Last year I did not keep track at all as to which books Zander read during his reading time.  He read so many, and I do wish I’d kept track.

So here’s his reading list so far for this year.  Many, many more will be added to it.  But at least I’ve got a portion down for my sake.

• Geronimo Stilton: The Curse Of The Cheese Pyramid by Geronimo Stilton
• The Adventures of Sam X: The Boomerang Wakes Up by Hubert Ben Kemoun
• Mercy Watson To The Rescue by Kate DiCamillo
• A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond
• Freckle Juice by Judy Blume
• The Mayor of Central Park by Avi
• Pee-Wee’s Tale by Johanna Hurwitz
• How To Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
• The Mouse And The Motorcycle by Beverly Clearly
• Runaway Ralph by Beverly Cleary
• A Mouse Called Wolf by Dick King-Smith
• The Littles by John Peterson

I realize the ultimate in irony of the post I am about to do.  Just weeks after I was glowing about how our unschooling of Science was proving rewarding, I am about to share how we are moving in a new direction with our Science studies.

Enter NOEO Science.

Last year, about this time, I was sharing how I wanted to use Real Science 4 Kids as our Science curriculum for this year.  There were two problems with using that program for us.  One was cost, it’s pricey, probably worth the price, but when we’re stretching pennies here, that’s not the best idea in the world.  The second problem I had with it is that it doesn’t come with experiment materials- even chemicals for chemistry, you need to hunt them down and gather them yourselves.

And yet, a few weeks ago, when we found ourselves with the financial ability to consider buying a Science program, I went right to that webpage.  I loaded up my cart, and then I paused before I purchased.  A voice in my head told me to go check out NOEO Science,(a program which, btw, I’ve never, ever looked at) and I’m so glad I did!!!

NOEO presents Science with a Biblical view, but not an in-your-face view.  There aren’t scriptures backing up the science at all, but there aren’t those scientific contradictions you find in other programs (Is the earth billions of years old?  Really?).  The science is real science, so many times that Biblical view gets in the way of presenting real science.  Not here.  Not here at all.   And on top of how the science is presented, experiment materials are gathered for you and included in your package.  Everything except household supplies- and that is listed out for you as well.  Looking through that list, the only items we don’t consistently have in our house is the 1 and 2 liter bottles.  Everything else is something we have on hand all the time.  And since I know when we’ll need those bottles, we can plan ahead to have a little soda treat with a movie night sometime.

Our first box from NOEO came yesterday, and the second one will arrive today.  When I opened it up last night, I couldn’t believe all the wonderful books, the science kits, and the instructor’s guide.  Even Andy was impressed and when he asked me how much I spent, agreed that it was an excellent value.    Zander is beyond excited, because we’re starting it up today.  When the second kit comes today, I will have Abigail look through them both and decide if she wants to work with Zander, or do her own.  I ordered Biology 1 and 2, and if she wants to do Biology 2 on her own, that will be just fine.  If not, we will save it for later on.

For now, the plan is this.  This is a 36 week course, and we have not that many weeks left of school.  So my plan is to try and get about half of the Biology 1 done this school year, and then we’ll pick it back up in the fall.  Then, halfway through next year, we’ll get the Chemistry set to break up the school year so we’re not doing Biology all year long.  So far, it sounds like a do-able plan, and we’re really excited to give this new Science program a try today.

Look what showed up on my front stoop today!

There’s no turning back now!  It’s the most important part of starting our new school year, our Instructor’s Guides from Sonlight.

Abigail will continue ahead with the second half of US History while Zander gets a look at world cultures.  They’re both going to love school this year.

I’ve decided that our first day of school will be August 30th.  Which means I have until then to assemble all the bits and pieces we need to get school rolling.  The binders are assembled and on the shelf, and now I need to acquire all the books and tools we’ll need yet.  Zander is very excited to get his own Book of Time this year where he’ll start his timeline.

And of course, since I last posted, what, a few days ago, I’ve already changed my mind again about something.  Figures.  I really, really like the look of the science materials for Real Science 4 Kids.  And I really want to do them.  The thing is though, I will have to buy books and teachers guides for both kids, and THEN I will have to go hunt down all the individual components for doing the experiments and activities.  Just thinking about doing that every week makes me want to break out in hives!

So I’ve already changed my mind and decided that we will, after all, go with Sonlight for our science needs as well.  We get the best of both worlds then, because Sonlight does use some of the Real Science books in their program.  But even better? I won’t have to run all around creation hunting and gathering what is needed for the experiments.  Sonlight does that for me!  When I order the complete Science programs, they come with all the tools and items needed for the experiments and activities.  I love that.   For certain I will be doing Science K with Zander, and I’m deciding between a few sciences for Abigail.

I wonder what else I’ll change my mind on yet in the next four weeks…

That can be a scary thing in the life of a homeschooler!  Because when you click purchase, you’re really, really saying a prayer that what you are about to purchase is going to work for your child.   I’m slowly making purchases and decisions about the coming school year, and it’s time to really assemble and start working out how our year will go- and it’s time to pick a start date- that I haven’t committed to yet.

And don’t ask me yet how I’m going to intertwine two cores together.  I know we’ll figure it out, but our school days are definitely going to be longer.

Right now, for Zander, his day will look something like this:

Bible: Sonlight Core K

Math: Horizons 1, Singapore 2A

History/Geography: Sonlight Core K

Reading: Sonlight Readers 2

Language Arts: A Beka Language 1, Spelling and Poetry

Handwriting: A Reason For Handwriting “A”

Science: Real Science 4 Kids Pre-level 1

For him for math, I’ve decided that while the Singapore method is working brilliantly with him, I also want him to learn to do math more traditionally, so we’re going to combine the two math programs.  He’s so incredibly fast at math anyways, hopefully by using the two programs together, I can make them stretch to last the whole school year.  For language arts, I had a heck of a time finding 1st grade LA that did not include phonics.  I was very happy to find the A Beka workbooks, and when he saw them come in the mail he was very excited about them. His handwriting will only last for the first half of the year, and then I’ll need to make a decision about where to go for him.   I’m also adding in for both kids a map unit this year, because they really enjoy studying maps.

Abigail’s day is shaping up to look like this:

Bible: Sonlight Core K with Core 4 personal devotions

Math: Teaching Textbooks 6

History/Geography: Sonlight Core 4

Reading: Sonlight 4

Language Arts: BJU Press Grade 5

Spelling: Sequential Spelling

Handwriting: A Reason For Handwriting “E”

Science: Real Science 4 Kids, Level 1

I feel like I’m missing something there, on both lists, but I’m drawing a blank as to what it is.   The Real Science 4 Kids I’m excited about, because I think that by using the two levels, I can still teach them together the same subjects, just Abigail’s will go more in-depth.  I’m hopeful that’s how they will work anyway- it may take a little tweaking on my part.  I still have to order those, as those are some of the more pricey pieces of our curriculum.  They may be arriving dead last just before school starts this fall.

A piece at a time.  Can it be we’re already in the home stretch of summer vacation?  That back to school is coming soon?  Crazy, just crazy.

When we first decided to home school last year, I asked the kids what they would both like to study for Science.  The answer was unanimous- they both wanted to learn more about the stars and planets- and then Abigail added that she also wanted to do experiments.   After looking at several programs and ideas, we settled on doing Apologia’s Astronomy for our Science, and I had ideas to add little projects and things along the way.

First of all, I like Apologia’s approach to Science.  I loved the fact that our Astronomy text was presented in a “God created everything” way.   I think that the information contained in the course was top-notch and current as well.  At the  end of the course the kids got to decide for themselves whether they thought Pluto was a planet or not.  (They were split on that, by the way.)  We spent time exploring each planet, comets, asteroids, space travel, and stars among many other things.  Information-wise, we learned a lot.  But project wise, not so much.  Many of the projects suggested for the course were either not do-able for one reason or another, or they were simply…well, boring.  When we studied moons, the suggested project was to drop different size rocks and marbles into a bowl of flour to study how craters are made.  Interesting? Maybe- but that’s  stretch.  One of the activities suggested that you take apart magnifying glasses to make a homemade telescope.  Well, by the time you lay out the expense of the magnifying glasses, you could have just bought an inexpensive telescope that works better.  Overall though, I am not regretful of our time spent with Astronomy- but I am regretful that we ended up not really getting out hands dirty with science so far.  We’re finished with the Astronomy, and I found myself trying to decide what we should do for the second half of our school year.

My first thought was that I could utilize the library to put together a few unit studies.  Maybe we’d do electricity- maybe biology, and maybe a little bit of animal science of some kind.  I checked out a handful of books and set to work looking them over to see what I could come up with.   I flipped through the books, but I was really unsure how to proceed.

So then I spent time online going through different websites and reading science resources to find something that I thought I could do with my two.  I spent a lot of time reading reviews and looking at programs, and I am happy to say that during my quest I did find a program that we will be using for next year’s Science.  Real Science 4 Kids is exactly the type of program I was looking for.  It comes in several levels as well- so I plan to pick up the full intermediate program for Abigail and then picking up the elementary program for Zander.  With any luck I can do some of their science things together.   On their website you can actually look through the entire texts online- and they look fun and informational- and there are plenty of activities to give a nice hands-on approach to chemistry, biology and physics.  The only downside is that they are pretty pricey, and so while part of me wanted to pick it up to start working on this year, it will wait until next year.

Which brings us back to this year, and this new semester.   Part of my troubles was that as I was reading the books I’d picked up at the library, they were written from a worldly point of view.  Honestly, this never bothered me before, but I think we got spoiled with Apologia this last semester.   So in the end I went back to Apologia and looked through what else they had to offer for elementary kids.  I decided that some Zoology would be fun- and as spring is just around the corner, spending days at the zoo studying animals would be a fantastic use of our time.  I settled on Zoology 1: The Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day.  So next week, the kids and I will dive in and begin learning about birds, bats, insects, and any other creature that flies.  The text is promising.  The activities seem to me to be much better than the astronomy ones- and the kids both seemed excited when they saw the new book.  After spending so much time in space, I think taking to wing will be an exciting new adventure for Science class.

Since I talked about our language arts last week, I thought that this week I’d get my thoughts down about our current math going-ons.   Math was a challenging one for me to nail down before school started this year.  Math is one of the biggies- and of course, it’s the first one that people grow concerned about when I talk about homeschooling.  Everyone wants to know how I’m going to teach the more advanced math to my kids- and what if I mess that up? Really?  This is the age of technology my friends, and whatever I come upon that I struggle with teaching can be done on the computer or via a DVD.  We can go all the way through advanced calculus if my kids are so inclined.  And actually, I suspect that Abigail is right on track to accomplish just  that if we do math every year of high school.

The number one thing I had to do with selecting math was wait until 3rd grade was done.  I needed to wait until all concepts had been gone over and reviewed.  Then, the next thing to do was to have Abigail take some tests.  Thankfully, most of the math programs out there have placement tests, so you can order the right one for your children’s abilities.  I printed off a total of about six math tests and Abigail had to take them.  She was not happy with that process, by the way.

But when she was done with the tests, I had her rank them in order- because the tests reflected the curriculum, and if she had a hard time understanding something on a test- that meant something to me.  Some were also colorful, and some not- and that also played in.   She ended up choosing the Horizons test as her favorite, followed very closely by AOP’s Lifepac curriculum.  After looking over both programs, I decided that Horizons was closest to how I wanted to teach.  I have not regretted it at all.  Abigail loves doing her math.  She loves the colorful notebook, and she loves the approach.  It’s spiral math, which I actually wasn’t sure about, but it’s working very, very well.  When I say it’s spiral, I mean that it revisits topics over and over.  Last week we introduced division of money.  Abigail did about 8 problems regarding that, and then moved on to do a few problems dealing with multiplication into the hundreds, then a few regular long division problems, then a story problem or two, and finished up with a puzzle which was a review of prime numbers.  So she’s not doing dozens upon dozens of one problem- and we both love that.  She does enough so that I know she knows what she’s doing, and then as we keep coming back to it, she gets more and more confident.  It’s wonderful!

We are about one week away from finishing up her first book for the year.  This book has dealt with the big guys- major addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and money.  The next book we get into the more “fun” math- the geometry, the algebraic equations, time, decimals, fractions, ratios, graphing, things like that.  I think she’ll have fun with it, actually.

Which all leads me to next year, and thinking about next year’s math.  I have an extra variable for next year- and that is little brother.  While they are doing different math this year (obviously) next year the bulk of their school days will be separate.  I fear it will take a while to totally wrap my mind around the idea of doing two separate cores, but in the meantime, my decisions for next year will involve as much independent work as I think I can ask for.  Math is one of those for Abigail.  While we’re really enjoying the Horizons math, I think that this next year will be a good year to switch to Teaching Textbooks.  This program is done at the computer- where the program walks you through problems and helps you learn to complete your math.  Then mom comes in and checks the work- but the bulk of it is done by the student and the computer.  This will be something that I can have Abigail do while I work on something separate with Zander.  I think it will be a good choice- I just need to wait until this school year is done and have Abigail take a placement test to find out which version I should order for her.

Zander has been a completely different ball of wax.

When you look up the requirements of a kindergarten math program… well, lets just say that I could have skipped it altogether.  The basics of kindergarten math are counting to 20, identifying and writing numbers, identifying something like 10 basic shapes, and there’s something else that is escaping me.   Knowing that, at the very beginning of the year I picked up an inexpensive math book, thinking we’d just go that route.  Except that Zander whizzed right through the book in a matter of a few weeks.  So I went back to the computer and did my research before deciding that if I wanted him to have math- I would need to go with a first grade program.

So I ordered the beginning books for Singapore Math.  The Singapore way of math is praised the whole world over- and Singapore students consistently rank at the top of any standings when it comes to math- so they must be doing something right.  Contrary to some beliefs, the US version of Singapore math does not have foreign currency or strange symbols in it- it’s Americanized all the way, and has been a very interesting journey in teaching my son basic math skills.

Honestly? This program is phenomenal.  It’s so easy to understand, yet at the same time, it is totally teaching math skills- today I sat down with Zander to do flashcards and he whizzed right through them- telling me over and over again how easy they are.  The Singapore way of math has worked so well.  One of the things they encourage is the grouping of numbers to make it easier to add them together.  So when Zander sees 9+8, he automatically thinks to himself that 10+8 would be 18, so he needs to subtract one and get 17.   And he can do this well into the 20′s and 30′s now.  Just this morning he showed me that he can count by 1′s to 1000 (I let him stop just past 100), 2′s to 100, 5′s to 100, 3′s to 30, 10′s to 100, and then he wanted to count by hundreds to 1000.  In the weeks to come, he’s actually going to be starting multiplication already- in kindergarten.  He just gets it.

Where I’m hesitating is that while the Singapore has been good for him, I also really like the Horizons math.  So this is going to be weighed out very carefully for us in the coming months.   Ultimately, I think it will come down to his placement tests.  The number one thing when looking at any math program for me is those tests.  It’s just so important to make sure that they are using a math program that fits them where they are at.  Honestly, I’m not even looking at grade numbers anymore when it comes to math.  We’ll do the test and order the correct curriculum for where they are at.

And after all that, if the program shows up and after a few weeks we’re just not jiving with it, we can always switch to something different.  And we will switch and switch until we find the program that fits best.  Individualized education- that’s what we’re all about here at The Sacred Sprouts Schoolhouse.

I’ve been meaning to spend some time here to share a few of the tools we’ve found successful in our first year of homeschooling.  It’s the time of year to start thinking ahead for next year, and as I assess where we are going and what choices to make for next year, there are a few that have become stand-outs as far as I’m concerned.  So today I thought I would share a little bit about some of the language arts curriculum we’re using.

First, let’s talk about spelling.  If you asked me last year what was the one area Abigail needed most help in- it was spelling.  She was really not a good speller at all, and I knew it would take some work to get her to really think about the spelling process.  During our summer school time, I had picked up an inexpensive spelling book put out by Spectrum.  It was decent enough, a basic spelling program with spelling lists and three days worth of workbook pages to integrate the words and become familiar with them.  I thought it might work for us, but I really didn’t relish the idea of having spelling lists and tests every week.

So on the recommendation of Sonlight, I ordered a copy of Sequential Spelling.  I had no idea what to expect, and when I got the book, I almost sent it back unused.  The premise is unlike anything I’ve ever heard for spelling.  You start with a list of words.  You go word by word- you say the word to your child and use it in a sentence.  Then they write the word.  Immediately, you also write the word so they can see it.  They check their spelling of that word, correct their mistake- if any- immediately, and you move on to the next word.  There are 25 words every day.  The words are related, and you build on them, triggering the mind to remember sequences when it comes to working with words.  As an example, this week we did stand, understand, misunderstand, misunderstanding all on different days.

It’s so different!  There are no lists of words to study- no tests, unless you want to do a review test at some point, but you do a list of words every day, and by golly, if it isn’t working. Abigail’s spelling has improved incredibly, and most often, when she gets a word incorrect now, she knows its wrong before I even write the correct spelling.   She’s understanding when to change the Y to an I, and she’s thinking about correct spelling in her everyday writing.  Sequential Spelling has made me a very happy teacher and mommy.  When we’re done with school for the year, we’ll stop wherever we are in this book, and pick right back up where we leave off.  If we finish the book, we’ll be on to book number 2.  When Zander starts spelling, I anticipate using the exact same program with him.

Grammar and Writing have taken us a little longer to find our groove with.  I had started out our year with Sonlight’s language arts program.  I really wanted to like it, because it works with everything else we’re using.  It was a nice blend of grammar material and writing material, dictation was done, except that it just didn’t make much sense to my daughter.  After a few weeks, I decided that it wasn’t enough grammar by itself, so we added on some Easy Grammar to our days.  Well, that took a subject we already weren’t excited about and simply made it even longer.    It wasn’t until I started asking around that the light-bulb clicked, and I understood that the LA we were using utilized the “classical approach”  to language arts.  That may be fine for many people, but for my daughter, who had four years of public school under her belt, it just wasn’t clicking.  I suspect that if I had Zander begin first grade next year with Sonlight’s LA we’d have no problems, because he would grow into it and get used to learning that way.

Abigail needed something new.  The LA was not keeping her attention, and the Easy Grammar, while it may be a good way to learn grammar was so dry and boring!  I think we spent about 6 weeks on prepositional phrases alone.   Over Christmas break, I was thinking about our day and decided that if we didn’t like it, I should try something else.  Enter Bob Jones University Press. I was looking and looking for a language arts program that would capture Abigail’s attention.  In reading reviews, I saw one person talk about how colorful the workbooks for English was, and I was sold on trying it out.   I ordered a student workbook and eagerly waited for it to arrive.

Oh, if you could have seen Abigail’s face light up when she saw her new book.  She loved seeing the color and the whole workbook, you could just tell, almost felt familiar to her.   Immediately, we both stopped dreading our language arts time together.    I love their approach- love it, love it.  We spend one chapter of twelve lessons learning grammar and then we switch gears and do twelve lessons of writing.  The pages are very colorful and easy to understand.  Each lesson consists of two pages- one page we do together, and the second page Abigail does on her own.  Flipping through her book did give me a reason for concern right off the bat though.  It didn’t take me long to see unfamiliar lines and drawings that could only mean one thing: sentence diagramming.  I have never diagrammed a sentence in my life- only read about it in the Little House series of books.  I decided I better send for a teacher manual too- so that I could learn to diagram sentences properly.

The teachers manual is very user friendly too!  It offers teaching suggestions, optional worksheets, game suggestions, overhead masters if you choose to use them, as well as answers for all the student activities.   There’s an optional CD-Rom that you can also use to print out extra practice pages and worksheets as well. Together, I am completely sold on BJU Press’s English 4 program for fourth grade language arts.  Next year we will do English 5 for Abigail, and I’m thinking about English 1 for Zander.  I just really like everything about this language arts program.  It’s not complete by itself- you’ll need the spelling too, but I’m really happy with the quality, and the quantity of work for each day is the perfect amount.  As it is, since we started English 4 halfway through the year, I’m contemplating doubling up a few of the chapters.  I think it wouldn’t be too difficult to take a grammar chapter and a writing chapter and have them going simultaneously.  We’ll see.  We’re on our first writing chapter, so once we’ve given that a full go, we’ll see about combining in the weeks to come.

Overall, I am very pleased with both of these programs.  I can already say with absolute certainty that I have two choices made for next year for Abigail. Well, that and the core work are set in stone.  Other decisions are on the way, and I hope to share about those soon as well.