Summer Vacation at Last!

Well, we survived the first year of homeschooling! I am glad, (no, really) I AM glad that we are homeschooling, I am just really, REALLY ready for summer vacation!! It has been a successful year, for sure, but the ups and downs of learning the ropes was stressful for me. Plus, the way Ry learns had me guessing each day. I'd think I'd have a method down-pat for what helped him, only to discover the next day he'd switch it up and that way wouldn't work. I've learned through research that that is typcial for ADHD children! We were working with My Father's World curriculum, which ended up being far too easy for him and I had to add several phonics books and readers mid-year to supplement. We were using Horizon's math, which is a spiral method and that ended up being a thorn in both our sides!! Apparently, spiral learning is NOT for Ry! That all being said, as I gaze upon my walls still full of artwork and learning projects, I realize that I taught a full school year of good learning to my son all by myself and the proof is all around me! He has learned to read and his handwriting has greatly improved. He has learned to add, subtract and do much more in math concepts. He has learned many many Bible verses and stories and life lessons. He has done lots of science experiments, watching caterpillars emerge as butterflies, hosting an ant farm, building a working volcano, visiting a cave and making butter being some of our most fun science lessons. He has learned how to tell time and keep track of days on a calendar. Counting money has been a hard concept for Ry, but I am proud of what he has accomplished and am confident that he will master it fully in first grade. Our nature walks/nature observation and learning have been the most fun subject we've done. He has learned a lot about animals, plants, trees and all of God's beautiful creation during these times. In looking toward next year, I am excited about the new curriculum we have chosen. After attending the CHAP convention last Friday in Harrisburg, I have a solid plan for next year. We will be switching math curriculums, allowing for a less rigorous pace in math and focusing more on boosting his reading skills. I am really excited about the subjects I've chosen and Ry is too! I only wish there was a curriculum out there that "did it all" for us. However, because of how Ry learns, we are forced to piece together our own curriculum package, using subjects from a variety of publishers. But, I'm thankful that I've learned all this and now know what does and doesn't work before I spend big bucks on all-in-one packages. So, our summer vacation has started today and I am really enjoying sitting here and typing a nice blog at 9:23 AM with only the laundry to do today. Ry is mourning the rain, because his first Monday morning of summer vacation can't be spent outside, but I'll admit to a little bit of gladness that I get a chance to have a lazy rainy day. I will be counting some of our summer activities as First Grade days, among which are visiting the Pittsburgh zoo, a visit to the air and space museum and various other educational field trips I can dream up to count for school days. Saturday, we did a 5 mile hike in the mountains. Ryan learned about poisonous snakes, underground mountain springs, viewed many varieties of butterflies and watched a baby wolf spider, stink bug, aphid and spider mites in action. We marveled at the beauty of the illusive Indigo Bunting and spotted various animal signs. Did I count this day as a First Grade school day?? Absolutely!! Think how much he learned that was much more memorable than sitting in front of a book reading about these things?? Not that reading about things is not valuable! It surely is and we do a lot of that as well. But Ry thrives on these hands-on learning experiences, which is my number one reason for continuing homeschooling next year. They don't offer this kind of learning in public school. And we have the freedom to do all this and more. As difficult as some days are, I am so thankful we have the homeschooling option. I really don't know how Ry would succeed in public school with his ADHD symptoms which cause him to learn much differently than the average child. So, all that being said, we are really excited to have a break from school, yet look forward with anticipation to all we will be learning next year as well! Happy Summer to all my readers! See you in the Fall!

A Child-like faith.

I received a discourse in the car the other day from my 7 year old son. He was explaining the need people have that requires them to have food to survive. I told him he was correct, that without food, people would die and asked him what other thing people need in order to survive. "Water," he replied. I then proceeded to go into great detail about how people actually require water more than food, that you could survive much longer without food than you could without water. "A great schooling moment", I think to myself. He listens intently then says, "Mom, there is one other thing people need to survive." "What's that?" I ask, wondering what crazy thing he is going to say, probably something like "birthday cake", or "matchbox cars" or "kitkat bars." "People need to trust in God, Mom, those are the three things we need to live."

Food
Water
Trust in God

The three things the human race needs to survive. What a wise soul you are, my son! And I am humbled by your simple childlike faith in God. How He is an integral part of your everyday life. You taught your teacher something special on that day. I praise God for you!

Making Butter

The week has been harried and its only Tuesday. Of course, it IS the week before Christmas, and while all other sensible homeschooling moms have wisely opted to start Christmas break early, this crazy mom has aspired to have a full week of school so that we can have next week AND the first week of January off. We are studying cows and dairy products this week and one of our science projects was to make butter. Well, being skeptical, but optimistic, I purchased said pint of whipping cream last night with high hopes but not much faith that this would actually work. I actually purchased 2 pints of whipping cream in case this frontier mom ruined the first batch. I've come to discover that its impossible to fail at butter making. Apparently, it is one of the easiest things ever, or perhaps I had an exceptionally great batch of whipping cream to start with. However I can claim the success, our butter took a mere 15 minutes of hearty shaking to form full fluffy peaks of richness. Flavored with a little salt and colored with a little yellow food coloring to make it pretty, I may never buy butter in a tub again. The flavor and texture is sweet, creamy and smooth. WOW! I have heard horror stories of failed butter attempts, small, liquidy, curdly, not fully formed butter. Prepared for the worst, I was amazed to open our jar and discover beautifully formed butter. With a 6 year old at the helm, we cannot claim consistent shaking, but somehow we did it! How cool is that? We're ready for that log cabin and covered wagon! We've got the butter making down pat! We probably would fail, however, at milking the cow by hand!

Wishing you and yours a Blessed Christmas!
Mrs. Mom

Shaking the jar of cream.

The finished product.

The happy shaker!

School update

As I write this, I am anxiously passing the minutes until we can check school off the list for the day. We have one more day of school (today) before we have a full week off for Thanksgiving break. I had originally scheduled school to start this morning at 10, but when I went to retrieve my student, found him deeply engrossed in a Curious George TV special showing until 11. Being the gracious and loving mom that I am, I concluded all concentration would be blown anyway if I drug him away from this special showing. So I am killing some time until we can start at 11. We have very little to do today anyway, just finishing up some math and reading, so we should be done in short order. And boy am I glad! It has been a difficult week in Math. Ry has been struggling with coins and counting coins to the point where I put every other subject on hold (last friday) and we worked solely on coins. Saturday morning, he decided it truly was in his best interest to memorize the value of the penny, nickel and dime (threatened with wearing a hand-made flash card booklet all weekend) and promptly proceeded to accurately answer my drills correctly every time. Ah the stubborness of an ADHD child, who really could memorize anything, just not if he finds it boring! So I feel we accomplished that!

Now, my next hurdle is getting him to count coin combinations. We will start that today. Hopefully that will not be as much a struggle as the previous week has been! I truly need a nice long break from school and Ry does too. His little mind is full to bursting with double digit addition, measurement, coins, graphs, place value, vowels, reading, phonics and science facts and projects. Not to mention handwriting skills, bible verse memorization and the many skills we work on every single day that ADHD children need to have to succeed. No wonder we are tired!

I truly DO love homeschooling, if you were beginning to wonder from the tone of the previous paragraph. It is so rewarding to see that "light bulb" turn on and so rewarding to be the one who has helped my child succeed. But homeschooling an ADHD child is incredibly taxing. It takes extreme patience and lots of activities. Its exhausting!

So this Thanksgiving season I pause to give thanks. I am very thankful for the opportunity to homeschool my child and thankful for the wisdom and grace God grants me to do so. I am also very thankful for days off from school which allow me to regroup and rest and think of something else besides the all-consuming responsiblity of educating my son. Thank you God for your many blessings!

Well, Curious George is over, so I shall now resume my teacher duties. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone! Blessings to all my readers!

Learning to read!

Wow! I can't describe the feeling I have in knowing that I am responsible for teaching Ry to read. Mrs. Mom is over the moon in excitement. Ry is pretty proud of himself as well. Granted, he is not yet reading War and Peace, just simple stories, words and short sentences. But he IS reading. He is stringing words together on his own, sounding out new words, and generally amazing me with his quick picking up of new sounds. I am in awe that I have taught my son to read! What an incredible feeling!

Apollo 11 Cleared For Lift-Off

Today was a pretty cool day. In Science this week, we've been learning about the moon, various missions to the moon, astronauts, space and other interesting stuff. So today, as our science project, we built a spaceship and re-enacted Apollo 11's mission to the moon. I'll let the photos tell you the story!

As I've never added photos to my blog, I still haven't figured out how the captions work. So here is what's going on:

1. Getting ready to launch.
2. Interior view of rocket. Astronaut's seat and wing controls which actually can move the wings (albeit only certain directions).
3. Interior view of control panel on front.
4. Waiting impatiently for Mission Control (mommy) to authorize launch.
5. Waiting for countdown.
6. Hatch lowered and countdown begun. 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 BLASTOFF!
7. Mid-flight in space.
8. Having landed safely on the moon, our astronaut is planting the American flag on the surface.
9. Sorry about the blurriness, our astronaut is demonstrating for Mission Control's benefit, the standard of gravity on the moon. Each step is like a large giant bounce.
10. Back in the spacecraft and homeward bound, our astronaut is talking to Mission Control to execute a safe landing.

P.S. If you carefully look, you'll notice the hatch was replaced while ON the moon. The first hatch (blue laundry basket) kept falling in and beaning our astronaut on the head. So, during the mission, repairs were made and a new, better quality hatch (green laundry basket) was installed. Generally, it is a good idea to keep your astronaut conscious until he returns to earth!

What a great way to have science AND history class!

From Mission Control:
Over and Out!

Success with Ordinal Numbers

Yay!! What a great feeling. I finally feel confident that Ry has a strong grasp of ordinal numbers, at least 1st - 10th, which is all that is required so far. In looking ahead yesterday, I saw that his math curriculum begins addition and counting by tens next week. I was in a panic about starting 2 new concepts without fully grasping ordinal numbers, then pairing that with counting days of the week by using ordinal numbers....well, he was struggling. But today, it just seemed to CLICK! He whizzed through his practice worksheets (Thanks to Carla C., another homeschooling mom, for the tips on extra printable practice sheets) and finished his math page in record time. Whew! Relief. I have to say, this kid will be far ahead of where I was in Kindergarten by the end of the year. Its amazing how different education is today as compared to, well, a long time ago. :)

TTFN,
Mrs. Mom