Getting Ready For School

My blogging break is going to be shorter than I thought! We have decided to start school on August 6th. That is a whole month earlier than I originally thought we would do. It will work out great for our family though. Running from August through the end of April is going to be great because we had a really hard time doing anything in May. It was busy and nice and we just didn't hit the books like we intended. Jayne and I are both very excited to get started on school and I actually gave Jayne the decision on the start date and he is the one who chose sooner.

In the last 4 weeks of our summer break we are going to be doing lots of reading and swimming at the pool. Our book reading slowed after we started The Borrowers. The book is quite a bit slower than the movie and Jayne just wasn't connecting with it. Today we started Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and it is a huge hit! It is very readable and has a couple of pictures per chapter to keep his mind from wandering so much. He loves the movies and can't wait to compare them to the book.

As we are getting ready to get started for the school year, I came across the "So You Wanna Homeschool Class" I signed up and am going to give it a try. I found it on samsnoggin.com and here is a little of what they are going to cover during the 1 week online class:

Here’s what you’ll learn over the seven days of the course:

• How to find the legal requirements in your area and fulfill those
• How to find and choose curricula and other resources that work with your values, style, and needs
• Specific ways to organize your homeschooling materials
• The secret to successful homeschool planning and goal-setting
• Stellar record-keeping techniques
• Where to find your people {how to build your support system}
• The things nobody tells you to do during your first week of homeschooling

I am really looking forward to the class and learning some new things to grow my homeschool confidence. If you want to join me, I am in the very first class, which is also half off and comes with a free copy of the book I might add!

Here is The Class link: http://starthomeschoolingnow.com/the-class/

Homeschool Fun: Learning and Planning

Jayne has learned a lot with Happy and Max this summer. Head of the Class is a great free resource for teaching your kids. It has curriculum up to 8th grade. I found that for preschool, the games are very repetitive. Jayne is starting to get a little more variety now though.

The game he gets the most is a game that shows a word and he has to select the picture that goes with the word. Jayne was already familiar with the sounds of the letters (thank you Leap Frog's Alphabet Factory movie) and that gave me a chance to show him how all the letter sounds work together to make the words. He does some of the words on his own now without my help! He is good with pig, dog, cow, raincoat, and a few others. I haven't noticed that he can pick them out of text yet, but getting them in the game setting is a great start. I think there is a good chance he could be reading somewhat by this time next year.

The other game I have shown here is a math game. He counts how many pictures are shown and touches the correct number. Just to clarify, our computer has a touch screen. He is very good at doing 1-5 and is most of the way there for 6-10. We are also working on the concept of 0.

I definitely recommend using head of the class. It is free, can be used to hone some skills over the summer, and is great when there just isn't time to get things set up. Just click and go.

I also wrote up a trial daily routine for us. My routine leaves too much free time for Jayne and with his less than fantastic behavior recently, I think it is time for more structure in his day. He still has 2 hours a day of free play which is when I can cook and clean. The new routine gives him a lot more face time with me too, which should give him the attention he seems to be lacking. We are going to give it a try tomorrow and see what it is like. We are on vacation next week, so we won't get into the swing of it till the following week. At least we can get a taste tomorrow and see what we like and what isn't going to work.