{ Week 10 }

Can I just let you in on a little secret?  Homeschooling can often be hard work.  Yes, it can.  It's a lot of work to juggle 3 full time { primary } students with a little 3 year old and baby tag along.  I won't count the two young men in the house because they're autonomous.

The hard work component is when you've discovered that you're lacking in knowledge and experience in a particular subject and have to learn it yourself before you can competently teach it.

I've been hard at work with writing.

How I've been able to get to teaching this is an additional problem.  Which child needs me right now? Which part is most needful?  Juggling all three at once.  Checking spelling, checking format, checking grammar.   Are they even listening?  How many days do I need to remind them that we put the lesson number, title, and date on the top?  Never mind the actual lesson.

As it turns out I'm only useful when I can focus on one child at one time.  I just can't do more than that without feeling like I'm losing my mind.

Hannah is great when I'm sitting there with her because I can prompt and lead her through each lesson without much difficulty.  On her own though she forgets that outlines need only two or three key words and gets carried away with herself and tends to write sentences instead of saving them for the actual writing.  The good news is that it's still early days and I've got plenty of time to work with her on it all.

{ By Hannah } 

Chloe was great this week as well.  She remembered to put the lesson number, the title, and the date on her page.   Then she did up her own outline and written piece.  I can't even begin to tell you how relieved this made me feel.  For the moment I can know that she can get some of her work done without me hand holding her.

 { By Chloe }

Don't ask me about Phebe.  I just want to cry.

In the Maths department we continue to make a good success.  This week in particular, because I was so overwhelmed in the school department - the writing has been taxing me, I got the girls to do their lesson, mark their own work, and fill in their own pink slip.  That left me with the only task left:  to enter their daily scores in my book.

Chloe is up to lesson 47, Phebe 35, and Hannah 44.

This week, to help clear my mind and release the stress I went back to looking at the Robinson Curriculum.  So for the next 7 weeks we won't be doing the usual surprise daily activities { added extra worksheets } or the spelling/vocabulary, that's on hold.   I was hoping to do a rain forest theme with the girls, but that will be on hold was well.  Additionally, English as a separate subject will also be in the bin.  Writing will be considered English instead.  Chloe will still have to do Writing with Skill though.  We'll that's the plan anyway.  I just need to simplify to get my sanity back in place.  So what's still on the list?  Math, check. Writing, check.  Reading, check.  All good.  :o)

Now while I'm getting back to basics with the other three girls, our dear Charlotte has really stepped up in wanting "school" time.  So this week we worked on some letter tracing and what nots.

And today:  the girls have been totally looking forward to our afternoon out with the other homeschoolers.  Today we'll be at the Botanical Gardens in town.  The big excitement, especially for Charlotte, are the NEW drink bottles, food cases, and hats that I bought the girls for when we go out each week.  I have a separate back pack for the picnic blanket and what nots.

I went and bought a plastic box to store them in.  That way they'll all be together and hopefully nothing will get lost.

Inside: just right for 4 packs.

This way each girl will have their own drink bottle and snack packs.

{ Noah }

Here he is in the walker.  He doesn't walk, but it's a good place to put him to get him upright.

Here I had him on my lap and thought, let's see if I can get some nice photos.  I won't tell you how many times he moved { which causes blurry photos }.

Today I'll be linking up with:

I hope you will join us.

Thanks for visiting.

Working on Alphabet Ideas for Charlotte

Today I continued on with making some more templates and what nots for Charlotte, who by the way, has been taking a huge interest in school this week.

Feel free to grab a copy of the above worksheets by clicking on either one.

Thanks for visiting.

Just a few little CVC worksheets

What better way to start off a new month than with some freebie worksheets.  :o)

Just sharing a few ideas that I've been working on for Charlotte.  At any rate I'm just sharing my thinking ahead about what types of things would be good to do when it comes to cvc time.

Firstly, another cvc cut and paste set.

Don't forget to go back and pick up the first one as that has the base board to stick them onto.

 Secondly, circle the correct word and copy it on the line.  This would be a great way to practice high frequency words as well as the cvc ones.

 Thirdly, draw a line to the picture.

You'll have to click each picture separately to download them all.

Thanks for visiting.

{ Week 9 }

The weeks are speeding by rather quickly, don't you think?

This week in the school department I feel that we made some super good progress, but it will still take a lot of work to make it stick like glue and become autonomous.

Today I want to start off with something funny though:

Do you get it?

Way funny, I thought.

I also found about a 100 photos taken by the girls { ie. not by me } on the camera.

Hannah continues with her freestyle "Art".

This piece is a pretty good meter long, I reckon.  Maybe a little more.

Last week I mentioned that the writing needed more attention.  So, this week I spent some time with the girls to help get a bit more out of them in the History and Science departments.

This one was done by Hannah.  I was particularly impressed that she was able to find the main idea to begin with, which made the lesson quite timely and easy to do.  Now technically we'd be starting new paragraphs at each of those roman numerals but it's all a bit of a hop, skip, and jump to the "real" thing.

ha ha ha - guess what?  more Hannah Art on the camera.  You know I'm just uploading them all in sequential order that they were taken for the blog.  :o)

The following is a piece that Chloe did for Science.  The outline for it is up above on the page, but I helped her put the outline together, and I figured you didn't want to see "my" work so much as you wanted to see "her" work.  :o)  As a side note Chloe was totally put to calm and relaxed when she saw how quickly I put it together { oh say, like under 2 mins if that }.  There are some super nice easy cheat ways of "perusing" a text to get the gist of it or to build your outline.  Thank you especially to the Titles, Sub Titles, and Listed Points.  Even better when they stick out when separated or bolded text.  Oh, I should also mention that the vocabulary list was also a helpful little addition as well.  Anyway, she still needs some work, but this is a much improved piece compared to previous submissions.

Then on Wednesday morning I tried walking both Hannah and Phebe through a MOH lesson.  We only got an outline done, but that is a very good lot of work and progess.

{ Hannah }

I think the a, b, c threw them off a little because up until now I'd only just been asking for the roman numerals { aka paragraph main ideas }  There was just too much in the lesson, as in information with which to draw a decent narration out of.  A lot of children would be going, well, she talked about this, and this, and this and I reckon they'd just get lost on it all.  So we did end up leaving out a bit of stuff too.  I figured since Hannah was nearing the end of her page we'd call it a day.  We had 3 good paragraphs outlined and ready to write up if we chose to and for a 5 year old I think that's plenty.

{ Phebe }

Phebes just basically came along for the ride.  In a lot of ways we're still at the stage where I am setting up the formatting.

For English this week I threw a spanner in the works and added this little exercise.  There were a few more other pieces for the Fable but hey, can't show you "everything".

and I don't really think you'd want to see three different versions of this either, so....I'll just grab "one" of them, ok?

We also took a quick tour to visit "landforms" again.

We'll be working on some more landforms later on today.  Heather from Only Passionate Curiosity has some awesome free printables on her blog this week. 

Chloe started French.  Wow, is she totally interested in this or what?  It's great, but yeah, more work for mummy.  She is also using Duolingo as well.  I never really pictured her as a french language girl, but yeah, she's taking to it like a duck to water.  Guess she just had to be interested in it.

And todays show and tell:

Chloes MOH lesson.  Now, I MUST say how improved this piece is compared to previous weeks.  It is actually reflecting her school age much more closely.

Here is Hannahs piece { from the same lesson }.

Outline on the left, written piece on the right.

Some more Hannah Art.  :o)

Today I'll be joining up with:

and

and

I hope you will join us.

Thanks for visiting.

Saxon Teacher 5/4

I really love how Saxon 5/4 works.  It's been a great investment for our home.  I love it so much so that I decided that I would also purchase the Saxon Teacher CD's as well.

I use it to "teach" the lesson, and run the girls through their practice sets.  Then they go off to do their lesson.  Afterwards I mark their work.  { Some days I get them to mark their own work as we transition them to more self direction/learning. }  Then I take a separate form and circle all the numbered questions that they got wrong for them to go back over with the Saxon Teacher.  She walks them through and explains how to do each question.  We just select which problem to view from the drop down menu in the lesson.  It's great, especially when I need to be attending to the baby or something else.  Money well spent for this busy juggling mummy :o)

What are you using in your Math department these days?

Thanks for visiting.

Medial Vowel Sounds { freebie fun }

Today I have a quick little freebie printable to share.  It's focus is on medial short vowel sounds.

Just click either worksheet to download.

Here is the base board with which to glue the pictures to.

The pictures.  Just glue them according to their short vowel sound.

I'm hoping to make some more, but I just need to find some relaxing free time to do them.  :o)

Thanks for visiting.

{ Week 8 }

This weeks update is going to be short.  I'm totally exhausted.  Life is overwhelming.  My work load is continually full.  I don't think I'm getting enough sleep.

English:
Miss 7 and 5 have gone back to copywork.
Miss 9 continues on with Writing with Skill.

Spelling:
Both Chloe and Phebe got their best score for the year this morning.

History:
The girls read 3 lessons from MOH throughout the week.  Then they gave a short writing about their reading in their books.  Can I just tell you that some of that writing is totally illegible, spelt incorrectly, and is just straight out tardy.

Science:
Pretty much the same type of work as the history, except from their science books.  I'm not really complaining, but I just want to make a note of it so that I can find some time to get it improved.

Maths:
I feel that we are making more progress with the Math.  The routine for it is coming along nicely.

I've got all my boxes ticked for this week - but there were a couple of days that I thought it might not happen.

Additionally, this week I canned up two separate days on green apples.  One lot went into the pressure cooker and the other I water bathed.   In future all my green apples will be water bathed.

The girls also got to go out to this weeks homeschool get together.  For some reason I didn't think to bring their floaties/swimmers and as it turned out there was swimming involved.  Never mind though, because they just stripped down to their underware and jumped in anyway.   I do have to confess that I was totally stressed since none of them are good swimmers and the baby kept a lot of my focus as well.  Going out is a bit stressful for me generally anyway.  But hey, this year I'm really going to make an effort to get these children out and about!!