sharing "Educating the WholeHearted Child" with Homeschool village

Today I am linking up over at Layton Family Joy to talk about a book that has supported and encouraged me in my homeschooling adventure...

My favorite, inspirational- yet practical homeschooling book is Educating the WholeHearted Child by Clay and Sally Clarkson.
I have loved, loved this book. My favorite thing first and foremost about this book? -It is filled throughout with scripture, and much of it is found sprinkled throughout in the margins. I used this book as a devotional many times just by reading the margins every morning.

Educating the WholeHearted Child is unlike most homeschool books- it's very inspiring and yet, gives you practicle thoughts on setting up and running your homeschool- without making you feel like you must do it just like this. It's a great jumping off place, making you think deeply about why you are homeschooling, and about the importance of touching and keeping your children's hearts.

I do not, unfortunatley, have my copy to quote from, or to show you...I lent it out and never got it back. A new edition is due out this September, and I will make sure I get a copy!

You can order Educating the WholeHearted Child thru Amazon , or thru ChristianBook.com

Homeschool Village- "Refreshed" week

I am joining up with the Homeschool Village, and the question this week is:

What do you - homeschool mom - do to get refreshed for the next school year?

I'm going to confess, that as the forever planning-challenged homeschool mom- in the past I haven't done much of anything to refresh for the next school year. We school year round, but the summer months are always lighter in load, usually just math and reading. I don't plan specific time off-except for during our week-long Bible conference, so I don't really feel refreshed...much.

This summer, I am going to sit down and plan a second full week off- not a happenstance week off, where we get up late and putter and it ends up being days off by default...but a planned week off, to relax, recoup and have some fun. I am also going to plan to do something "summer-ish" each week with the kids, either hitting the beach, or the pool, or something like that.

Being a homeschool mom who fails to plan much...I do want to take time at the end of the summer to plan, organize and clean. Having a plan, feeling in control of my homeschool domain, will make me feel refreshed for the new year.
How about you? Do you have plans to refresh yourself for a new school year-be it at home or at a school-school?

hop on over to Layton Family Joy to join up, or to visit around!

Homeschool Scheduling- a chalkboard approach

I've tried many different scheduling approaches for our homeschool planning. After more than 10 years homeschooling, I haven't found a system that sticks. Some have worked well for a year, or a month... but then the look of our school day changes, and my schedule falls by the wayside.

The chalkboard of ultimate power sprung from the clever whiteboard system used at our Classical homeschool group. I realized I was onto something possibly brilliant in execution...and so I asked sky to put up a chalkboard wall for me.

I chose a spot in the room we do most of our school work...the dining room area. Sky simply painted this wall with chalkboard paint.

I write out the flow for our day for my 3 youngest students, so they can see what comes next and what is left to do.

I have a running list of things I need to do. Here's the brilliant part....I erase as they are done.

If it's still on the board, I still need to do it.

It's my board, no one else is allowed to write on it. Ha!

There you have it, homeschool planning/scheduling for the Bridget Jones homeschool mom.

The dry- erase- board of ultimate power

"Padawan, discovered the seat of ultimate homeschool power, have I? -Yes."

Behold the ingenious white-board concept I discovered through our Classical homeschool group.
I mentioned it here briefly in *this post

Here is the deceptively simple, yet brilliant concept: The grammar to-do list is written on the board, in list form on the left-for what we will cover, and then else-where on the board in actual content. And then we erase it has we go. No more ambiguity about what else I need to cover or when I should get to it...if it's there, it still needs to be done.
Brilliant.

The second photo has the timeline cards we memorize for the week on the bottom ledge, we do those first and get them out of the way.

I can see this working for a general homeschool mom's day- plan...list all the subjects and pages you need to get through and even things you forget to do like, "call the vet", "drop off books at library" and then erase as you go.

I'm so doing this. Sky is going to put one up in the dining room for me, since that is where we do our homeschooling.

Embrace the force.

Summer is done!

Okay, panic has set in, I have less than two weeks to organize and plan for the new homeschool year! Where did my summer go?? It was just here where I left it,...what happened?
-Where did my super planning and feng shui go? I was going to wake up and magically be the new and improved, utra-efficient, ultra organized home-school mom...and lose weight, become super-fit and become self-actualized.
cue angels singing...

I guess I will go to plan B and just try to get my Sonlight core 6 shelved. It's been a few months now since I opened the box...Core 2 will be arriving soon and then I will have even more to shelve!

This summer has been very full and topsy-turvy. I had my trip to Singapore, then we took the kids to Boston, then we got Emma the wonder-labradoodle, hosted people for the Bible conference, went to the fair, registered Meg for a classes for high school at a private homeschool group, sent Meg to Bible Camp in Canada!, decided very last minute to join a
Classical homeschool group and teach a class there.. no-less and had a surprise visit from the local truant officer. Fun, fun, fun! I had to do a 3 day teacher training for the new group in LA...I don't like driving thru LA..it took me a few days to recover from that!

Summer-lov'in...happened so fast....

I am really excited about our new Classical group, I think it is going to be a really good year for us, the kids are going to memorize lots of important and good stuff and have fun doing science experiments and art activities. The other teacher-moms are all very nice, I haven't been this excited about a group in a long time. They have some really impressive stuff for the older kids, logic, Socratic discussion, essay writing...I'm kind of hoping we can fold Meg into this group next year..we'll have to see how it would fit into the classes she is involved with right now.

On the starting school front, I actually have all the books I need, except for the
Sonlight Core 2, which is the second half of Ancient World History- for Demi, Amie and Teddy. We have all our math, LA, Latin, handwriting...so far I am thinking of building around the science we will be doing in our Classical group, we will see how that goes.

How's school planning going for all of you?

our 1st week with Sonlight's Language Arts

We finished up our first week using Sonlight's Language Arts 2 material...and I was in love with it on the first day. I wanted to wait till I actually made it through the week before sharing my thoughts here on the blawg.

Language Arts has been very light, and not a regular thing, since my 3 youngest students were not quite reading. We are getting close to the end of Headsprout phonics, so I felt it was time to bring in some LA. I puzzled over which LA program, and then realized the answer was probably Sonlight. Kind of an out of the box thing, to order the LA portion when I am not using the rest of the program, but hey- I live life on the edge...

Soo, Sunday night I pulled out my binder and looked to see what we would be doing on Monday with our new LA and *readers... :) (It's sort of weird the way I love new books and new programs..but hey, it could be shoes or bags...)

It was just the right sort of work and lightness, we had a copywork passage (taken from the reader assignment, sigh-I love when things are inter-woven!) and then a note suggesting I write a few compound words on index cards, explain what a compound word is, and then have the student(s) put them together. They even gave me a list of words. So I did it, because it was the small kind of project I can handle....and then I tucked the cards away in my binder pocket.

The kids had a ball, and it even became a competition to see who could make the most words. Teddy was in the lead right till the end (which made me very happy because he is our struggling learner and I love moments when he can shine), and then Amie swept in and won by one word.

These are the kind of activities I love to do, it reminded me of a Montessori- education way of doing things- I love to do things like this, but I do them very sporadically because I am 1) either feeling behind in everything, 2) very busy and just forget, or 3) I don't plan ahead.
It was wonderful having it scheduled for me.

The next day we had a portion from the reader to unscramble- short and sweet! And then the next day we had a lesson on descriptive words and answered some questions about an animal they would like to write about; a pre-writing lesson. *here are Teddy and Amie hard at work on their adjectives...

Friday was the big writing assignment day, they took their list of adjectives and wrote about the animal they were describing. *Here is Demi-Sky's on the left, his student activity page for the week is on the right.

I really like that we do a little bit of work everyday, so they don't get burnt- out.
The Regular Readers-2 are just right for Amie, she reads them fluently but tires quickly with it. Demi is zooming through them and begs for more- which is perfect, because I anticipated this and ordered him the Intermediate Readers-2 schedule/study guide to add, in addition to the regular readers. Teddy is floundering a bit. He has an auditory processing disorder-and has come a long way since being pulled from public school last year, he has been doing great with phonics type readers...but the reading for this program is from The Beginners Bible, and is not limited to an easy phonics list..and he is not able to read as many pages as are scheduled.

I waited, watched and worked with him this week..and decided to go ahead and order him the Sonlight Reader's schedule for core 1. I am going to keep him with the
Language Arts 2 portion..and just hold his hand with it- because I think he needs the stretching it will give him with writing. But, I thought about it a lot, and decided that we want to foster a love of reading for him, not frustration or defeat- so the reader's for core 1 will be at a level he can triumph with. I love the fact that Sonlight has so many different reading and Language Arts levels within the different cores, it makes it easy to move the kids up and down if needed, but still keep them in the same history year...which we will be doing next year. It's decided, we are doing Sonlight complete cores next year with all the kids.

I will share more with you on planning, what the schedules are like and such, as I go along and figure it all out.

This week was a really fun week for me, Language Arts wise.

things are a happening around here

Things are not dull for long around here! Well first, homeschool news-wise: I went ahead and ordered the Core 2 Language Arts from Sonlight. I also ordered the regular readers and intermediate readers guides with it.

I am really excited, aside from the fact that I love new books, new programs and packages in the mail (I am a curricula junkie, I admit it) , I am so excited about the point my youngest 3 students are in their learning to read journey. We are a little more than 20 lessons away from completing the headsprout phonics program, which is supposed to land them at a second grade reading level. They are just getting to the point of being able to enjoy what they are reading. The Sonlight program has a whole bunch of readers that look like so much fun.

Will the Bridgett Jones- homeschool mom be able to actually stick with a program? Well, my track record this year has improved tremendously, so I think I have a chance this time around.
You can all watch my progress, trials and triumphs here on the little ole blog...maybe,
unless it gets real ugly, then all bets are off and I will happily announce my new find next year...

With Meg starting high school next year, I really feel the need to have some continuity in our homeschool journey. That, and I am working my way so slowly through the program I have, which has been a great program, but I think I need more direction and a tightly scheduled day to keep me moving.

Other news, we have the kids of dear friends staying with us this week...there are 3 of them. So, this means that during the week I have 8 kids.

Here is the gang at McDonalds. We have been skateboarding and to Disneyland this week...I think a cheap movie theater is next. The really, really great part?... I got to drop off the 5 oldest kids at D-land and leave!!
It's the small things in life, really.

Sunday night planning

Here is what Sunday night planning/prep-work looked like at my house. I was filling the kids' notebooks with handwriting sheets, maps, history color-sheets/worksheets and our Tapestry of Grace reading assignments for the older girls. I make copies of my book assignment page and then just circle the book assignments Meg and Josie are responsible for that week..it saves writing it out,- there are too many books listed to do them all, you are meant to choose a few.

I am planning on doing a weekly review with photos, but since we started our week on Tuesday, I am planning to end our 1st week officially on Tuesday- there was just too much to squeeze into 4 days.

Here's to a great Monday, everyone...lifting my diet coke in a toast to you!
Have a great week!