Let the Schooling Begin...

I have mentioned before that we are planning to homeschool Ada, and our journey officially begins in August when she will be a part of Classical Conversations--a classical homeschool group. 

I am so excited about this!!!  I think that we desperately need a homeschool group if we are going to "do this thing."  I need the accountability, and I think it will be fun for Ada to have an official "first day of school" and classmates and all of that.  You can read more about Classical Conversations here, but basically, we will meet one day a week at a local church, where the classroom tutor will introduce the week's material and review (?) the previous week's material.  I am not sure about the reviewing part.  But, anyway, for this super UNorganized mama, the actual reporting to someone once a week is a huge help.

I was going to go into all the reasons why we are homeschooling, but I decided I just won't.  Bottom line, it's what we feel like God is calling us to do, and as for the education itself, I absolutely, 100% believe in the classical model, so that's the why behind that choice.  If anyone wants to know more I would be glad to share, but that would take so long right now, and really I just want to blog about Ada's BIG accomplishment. 

Today...Ada read a book!!!!

We have been working our way through Phonics Pathways for a while now, but we haven't been able to move past the vowel sounds, which is driving me a bit crazy.  I don't know if it's a developmental thing, and maybe it will come with age, but Ada can't get all the vowel sounds right.  She knows the A sound without question, and she also does O fairly automatically, but the others trip her up a bit.  Well, yesterday, my BOB books (LOVE them) arrived in the mail, and I decided to just go for it with book 1--she only had to know four sounds to read it, and only the A vowel sound, so we tried it yesterday.  She read one word yesterday, and I was so excited, but she burned out pretty quickly. 

Well, we tried it again today, and today, I made her work through the whole book, and SHE DID IT.  If you can't tell, I am pretty fired up about this.  It's just so amazing to watch her sound out the letters and realize it's a word and then read this (SUPER simple) story all by herself. 

I should add, that after reading two pages, she decided she wanted to be done.  When I told her, "no mam, we have to finish the book," this was her reaction

So, it quickly turned into a discipline issue, but we eventually made it through the book. 

I am also slowly introducing some sight words--we are starting with just three--and she is doing fairly well with those.  She can recognize them on the notecard, but she doesn't seem to recognize them in the context of an actual book.  We just started the sight words today, though, so I assume that will come with time. 

So, here we go...we are official homeschoolers.  Yes, I know, mark us down as a weird homeschool family--we can handle the label ;)

Our other school related item of the summer is that I signed Ada up for the reading program at the library.  Now, when I was doing summer reading programs, I think that I got a free pan pizza from Pizza Hut at the end--am I right, mom? other "Book-it" alumni?  So, I pictured it being this big deal at the end of the summer where Ada got to go get her free pizza because we read so many books, etc. etc.  I think all she gets is a certificate.  But, we're doing it anyway, and it has made both of us remember to read books more.  She gets excited to write it down on her list, and, let's be honest, nerdy me also gets excited to write the books down on her list.

And when we're not doing all this "educating," (which takes up like 30 minutes of our day--at the most), Ada and John are busy making silly sounds into the box fan in the kitchen.  Classic summer entertainment.  Ann, don't you remember sitting in our bedroom in the house on Birchwood, making noises into the box fan?  John may not be able to say many understandable words, but he can make silly sounds and crack himself up with the best of them.

Playing School

I am a champion homeschooler, really.

About 15 minutes into our first day of school at home, Ada announced, "I don't want to play school anymore."  Awesome.  And when I said, "We're not playing; this is really school, and we aren't going to stop yet," she burst into tears.  A successful first day, don't you think?

No, really, it got better after that, though she continued to call me teacher and call what we were doing playing.  Whatever gets the learning done in a way that will stick. 

A says aaaa....

1 letter A sticker...

Adam and Eve...

The Ants go marching in...

Leroy Anderson, the composer of Old MacDonald's Farm...

Snacking on an Apple...

One day down, so many years to go...

(excuse her stomach, she is currently "pregnant" with her little girl named John).

Sunday Night

We are starting "preschool" in the morning, right here in our very own kitchen;)

I am excited to create a schedule for our days.  I am hoping it will help me to get things in line around here--and by things I mean John's feeding and nap schedule, the house cleaning, and Ada's daily activities. 

And we are officially starting P90X in the morning.  We did a trial run right before the beach to get an idea of the time commitment involved, and it looks like 5:30 am is the best time to do this thing.  Yikes, yikes, and more yikes.  But I am excited to get. in. shape!!!!

And by the way, WAR EAGLE, right?  It was a close one.  I love the feeling of waking up on Sunday morning and remembering that we WON the night before.  (And of course, I hate remembering that we lost).  I told Scott that I was sad that I didn't really have anyone to share the victory with--no other Auburn fans around here, despite the fact that I am living in the south.  So...I decided to share my joy with Ada.  I said, "Ada, war eagle!!!"  And she looked at me, threw her little fist in the air and said, "T-Rex!!!"  What?!!!!  Oh well, it was worth a shot.

Okay, just wanted to chat for a bit.  Off to lesson plan (sort of).

Stone Soup

Last night Ada and I read the book "Stone Soup," so today, soup is cooking in the kitchen. I am reading the book, For The Children's Sake, which spends much time emphasizing the need for children to read real books, not "twaddle," as Charlotte Mason calls those pointless books. She claims that if the adult doesn't enjoying reading the book, then the child probably shouldn't be reading it. Good books can be enjoyed by people of all ages. Does this mean that I am putting Elmo away for good? Of course not. But I do want to make sure that real books are mixed in.

So...we are working on that, and Ada's attention span is increasing. What I do is I mix all the books in together. The Elmo books are there alongside the classics, and I give Ada the freedom to choose which ones to read. Some days are Elmo days, and some days she chooses the meatier ones. Last night she chose "Stone Soup" for the first time, and she was able to sit through it. I was surprised. I don't think she understood a lot of it, but again, based on the book that I am reading, that is okay. The book talks about reading to children without forcing them to "get" certain things. She says that a five year old and a two year old can listen to the same book and walk away with different things, and that is a good thing. In fact, two different five year olds will get different things out of books, and that is also a good thing. Children lose interest when we try to force the facts. Our job? To give them real literature, and then let them do with it what they will.

Anyway, those are just some things I am thinking about as Ada gets older, and I become more interested in her "education."

Again, I ask, what are your favorite "real" children's books? I loved Velveteen Rabbit. Wasn't that a great one?

Book Wish List

We are all home from church today as Ada is still recovering from her cold, and we wanted to keep her away from the nursery. And Scott and I are now in the thick of what she has been suffering from all week. I finally took Ada to the doctor on Friday morning, mainly for my peace of mind, and she did have an ear infection. She is taking an antibiotic for that, and she seems to be doing much better. I on the other hand will be glad to get to the other side of this thing.

Anyway, as Ada is napping right now, I am resting in bed as well, with the lap top as my companion. Because we are done with Christmas shopping, and Ada's birthday is still months away, I am excited to begin using my swagbucks to purchase books off of Amazon rather than toys. My book list is long, ya'll. So very long. I have my own book list, two of which I already ordered--For The Children's Sake and Let Us Highly Resolve. I plan to do much reading over the next couple of years as we begin to make decisions about Ada's education. I am glad that she is still only two, and I have much time to read and research before I have to put anything into practice.

In the mean time, I also want to choose wisely the books that I read to Ada. I have already surrounded her with her favorite picture books--you know Elmo and Curious George and Dr. Seuss and such. I stock up often from the dollar section at Target and various other places. And I think those books are great, as any time she spends with a book makes me happy. But I also want to be intentional about the books that I choose to purchase and spend time reading aloud to her.

My current list includes the following books

Poems and Prayers for the Very Young
The Complete Poems of Winnie the Pooh
A Family Treasury of Little Golden Books
The Real Mother Goose
The Little House
The Little Red Hen
A Hole is to Dig
Make Way for Ducklings
The Little Engine that Could
Peter Spier's Rain
The Story of Creation

Most of the above titles I can get used for very little money on Amazon. And of course with Swagbucks, I will pay nothing out of pocket. And right now, the 5.00 Amazon gift card only costs 40 swagbucks rather than 45--woo-hoo. I currently have 10.00 worth of gift cards, and I am excited to get our library of "classic children's books" started.

Remember you can also get in on the swagbucks action by signing up here. And of course, if you sign up it benefits me because I earn points for all of my referrals;) We were able to spend less than 50.00 to buy all of Ada's Christmas because of gift cards earned on Swagbucks. I have made over 200.00 so far. It's crazy, ya'll. Really, you should sign up.

On another note--what are your favorite children's books? Ones that you remember reading and loving as a child? I am always up for suggestions.

I made my list from this classical education website--check it out.

p.s. I will be sharing many more thoughts about Classical Education over the next couple of years as we approach the age when Ada will begin school. The whole method fascinates me, and I spend way too much time reading about it and researching it and getting my hands on whatever information I can find. The above website is a wonderful source of information. I can spend hours just on that one site. Do I have any readers out there who were educated classically? I would love to hear your thoughts.

From Alabama

Well, here I am, back in Alabama for a week, hoping to be of some help to Ann. Scott's parents picked Ada up today, and they will keep her until Sunday afternoon, so my hands are free.

We arrived yesterday evening around 5 pm. I planned to arrive midday yesterday, but I had a last minute parent-teacher conference to attend for one of my tutoring students. It's the first time that I have been in the halls of a school since becoming a full time mom, and I wanted to soak it in. It's just a fact--no matter the school, I feel at home there. I love walking down the hall while all the students are in class, and you can see in the windows--all the various types of learning that are taking place. I LOVE IT.

I have picked up a new tutoring student--a ninth grade boy, and finally, finally I am tutoring English. Before now I have done History or study skills or test prep, but I have not had an official English student yet. I have only been with him for a week, but Wednesday night I finally arrived home at 9:00 pm (I had been gone since 3:30), and Scott and I both noticed that I was incredibly energized rather than the exhausted that I usually feel. And we both hypothesize that it was due to the 90 minutes spent discussing Great Expectations that put the spring in my step. I asked my student what he is reading next, and he told me, Romeo and Juliet. I practically started salivating. I said, "Oh, I love Shakespeare," with much gusto, and he looked at me as if I was a bit crazy. But I don't mind. I'll take Shakespeare with a side of Chaucer, please.

Back to the matter at hand, though.

So after a rather nerve racking drive home--Ada spent much of the three hours screaming rather shrilly, we got to Scottsboro, and all went fairly well. I held a crying, tummy hurting Andrew, while Ann bathed Ellie and Ada, and then we switched so Ann could nurse him. And I even got Ada down with barely a whimper. However, at 10 pm, Ada decided to wake up along with Andrew, and give him a run for his money in the crying department. She was practically in hysterics, and she started asking for Ellie and Luke. I was like, sweetie, Ellie and Luke are not going to do you much good right now. I finally let her cry it out for a while--and by cry, I mean loud, hiccupy, can barely breath crying, but she finally fell asleep, and promptly woke up again a few hours later, and again and again throughout the night, until finally at 6 am, I threw in the towel and took her up to the playroom. The first couple of times she woke up, I was worried about sending her off with Scott's parents, but by 6 am, I have to say I was rather eager to get rid of her. Really, I am kidding;) I will be anxious to see how she does.

But, on that note, I should get back to Ann's house to see how she is faring. Poor little Andrew and that upset tummy. Bless his little heart.

Thoughs on Public school from a teacher turned tutor/mom

As you know if you are a regular reader, I am a mom by day and a tutor by night. The majority of my students attend various private schools around the county, and it has been interesting to compare the curriculum that they study versus the curriculum used at the school where I taught in my pre-motherhood days.

I taught American and British Literature while at Pebblebrook, and the American Literature semester always started with the Puritans. Well, more specifically, we started with Native Americans, but we flew through that in about two days because the students hated it. For the Puritan unit, however, we read The Crucible, though it was actually written decades later. The students loved reading the Crucible for obvious reasons--scandal, witchcraft--I don't know, maybe they could relate. (Totally kidding. Sort of.) Anyway...being a first year teacher, I received a lot of advice from the other American Lit. teachers, and for the most part I did what they had always done, and they had always read the Crucible because to them it was a great representation of the Puritans. Hmmmm...here is where I differ in belief. Again, being a first year teacher, I was grateful for any notes, tests, projects ideas, etc. that might be passed to me, and I was given a power point presentation to use at the beginning of the Puritan Unit. One of the vocabulary words included in that power point presentation was fanatic. As in, religious fanatic. As in, the Puritans were nothing but religious fanatics, and there is not much good we can say about them. And Jonathan Edwards. Oh dear, the things I was supposed to teach about Jonathan Edwards. Did you hear? He was nothing but fire and brimstone that only served to increase that fanaticism among the Puritans. Crazy man. Interesting, I thought, since I had always heard that he was a great theologian of the Great Awakening. Hmmmm...

So, fast forward to tonight, and I am helping my history student prepare for finals. It's one of those impossible situations where she has to study 13 chapters worth of information by Thursday of next week, so we were scrambling to make note cards out of old tests borrowed from a student who actually thought to save her tests. (The girl I tutor, her mom thinks she probably threw them away. I have to agree with her mom. She always tells us that the teacher never gave it back. Funny, since the teacher says he does give them back. You be the judge--who's telling the truth?) Anyway, I digress. So there we sat, quickly making note cards, and I was making a note card about Jonathan Edwards, and sure enough, this test for this history class at a Private Christian School defined Jonathan Edwards as a well known theologian from the Great Awakening. Nothing about fanaticism. Nothing about crazy.

You tell me if certain world views don't creep into the curriculum. One curriculum accepts as fact that Jonathan Edwards and the puritans were crazy fanatics, and another claims he was a great theologian. It gives this mom a lot to consider when it comes to the education of her children.