Satori Smiles

This summer has been pretty relaxed, and I have to admit, I’ve been pretty relaxed since we started homeschooling back in February 2009. I’ve designated Tuesday, September 7, as the date we really get serious with Grade One! I’ve spent countless hours researching the perfect curriculum for us and have planned it all out for the entire school year.

I’ve updated (and still need to make a few tiny updates) our First Grade 2010/2011 Curriculum page. Some new curriculum we’ll be starting and blogging about this year are: Beyond the Code, Write Source Grade 1, Growing With Grammar, Meet the Masters, Drawing with Children and adding math supplements (MEP Math and perhaps Math Mammoth or Miquon).

I’ve cleared room on this shelf for all the binders we’ll be using this year, a whole size/color array of my favorite Staples Better Binders! I tried to print out all the worksheets/paper stuff we’ll need for the entire year for all our programs. I’ve also stocked up two Staples Desk Apprentices that twirl around with our textbooks and workbooks.

I’m starting to map out our Art Appreciation read-along books to coordinate with Meet the Masters. I’ve done the same for R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey – Life, with a page on additional resource suggestions for RSO Life. I’ve linked to all the Elementary Spanish videos on our Discovery Streaming subscription.

The only things left to do this weekend is to map out two more subjects – Drawing with Children and figure out our music. For music I would love to give a light intro to Music Appreciation as well as start piano lessons.

While I don’t consider myself the most organized in real life, I tremendously enjoy planning everything for homeschooling. I normally use Homeschool SkedTrack and plan out four months at a time. But currently there’s a lot of buzz on the homeschooling boards about crate/file folder planning out to the week for an entire school year! So one file would have all the ripped out worksheets/textbook pages/etc for ALL subjects for an entire week! I could never do that, what if I slacked off in a subject a few days? Think of all the work that would need to be done to re-organize the folders. Not for me, I’m enjoy flexibility too much.

So I’m keeping all the plans online, where things can slide to the next week easily if needed. (I’m sure that’s one of the advantages of having a whole year planned out, you wouldn’t want to let things “slide”.) But I do like having some things planned out, so I’ve decided to plan out subjects for our 2010/2011 school year, until the end of May 2011. But I won’t be having weekly file folders. I’m doing it by subject only.

Here’s my RightStart Math binder. No, I didn’t rip out all the pages of the teacher’s manual. What I did was go over EVERY lesson for the entire RightStart B program, and made sure I did printout any sheets and worksheets we might need.

In the front pocket I’m keeping our laminated Whole-Parts diagram, that we use quite often. The rest is whole punched and stick in the binder in order.

Some sheets I placed in page protectors, like Practice sheets that we’ll reuse, or other things that shouldn’t be hole-punched.

I also made sure I included in a special bag, all the little things we might need for a particular lesson. Tanagram shapes? I made them out of foam paper, they’re pretty cool! Clock flashcards for a certain lesson? All set. All those little paper parts and such for all lessons for RightStart B.

And here’s our little tote that carries our most common RightStart manipulatives. There’s no room for our abacus, but we keep it right by the tote.

Now, RightStart planning is done for the year! Some subjects are truly simple and just open-and-go, so I input all our lessons into Homeschool Skedtrack. I’m working on science now. I’m listing read-aloud books for our entire RSO Life year. Printing out stuff from the Evan-Moor Giant Science book. Etc….

At least I enjoy this kind of thing, but I’m very exhausted today. The plus side, is all this extra work beforehand will help our year progress smoothly. I hate when we have a holdup in a subject just because I didn’t print/cut something out that we need for a lesson. Anyway, I’m very excited about all the work I’ve done and ready to have another great year!

If you don’t have a homeschool ID card yet, you can get one free at the Homeschool Buyers Co-op! We did this last year, and just last month I updated it to reflect our new First Grade year and new photo. Here’s our updated Homeschool ID. I used Photoshop to gray out identifying details to post on our website.

Although this service is absolutely free, and you can print out and laminate at home, this year I chose to order a card from their Print option. I ordered two and they arrived quickly. I was very impressed with the end result, it is very official looking and extremely sturdy. It might even be thicker than a typical credit card. Check out how thick that edge is! It certainly looks more professional than my home laminator.

We love the advantages of having a homeschool ID card, we get to qualify for discounts at so many stores we shop at! So far we’ve used it at Michaels, Staples, Borders, Lakeshore Learning… Here’s a HUGE list of where you can get Home Educator Discounts. Be sure to check that list out, it goes into detail of which stores offer homeschool discounts, how to get them, and includes stores you wouldn’t think of.

I always like to play with Photoshop actions, the following are combinations of Totally Rad Actions and Kevin Kubota.

And then back to my favorite for portraits, Black & White.

We took the above photos last night right before our family went to the Boulder Dinner Theater to see Peter Pan. We were all dressed up, and it was time for a Not-Back-to-School School Portrait anyway!

Stay tuned tomorrow for a post on our free Homeschool ID card and how (and why) you can get one too!

The following photos are taken for the Heart of the Matter Not Back to School Hop – it is School Room Week. This week we are to share where we do our homeschooling.

I’m going to go over the new stuff first. Satori loves to write so much that we actually made a Writing Center in our Great room just last week so she has easy access to writing materials. We’ve moved all her writing and handwriting lessons down here. We’ll have plenty of paper, blank books, note-cards, and pens/pencils for her to write with here. I’ll probably add a children’s dictionary and writing prompts/activities later this year. She’s only 5, but she’s got a great interest in writing, she’s writing a book as I took this picture, and her latest one “I love my muther” is the yellow one propped up on the right. (To view photos in original, large size, click on it.)

Close to the writing area is Satori’s new Art corner, also a highly creative space for her to have fun. We just made this a week ago, and we’re loving it! I really wanted easy access to all her colored pencils, watercolor pencils, markers, pastels and paper so she can create whenever inspiration hits. The views and fresh air are rejuvenating. Under the desk I’ve stored all our art and drawing books and curriculum. For family art activities, we have a big table that we pull out so we all can join in on the fun.

Around the corner is our Nature Nook. We have all our bird identification guides and binoculars in one place, right next to the window to our deck, where we hang all our bird feeders. We get Steller Jay’s, Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers, Mountain Chickadees, Pygmy Nuthatches, Pine Siskins, Broad-Tailed Hummingbirds, Dark-eyed Juncos, and more here. We’re reading the Burgess Bird Book and all of our resources are here. In the orange basket are other nature identification books, journals and more.

We mostly do our schoolwork in our Learning Loft. Both Satori and Mom have their homeschool computers here. Even though we have desks and tables, we still love to sprawl out on the carpet. The white table with the red chair is a dry erase table with a paper roll/cutter built in, it comes in quite handy. I will be moving the bookshelf to the Reading Room to make some room for a larger dry erase board. I also am trying to get the Trofast shelving, you may notice I already have the Trofast bins stacked and ready. We don’t use the workbox system, but might like to try something like it this year, and the new shelf/bin unit would be perfect.

View from the other side. You can see Mom’s desk. In this desk are most of my teacher homeschool resources books. Current curriculum are stored in the two Desk Apprentices on the main table.

Closeup of the shelf.

Read-alouds are to be done in our Reading Room.

Crafts and messy stuff we do down in our basement Kraft Kitchen. In this room we’re able to store all of our craft supplies in drawers and cabinets, which is good, otherwise our cats would have a field day with feathers and yarn!

I just got some stuff from Ikea that we’ll be using to replace our art display line hangar, as well as some things to store art supplies at-hand so they’re more easy access. These aren’t up yet.

Lastly, here’s the room where I work on the Satori Smiles blog and ship out books I sold. I used to be in this office all the time back when I had a career, now I am in here as little as possible. Not shown, but in this room are all my photography and programming books. I’ll be selling many of these in the months to come to make room for more books.

For more photos of our homeschool rooms, head to our Homeschool Room page.

It’s time for the Heart of the Matter Not Back to School Hop, and this week it’s Curriculum Week! (Oops, I missed this week by a a few days, but since I wrote this post, I’ll just leave it.) I remember participating in some of these last year. Perfect timing too, as we’ve had a few months of trying out our new First Grade curriculum choices already, so we know how things are going to work out.

This blog post will summarize what we’ll be using for all our First Grade subjects, you can always see them at a glance on the right side of the blog. I’ve also created a First Grade Curriculum page where I can into more detail about our choices and how we plan to implement them. We do lessons Monday through Friday about 2-3 hours a day, year-long with extended breaks a few times a year.

The below schedule is what we’ll be following starting September 2010, even though we started first grade June 2010.

First Grade Curriculum 2010/2011

Reading/Phonics (we wrapped our our main program, Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading, August 2010)

• Explode the Code Workbooks 4-8, great review on everything, humorous worksheets
• Beyond the Code – to start in September as a trial, may ditch this if we don’t like
• Various read-alouds – both mom and Satori reading aloud to each other

Math

• RightStart B – main math program
• Math Mammoth (occasional supplemental worksheet)
• MEP Year 1 (supplement for fun 1 day a week)

Spelling

• All About Spelling – Level 3 and 4

Handwriting

• Handwriting Without Tears – Cursive – trying to go slowly on this, Satori totally rushed through handwriting
• StartWrite Handwriting Worksheet Wizard – using for copywork
  

History

• Story of the World 1 – Ancients (SOTW) and fun Activity Guide
• Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History (occasionally as supplement to SOTW)
• History Odyssey (mostly using SOTW, but may use a bit of this for more ideas)
• Map Trek: Ancient World

Writing

• Writing With Ease 1
• Write Source Grade 1

Grammar

• First Language Lessons 2 - this program goes slow for us, but I love the memorization technies
• Growing With Grammar 1 – brand new curriculum we will try in September

Science

• R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey – Life – just started this and having a blast!

Vocabulary

• Wordly Wise 3000 Grade 1 – after this colorful (but expensive) program finishes, not sure if we’ll continue with Wordly Wise 2+ (which is not as colorful but is inexpensive), but we’ll definitely be using something. Satori loves learning vocabulary and loves the Wordly Wise K-1 curriculum!
  

Art

• Artistic Pursuits K-3 Book One – for general art
• Meet the Masters – for artist study, just started this and love it
• Drawing With Children – for realistic drawing
• various art project books/websites – we really want to enjoy art this year!
  

Critical Thinking

• various workbooks – such as Logic Safari, Primarily Logic, Analogies for Beginners, Logic Links
• various puzzles/games like Rush Hour, Chocolate Fix, SET Game, Blokus
  

Geography

• various workbooks, currently using Maps, Globes, and Graphs: Level B
• The Geography Book: Activities for Exploring, Mapping, and Enjoying Your World – haven’t started yet, but looks like hands-on fun!
• Geopuzzles – the whole family loves these

We are already loving this new space, filled with light! Even at night, we have enough light to work by. Satori is loving drawing pictures and writing at her new desk. More on this next week, when I flesh it all out more!

Writing center – I want to have writing utensils, paper, journals, bare books, writing prompts and more handy for Satori whenever she’s inspired.

Just wanting to throw down my latest thoughts…

FIRST GRADE CURRICULUM

We started “first grade” this summer to ease  ourselves in a bit more into being a bit more rigorous. We still just do 1-1.5 hours a day at this point. This fall I’d love to increase our workload to 2-3 hours a day, but that is including some creative stuff like art and music. I’ve got our curriculum all finalized and almost finished working out our Fall 2010 daily lesson plans. I’ve been following this 50+ page thread on WTM forums on how to organize using files/crates, and gotten some good ideas from it. I don’t think I’m going to go that far, but it has given me some ideas and inspiration. I may get some use out of the Workbox system and Loop, although again, I probably won’t follow the method 100%. I think I’ve gotten ideas from all the major planning/organization methods that are making their rounds this time of year.

I’ve divided our subjects into three groups. Core, Support, and Enrichment. (I just came up with those names  out of the top of my head just now, hehe.)

Core is most important and first on our priority list. Right now they are only Reading and Math (although that may change). This fall, we’ll have finished our formal phonics reading program, but we’ll continue to practice reading and gain fluency. We’ll keep working on our ETC workbooks for as long as they work for us. For Math, our main math program is RightStart, and we’ll do 20 minutes 4 times a week. Because Satori now doesn’t like to finish the RS worksheets, we might try a bit of Math Mammoth worksheets everyone has been raving about.  I’d love to incorporate MEP too a few days. This supplemental math will take 10 minutes a day, 4 days a week. Total for our Core is one hour a day. We’ll be tackling these first and then take a short break. We’ll be doing these Core lessons everyday, in some way or another.

Support subjects are those lessons that support our core. Some of these might make it into our Core down the road, but right now I’m not too worried about them. These subjects may be ones that Satori excels at and I’d actually like to slow down to give priority to our core. Or they are ones that I don’t think are crucial at this time, but they are definitely important and nice to work on, so I give them secondary priority. Our second hour will be filled with Support subjects. These are Handwriting (we’re starting cursive), Spelling, Grammar, and Writing. Due to Satori really enjoying creative writing, some of this might seem to go at an accelerated pace for a first grader. Handwriting and Spelling will be our usual curriculum – Handwriting Without Tears and All-About-Spelling. Grammar and Writing we are trying out some new stuff, while still keeping First Language Lessons and Writing With Ease. These two programs seem too easy for Satori, but I like the memorization, narration, and copywork that these programs promote. We will be adding Growing With Grammar Grade 1 and Write Source Grade 1. Support lessons will be done 2-3 times a week.

Enrichment subjects are subjects like history, science, vocabulary, art, music, logic, geography, etc… Not totally necessary, but so much fun! I plan to really ramp up our Art now, and we are thinking of starting Notebooking for subjects like history, science, and nature study. I’ve made some changes to what we’ve done in the past so we shouldn’t get so far behind in history and science. Enrichment subjects will be tackled 1-2 times a week.

By thinking of our subjects in this way, we’ll get our priorities in order and make sure we get the most important things done for sure and done first.

When I get some time, I will flesh out our First Grade curriculum Fall semester, as I do every semester and talk about our choices in a little more detail.

ATELIER STUDIO

I’m adding a bit of creative inspiration to our great room, I’ve got some great ideas for an art table, writing table and birding watch to place in our main room, while still hopefully retaining a room that we can still hang out in and not be overwhelmed by messy homeschool stuff. We’ll see.

Here’s a photo of David putting together our new art table:

We’ve been wanting to get a new haircut for quite some time, and after seeing the movie about Ramona, we were ready. It was a bit shorter than I was expecting, but we all really like it! We can see her eyes and face so much easier. Satori will now be able to brush/comb her own hair everyday, what a plus!