Closer look at our filing system

Here's one weeks hanging file folder. From left to right you have my items, Miss Green's folder, Mr. Blue, Miss Pink, Miss Purple, Mr. Yellow, Science, and History.

This is my binder. I have post-its, a pencil holder, and lined paper in the front. I use the lined paper for writing narrations quickly before adding them to their illustrations or dictating them back to them. Below is the same binder on the side. From front to back you have history and science together, Miss Green, Mr. Blue, Miss Pink, Miss Purple, and Mr. Yellow.

Kindergarten ABC Workbox Ideas

I've mentioned Mr. Yellow is showing signs of being ready for school work. He's developed quite the addiction to my phone and tablet. If I don't have him right beside me, he's sure to be hidden with one of them under the covers in his room. The little stinkerpot! So, I've been trying to make sure I have several fun activities planned for him to do independently. I get him started and then let him

have fun with it. I haven't been using our workboxes since we moved, but I'm ready to get them out for him now. I think they'll work beautifully for him, so I've been brainstorming ideas. Here's what I have thus far.

Handwriting Without Tears Capital Letter Pieces

We have these already along with the cards. I've been planning on adding magnets to the back forever, but I see

now they have magnetic pieces now. It's about time! I'll probably just add magnets to our existing set though.

Roll-A-Dough Letters

We have these too. I'm not thrilled with them, as my kids haven't had the dexterity to make the long thin pieces needed at the age they need these. I do like the idea of them, and I see that you can use them with shaving cream or rice. We may do something along those lines with Mr. Yellow.

Lauri Alphabet Puzzle Boards

I love Lauri products, and this one is no exception. It has 3 parts, matching the shape of the letters, matching the shape of the picture, and putting the two together.

Alphabet Art Puzzle

This is one of the prettiest alphabet puzzles I've seen. I think this will be my 3rd child to use it.

Clothespin ABC Match-up

I love Erica's printables. I printed this one up and laminated it. Then I printed the alphabet on labels, stuck them on clothespins, and Mod Podged them.

I'll probably also use some of the File Folder Games I made for Miss Purple when she was this age.

I found them!

I actually managed to find the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Reading magnets. This means we can start reading with Mr. Yellow this week! I need to add the cd to iTunes, so it will be on my phone. After that, its all systems go. Have I mentioned how much I love having in iPhone? I had an iPod Touch before, which I adored, but the unlimited data plan on the iPhone is just amazing. The kids use it all the time when w
e're on the road and need to look something up. I let Mr. Yellow use it when we're at swim practice. It's hard

for a 2 year old to stay in the same place every night for 2 hours with very little to do. We used to haul lots of toys and books in for him, but now I just consider that his screen time. I don't let him use it for the full 2 hours, but it does keep him entertained for as long as I'll let him keep it.

At the moment, he's enjoying the Starfall app. Everytime it plays the ABC song he runs to me to have me sing it with him. It's adorable.

More finds from the barn

Today one of the boxes we went through was full of binders. Some of them were Story of the World activity books, but others were the kids history and science binders. It was so fun to see their handwriting from 3 years ago.

Another box had a lot of printer supplies, i.e. labels, greeting cards, photo paper, and tri-fold brochure paper. I see some printing in my future!

Mr. Yellow is showing many, many signs of reading readiness, so I guess I need to get fired up in that department. We started learning the Short Vowel poem from the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. Now if I could only find the magnets to go with it. I think may still be in the barn somewhere. Hmm...

I've made a lot of printable math activities for him. I am loving Confessions of a Homeschooler right now. She's got great stuff like a Number Word Match-Up that he has great fun with. We put the laminated print out on a cookie sheet, and then he matches up his magnetic letters to the paper. Then he counts the items and "reads" the word and points to the number and says it. He also likes the Number Dots Worksheet to use with pompoms from Dollar Tree. I got him some little tongs, so he uses tho

se to pick up the pompoms and put them on the print out. He likes to count while he's doing them and then he says the final number. I've also let him play with the Cuisenaire Rods a bit after Miss Purple is done with them and he uses them with the fabulous Cuisenaire Activity and Exploration Book. We haven't played any of the games yet, but he has done the pictures. He's getting the hang of them for sure. I have the Cuisenaire letter book, but it may be another one that's in the barn. Are you seeing a pattern here? Speaking of patterns, I've also got pattern block work planned for him. We have the Melissa and Doug set, but I want to get a magnetic foam set to use with the Patternables book we have on hand, in page protectors no less!

I tore up the Capital Letter Stories workbook and put it in page protectors, so he can do it over and over again with dry erase markers. I recently saw the same system at Wal-Mart, but in a dry erase form. I prefer the page protectors though, as I can choose which letters to put in his binder for the week. This system reminds me of Handwriting Without Tears, but its a little more colorful/kid friendly. We have the wooden letter pieces for that program too and need to pull them out in the coming weeks.

Oops!

I loaded up with Miss Pink and Miss Purple this morning to make the 3 hour drive to my brand new nephew, but the car wouldn't start. I've suspected the starter was going for a few weeks, but this morning it completely gave up. So, I'm house bound until Daddy gets it or the van fixed.

When we moved back to this state 3 years ago, we knew we would be in a rental for about a year before moving into this house. Instead of unpacking everything in the rental, we loaded up the barn with things that weren't in use at the time. Fast forward 3 years, and now we'd really like to use the barn as, well, a barn. So, today we went out and filled up the truck bed with boxes to sort through. There's lots more to go through, but this made a good start on it.

We found the greatest stuff, including some of the kids most loved toys, i.e. dress-up clothes. My greatest find though was all the school supplies! I found my missing Story of the World 4 cd set, unopened. I've since bought the mp3s, so I guess I can put this one up for sale. I found a lot of Bob Books, which are perfect for Mr. Yellow in the next few months. We also found a lot of Peg Puzzles, which Baby Orange is loving. He puts a piece in and claps for himself. The greatest part is he claps whether he gets it in or not. It's just hilarious and adorable. Mr. Yellow is also liking the alphabet puzzles we pulled out. We discovered duplicates of the Usborne Internet Linked Encyclopedia of World History and the Usborne Internet Linked Science Encyclopedia. These were put away before I cataloged our books in the rental, which reminds me I need to update those records. This just scratches the surface of the great stuff we found. Most of what I'm excited about is for Mr. Yellow's kindergarten year. He's starting to show signs of reading readiness. It's such an exciting time! More on his plans later though. For now here's Miss Purple's list.

Song School Latin We've used this before, with Miss Pink. She enjoyed it, and I imagine Miss Purple will as well. We love the songs!

Math Mammoth 1A She's nearly done with this, so we'll soon move on to 1B. I haven't done well making sure facts are memorized, so I need to add some drill work.

Miquon Orange I used Miquon when Miss Green was 4. I pushed a little too much and we both ended up hating it. However, I scored this for free when CurrClick had an Easter giveaway. I printed out the pages that use Cuisenaire rods, (another find in the barn) and have her working 1 or 2 a day. I've seen her make connections that weren't there before, so I think I'm going to buy the Red book and continue in the same way.

Writing With Ease 1 I would say how wonderful this is, but I think I'd be repeating myself. One thing I don't think I've mentioned is how this series piques their interest in some classic books. We've gotten a lot of library books after using passages from them for narration and dictation.

First Language Lessons 1

She's loving the poetry memorization. I've typed in some of the definitions, which we'll start doing as copywork soon. I use StartWrite for that, which is quite handy. I can easily print out different fonts for different kids.

Handwriting Skills Simplified Level B Her letter shapes are pretty good, but she doesn't know how to use the lines yet. I'm hoping this will help that issue.

Algebra, here we come!

We certainly did a shortened day, but since we missed so much time with the baby we have to be diligent.

We did have an amazing, wonderful thing happen today. Miss Green has always been math phobic to say the least. She has resisted my teaching on anything related to math. I had decided though to switch her to Teaching Textbooks next year, since its something the younger ones will be able to use as well unlike Aleks which is a subscription. I printed out the 7th grade placement test last week, and to my great surprise she said it was too easy. She asked to have the next test to take. So, I printed the Pre-Algebra test. She did great on it! She missed a few questions, but was still passing. So, she wanted the Algebra test. That was more challenging, but after I had her do 2 sample lessons of Algebra, I made the executive decision to order Algebra 1 for her. I can not believe how excited she is about it. She called Grammy to share how thrilled she was. So, it looks like I'll be placing a Timberdoodle order soon.

Miss Pink this year, 3rd grade or so, wrote in her binder today "gnirob si htam." I think she's tired of working on clocks and time. I'll have to fast forward her to the next lesson in Math Mammoth 3A. So, here's her work for this year.

The aforementioned Math Mammoth. I don't think I've mentioned that I bought all levels of Math Mammoth when Homeschool Buyer's Co-op had it offered. It was one of my best purchases yet. It's really nice to be able to print out remedial things for any of them to complement their other math programs. Just this year we've switched over to using it as our core instead of a supplement.

First Language Lessons 3

I just can't say enough good about this program. My kids especially love the poetry memorization. I love it even more that I've got the pdf for the workbook. It makes it so easy to file.

Writing With Ease 2

This one we may skip part of to move up to 3. I'm still undecided. She's doing quite well with it so far. I have the pdf for the student pages on this one too. It makes it super easy to replace anything that goes missing in the course of the week.

So, that's her core. She also has the subjects we do as a group, which will come later.

Another successful day notebooking

Today we did our basics and finished up with silent reading of history books. Everyone was reading about FDR today. Afterwards, they each drew a picture and captioned it. They knew they would be notebooking their books, and I believe paid better attention to it than as per usual. So, I think we're going to stick with narration for the foreseeable future.

So Mr. Blue's (age 12) plans for now and the coming year are as follows:

MindBenders- B series I think this is his favorite subject. He pulls out extra to do. He likes me to sit with him while he does it and talk him through it. It's lots of fun for both of us. We may move on to the C Series if he completes this before the end of the school year.

Math Mammoth 5 & 6

He's getting a better grasp on math this year. He's actually enjoying long division. He likes to have competitions with his older sister to see who can work a problem faster.

First Language Lessons 4

I really like this program. I'm adding one small thing this year for all of mine using it, copywork for the grammar rules and definitions. He's a champion at diagramming.

Writing With Ease 4

This is another love of mine. I've found that all of mine who have used this program are able to narrate quite well. They're also better at summarizing than the oldest, who never used WWE. I really appreciated watching Susan Wise Bauer teach her son out of this book.

Of course he also has group subjects, which we'll discuss later. I need to add in handwriting for him, as his italics need a little work.

Major breakthrough!

I'm reading The Well-Trained Mind yet again, but I was forced to take a break when it fell apart. I've since rubber cemented it, and am waiting, ever so patiently to crack it back open. While I was reading the science section for the elementary grades, I once again was motivated to "do narrations." After reading from the Apologia Anatomy book I had each one tell me what they remembered. Then we pulled out the paper and they drew something to go along with it. I wrote their narrations all on one page for them to copy, but they all ended up writing a lot more to go with their illustrations. I really can see how much more they learned using the narration method. They also made sure to pull them out to show Daddy when he got home. They don't usually want to share what they've done and only will under duress. For them to be anxious to share is a huge accomplishment. I'm looking forward to doing more for history and science.

Filing has worked surprisingly well for us. Every Sunday evening we pull out the file and put our papers in our respective binders. I've been slowing adding things to the files as we go, and we've abandoned some things that I to put in their own special file for a later date.

So, for Miss Green, now an 8th grader, we've got a short line-up. I'm still tweaking what she needs, and while we do that we're keeping it simple.

English in Blue and White.

She really, really likes this one, and insists its the best grammar program she's ever done. It was written by two 8th grade teacher's to make sure their students knew what they needed for high school.

Vocabulary From Classical Roots C

She completed the A book rather reluctantly, but after about a month off has attacked this one voraciously. I think she's realized that its fun to learn finally.

Vocabulary Cartoons

This one is quite enjoyable to flip through. I've learned a few new words.

Aleks

This is one of the few maths she's like thus far. I'm not sure what she likes about it, but she's learning, enjoying learning, and gaining confidence.

Writing With Skill

We just started this today, but I can already tell we're going to adore it. She never did Writing With Ease, but I've loved it with the younger ones.