We need another Eclectic thread! - Page 14

[MyLittleWonders]

Welcome rockportmama! I was one of those who considered ourselves homeschoolers/homeschooling long before my oldest was of age for reporting in our state. It was a choice we made when he was very young (I think before he was 2) and so from then on, we were homeschoolers, and by the time he reached preschool age (3), I considered ourselves homeschooling. (You will find many opinions on the subject and even some heated debate, but I say whatever works for each family, yk?)

[urchin_grey]

Originally Posted by MyLittleWonders

Welcome rockportmama! I was one of those who considered ourselves homeschoolers/homeschooling long before my oldest was of age for reporting in our state. It was a choice we made when he was very young (I think before he was 2) and so from then on, we were homeschoolers, and by the time he reached preschool age (3), I considered ourselves homeschooling. (You will find many opinions on the subject and even some heated debate, but I say whatever works for each family, yk?)

I was the same way. I've never been pushy or anything though, since we've always leaned towards unschooling. But we knew we would homeschool since he was a toddler and now that he's really "preschool age", I feel like we can finally REALLY call ourselves homeschoolers. We don't have to report here until age 7 but I can't stay away from this forum until then!

[Jennifer3141]

I knew I wanted to homeschool the moment the kids were born. It took DH awhile longer - like this summer when he realized that our lifestyle would dramtically change because we'd have to work another schedule into our lives - then he came around FAST.

We're thinking about roadtripping the entire UP to go to a medical seminar at Mayo the first week in October. We wouldn't be doing that if the kids were in school. The kids and I would have to stay home instead of going adventuring.

So I'm with Urchin, I've always considered us homeschoolers. We went to homeschool co-ops for over a year before K began.

[DaughterOfKali]

I'm getting closer and closer to homeschooling. Will make a decision before winter comes. I should also try to chat with local hs'ing moms.

[Awaken]

Hi all, I have been reading along with the thread but this is my first chance to post!

We started school last Friday, and today is our 2nd day. DS1 is almost 7 and in 1st grade. My almost 4 yr old is in preschool MWF so those are our school days and we do trips or other non-academic stuff on T/TH.

Someone asked about FIAR, we are doing it and enjoying it! I don't do it 5 days in a row for sure, it probably takes us a few weeks to be thoroughly done with all the activities and discussions we want to do with a book. Plus, I think we would all get bored doing it every single day. Getting so deep into the books has really caused them to love the stories and have them become a real part of our lives and everyday conversations!

This year I am alternating FIAR days with Story of the World. I wasnt sure my ds would understand SotW or like it, but we're on Ch. 2 and so far so good. We're going to do some "cave drawings" this afternoon and perhaps try to build a shelter out of sticks later this week. He is already talking about Nomads all the time now!

Otherwise, we do Abeka math and language arts and Explode the Code 1-2x per week each in the mornings. And he is signed up for a homeschoolers art class, and will soon start piano lessons. Science and social studies are easy, he has so many interests and questions we basically just read books about outer space and look stuff up online and go to museums.

I have found it completely impossible to do school with my younger DS around. I don't know how others do it. It doesn't matter what kind of interesting activity I give him or how I try to get him involved in an age-appropriate way, he is done with it in about 30 seconds and talks our ears off the entire time and demands my attention. It is impossible for DS1 and I to concentrate on school work with him around, hence he has to go to preschool!! We were not able to do any schoolwork the entire summer because of this!

[Jennifer3141]

I for one would enjoy having you around, Kali.
(She's always been one of my favorites! )

We've got about half of a lesson for DD done today. I have no idea what's on the agenda for DS. I haven't looked. Swimming lessons start today!

[DaughterOfKali]

Originally Posted by Jennifer3141

I for one would enjoy having you around, Kali.

Well Hi there!

[momofmine]

Originally Posted by rockportmama

I feel a little guilty. When DS was 9 months he had my complete and undivided attention! I did nothing but work with him, teach him, etc. With DD, not so much. I'm working part-time now, and when I am home, I have a three year old to deal with! He's definitely the squeaky wheel of the two. I have to remind myself even to read to her every day. She hears me read to DS, but his books are clearly not as engiaging to her!

Any thoughts on how to educate the baby while educating a 3yo? Maybe I should just relax? LOL! I'm partly upset that I just found out my friend's baby (who is younger!) is signing please. I haven't even shown DD please yet!! I've only done food and milk! While I know it's not a compitition and I shouldn't compare, I still feel guilty!!!

Sorry so long, and thanks for letting me jump in!!
-rockport

It sounds to me like you are doing everything right! I wouldn't fret one bit! AT 9 months she does not need to be taught. She needs to be with you, experience life, hear you talk and interact and read to your ds, everything you are already doing. Sounds like you are doing great!

Originally Posted by craft_media_hero

We're trying FIAR again next week. The first two stories were great, but it felt a bit like picking the Oreo cookie apart with DD; she was kinda resistant to the discussions/activities. I guess after a couple more stories, we'll know if it's a good fit for us or not. I have this weird feeling that Maybe I'm Not Doing It Right : although I really do like the literature analysis aspect of it. Anybody else doing FIAR this year?

I'm all about giving it the old college try til mid-year; then we may just throw everything out and start over!

I just wanted to give my experience and perspective on FIAR. Doing the curriculum as the book suggests would never have worked with my kids. Personally, what I loved FIAR for was the WONDERFUL book lists! I would never have discovered, and re-discovered, all those wonderful children's book titles if I had never seen that book. Robert McCloskey, How to Bake an Apple Pie and See the World, Owl Moon, just all of them! So wonderful! I was so tired of reading Thomas the Tank Engine and such and when I found that book I felt like I rediscovered chidren's literature! :

I have such fond memories of reading those books to my ds age 5 while nursing his little brother, for the first four or five months. It was wonderful. But, to be honest, I like enjoying each story for what it is, and we just felt that all those activities, and that whole set-up just took away from the joy of reading great children's literature. So personally, I say read the books, do a few activities if they sound fun and engaging to your LO, and move on.

[Eli&SkyesMom]

I figured it's about time I checked back in. We started "school" a few weeks ago. Things are going pretty good.
We are using sequential spelling for the first time, and are realy likeing it!! DS was over the moon when on his 5th lesson, he was able to spell "begining" perfectly. Only 4 days earlier he had no idea how to spell it! It was wonderful to see him light up and to see his confidence rise.
We are having fun with SOTW Vol. 1 moving kind of slow with it and adding a lot of other sources to add to what we are reading.
We are using Easy Grammer 3/4 for the first time. We haven't realy started it as we are still working on learning hte list of prepositions. ( any suggestions on how to make it more fun would be great!)
For math, we are working on memorizing multiplication facts. TimezAttack has come in handy for this. I've also been adding in a MathArt Project once a week.
Tomorrow we are going on a group fieldtrip with our homeschool group to Piedmont Ridge Ecostation, so that should be loads of fun.
Oh yeah, we are also doing a Basic Music Theory class from www.spaceded.com which is pretty cool. I've learned a lot, and recomend it to anyonw who doesn't know much about music theory but is interested.
Well, I'm sure there is more, but it's getting late and I can't think of it now.
Thanks everybody for providing this wonderful thread, I love hearing what others are doing and getting input from all of you.

[craft_media_hero]

E&SMom--I had a teacher say "The birds fly _____ the clouds" and any word that would fit in the blank is a preposition. Put it to the test---sometimes the sentence is silly, but if a word fits in there, then it's a preposition. There may have been a handful that were exceptions, which would just need to be memorized from "the list". Oh, and thanks for the insight into sequential spelling, I may give that a go when DD is reading more independently.

Okay, so weekend update, folks. How'd everybody's homeschool week go?

I'd have to say that we were amazingly productive and low-stress this week. I believe this is for several reasons:
1. We are finally getting into a routine.
2. I am relaxing a bit and feel okay with dropping little stuff here and there rather than forcing our way through an activity just for the sake of sticking to "the plan".
3. I made a cheat sheet which really helps me a lot---just writing out all our daily stuff in one place (along with foreign lang. vocab and memory verse, etc.).
4. I've been a lot better about integrating a bit here and there throughout our day instead of trying to do everything all together before lunch.

Strangely, stepping up the pace in reading and math seems to have helped as well. Last month I was only giving V one word at a time to read; this week I've been giving her six (short) sentences at a time which we illustrate together, and she's really been excited about this.

Ditto with math---I decided to stick with our Singapore book until it gets too complicated, and then switch back to Miquon (I had previously been putting together packets from both workbooks, and noticed she favors the Singapore pages, so we're just going to stick with that for now).

Handwriting is another story, though. I can't wait until we get through the uppercase alphabet---this is the one area we struggle with; in math, for example, she gets frustrated writing the numbers but totally gets the concepts, so I've been writing what she tells me down (hope that's not "cheating"!) I want to get her numbers stickers so that writing issues don't affect her math.

Ummm, what else? Oh yes, we returned to FIAR and I'm really starting to see a good response to it, she's been enjoying figuring out what the artist/author is doing and finding the setting on the map (our first official map work!). It's our third "rowing" and we like it now! We were both a little disturbed by animal cruelty stuff in "Ping", but talking about that became part of our Science day and exploration of the story.

I'm still feeling like a bit of a slacker in the Science and Social Studies department. I'm really interested in the Montessori approach for these two subjects (Social Studies and Science seem so thorough in Montessori, no?), but can't seem to find a complete resource. Any suggestions?

We also have been slipping into a Friday routine of Dad reviewing her 3 ring binder while I make lunch, giving her an opportunity to demonstrate her retention of the week's work, and giving all of us a chance to see that, yes, we are actually making progress, which is very encouraging. So I like this, Dad sees how much we're doing, and she gets to review the work without it being an "official" or pressured thing.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else has been up to recently.

[Jennifer3141]

We've taken a lot of this week off. Swim lessons started last Monday and 3-5 hours at Great Wolf Lodge twice a week wipes us out!! We love that place but it's exhausting!

And today we have a fall festival at our local dairy. So it's going to be another non-schoolish day here today. I need to make tomato sauce over the weekend.

Craft, my DD hates handwriting. It's the only part of Calvert she really groans about. So we compromise a bit. I have her trace the letters with her fingers and then I'll even let her do them with my hand over hers so that I'm basically doing it. 9 times out of 10, I'll find her writing the letters on her own later or she'll show an interest in the letter after the lesson. That's where the "eclectic" part of me wins over. She's probably just not completely ready for handwriting yet and I have faith that someday, she will be. It's my job to keep it fun and light so that someday, she wants to write something - anything!

[Eli&SkyesMom]

Our fieldtrip on Tue. was a huge success. The rangers were very helpful, and DS found 13 sharks teeth! I had made up a little questionare for the trip and the kids paired off to fill it out while we did the self-guided tour. The kids found lots of creepy crawlies and had a wonderful time.

Wed. morning we spent practiceing life skills (cleaning house). Then we relaxed and read in the afternoon.

Thur. was back to buisness with the workboxes. We are just finishing up our study of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, and found a relavant article in Time mag. online. Then we had our weekly trip to the Library and checked out a bunch of new books.

I try to make Fri. our fun day. DS made a replica of a plant and an animal cell, out of jello and fruit. He worked on some of his cub scout acievements (reading folktales, and talking about conservation). DD and I worked some puzzles, and did some fun workbook things. We also did a few dance lesons from activitytv.com That was fun. Looking forward to next week!

[mommyshanti]

my son is 5 and in kindy right now but i am leaning more towards hsing and so is dh
at dinner we always talk about our fav part of the day and my son actually said
"doing homeschool" (we ditched that day and did time4learning and mus and then went to park for lunch came home and painted)
i was looking at fiar and was wondering is it best to start with volume 1 it is 19 units about how long does it take to go through?
i am just wondering if i should buy all the volumes at once ?
thanks im new to all this

[craft_media_hero]

Originally Posted by mommyshanti

my son is 5 and in kindy right now but i am leaning more towards hsing and so is dh
at dinner we always talk about our fav part of the day and my son actually said
"doing homeschool" (we ditched that day and did time4learning and mus and then went to park for lunch came home and painted)
i was looking at fiar and was wondering is it best to start with volume 1 it is 19 units about how long does it take to go through?
i am just wondering if i should buy all the volumes at once ?
thanks im new to all this

We started with Volume 2 as it was the one I found to be least expensive at the time. Since I wasn't sure how we'd like it, I didn't want to invest a lot of money in case we didn't use it. So far, doing the Vol 2 books hasn't been an issue---once you get the hang of it, I think one could simply use the book lists and wing it without the guides (we did that with Ping, a Vol 1 book, as the title I wanted wasn't available at the library); although having the guide for Volume 2 has definitely been helpful.

I would say start with whatever volume will be easiest/least expensive for you to obtain, and give it a try! That way you'll get a feel for whether you like it before dropping the $ on the whole series.

[mommyshanti]

thanks craft media hero
u ladies that use fiar would you say you can find most books at the library or do you have to buy alot of them
thanks

[Jennifer3141]

I think I have the preschool FIAR around here somewhere. It's blue, right? If anyone needs/wants it - PM me!

[MyLittleWonders]

Well, I made the executive decision today to take the day off. We've been plugging away 5 days a week for a while now (at least August and September - I think we took some time off in July but I can't remember). I'm tired. Ds#2 and I have both been getting better from having colds/sinus stuff. Did I mention I was tired? So, math, spelling, penmenship, writing/copywork, history ... it's all getting tabled until Monday (though I might ease us back on Friday since ds#1 does worse and worse on Mondays with the more time we take off). We have PE today. We have an aquarium trip tomorrow. Ds#1 has baseball practice Thursday evening and Friday evening. And I'm tired. So ... executive decision - we are taking an impromptu couple days off.

[inkedmamajama]

finally a thread for me!

i consider us unschoolers who use public school as a tool...hows that for eclectic? I have subscribed to the theory of unschooling since my first baby was born-but circumstances in my life took away my option to homeschool when she was kindergarten age-so we started public school. i like to consider public school to be the supplement to the unschooling we do at home.

[momofmine]

We are not really getting much of the "planned stuff" done around here. Our activities are all really wonderful, but keeping us really busy right now. I'm okay with it for now, but I do want to find some stuff that DS10 can work on independently. because I feel like all the stuff we do, he needs me to do it with him. He needs to learn handwriting (still kind of does caps and such) and I think if I could find things he was interested in, he would do it at those times when he is BORED and I am not available for helping out with something. He definitely does plenty of hands-on stuff on his own (legos, robotics, electronic stuff), but I think it would be good if he could feel more independent with some of the academic stuff. I just have this feeling that he is ready for that.

[craft_media_hero]

Originally Posted by mommyshanti

thanks craft media hero
u ladies that use fiar would you say you can find most books at the library or do you have to buy alot of them
thanks

I don't know what everyone else's experience has been, but it has been kind of difficult to find the books. My library has about half of them, and I think there are other HSers using them, so it's touch and go as to whether they'll be available. I do think that my local library is not the most HS friendly, though, so your local branch might have a better collection.

We don't do FIAR every week, though, so it hasn't been a huge problem. I wonder if maybe Volume 2 (which we're using) has more OOP books than the others? We've purchased a Beatrix Potter collection and Harold and the Purple Crayon---both books are awesome, so I feel like it was a good investment.

If your library has an online search function, you could probably search the titles for each volume to see what will be most economical to buy.