Last week we did a brief history/geography lesson on the Makings of America. Here’s Nyomi with the globe as she learns to locate the United States on a globe and atlas:

We learned about the American flag and its significance (our freedom from Great Britain and the waving of the flag on the battleground). We also discussed our National Anthem and sung it a bit (and played it on the piano) as part of our music.

The weekend passed by rather quickly and I’m getting ready for the next telechat series at Christian Ladies Connect, so I’ve spent some time preparing for that. Meanwhile, I’ve been kind of harried about Nyomi’s science lessons for the month.

I’ve got some objectives in place for her this year for science and I want to cover a segment of these before the end of September– so I’m doing some spur of the moment search for cool projects to integrate into our objectives and we’ll be set. Math-U-See program is EXCELLENT!  We’ve gone through 12 lessons (although they’re set to be paced one lesson per week and we’ve only been in school for 3 weeks) but she loves the program and I do too. Which says ALOT for this particular program since I’m sooo picky. Currently she’s on the concepts of adding numbers together using manipulatives and I’m seeing where she’s able to recognize a set of 3 1’s within the a “6″ block. She will split the block mentally in half and say “I see 3 units on this side and 3 units on the other side, so this is a 6 block”. Then we take the 6 block and, say, another 3 block and “smoosh” them together to make “6 + 3 = 9″ or “6 + 3 is the same length as 9″. The program is quite comprehensive I think…with the exception of money (which we’ll work on with time- recognizing pennies, dimes, nickles, and quarters and assigning value to them). I’ve been meaning to find a good pretend cash register for those upcoming lessons/games.

Well I guess that’s all for now… We’ll need to do a new podcast episode soon.

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Today was Nyomi’s first day in Co-op, where lots of homeschool families get together weekly to give the kids an awesome learning experience to supplement our daily work at home.

Nyomi really had a blast and enjoyed the “classroom” experience of being with other kindergartners and having 4 teachers. Her schedule consists of 4 blocks where she has: reading, creative thinking, P.E. (then snacktime), and finally music. Here is a picture of her wonderful morning:

At morning assembly wearing her name tag and backpack at hand.

More postings later on some of the things we are learning in history this week.

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I didn’t know that Will Smith and Jada Pickett were homeschooling their children.? I found this to be quite interesting (yeah homeschooling!) http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/will%20and%20jada%20opt%20to%20homeschool%20their%20children

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This podcast episode is about Nyomi’s plant project this summer.  She just grew her first sunflower is mighty proud of it! Listen in to this episode to find out about our upcoming project plans for the year, and a brief mini lesson review and discussion my daughter and I had on how plants grow.

Click Here To Listen

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I’m doing a study on managing our lives with Elizabeth George’s book “Life Management for Busy Women”.

I hold the studies weekly by teleconference at www.christianladies.net (it’s free to join!)

One thing that has really struck me in chapters 1-3 is the idea of “early” time and “first” time with the Lord. Elizabeth really stresses this in her book– but I like to think that there are a variety of ways we can spend time with the Lord–but however we choose to do it, we must ALWAYS abide in Him. He alone makes our heart tick, and keeps on giving us the strength we need for our daily tasks, such as homeschooling.

I like the “Rules for Daily Life” on page 33 of her book: “Begin the day with God Open the book of God Go through the day with God Converse in mind with God Conclude the day with God Lie down at night with God” (Life Management for Busy Women, Elizabeth George, p. 33)

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Today we did a more relaxed homeschooling approach since all week long we went straight by the books in our chosen curriculum. Since it’s Friday we kind of “chilled” and  then we came home and she sang with her dad as he played some praise and worship music. She then watered her plant (a sunflower which has grown tremendously under her care in the past 2 months

Afterward she worked on a few handwriting worksheets and played some computer games on PBSKids.org.   So in all, today she did Language Arts, Music,Science, and P.E. In science, she’s been learning about how soil, sunlight, and water help a plant grow.? Here’s her beautiful sunflower which she’s been growing for about 2 months now:

Overall, this has been a very successful first week of homeschooling.

Up until today, we’ve been working vigorously through our Abeka program for Language Arts, the Math-U_See for mathematics, practicing writing a-c lowercase, piano lessons, and learning French… French has been great!

Her father’s native language is French so it’s a real plus having the “source” around to help us integrate the language into our family life. In the meantime, when he’s at work we’ve been playing a game I like to call the “BonBon Game”, where we have several differerent colors of candies (or in French “bonbons” or “les bonbons”)…but since we don’t keep candy at our house we used colored counting chips instead.

I made flash cards and set out groups of 5 red chips, 4 yellow, 3 green, 2 blue, and 1 orange, for example. The flashcards gave both the names of the colors and the amount in French. I would ask “Je voudrais deux bonbons bleu, s’il vout plait” and she would learn that I am asking for 2 blue candies and would give me what I requested. The other half of the game is when she had to ask me (in French) for the amount and colors of candies she wanted.

In piano, she’s learning theory (quarter notes, half notes, whole notes), what a measure or bar is, bass clef and treble clef, and so far is able to recognize the notes C,D, and E on a music sheet. On the piano keyboard she recognizes middle C and all low and high C’s. Of course, these are things we’ve been working on since she was very little, so this didn’t all happen this week!!! I plan to make some music flashcards (or buy some, or even print some out if I can find a great free resource) so that she can learn to recognize more of the notes. Anyone knows of a great resource for this?? Let me know!

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