Abby, Zoë and Enzo

During the cold months the homeschooling group has been meeting at the nearby recreation center as their 'indoor park day'.  Unfortunately we haven't made one single time.  Today, however, we finally got there.  With the nicer weather, though still a bit on the chilly side today, a lot of the kids were outside at the skateboard park.  This made me really nervous, because it's just cement and pavement everywhere.  I sucked it up however, put Enzo in the ergo and let the girls play - with just a few requests of ramps not to play on.  Zoë, Abby, and Maggie found a good sized ramp and used it as a slide, wave, waterfall, and who knows what else.  Zoë did fall down when running once and hurt her hand, but no serious injuries were had.  The upside of that was that Maggie said she'd go play inside in the gym with the girls, which was nice for Enzo because he was ready to get down.  Iris joined in and they all played different games with the basketballs.

We took a snack break in one of the other rooms after Maggie and Zoë collided and Zoë's nose started bleeding all over the place.  It wasn't really a bad run in, Zoë just has a sensitive nose like her Daddy.  Enzo was all over the place, running through any open door that he saw.  He did pause to try to hug Maggie's little sister, Zeland, who is two.  She wasn't in to having a hug though so Enzo moved on to Naomi's baby brother, who was happy to have the attention.

As the girls were sitting at the table doing their spelling and math workbooks, Leeann called and happened to ask if I was "making the girls do school work".  I said that they were working on math at that very moment.  Then she informed me that it was February vacation week and she was going to tattle on me to Zoë and Abby, telling them that they were doing school work when everyone else was having a break from it.  My reply was, yes, but we already had a two week break starting at the beginning of the month due to sicknesses, so they used up all their break time for February. :)  And no, we don't take snow days either... and won't have any to 'make up' at the end of the year either.

Apparently the girls still don't have a firm grasp on long spans of time.  They don't really get how long ago certain things in history took place.  We were doing a timeline for our deaf studies unit we just started and the girls kept asking, "Were you born then?" or, "Were you alive then?".  Mind you we were talking about things like when Helen Keller was born in 1880.  I told them that I was born more than 100 years after Ms. Keller in 1983, but they kept asking, "So, were you alive then?"

We read a bit about Alice Cogswell and about Helen Keller today and kept refering to the timeline, adding in things like when Grampy, Nonna, and Grandma Cindy were born - to give some reference.  We'll keep working on it.  I guess it's kind of an abstract concept yet for them.

Could it be that I've never gone over with the girls what todays holiday is about?  Today we gathered around the computer and read about Martin Luther King Jr., his life, his speaches, and why he is famous.  We got to listen to some clips of interviews and parts of his speaches.  Zoë and Abby listened much more intently when they got to listen directly to Mr. King, so that was a good addition to the history lesson.

Today we finished up our unit study on Native Americans.  We started back in October with the Northwest Indians, then did a week on the Plateau, a week on Great Basin, a week on Southwest, two weeks on Great Plains, one on Southeast, and finished up with two weeks on Great lakes and Northeast tribes.

We looked on territory maps and current day maps to see which states the different tribes resided in.  With all of the different tribes in each territory we read and learned about how they differed and were similar to each other.  We met a man from the blackfeet tribe, made canoes and bear claw necklaces and learned about things like cradleboards and headresses.  We read stories of some of the famous Native Americans such as Sacajawea, Pocahontus, and Squanto.  The girls also watched the Pocahontus movie and saw how things differed from the actual life of Pocahontus.  Zoë and Abby are a bit bummed that our unit on the Native Americans is over, they really enjoyed this one.  We're still discussing to figure out what unit we're going to begin now.

I had my first real confrontation with someone not agreeing with my decision to home-school today. I am a very non-confrontational person but this (elderly) woman certainly wasn't.

After asking what grade the girls were in and me casually saying that we're homeschooling she just laid into me. It was awful. I tried twice to just have her drop it. First just saying, "well this is our choice" and after going around a bit with her saying, "let's just stop the conversation because you're obviously set in your opinion and I'm obviously set with my decision to home-school" But NO, this woman was crazy asking me how I socialize them (and telling me that weekly homeschooling groups weren't good enough because "those people are of the same mind" or something like that) and when I told her I was myself college educated in early childhood education she confronted me on WHERE I went to college!

I can't even begin to get into every outrageous thing this woman laid into me with but she had the audacity to come right out and say to me that I was depriving my children and doing wrong by them and that they weren't going to come out ahead and they weren't going to have any skills to be on their own in life! 

I'm sorry, but there have been plenty of very well rounded people in history who were home-schooled, as well as those that went through public school so really I feel it's more of a to-each-their-own sort of thing.  I understand that people have their opinions on things and specifically the public vs. home-school front, but it's just not right for either side to behave that way.  I don't mind people who have honest to goodness questions out of curiosity to ask me.  However if you feel the need to tell me that I'm doing a disservice to my children and why... just don't.

I heard about a local homeschooling group meeting at a park in Stratham today so we geared up to go.  First we went to parent re-charge though.  One of the other ladies there, Timothea, said that she was going to it too, so we ended up meeting up there, which was nice.

Zoë and Abby played a lot with Christian, who is Timothea's son, as well as a little girl named Isabella, who is their age.  They had a great time and just ran and played for about two hours.  Enzo had a good time too, walking through the grass and asking to eat everything he saw any of us having.  I finally pulled all of the kids away to the car, but we'll hopefully see a lot of the people who were there again in town.  I found out that they meet at a nearby park every Wednesday so it'll hopefully be a nice outlet.

Today we went to Short Sands Beach in Maine to a 'not going back-to-school' celebration I heard about through a homeschooling newsletter.  It worked out as a unit related field trip too, since we're still studying the ocean this week.

Chris played with the girls on the playground while I introduced myself to some of the homeschooling parents that were there.  Then Enzo and I joined the others on the playground, where Zoë and Abby were playing with Maya.  If you remember, we first met Maya and her mom Anya at a playground in Portsmouth.  I think the girls were happy to have seen someone there that they know.  Enzo was having a great time scooting his entire body through the soft sand and even going down a slide or two.

So we've finished our first week of school and the girls have been loving it.  Their favorite subject?  Math.  Yes, math!  They just love math time, which we have everyday.  They also do 10 minutes of reading aloud each, daily, as well as journals. 

Zoë's not a big fan of journaling, but I think the more writing practice we have (we do that three times a week) the more she'll get comfortable with it.  She does really like her time to sit with me and read-aloud though.  This is great since she tends to be timid and feels that Abby's a better reader than her.  She does well sounding out the words and really has the timing of the reading down. As in, pausing at commas and stopping at periods.

Abby also enjoys reading aloud and zooms through the words and figures pretty much all of them out.  Though the zooming is what we're working on.  Having her slow down and pause and stop where she should.  While I was out today I left Chris the instructions of what we were doing for math so that he could do it with them and both girls were so excited to tell me about using the counting cubes and everything else they did with Dad.

I'm still trying to fine tune the schedule, what with outside activities not always being at the same time or day each week, but things are starting to come together.  The portfolio's are all put together, with subject dividers (thanks Grandma Cindy) and weekly work logs (for all of the things we do that don't have something to physically go in the portfolio).  I have my weekly planners printed and a timed schedule to fill in - once I get it all worked out.  Things are coming together and next week we have our first homeschool group get together.

This week I introduced geography and science into the mix.  We talked about our world and the seven continents and maps.  We also talked about plant growth and how they get their food and grow and the different places that different types of plants grow.  We worked on the short "i" sound as well as writing numbers up to 20 (both of the girls can count beyond 100) and printing practice.

We've been starting to get back into the swing of things with 'school' time.  Finally this week I'm remembering to post about it.

We reviewed beginning sounds, which the girls both zoomed through with no problems.  They had a pretty easy time with all of the review and Zoë actually said to me, "You're going to have to give me harder work than this, this is all easy."   We also reviewed the parts of a clock and telling time on the hour.  And finally, we did some self-awareness activities.

It was a lessened "work" week what with Nonna here and the holiday and all.  Doing things like baking, playing sorry, uno, and other games are all good fun ways to learn some lessons too though.

Monday: We did some more with mapping to start our day.  I put some shells in the shape of the US then I took a shell and said it was NH and put it inside the US in its place.  Then I took another shell and said it was Portsmouth and asked if it was a city,state, or country and once it was a city we put it inside the NH shell.  We took another shell to be Dover and put that inside the NH shell too.  We did a few other states with cities in them, then we did Brazil with the state and city we're in and I used my finger to show us driving out of Portsmouth, out of NH, into the different states and into NJ and then showed how we had to fly out of the country, over ocean and other lands and into this country, etc. etc.  Zoë seems to be picking up quickly the city vs. state thing and doing the map thing this way seemed to be more tangible and helpful way for Abby to pick up on it as well.

For journals both of the girls journaled about fish and they both spelled their titles the same way 'Fishss' for fishes.  Not a lot of sentence writing today, I guess it's just Monday.

Tuesday: Abby and Zoë got to do yoga in the pool today.  We did the posture sequence, altering a bit on a couple of poses due to the water level.  After the yoga we of course did swimming, swimming, swimming and then lay on the nice hot deck.

For journals Zoë wrote about the yoga in the pool, along with a great picture.  She left us out of the pool though, saying that the picture was of before we got in it.  Abby journaled about pineapples and drew a really good picture of one, complete with the 'eyes' that we have to cut out.

Wednesday: Had a baby brother!  We will take a couple of weeks 'school vacation' as transitions are made.  Though I did suggest to Chris that he give the girls some paper to do a journal while I was still in the hospital and Abby did a cute journal with a picture of me in the room, with a good depiction of the room layout, and me in the bed with the baby.

Here's what we've done for the week:

Monday: We talked about graphs and did a bar graph, graphing the clothes the girls have here.  I set the graph up with the numbers on the side and the articles of clothing along the bottom, the girls and I went and recorded the amounts from their drawers, and then we sat down to do the graph.  Abby and Zoë took turns filling in the bar for the clothing and then at the end I asked some questions.  They saw by looking at the graph that what they have the most of is undies at 16 pair and they have the least of pants (capri's) at 2 pair.  We did some other comparing that was fun as well.

Later on we played word bingo.  I had saved a rectangle of cardboard from the outfit Irene had given us and today used it to make four bingo cards, each with nine boxes.  Together the girls and I brainstormed words that started or ended with the letter combos of sh or ch.  From that list the girls randomly chose nine of the words to fill in each bingo card.  The first game we did a 'black-out' where they had to get the whole card filled in to call bingo, Zoë won this one.  The next round we did an 'x' and Abby was the first to make an x across her board. (we're using shells as the markers)

For Yoga today we did the 'just for fun' sequence.  At Journal time Abby journaled about the plants we saw at Manu's on the way back from the beach, and Zoë journaled about the beach itself, which ended up with two submarines in her picture and it turning into a story about one being nice and the other being mean.

Tuesday: Unfortunately we didn't get any school stuff done today, which the girls reminded me of.  With my dentist appointment this morning, shopping in the afternoon, and then dinner out, the day got away from us.

Wednesday: We played three rounds of our word bingo this morning.  First Abby got to be the caller, while Zoë and I filled in our cards, Zoë won with getting her x first.  There were some words on the list that I had to help Abby with, but she did really well at sounding the majority of them out herself.  Next Zoë was the caller and she did really well sounding out the words too.  This time we were doing 'four corners' and I got mine filled in first.  Every time I'd take a shell off my card and read the word for her to check she'd say "No, I didn't call that word".  Luckily I had them put marks by the word when they called it so we'd remember.  Next I was the caller and Zoë won this game as well.  Abby was bummed that we weren't playing another round as she wanted a chance to win, but with a little reminding she stopped pouting and said "Good game Zoë."  After this the girls really wanted me to do a 'math story' with the shells so I made one up about a guy going to buy a bassinet and which one was the best for him to get and how it wasn't necessarily the one with all the bells and whistles and this and that and they helped decide which one he could and should get.

For Journals Abby journaled about coloring and Zoë journaled about nap time in her room here.  Abby wrote "Culren" at the top for her title and then "Claons" below her picture of the clown paper she'd colored.  Zoë wrote "Nap Tim" for her title and then also wrote it again as 'nap tiem mi room' above her picture of their room.  She also labeled the door, her bed, and Abby's bed in her picture.

Thursday: The first thing we did today was talk about community workers.  We talked about what a community is and about the people who help in our community.  Then I had a pencil 'person' come up onto the table and give hints about what they do for the community and the girls guessed who the person was.  Also each of the girls got a turn to pick someone in the community and give us hints.

We did some geography stuff afterwards.  I found some maps for kids online and showed the girls the map of the whole U.S. and then the map of some different states and I also found a map of just Portsmouth to compare.  They're still having some trouble getting the different state, same country and that cities are not states, etc. etc. so we'll do some more with that.  While we were doing this Abby asked if we could do Brazil and I reminded her that Brazil was not a state in the U.S. but a whole separate country and we talked about that a little.  With nothing tangible in front of them, they both kind of got tired of just looking at maps on the computer so I'll have to make the next mapping lesson a bit more exciting.

For journals today both of the girls had similar content.  Zoë wrote about snow white and for her title wrote 'prinsus snow wyt casyl' (Princess snow white castle) and then drew quite the picture of snow white.  She also wrote a really long sentence, "with a period at the end, mom!", but I think she lost concentration after "the prynsus snow wyt casyl wow" as then she just began writing numbers and "love you now" over and over.  Abby's was about a barbie princess that she's seen commercials for.  Her title was 'BoRBe cAcuL' (barbie castle) and then next to her picture of a barbie princess she labeled 'PRiNSuS' with an arrow pointing to the picture.  She wrote a sentence too, "This BaRbE is Net oN teve" (This barbie is neat on tv)

Yoga today was the 'before bed' sequence, as we ended up going out this morning at the designated 'yoga time' and we had some time before bed.  I left off the 'magic carpet ride' at the end and I guess maybe I should have done it because it took the girls a while to get to sleep.

Friday: To do more with mapping I drew an outline of our whole house (in Portsmouth) and then we talked about the different floors of the house and then the different rooms in each floor.  Abby and Zoë told me the things that were in each room and where they were at and we did this for each level of the house.  Afterwards we talked about how the whole house was like the whole United States and each different level of the house was like a different state and the different rooms on each floor were different cities in each state.  We gave the levels of the house states and cities and the girls helped choose which whould be what.  We had the basement be Pennsylvania, with the washer/dryer area being Avella and the back workbench area being Pittsburg.  The first floor was Massachusetts with the kitchen being Quincy, the little coat area being Scituate, and the living room being Boston.  The second floor was New Hampshire with the bathroom being Dover, Abby and Zoë's room was Portsmouth, Our room was Derry and the closet room was Newington.  The top floor was New Jersey with one room being Annandale and the other being Clinton, yeah I know, same place but the girls don't know that. : )

Today Abby journaled about our house in Portsmouth with her title being 'HAAos and Prsins' (house and persons)  She also wrote 'This HAaos is FuN' (this house is fun)  Zoë journaled about Pica Pau (Portuguese for Woody Woodpecker) with her title being 'Pecu Paw' and the sentence she wrote was 'the pecu paw is FuN' and she also added St with a period at the end just to show me which two letters make the ssst sound.

With Zoë and Abby being so preoccupied with bees lately, I thought some projects round the idea would be a good idea.  I wrote out a poem for it (from a book we got from the library) on a big piece of paper and drew pictures around it.  First we just worked on reading the poem yesterday, then today we did a little project.  I had drawn black and white pictures of a honeybee for each of the girls and then today we thought of words that rhymed with "bee".  Each time one of the girls thought of a word, we figured out how to spell it and then they got to write that word in one of the stripes, or wings, of the bee.  Here's the Poem:

The Honeybee
I can see
A honeybee
Go in and out
of that old tree.

I can see
A honeybee
Fly up and down
my garden's sea.

I can see
A honeybee
Jump rose to rose
so fast and free.

Then I see
That honeybee
rest for a while
right next to me.

The words that Abby thought of to rhyme were: three, key, me, and pea.  Zoë thought of: honey, tree, sea, and we.  We thought of "free"  together.  After we did the rhyming project, I read the poem and then we counted how many of the words we thought of were in the poem and how many weren't.