For math we have a few workbooks - Kumon and Evan-Moor bought at Barnes and Noble - as well as flash cards and worksheets printed from a math worksheet creator.

Then earlier this week I read on a blog (I don’t remember where!) about the public school (located wherever the author was located) didn’t teach multiplication tables in school anymore. The teacher told the author (the dad of the child in public school) that the smart ones would pick it up.

What!?! Seriously, did a teacher think saying that was okay? That is just flat out ridiculus.

But also in that article, the dad linked to Singapore Math. There are placement tests for grades first through sixth, but none for kindergarten (here is the placement guide for the tests) So I printed off a 1A test and gave it to my daughter. Everything that we have been studying - more and less, addition, subtraction, guessing, patterns, and more - she did great on. There are a few things she didn’t have a clue about though we didn’t finish the test. I am going to give it to her again at the end of the year and maybe buy the 1A book for her to do during the summer. I know, school in the summer! But not as much as we are doing every day now.

Alice has moved to a different gymnastics class. It’s the same age group (5 & 6 year olds) but a different time. Now she is in a class with a six year old girl - rather then the class with Jake that is all three and four year olds. The teacher said he didn’t want Alice to get bored. And she is having a lot of fun in her other class.

Jake is still in the class they started out in - which is 5 & 6 year olds. He’s slightly energetic during class - always good I suppose! - and seems to be having fun. He doesn’t like only getting to watch Alice during her class and gets bored about half way through.

Ugh. Okay I haven’t decided anything really. I just feel like we need something structured.

Mostly because I’m a structured person and my daughter is just like me. She likes “playing school” with her brother and enjoys doing worksheets.

I ordered a Sonlight catalog and it just wasn’t for me. I love literature and reading and that aspect of it - but then they said something along the lines of not being afraid to admit (and they should not be!) that the people who purchase Sonlight are typically Christian families. And we are not Christian.

So I’m off to find another curriculum. Granted, most days I think we are doing fine. We are basically unschooling - I got a lot of advice that I completely agree with that made us pick this route. Kindergarteners don’t need school from 9-3 (or whatever the school day is these days). They need to be encouraged to learn about anything and everything they are interested in. Alice catches on to whatever she is learning very quickly. She got a Barbie computer for Christmas and (other then the half that is Spanish) she is doing so good with it. She loves her leappad and once she “gets” what she is supposed to do, really enjoys working with it.

I suppose it is just me that feels this structural need. Admittedly we don’t have a set day time schedule. The kids wake up when they wake up, we have breakfast if it is 8:30 or if it is 10:30. Chris wants them to have more of a schedule but considering I stay at home with them (and we are homeschooling!) why should they? Granted, they do have a fairly set bedtime, that’s all that is set.

Maybe I’ll just write a general schedule of what needs to be done during the day and then during the week. I’m a list-maker and that will make me happy. Of course I rarely follow my lists down to a T so I’m flexible.

Does any of that even make sense?

Starting this week we are going to do specific tasks - Alice loves worksheets (she is my daughter!) so we are doing to do worksheets in the morning and other in the afternoon. The kids next door also homeschool and they play outside in the morning. Somedays we are out there too so they all get a few hours of playing time in. I am so glad they homeschool, I don’t think there are others on our street that do (they are all private school go-ers).

We finally started getting involved in a support group. Well, if by involved means getting their emails about events they organize. I am putting things on the calender today so hopefully we have at least a few things this month.

There were four other kids there and two adults. Alice and Jake were the biggest kids there - I figured Alice might be because she’s 5 (the class is for 3-5 year olds). But I was surprised that Jake was second to her. He was the only boy in class and maybe girls are just tiny these days.

There are windows so you can watch the kids jump, tumble and balance. I took my crochet box with me because I am very close to finishing Alice’s poncho! They start out with basics like what looked like light stretches and jumping. Then they tumbled, played on a trampoline, played on balance beams and also on the uneven bars. With the adults help of course. I watched a lot or glanced up in between crocheting and they looked like they were having so much fun.

Child development is always interesting to me. I wonder what it is that makes some kids develop faster (emotionally, physically, mentally, etc.) then others. I said that Jake was the second biggest kid but once the class was over and everyone came out, I realized his vocabulary is much more advanced then the rest of the 3 year olds. The teacher said something about him being close to Alice’s age, and I said no he was just 3 in August.

So since the kids were bigger then the rest, the teachers (both also the owners) said it would be okay to move Alice and Jake to a different class. They said the other class moves a bit faster then this one did and those kids are about at the same level as where Alice and Jake are.

They had a lot of fun though, at the end they get a washable stamp on their foot and they were so proud of that. We go back next Tuesday.

We went out today and purchased said books! Alice loves doing worksheets - she inherited that trait from me - and she also wanted flash cards. She got a couple of books that come with attachments - like one book comes with crayons and hard plastic with a pattern, you put the plastic under the page (I think? I haven’t looked at it too closely yet) and then color, then your page isn’t smooth but patterned.

She also picked out a book with felt cutouts and has been making various creatures since we got home. I have a list of things I want to get her now - more felt stuff, some Usborne books, and some Bright Minds books. I need to make a list! We spent a little today so I don’t think we will be buying anything for at least a couple of months.

Unless she breezes through these workbooks too!

Alice breezed through the workbooks we purchased. And for the past couple of weeks we have been doing projects around the house, letting her help more with cooking, teaching her crafts, etc. And it just doesn’t feel like enough. I struggle to define what we are doing and when Chris doesn’t see her doing worksheets, he doesn’t think she is doing school work.

Actually, curriculum or no, we just need more resources and idea books to get her going. We were cash strapped until recently so I bought a couple of books off of Amazon and am going to look into a couple of curriculum choices this week. Even if we had a few things to get us jumpstarted, it would be easier.

That being said, its … somewhat akward for me to read about the misconceptions of homeschooling. For some reason people picture a family who never leaves their home, lives in the woods and has sheep so they can use the wool for clothing. It’s a very odd thing to me. Even before I homeschooled, I did not think that way. And after researching and reading SO much - I KNOW that the homeschoolers out there are awesome people doing a great job.

How can you isolate your children? Do they come home from school and then talk to noone else, are you leaving them at home while you go to the store, on vacation or outside? Then that’s YOUR issue, not the schools. And really, who is doing that? Noone that I know.

She is learning more addition, sounding out more words, learning to spell more words and we are going to get started on a family tree this week. I know I need to pay closer attention to what we are doing for the association we joined - we have five subjects we are supposed to be teaching from. This goes against the three r’s that I am mainly thinking about. I probably am teaching all five, just not realizing it.

Anyway, last week and over the weekend we were a very crafty family (see the posts at mebeingcrafty.com) - we painted t-shirts, made Halloween cards, made a birthday card for my neice, a birthday card for my SIL and finished up our Halloween notebooks I am sending my nephews.

So we haven’t been schooling. Rather, we haven’t been doing worksheets. We have had fun, I think Alice is learning - we talked about what paint is, we talked abou time because of having to wait for it to dry, we talked about color, etc.

I need to be better at keeping a daily (rather then weekly) report. I’m going to start this week and backdate it to last week while the info is still fresh in my mind. So we need to make some changes - completely okay to do since she stays home!

What an awesome first word to learn to read!

We have been working on phonics and the alphabet a lot, every day it seems. I found a cool website that has interactive games for kids and at first I let her play the letter games. Those are the very beginning ones - they tell you the letter sound and give you one word that goes with that letter.

The next step is learning to read ~ when you click on a word, it is sounded out letter by letter and you can click on every word in the sentence. The character also does something when you click on it. The are quite a few books to pick from on that site and we just started on the learn to read section this week.

Then today she spelled friend and said “Look Mom, friend!” I asked her how did she know it said friend and she said that she sounded out each letter! How cool is that!

Of course she knows other words and can spell them, but this is the first one that she said she sounded out.

I’m very excited. The other night Chris told her that she would soon be able to read Calvin and Hobbes on her own - that made her very happy.