OLD HOMESCHOOLERS NEVER DIE . . . THEY JUST WRITE CURRICULUM


"Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew,
like showers on new grass,
like abundant rain on tender plants."

Deuteronomy 32:2

Courses of Study

To view the Course of Study for each grade level, you can click on the "Course of Study" label
or "Search This Blog" for the specific grade level you wish to see.
To date, I have courses of study completed for kindergarten through fourth grades.

Newsletter Articles

In 2013 the Lord started me producing a newsletter for the homeschool group we are a part of. Every other month I write an article on a topic the Lord has put on my heart. I've decided to add these articles to this blog. I hope you will find encouragement through some of my ramblings. You can click on the label "Newsletter" to find the articles.

Friday, July 30

Phonics, Step 4

Now that we have completed learning the blends, I wrote a story and used clip art to illustrate it. After K. has read it a few times we will be on to learn the clusters.

I've grouped the clusters this way:
  • ar, er, ir, or, ur
  • ch, sh, th
  • aw, ew, ow, oo (as in spoon)
  • oy, oi, ou, oo (as in book)
  • ing, ang, ong, tion

Children know how to say these clusters -- they use words with them all the time -- however, they don't know what letters make the sounds. Using this reasoning, this is how I'm introducing the clusters (I'll use 'ar' in this example):
  1. Show a picture of a car and ask K. what it is.
  2. K. tells me "car"
  3. I write "car" next to the picture
  4. We sound out the word: k - ar
  5. I bring attention to the sound of 'ar'
  6. We use the letter cards to build more words which contain 'ar'. Here are some examples: hard, card, far, jar, mark, lark

If I want K. to have more practice:

  • I can write the words we build on a sheet of paper for us to review.

  • To spread phonics over the whole week, and since she enjoys cutting and gluing, I can also write the words on a paper (or each on a card) and K. can find pictures of the items and glue them next to the word.

  • Another idea is to write some sentences K. can read after each group of clusters is learned. They might be silly like "Her car is full of fur." K. could illustrate the sentences.

After learning the clusters there will be another book to read.

Sunday, July 25

Our Neighborhood

Last week we finished all the structures that we were making for "Our Neighborhood". We took them in on the living room floor and arranged them in their basic direction from our house. In this first picture you can locate our house (bottom) and get the idea of the main street going past the stables, doctor's office, gas station, and bank.


This picture gives a better view of the gas station and shows the library. We made the grocery store, but it is in the other direction and isn't in these pictures.


K. enjoyed getting out her cars and people and playing. The buildings are made from half gallon juice or milk cartons. I covered them with butcher paper and K. used markers to draw on the windows and doors. Most of the buildings are open on the top so she can put people "in" the building. For the stables we made fences from tongue depressors, stuck them (and glued) into a round styrofoam, and found pictures of horses and glued them on the fences.

Wednesday, July 21

Bubbles

Last week I was going through our bookshelves pulling out books I wanted to use for kindergarten science and came upon the book Make It Change by David Evans and Claudette Williams. It doesn't go with our kindergarten theme of Creation, so I decided to go through it before going back to our regular book, Science Experiences. Yesterday we did the page "Can you make bubbles?" I had a large container of bubbles that was about 4 years old, so we used that up instead of making our own bubbles, but we did make our own bubble blowers from pipe cleaners. We made this large one first, then we made a couple smaller ones. There was a slight breeze and we discovered that the breeze was better at "blowing" the really big bubbles than us blowing them. We played with the bubbles for about 30 minutes. It was a lot of fun!



Thursday, July 15

Eddie's Friend Boodles

This wasn't one of my favorite books by Carolyn Haywood. It was a good story, but not very captivating. The book did introduce us to funzies, though, and we are having fun with them. A funzie is a tall tale -- like Paul Bunyan -- something you and everyone listening knows isn't true, but it is fun to say.

Tuesday, July 6

Eddie's Menagerie

I was a bit disappointed in this book by Carolyn Haywood. It was written in 1978, and I guess she changed with the times and decided they didn't need to go to church on Sundays.

Other than that it was a very good story. If your children like animals, they will love Eddie and his adventures that center around the pet shop, a colorful cap, his family, and friends. Eddie is older in this book so I thought K. might not relate to it and like it as well, but she enjoyed it just fine -- "read the next chapter!"

Friday, July 2

Back Yard Science


See our catepillar? A few days ago while I was weeding in the backyard I found this little catepillar. K. and I brought it inside and put it in a jar with an avocado leaf and bell pepper sprouts (we had an over-abundance). It ate the bell pepper sprouts, so the next day we went back out and gathered an assortment of leaves and plants from where I found it. Of course, it likes the tomato leaves! Anyway it has almost doubled in size now.

Calendar

When K. was 2 she started asking about when things would happen, so I decided it was time to introduce the calendar. I made a two-week calendar form and put it on the bulletin board in our dining room. I labeled the days of the week and used clip art for pictures and symbols for events -- church, Cubbies, park day, grocery shopping, birthdays, sisters visiting, etc. -- and covered them with clear contact to make them last. With the two-week calendar we had the concept of what was happening this week and next week. Then on Sunday, the events that were "next week" got moved up to "this week". I also made a sun, with the center cut out to move from day to day to show which day it was. We used this for almost 2 years.

Now we use the family calendar and just put up special events (not weekly the weekly ones of church, Bible Study, groceries as she now understands what day those things happen). We use an orange highlighter to draw pictures of these events and to circle the number of the current day. I chose a highlighter because any writing on the calendar (birthdays, dr's appointments, etc.) will still show through.

Two and Two are Four

This book, by Carolyn Haywood, is about a family that moves from the city to the country. The Dad buys a farm, but he takes the train to the city to his job and there is an older couple (the Perkins) who work the farm. The isn't really about the farm, but about living in the country and the adventures that Teddy and Babs and the Perkins' grandchildren (Peter and Jane who come for the summer) have. The children have problems with a skunk and pigs. They go on a barge ride for the 4th of July, and they get a pony. There are a couple chapters that deal quite nicely with disobedient children, although I think I would have prefered Babs having to help clean her hat instead of it being done for her.

At the beginning of the book K. started saying, "I want to live on a farm." There are a couple chapters she really enjoyed and we have read them more than once.