mid-week trip to the zoo

                We had friends of our girls visiting this week, while the boy was back in Illinois visiting a friend of his. We took the opportunity to take a fun field trip to the zoo, with morning Mass and confession to start us off right :) at our beautiful Cathedral Basilica.

 

 

The zoo was deserted pleasantly peaceful and the girls were able to run and goof around as much as they wanted. The keepers were more then happy to explain things and give mini lessons on the animals as they were cleaning the cages and walking the animals outside. I would recommend a mid-week winter visit to your local zoo.


Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

School Planners

At the start of this school year we started using new school planners. This was a free download I had found from The Frugal Family. I printed out a planner for myself, which has space to write daily lesson plans for 3 children. And then I printed each child there own. There were several styles to choose from, and plenty of extras, like calendars, long range planning sheet, objectives sheets for each subject. I put in some of my own extras like, prayers in Latin, chore charts and schedules. After I printed them, took them to Office Max and had them spiral bound. So far the kids love them and so do I! I also makes it a little easier in that, it holds 180 lessons, so once the kids finish I know its time to start a new year. So they can work more at their own pace instead of all working at the same.

Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

I got a new book :)... and poison ivy :(

I will start with a warning, PLEASE always wear long pants, nylons, a long skirt, knee high socks, something that covers your legs fully whenever you go geocaching with your family! Poison ivy is no fun!!!
Now for the fun stuff, I bought a new book, it was very cheap being it was a "hurt" book from IGNATIUS Press, it is titled Designing your own Classical Curriculum by Laura M. Berquist. It looks very interesting. All of the children have subjects that they will be finishing mid-year, and I have been leaning towards a "classical" education, I figured as they finished subjects we would flow in to a curriculum I will make using this book as a guide. The way I figure it I will have this home school thing down by the time the have graduated. ;)

Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

uuhhh.......

I so hate it when I am wrong, especially when it is because I did not look at something good enough... While making my lesson plans for the girls history, I noticed that the book on google books is not complete like I had thought. I had skimmed through it and thought it was all there, but about every other chapter it is missing pages. I was just so happy about finding it that I did not pay enough attention to the books. So now I need to decide do I bite the bullet and spend the $80 for the books? I really want them... but $80 is a lot. I have 2 Christian American history books, I could use either 1 of those, but I had really wanted to use Catholic  books.... oh what to do....


Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

This years curriculum

Well here is or lesson plans/curriculum so far. I think I have everything we need and I am hoping that in writing this I will not discover things I forgot :)

I would usually wait to switch books and curriculum until the start of our new year, January 1st, but we have finished early or come to a point in the curriculum where I thought, "wait we need to go back and start over because you are NOT getting this as much as I feel you should". And I am not very concerned about what "grade" they are in, we just move on as we finish and continue in a progressive order. So I am just putting their age and not a grade level for each child, but I will put a grade level for the books. Also this does not include crafty, read a louds and field trips, those are planned weekly. We also only have 4 basic subjects, english, math, history and science. We do Bible/prayer/Catechism together daily. I also included prices and places I got the books to give you an idea of how much we spend for a school year.

Claire age 10

Math- Arithmetic 4 curriculum this is a review unit for her, we had been doing a 6th grade book, but fractions and more so decimals were a struggle. I got this curriculum (teacher workbook key I am just going through and writing the problems in a spiral notebook, my grandpa gives us about 25 each year, for her to use as her "workbook"and teacher lesson book that I will use for the daily teaching lessons) for free at a book sale and decided to just start over, we will be flying through this book just because most of it she has down, but thought it would be more beneficial to start at the beginning and I really like ABEKA.

History- From Sea to Shining Sea grades 5-9 American History from Ignatius Press we will be doing this a combined class with Maria. I found the book on google books and the teachers edition up to chapter 6, but that gives me time to either find the teachers book cheap or go through and make my own tests. 

Science- Science Order and Reality, grade 7, I really like ABEKA books they seem to flow nicely and are easy to use. Claire has not done a science curriculum before she has done unit studies in the past, but looking through this book she has already learned about most of the units, so she will be expanding what she knows. This is another book (just the student book) I got off the free table at the last book sale I went to.

English- Literature and the Language Arts this is a grade 6 textbook that is full of short stories, it focus on reading comprehension and vocabulary and writing skills. I got his curriculum (student book, teacher book and answer key) from my dad, my brother who was home schooled never used it.

Claire age 10 at least 1 year of lessons; cost free

Maria age 12

Math- Saxon 6/5 grade 6, I love Saxon math, I always use Saxon (except for Clarie's review bc I got the ABEKA free) I got this student textbook free from a book sale. We will do 1 lesson a day, Maria was just not as strong as I wanted her to be for math. We will supplement with some of the free resources on the Saxon website.

History- From Sea to Shining Sea grades 5-9 American History from Ignatius Press we will be doing this a combined class with Claire. I found the book on google books and the teachers edition up to chapter 6, but that gives me time to either find the teachers book cheap or go through and make my own tests.

Science- Matter and Motion in God's Universe grade 8 ABEKA. I got this student book from a friend. Maria also has done only unit studies in the past but I like that ABEKA mixes reading and hands on in their books so I think she will enjoy this book.

English- Grammar and Composition I grade 7. I have the teacher book and student book, I got both from my dad unused.

Maria age 12 at least 1 year of lessons: cost free

Pio age 13

Math- Saxon 8/7 grade 8 with pre-algebra. another set of books (teachers, student and test) I got from my dad, we will do 1-2 lessons a week. Depending on how Pio does in the teacher instructed lesson, if he gets it we usually just do part of the mixed practice, if he needs more time to work with it we do the lesson practice and all of mixed practice

History- Christ the King, Lord of History this is a 2 year curriculum book for 9th and 10th grade and is world history. I got he book off a Catholic curriculum swap Yahoo group for $13 including shipping. And found the workbook for it on a Catholic book website, it is in a down loadable/printable form but I will probably just have him answer the questions in a spiral notebook instead of printing it all out (we are all about being cheap frugal around here)

Science- Exploring Creation with Biology High School grades, I have never used anything from Apologia but this is a computer based curriculum, all of the lessons are on that computer disk that runs on Internet explorer and has hands on experimentsPio will answer in a notebook so we can cut out printing costs. This is a really in depth curriculum and I am excited to use it. I only wish it had a timeline of how long each study unit will take. I did not take biology in high school and I am unsure of how easy/hard it will be for Pio, so I do not know how to plan my lessons.

English- Themes in Literature grade 9 (another free table find) similar to Claire's book this is a collection of short stories, poems and the like the are read and have vocabulary and comprehension questions along with each story. It also has writing assignments that go along with each story, so if it is a biography the student might need to write a biography. All assignments are short and able to be done in a day. It also has a timed out loud reading section so once every 9 weeks you can test their reading speed which for me is not a big deal but some people like it. Aslo the teacher book is outlined very well as far as lesson plans, easy to implement.

Pio age 13 at least 1 year of lessons: cost $13

So for 1 year of home school curriculum for 3 children I spent $13 on textbooks. On craft items and printer ink I spend around $100 a year. I try to ask for craft items, glue and that sort of thing from my in-laws who like to by the kids "back-to-school" stuff. And depending on what I find at Good Will and garage sales that number might go down, or up if I have a pricey craft that I have to buy all the items for at a regular store. So all in all not a bad cost considering that school fees in our district are between $160 and $200 a child depending on grade. 

I hope you enjoyed seeing what we are up to. :)
Amy

Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

A.l.t.a.r. prayer books

These are the A.l.t.a.r. prayer books we made the other day. On the front we wrote "my prayer book" and decorated it however they wanted, on the inside the left page had a large A or l or a you get the picture, then on the right page at the top we wrote what that letter stood for adoration, love and so on under that we wrote a prayer asking God to help us in that area or a prayer adoring, love etc... God. We then put a small picture at the bottom, and Voila! All done. God bless,

A. adoration
L. love
T. thanks
A. ask
R. reconcile

Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

Thursday part 2

Well I never even started the post for Thursday part 2 until Friday afternoon, : ) but we did not do much we made a prayer book, with the A.l.t.a.r. prayers. Adoration, love, thanks, ask, reconcile. And some more quite reading. And I do not remember what else! And so for today we have not done much, me and Maria went to Joann fabric to get some things for a up coming craft show. They were having a big Presidents sale so they were super busy.so it much longer then I thought even though I new it would be busy and allowed more time then usual. so we got home had a late lunch. and watched The Little Princess, with Shirley Temple. And I plan on going through a couple of  folders of school stuff. We will doing a couple of things after dinner, just what I am not sure yet.

Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

Day 2 Thursday part 1

Day 2 of our week, morning
We got up late again! Opened the curtins only to see a dreary overcast day,

eat some cearel for breakfast, and while the kids did room clean up I downloaded some things, and joted down some ideas for the up coming Lenten season. Then it was time for chores.
We finally got started with our school work at about 10 a.m.
we started we handwriting, I will put a different bible verse on the board and they will copy it, they also do 1 letter a day, so today was O they will fill their page with O words, in cursive. Then personal Bible reading and study, they each do this on their own schedule, that they make on their own. They just need to spend about 15 minutes reading the Bible and thinking about they read. Pio does a Bible in a year, Maria reads a chapter a day and she started in Genisis, and Clare reads a chapter a day and alternates between old and new testaments, while we listened to Fr. Corapi. Then while the kids got out their literary guide books and had 20 minutes of reading, I cleaned the cat litter.

after we did our reading, we got started with math, the girls use a combination of math workbooks and texts books, all range from 4th to 6th grade and they are books that were giving to me, so we just go back and forth with which ever book explains it better, and then I just tear out the wokbook pages that go along with that lesson. Pio is in Saxon math 8/7 prealgebra. we then worked in our science notebook. for that we read from any number of books on whatever we are learning about right now it is the sun. (we will continue with the sun until we feel we learned enough, no real time schedule for science just a order) then the kids will right down a certine number of facts, today it was 2 and draw a picture to go along with it. and teh notebook is just a spiral 70 page notebook. then lunch and free time.


Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

A week in our life day 1, Wednesday

I have been wanting to do a day in our life kind of post, but each day of the week is so drastically different from the next I think that making it a day by day week in our life would be the best way to show the thngs I want to show.

Wednesday 2-16
I let everyone wake up slowly and everyone, including me slept in a little bit. I got up at 8 a.m. did my pilates and started breakfast. I went grocery shopping yesterday and got tons of fresh fruits and veggies on clearance. (not as bad as it sounds ; ) so for breakfast I sliced; mangos, apples, kiwi and green and yellow peppers. then we all got dressed and ready for Blue Army, then I spent way too much time talking to one of the other ladys after we got done so we didn't get in the door til noon. We got started with lunch right away, and had sandwiches and snack crackers. After lunch was cleaned up we did our daily chores and got bedrooms cleaned up. Then it was time to get ready for C.C.D. So I quickly cut some fruit and veggies so that when my husband picked the kids up from choir, which they have right after C.C.D. they could come home and make some sandwiches and pull out the fruit and veegies and Voila! dinner. I stayed at church for a parish council meeting and talked to the same lady way to long and didn't walk through the door until almost 11 p.m. Wednesday is always a crazy day with not much in the way of "learning" God bless.

Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

Who knew...

Who knew that finding info on lions and gorillas would be so hard! We are doing a unit study on Africa and as part of it we are studying lions and gorillas, I have been all over our library, other librarys and the internet and am having a real tough time finding anatomy worksheets or books on their anatomy? Can't wait to get a new computer so I can start blogging more often and add pictures, the kids would also like to start blogging more, but it is just tough when we are at the library and only have so much time. We have started looking at computers and are trying to figure out what will work best for us, along with finding an internet provider in our area, seeing how we just moved and it is a bigger town with more choices. Hope everyone has a good week.
Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

Sooo much to post, soooo little time

I have so much that I want to blog about and so much fun school stuff to post, but... with no computer at home it is hard to do, we are hoping to have a new computer this month or next. We have started our new school year, we go from January to December. We have been doing crafts for the Holy name of Jesus, cards to hand out magnets to give to family and friends, We made some sarki (sp) which are just African maracas. We used paper mache and as soon as it is dry we will paint them in African style painting. We have spent most of today at the library, looking at books and playing on the internet, but is about lunch time and we should be getting home, so as soon asap I will post more and some pictures. : )
Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

homeschool resources

I just stumbled on That Resource Site and it is awesome! lots of the stuff is for younger kids, but you could use it as a start point for ideas if your kids are a little older, or if you teach ccd. have a happy thanksgiving,

Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

planning

Well today is the day, I will start planning for the fall learning! I am always a little nervous because there is so much out there and soooo many choices. I never can make a decision, it seems like I am changing plans more then making them, hehe
But I think I have a good plan this year, vision books. We will be using vision books as our main learning and going from there. I picked up a couple of them at my local catholic book store, along with a teacher guide book. It has vocab, time lines, C.C.C. and Scripture connections, and more. So I think we will read the books out loud  over several weeks. And study the geography and time period of the saints life. If the saint lived in 1504 a.d. you could study things happening all around the world in 1504 a.d. You could study all the geographical places the saint went. You could use the vocab words as spelling words and use the C.C.C. and Scripture as handwriting practice. They also have topics for reports and discussions. So from one book as your core you can spin off into;
engish, handwriting, vocab, spelling
geography, history, 
Bible, C.C.C., church teachings
so all you are missing is science and math. Awesome!!, so I think we will each book read slowly and plan a lesson for each book that goes over about 4 weeks. We will have group time each morning doing things related to the book and then after lunch do individual math on Tuesday and Thursday and have science after lunch on Monday and Friday, Wednesday will be nothing after lunch to prepare for C.C.D. I figure if we read 2-3 chapters a week, that leaves plenty of time for other learning and spreads it out enough to not feel rushed. There are enough of these books that I think I could plan 2 or 3 years like this. I like this because it puts our Faith at the center of our learning, and our lives. And after all isn't that where it should be? 

Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

week of 6/13-6/18

Well This will be a light week. We have company coming from out of state, and V.B.S. is next week so I will be doing a lot of prep and meeting with the helpers.
We will be doing a lot of reading for the library's summer reading program. We will be doing daily bible study along with bible workbooks. I might squeeze in a math lesson, and we will talk about interdependence of people in the world. I am still not sure how we will do this, I think mainly it will be a discussion. I think we might make some flow charts on how things go from point a to b to c to you! And talk about how we use things like our home garden to support ourselves, and tie it in with carbon footprints, and being a good steward of our earth and resources and how this relates to being a good follower of Christ.
We will also be getting ready for our trip to Michigan the week of the 28th, busy busy time.
I thought summer was supposed to be relaxing : )

As for the home schooling group I am trying to start in our town We have 4 families signed up, not to shabby.
this is a great homschool resources, it has books that are great in instructing boys and girls in things like home ec, hygine ect...

Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

This has been one of those weeks where I need to decide if its worth the fight. My son who is 12 just has not wanted to do his work, he has just a bit to catch up on, really an hour or so of work if he would just sit down and do it, and he is just not willing to do, fussing and asking to take a break after not doing anything for 2 hours. So do I make him sit and do the work?? Or say this is why we home school so that when he is having an off week he can step back, put the work down and come back to it with renewed interest. The thing is I want him to get it done so we can be down except the little bit of group work we do after our morning bible study, I have tons of things racing through my mind, and would love to be able to say; school, CHECK so I have one less thing to think about.
V.B.S.is only 2 weeks away and I have so much to do still, next week will be a busy one.
Over at wardrobe refashion I got tons of ideas and can not wait to start sewing!! oh, if only there were more hours in the day, or I didn't need to sleep, : )

Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

Summer schedule

Well summer is here, I had hoped to be on our summer schedule by now, but we were a little behind and will be finished by the end of this week. Some sooner then others. We do school all year long but use the summer to review, touch on new things a little and do READ!! The kids are reading up a storm and each have read quite a few books for the summer reading program. We also turned in the Borders reading program sheets and picked out their free books.

It seems like time is flying by much too fast, 2 weeks until v.b.s. I am a little unprepared feeling, It is the first v.b.s. that I have made up on my own, but I think it will go well it is called Saints Alive!! and all about saints. We picked 5 saints to do 1 for days, 1-3, day 4 we do 2 blessed Marian founders, and Friday we do Mary and the party. Wish us luck.

I have much to think about as far as planning next years school, having tried a lot of different methods the last few years, I am thinking of doing a mix of traditional and unschooling starting in the fall. But I am still unsure. I hate changing so often but I am still trying to find the right fit.
Summer schedule goes like this:
bible & ccc reading, a little group work (maybe 30 minutes or so) and then reading.

Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

web site

I picked up this magizine last week and they have a web site by the same name, if you have not seen it before check it out, home school today


Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

summer reading

summer is fast approaching, and that means summer reading programs, why not start a reading journal, have your child draw a picture if thety can not yet write on their own, while having them copy the title. have older ones pratice handwriting, and sentence structure and work on grammer, verbs, adjectives, and have even older ones make outlines, fact check something they found interesting, or have them draw a picture of their favorite part to mix things up. but read, read, read, and have fun,

Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

so much going on....

wow, long time since I've posted, so much has been going on. The girls have started making a quilt for their beds, and I have been very impressed so far. Ellen has done a lot better then I would have thought. Her quilt will turn out well. I started a new scheduling system for school work, I make a calendar on the computer and list out special things that we will do on the days, like days they will be kitchen helper, the bible theme, if they are to start a new book, and then do a week schedule with the subjects, at the end of the week we staple them together, then at the end of the month we staple it to the calendar and put it to file. Maria has started a new work book. it is a compelte curriculum book and it is pretty nice, we just add on as need. I have been scheduling crazy, but after 3 months of just tring to be loosy goosy with everything, we need it. In January I tried "unschooling" and it was fun at first and it might be for some families, but not us, by March the house was a mess the kids were running around fighting and I had no idea what was going on, I couldn't keep track of anything, so I spent the last 2 weeks orginizing, and scheduling EVERYTHING!! And already you can tell the differnce, we are much better ready to face each day, when we know what the plan is. I really like the meal calendar I made, it makes my day go a lot smoother when I don't have to think about what I will cook. Well that is probably enough for know, I will be posting more often.
Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi

math and museums

Well yesterday we sat down and "did school" for the first time in a long time,
we did math workbooks

we did bible workbooks,

and apparently you get more from the Bible if you eat it, hehe.

Last Friday we went to my in-laws and went to the local museum, the kids had a blast. I am so happy the weather is getting warmer and we will be able to more things.

I love my son in the background!!! They were doing the hula. Priceless.
Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis of Assisi