Today is a New Day

27 March 2012

Today was a new day! I got myself out of bed by 8:00 am, which is average for me, but I got dressed, had breakfast, helped the kids clean their rooms and started on schoolwork! We were done with school at about 11:00am! The rest of the day I kept looking at the clock and saying to myself, "Is it really only 12:30?", "Is it really only 1:45?", etc., etc.

With Ra and El we worked on math and handwriting mostly. With Ca I tried showing him how to write his name again and how to properly hold a writing utensil (which he absolutely does not care to do). We are using Glenn Kimber's book Principles of Numeration, which is quite a good, simple guideline and definitely not a grab-and-go curriculum. I am thinking about buying the Math Masters book to accompany it as well.

For the rest of the day I worked on the audio book I am recording. I fiddled with the sound, the timing, the white noise and whatnot trying to figure out how the controls work in Adobe Soundbooth. Rather interesting. I also got myself an account on Lynda.com which has excellent tutorials on just about every software out there that needs explaining.

At the end of the day we went for a drive as a family and the hubby and I discussed many points about homeschooling as well as a few other topics, but mostly we talked about homeschooling. To my delight it would seem that the hubby is actually on the bandwagon with me about homeschool, finally! Though our reasons may differ slightly, we both definitely agree that our children need to be taught in the home.

Notebooking and Numerals

16 February 2012

Being computer day today I spent some time conversing with my mother and my sister and cleaning up the house while the kids played on the computers. After lunch I put on some education flash game sites for the kids. I meander down to see how they were doing about an hour later and found Ca (who is only almost 4 mind you) doing a fractions game! I don't think he knew exactly what he was doing but it was amusing to see how invested he was in it!

Most of my time was spent figuring out my plan of attack for the next little while. I came across Notebooking and Classical method of education and I believe I am going to incorporate each of them as best I can in their own appropriate places. I had already done some Notebooking and so the idea of doing more of it comes natural and is appealing. I was going to teach my kids German as their first foreign language but I have changed my mind and I am now going to do Latin. After all, if they learn Latin well enough most other languages should come easier and it will help the kids know and understand our language better. They will also be able to understand the terminology used in sciences and mathematics.

Towards the end of the day I did a quick lesson using Principles of Numeration: Learning to Think and Self-Govern with Numbers by Glenn and Julianne Kimber. We went over Principle 1 which is "Numbers can be written in more than one way and still have the same meaning." The kids drew examples of this principle in their Notebooking notebooks I had for them already. I went a little further in my explanation of this principle by suggesting that numbers are an idea and the symbols or words we use are simply our way of expressing that idea. Ra caught on to that quickly and told me it is the same way with words. She is a bright cookie! I am going to enjoy teaching her so much.

After our little lesson we read a chapter from Genesis in the KJV Bible and a chapter from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was a good day even if it doesn't look like it was particularly productive.

P.S. Our Jar of Good Works had been added to a little each day! We are keeping on track with it. It was a great way to keep El's spirits up today since he got in trouble and had his computer privledges taken away. I found things for him to do and he found things to do that would earn him beans. Every time I put a bean in the jar for him his face would be bright as the sun! And speaking in similies, we watched a movie on similies yesterday and Ra has been making up her own. For example, she went to brush her teeth and she knew we were waiting for her so we could begin reading and she said, "I'm going to be as fast as a horse!" Kids crack me up! But in all sincerity, she knows what it is and she is using it! That is what makes homeschooling so neat!