Thursday, August 21, 2014

Wow, what a week it has been! I am overwhelmed with the support I have gotten from other home school moms, notes, texts, posts, it has been just when I needed it. Also Darin has been super supportive and a great listening ear as we tweak our schedule and find our routine.

We started this week talking about creation and working on letters. I am happy with the progress he has made this week. We think Zane is a numbers man, not a letters man. But there is a letters game we have been playing (simple flash cards, who knew?) and his grandparents bought him a book, Magic Treehouse #1 and it seems like with the combination of those two things, he is wanting to read (and by this I mean, being read to) AND learn his letters. Woo hoo! So we are headed out tomorrow to the Lincoln Library to find more Magic Treehouse books, renew our card and get more books to go with our units. I have already read the entire book to him and his dad just started over with it so we have to get more for our own sanity.

A little bit of the tweaking has been that I have had to jump ahead in lessons, the first 10 lessons were not enough for him apparently so I decided to add some more things in to challenge him so that was a challenge for me to hurry up and finish preparing the lessons from the first week in September.

Tomorrow after the library we are headed off to Morrill Hall and the planetarium. If anyone has good ideas of making a solar system we would love to hear it!


Monday, August 18, 2014

Well, it's been a while since I have posted. I guess it's fitting to start now for a couple of reasons. One, we are at the two year mark on Wednesday of my re constructive surgery. That was the 8 1/2 hour surgery. But we are recovering and starting a new adventure!

Last March, Darin and I felt a strong calling from God to home school Zane. This was not a decision we took lightly. I am at times overwhelmed with the responsibility I have for his education. At the same time, I am overwhelmed with joy to be the one to teach him to read, write,...And of course FIELD TRIPS. Zane and I love field trips! We are also thrilled because we have some very special people that we are blessed to call friends that home school as well. So our play dates and field trips are going to be awesome. We are also very excited to meet new people on our adventure.

Here is a picture of the kindergartner. He woke up by himself at 7:30 which rarely happens and wanted to start right away. I negotiated coffee first and we got down to it. The formal school work, took about an hour. We are using My Father's World which starts with the 7 days of creation. So the first seven days of school we are going to be doing a bit different activities. Also, next week we have a State Fair trip planned to the State's Largest Classroom. The following week a trip to Edgerton Science Museum for a lab.

Some of the activities we have planned at home in addition to his formal school work are playing, reading and playing. All the things a 6 year old should be doing! We are going to try to slip in some music lessons, swim lessons, plays at Lied Center, Orpheum and Rose Theater and cooking. The music lessons we will probably wait a bit on. It's a book for me to teach him piano aimed at home schoolers. I played all through high school so I am hoping that I can at least get him started.

So stay tuned for more updates!