true knowledge is beyond me. There are many faults with this test. With any standard testing. Some kids don't test well. I have 2 who don't test well at all. Mike is an average student and he did horrible on those tests. Had to take the last one twice. Nick who is very smart only scores average on them. Nicks teachers tell me the work they have for him in school isn't hard enough for Nick, it doesn't' challenge Nick. They wish they had more for him but they don't. One teacher said Nick would be a good candidate for self learning out of the school environment. But on this test he doesn't do well at all. For weeks before he would stress out over them as so much pressure is put on the kids about this test. For Nick stress equals to canker sores over his whole mouth. For Mike I am not to sure if he ever really stressed out about it. Now one of the boys friend is a smart person, Maybe did average in school. Well you want to know how he passed the test??? By not reading it and just guessing on the whole thing. He passed in the top 5% of the whole state. Now how is that even accurate???
So I ask you why do these tests matter so much??? How can they even use them in an objective manor?
So for Samantha unless they become mandatory for a homeschooler or she wants to take them I wont have her do them. Lucky her!!!

Fun time learning.

Today I was watching a tv show one of those wife swapping ones. It featured a home school family and a workaholic family. Well the workaholic father couldn't understand how the kids could learn while having fun. Now we are talking about children who were only 5 and 6 I believe. It got me thinking why can't kids have fun while learning. With Samantha I try to make it fun heck she is only a 4 yo. Why wouldn't learning be fun. But really there are so many learning styles and not every kid learns the same way. So many different ways to learn something. A person learns even if they are not doing book work. So why can't a child learn by doing both? As long as there is a balance between book work and life learning the child is learning everything she needs to. I have been doing a lot of researching into homeschooling and learning in general. I know that in our home school journey I want Samantha to enjoy learning, I want her to have a love of learning a thirst for learning. Really in life we never stop learning. But the desire can be squashed. Learning is life. Why not make it something exciting for the child.
If you ask Samantha if she likes homeschooling she will tell you she loves it. She is proud to say she is home schooled. She is funny she will tell a stranger that she home schools before I can even say anything. We were at Donkin Donuts one day and this older man asked if she goes to preschool. Samantha right away said NO I home school. He just looked at me. So I said yes we home school. He said that's nice. That was it. But she is so funny about it. She loves learning right now and I hope we can keep that love. When I was a kid I loved learning but somewhere along the way I started to hate it, well maybe not the learning itself but school. I know it happened sometime in third or fourth grade and that is young. I didn't find that love again until college.
We have been working on her numbers some more and doing some of the Boz God's world book. We have been doing some water colors and other crafts. She made a placemat for herself to teach her how to set the table. So we have been working on some life skills. She has a chore chart now and is really loving it. She can't wait to do her chore to get a sticker on her chart.We have been doing the Amish friendship bread. We already made one loaf and she helped me everyday mix the started. Then she helped me measure add the ingredients.
Next I have a lesson to start this month about Easter that includes things like working with numbers, shapes, animals, drawing, life skills and of course about Jesus. It will take a couple of weeks so we should be starting that in 2 weeks.

Slow week...

Its been a slow week with Samantha sick. We did do some work on writing her numbers 1-5, counting objects and some simple adding. We also did some crafts using triangles. She decorated a birthday hat with all triangle. She made different pictures using only triangles. Until I get my camera fixed I wont be able to post pictures.

Right now we are not using a box curriculum. What we are using is different work books and printed pages. I have been able to find many useful things at stores like the dollar store, walmart, kmart, the Christian book store and the Christmas tree shop. Its been fun finding all sort of things to make it fun for Samantha to learn. Starting in the fall I we will be purchasing a boxed curriculum. Not sure yet what company I will go with but I have been researching it. I would like to find one that is hands on type of learning. As of right now I think that is how Sam learns best. She really does love doing the work sheets but She seems to learn so much more when its hands on learning.

Some stuff we have done...

I am going to try and post some older stuff. Maybe some pictures of what we have done.
In the fall Samantha was learning about the season's mostly about the fall. We talked about why the leaves change colors then fall off the trees. Why some trees don't loose their leaves. She was very interested in doing crafts with the fall theme. We did leaf rubbings, leaf, acorn and stick collages and made our very own fall tree. This is the tree we made. You can't see the leave on the ground of this but Samantha added many leaves on the ground becuase thats what they do in the fall she said. LOL She painted the trunk of the tree herself I cut it out and she helped me tape it to the wall. Then she hung all the leaves. Days later we did a lesson on animals and she made the owl She then added it to the tree. There is also a spider web she made with a thumb print spider. The spider web is made buy painting with string she had fun doing that.

She can do some simple math example: 1 + 1= 2, 2 + 1 =3, 2 + 2=4 and more of course she uses her fingers, beads or counting blocks to count for some of the math problems. She sight reconizes numbers 1-10 and her ABC's There are a few that she gets wrong but then realizes what it is after. She can write her name ,some numbers and most of the alphabet. She knows her address and her whole name plus family members whole names.

Since deciding to homeschool I have been amazed at how much learning a child does in a day without actual sitting down and doing book work. In the bath we use her bath crayons to practice writing her letters and numbers. When Samantha helps me cook or bake she learns about measuring. When she goes to work with me she learns about care of the sidk and compassion. There is so much learning in a normal day its amazing.

Welcome to our homeschool journey.

Welcome to our home school journey.Well I decided to start a blog to record our home school journey. Some have expressed concerns about our homeschooling so I thought if I blog about it they will be able to follow along and see just what we do and what Samantha learns. I am excited about homeschooling Sam. I know she is only going on 4 but really learning begins at the beginning of life. We have started to do home school work so I thought this would be a good time to begin this blog. Besides I keep getting the question when is Samantha going to start preschool. So my answer is she is she is doing home school preschool. I am constantly amazed at home much Samantha learns. The new things she comes up with every day. How she remembers what I taught her months ago or even last year. I hope you enjoy reading about this journey of ours as much as I enjoy going down this road.