Nine is fine and so am I!

Well, it's been a long long time since my last post!

I've come by occasionally to blog again but then it's been so long I haven't known where to start!

Since my last post, my beautiful daughter has turned 9! We made up a catch phrase when she had her birthday "Nine is fine" and it certainly has been!
She is blossoming into a lovely little lady!
Some cutesy little girl things have made way for more 'lady like' things, interest in fashion, make up etc are on the rise!
I'm really enjoying this season of my daughter's life, besides, it's great having some one to give me fashion and make up tips :)
Every age has it's own charm and beauty doesn't it!
She has become very interested in cooking and learning to sew and we've had some fun cooking times together and with her friends on 'cooking' play dates!

On the home school front, we started Living Books Curriculum when we finished our last school year some months ago. We are thoroughly enjoying it once again!
I love that I can just pick up the teacher's manual and go every day (aside from some minor tweaking to add Aussie history, art, poetry etc).
The books are engaging. Rebekah's favourite book is 'The Children's Homer'! She is yet to realise that her mummy didn't grow up with these books and that I am learning so much while home schooling her!

I've had a terribly busy year with work (I do some part time work from home), with my involvement in the local home school community, our church, and to top it off, we've had to travel interstate a few times this year due to family reasons.
I've missed my blog friends, I know some of you on Facebook and that has been great! However, I've missed the rest of you and have visited your blogs as time has permitted, which hasn't been that much!

I am not sure how much time I can devote to blogging and keeping up with blogs but I will certainly try to come by and visit from time to time. My health is improving slowly which has been great! Thanks to all of you that prayed for me! I know it has helped!

Here are some pictures from the past few months:

Rebekah doing some baking:






A bracelet she 'sewed':



Ron, Rebekah and one of our guinea pigs 'Peekface':



and this last one was just a couple of weeks ago, when Ron got to sit in for the first time on her end of term 'exams'. Here is Rebekah proudly showing off a 'certificate' I gave her for completing her term well!

I'm still here but things are changing!

I've been a bit absent from blog land for the past couple of months, just visiting from time to time as my time and moods allow:)

I've been through some serious 'curriculum' searching for Rebekah for her next academic year (year 4) which for us starts in April (as we don't follow the traditional school year).

I've had some health issues (ongoing and still working on getting answers) and so I've had to make life easier in terms of our homeschool curriculum.
I've loved the Ambleside Online curriculum but I've been finding it a little challenging in terms of my time and energy.
I find I need to research a lot before making changes to books as I don't want to short change Rebekah. I had already modified it a little to suit us but as I was looking ahead to their year 3, I found I just didn't like some of the books and would have had to swap out a few, changing/ adapting involving more effort and time on my part. I think I was starting to tire of all the "older" books too somewhat. Also, at this stage in my life I was looking for someone to 'tell me what to do' without having to research, research etc. So.....I'm going back to Living Books Curriculum!

I researched quite a few different curriculums and prayed a lot and I just couldn't get past LBC. We did enjoy the two years we did with them for Rebekah when we first started out. As I looked through their booklists and teachers manual samples, it brought back memories of some of the fun books we read and all the 'extra activities' they suggest, I realised that a few things were falling through the cracks for us including map work for geography, and a lot of the other hands on activities to add to our learning that don't come naturally to me! I'm sure I'll be changing some and adapting it to suit us but atleast I have a general guide for the year ahead that I pick up each week and know what to do! LBC is also rich in good books and utilises a lot of the classics like Ambleside Online but they also utilise a lot of newer books. I like exposing Rebekah to more modern well written books and being not a literary brain myself I have to search and trawl through book lists and blogs to expose her to these. LBC saves me a lot of time and effort with this!

I've continued to moderate our local homeschool group and also am very involved on a weekly basis with some families that have started recently homeschooling from our church, running the science class in this group. So it's a co-op style group and we're doing Apologia's Astrononomy book this year. I must say we're enjoying and appreciating the dynamics that comes with learning in a group for Rebekah (being an only child).

So, I've been busy and continued to stay productive with life in general (despite my health challenges and this is purely due to the grace of God and an amazing and supportive husband) but just not in blog land! :) I'm really really sorry to all my faithful blog friends out there, I've tried to visit as much as I've been able to but I have not been as active as I have in the past. I'm not sure how and when this will change but this is where we are at for now:) I'll continue to blog and visit you all as and when I can as I've missed my peeks into your lives and the interaction, sharing and friendship that come along with that:)

p.s. if you'd like to be friends on Facebook, please email me from my profile page and I'd love to keep in touch with you through FB :)

AO1 is done, year 3 - here we come!

I've had to explain our 'years' and how we work our school years to many a friend in real life, so I thought I'd explain it to you all here as well.
You see, Rebekah began a year of Kindergarten when she was 5 (2009) for which I used Living Books Curriculum's Foundation Year for this.

The following year we began their Year 1 when she was 6.
But halfway through that, I found myself tweaking their curriculum so much, that I found I was pretty much doing most of it on my own and not following the teachers manul much nor using all of the suggested books.

I then decided I would use the Ambleside Online curriculum that I had been eyeing for many years but just didn't feel confident enough to take on. You see, it's a free online curriculum and there is no teachers manual to tell you what to do each day or give you lots of extra tips and such. Also it seemed quite rigorous to me.
However, as mentioned earlier, due to me changing what we were doing so much anyway in year 1 and gaining a bit more confidence in my home school endeavours, I set out to do AO with Rebekah when she turned 7. I blogged about that here.

This curriculum being quite advanced I started Rebekah in their Year 1. Now, you might say she repeated year 1, which would be technically true except that they are quite different curriculums and the recommended age to begin year 1 (from a lot of mums who've done it) was age 7. (It truly is an advanced curriculum, just a quick look at the book lists will prove that!). So, this is what we did but we called it our Year 2. Clear as mud?:) For all extra curricular activities, Rebekah needs to be in a 'grade' and I didn't want her doing ballet etc with much younger kids, so I decided to call it our Year 2!

Well, we've just finished AO1 (our year 2) and all I can say is that we love it so much we are continuing with it this year. 'This' year for Rebekah is 'Year 3' which we started today. More confusing I know! Not only do we not keep our years simple but to confuse everyone even more, our school year doesn't start till April! Hey, that's the beauty of homeschooling though isn't it! It's quite flexible.

So, often Rebekah is doing school when her friends are on holidays and vice versa. This time however, her holidays coincided with the schools, so she had even more fun with plenty of play dates and a sleep over!

I try to keep things simple but often they get a bit complicated, much to my amazement! I seem to have a talent for this:) It was the same when we decided to call her Rebekah and not spell it the traditional way - Rebecca. I sincerely apologise to everyone out there for the confusion related to this. I just didn't anticipate that it would throw people so much that her name would end up getting spelled as Rebekkah, Rebekka, Rebekha, Rebekahh and so on:) Sorry!

Anyway, back to our homeschooling: I feel such a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction at having completed a whole year of AO. It might seem trivial but I know for me, I was apprehensive about using this curriculum as I knew it would be challenging for Rebekah me:) But I am happy to report that yes, it was challenging but only to the point of stretching her us and not to the point of frustration. I can now say I truly love AO after doing it for a year, though I probably only did 70 to 80 % of it as laid out. We omitted a couple of things and changed a couple to make it our Australian AO1. I've got to say though, I absolutely love the books. The online discussion group is very lively and supportive and best of all it's a curriculum that's doable on a tight budget as most of their resources are free online. You've got to love that!

Here's Rebekah on her first day of Year 3 (AO2) with a few of the books we'll be covering this year, (more on that to come in another post):

Year 2 - Leaving Living Books Curriculum to do Ambleside Online

I'm finally getting around to posting what we do for year 2 which we began early April!

I had been looking into Ambleside Online for many years but had been too overwhelmed or too intimidated by it all to really take the plunge and start it:)

I think two years of Living Books Curriculum has given me the confidence I needed to step out and do Charlotte Mason on my own without the need for a teachers manual.
So, even though I like LBC, I found that after a while I was tweaking it so much that I thought I would be better off to just do it on my own.
Not that you have to do it on your own with AO! There is a very active discussion group where mums discuss the curriculum and it is a great support network for those who decide to use it. This was actually one of the things that kept attracting me to AO and not to mention the great books used as well! I must also add that most of the books AO use are free online, a great bonus for those on a tight budget!

So, even if you don't home school or use another curriculum, may I recommend you look at their booklists? You're sure to get some great ideas from there!

Anyway, back to our year 2! I had heard that AO was quite an advanced curriculum and that one is better off waiting till the child is close to 7 to begin year 1. (hanging around that afore mentioned discussion group for years was great for me!)
So, Rebekah turning 7 this year I decided to take the plunge and do their year 1.
Now, for the purposes of extra curricular activities and for the Board of Studies I need to 'grade' Rebekah so we are calling it Year 2 and also I believe that this curriculum is quite advanced so calling it year 2 is quite appropriate in my opinion!

We are using the curriculum pretty closely to how its laid out with some small adjustments. I am adding some Aussie poetry, literature, art and history in this year by either substituting or adding it in as an extra.

Here is our take on it:

Bible:

We are following Charlotte Mason's PNEU curriculum along with the leftover pages of the Early Reader Wonder Devotional Book from last year and Leading Little Ones to God which we've been doing very slowly for the last couple of years!

Language Arts:

Penmanship:

Continuing with Italics Beautiful Handwriting for Children by Penny Gardner.

Reading:

Rebekah is a very fluent reader so we will continue buddy reading.

Poetry:

A Child's Garden of Verses by R.L. Stevenson
Now we are six by A.A. Milne
The Animals Noah Forgot by A.B. Paterson (Australian poetry)

Literature:

Aesop for Children by Milo Winter
Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit
The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
Parables from Nature by Margaret Gatty
The Way of the Whirlwind by Mary Durack (Aussie literature) (We intended to use this book last year but didn'nt as I felt Rebekah would get more out of it this year)

Maths:

We are continuing with Singapore Maths, doing the 1B and 2A books this year.

Science:

Charlotte Mason emphasised nature study as a foundation for higher level sciences so we will be continuing our focus on nature study using The Handbook of Nature Study as outlined in AO along with our own field guides and other nature books we've accumulated.

In addition to this we will be using (as outlined in AO):
James Herriot's Treasury for Children by James Herriot and
The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton Burgess

We will also be completing 'Growing Strong and Healthy' from LBC Year 1. This is a great book on the human body and nutrition and if you are looking for something free which is also good, it is available online!

History:

Early history, focusing on people rather than events-
Trial and Triumph by Richard Hannula (we are omitting this book)

An Island Story by H.E. Marshall
Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin
Viking Tales by Jennie Hall

To this we are adding My Place by Nadia Wheatley for Aussie history.

Geography:

Paddle to the Sea by Holling C Holling (This is a book covering the great lakes in America but it is such a lovely book that we just had to use it!)

Foreign language:

We are continuing Spanish with Play and learn Spanish by Ana Lombarda.

Drawing:

Drawing with Children by Mona Brooks

Craft:

We will use the many craft books we have in our home library!

Picture Study:

Here we are not following AO, instead we will be using:
Come look with me, exploring Landscape art with Children by Gladys Blizzard
Roy and Matilda: The Golden Locket by Susan Venn (Aussie art)

Composer:

We will be following AO for this and listening to the music of Beethoven, Vivaldi and Chopin.

Hymns and Folksongs:

AO have scheduled these but I am not doing them for now but will add them in later in the year after we are more used to this new curriculum!

P.S. I am deeply indebted to many that have gone on before me in this homeschooling adventure that I have learned from over the years. I especially wanted to mention Jeanne (ohpeacefulday) for her mentoring me in Charlotte Mason and Ambleside Online in particular! I also want to mention that I glean from various resources for my Aussie stuff, in particular I want to make mention of Ruth (From Wonder to Wisdom) and Michelle (Homeschooling Downunder) whose websites / blogs have also helped me immensely. You will find many many wonderful Aussie resources on each of these ladies websites.

We're done, yay!

Hooray, this week Rebekah finished year 1!

I used the 'better late than early' approach and began formal studies using our Year 1 curriculum with Rebekah very gently when she was about to turn 6 which was a year ago.
It was a year of trial and error, chopping and changing books and methods, routines etc. Can I say we're in a 'groove' yet? Not sure! Sometimes it felt like we were in our 'groove' only for things to change, but hey, it's all part of the journey and we are still loving it!

At the end of each term we did our 'exams' Charlotte Mason style mostly and I was amazed at the amount that Rebekah retained from her books.
For instance, during these latest exams, she narrated back so beautifully an Aesop's Fable that I read to her just once more than one month ago!
Charlotte Mason was right about using 'narration' as opposed to 'fill in the blanks'.
We used mostly living books barring one text book for this last term. We had trouble with some of the more 'textbook' type of books with this curriculum and I found that she was not able to narrate back much nor recall much at the end of term exams for term 2. The one textbook we used this term was for science (Growing strong and healthy), and from this she did remember quite a bit and did well with her exam questions which I was pleased about.
We also did a combined term 3 and 4 as we were lagging behind in the schedule put out by "Living Books Curriculum". I adapted it and made our own schedule for this last term and finished it on time!

All in all, I am pleased with Rebekah and how well she has done this year. Great job Rebekah!

And oh, just to make it more 'official' I bought these certificates from ebay which I awarded to her at the end of each term. Well, I am her teacher after all, so I can do this right? :)


















So, we will have a bit of a break before we begin Year 2 so Rebekah will have more time to do this (not that she doesn't already, but there will be more!):


















this:


















and this:

Year 1 Term 3

Ok, so I know that some of you that read my blog are not homeschoolers, so if that's you and you are not interested just skip this one:)

We started this year behind the NSW schools and we have been going at a slow...pace, so this week we started term 3!

I am finding that I am becoming less and less "tied" down to the curriculum I am using, so we are changing things a little this term.
I am still using Living Books Curriculum Year 1 but am changing the schedule to use their science book at a much slower pace than is recommended.
I love this curriculum but I am finding some books are a bit too fast paced for my liking so am even considering changing things around to another curriculum next year...watch this space:)


Also, I have revamped our schedule and taken out some of the things that are not part of LBC but ones that I added (like hymn study and folksongs, not that we ever did much of it, it was just there on my schedule to remind me:)). This is to allow one day a week to be a lighter day which will also serve as a catch up for anything we've not been able to do during the week.
I want to keep this term and next term more focused on the important essentials as we try to catch up a bit. Some might argue that hymn study and folksongs are essential of course:) Anyway, here is the link to my schedule:


Year 1 term 3

By the way, the science book I mentioned above is called "Growing Strong and healthy" and is in the public domain under a slightly different name. It is an older book of course but some of the information is updated by LBC in the ecopy I got. It is a charming little book to teach younger kids about health and nutrition. It has already won Rebekah's interest:) If you are interested, check it out here.

Our daily / weekly schedule

In one of my previous posts on our year 1 curriculum, I mentioned I would post about our weekly schedule.
So, here's the link (as I'm not too tech savvy, it's a link to my google document) and hopefully this will work for you:


Year 1 term 2 schedule and plan



In reality, the time's I've allocated are a general guideline only! Sometimes we are done much earlier and sometimes later than I've noted on my schedule! It's purely a "guide" for me!

We follow the Charlotte Mason philosophy of 1.short lessons(reflected in the schedule) 2. a liberal education (she likened it to spreading a feast before a child) so Rebekah is exposed to art, music, foreign language etc from a young age, 3. our language arts component is also different to more traditional curriculums; for instance at this age, we don't do "spelling" as such, nor grammar, etc, among other things:) (they begin at a later age with her method)4. I placed "habits" in the schedule to remind me to work on them as I need to be in the habit of working on developing good habits in Rebekah:)

For a good introduction and explanation of her method (if you're interested) you can check it out here: http://www.charlottemasoneducation.com/overview.html

Back to us: in term 1 we did 1 week of our curriculum over 1 and 1/2 to 2 weeks but as Rebekah has grown a bit over the last couple of months I'm finding I'm speeding things up a bit and we probably cover it in 1 and 1/2 weeks now. I know this will speed up even more as she gets closer to 7. (That's the beauty of homeschooling isn't it:)) That's why we are currently still in term 2!
Also, on some days, we throw out the schedule altogether and go to the park / for a nature walk / a play date! :) (Learning doesn't only happen with books or at a desk but that's a topic of it's own!)

Our curriculum for Year 1

Well, it's about time I actually posted about our home school curriculum! This may or may not interest you but thought I'd post it just in case:)

We are following Living Books Curriculum which we also used last year as a "kindy" year for Rebekah and I posted about that briefly here.

We decided to stick with LBC again for Year 1 as I liked what I saw for year 1 and I love all the "help" they give you in the Teachers Manual. I am not a very "creative" person when it comes to thinking up some of the hands on type activities etc (that they include in the Teachers manual)that most other mothers find easy to do. The more I use this curriculum the more I find how close to Charlotte Mason in a package it truly is and also it is definitely in my opinion Charlotte Mason for the 21st century (as they say on their website). The only bits I changed was their Geography (I will be using an Australian book to focus on Australian geography), also I decided to substitute Australian history for American history and add some Aussie books for read alouds and poetry.

You can read all about it at their website under year 1 but to make it simpler I'll break it down into subjects as follows:

Language Arts:

This is broken down as follows:

READ ALOUD:
Adventures of Bobby Raccoon, Thornton W. Burgess
Adventures of Grandfather Frog, Thornton W. Burgess
Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack, Thornton W. Burgess
Adventures of Prickly Porky, Thornton W. Burgess
Hey, Listen to This: Stories to read aloud, Jim Trelease
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
Treasure of the Snow, Patricia St. John
Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C. S. Lewis

We will be adding many more books to read aloud to Rebekah this year from our personal library!

STORYTELLING:
Aesop's Fables, Sheila Carroll, ed.

POETRY:
A Child’s Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson

PENMANSHIP:
Italics: Beautiful handwriting for children, Penny Gardner

For Aussie read alouds and poetry, I added for this year:

Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs,
Dot and the Kangaroo by Ethel Padley,
The animals Noah Forgot by A B PAterson,
Stories of Henry Lawson and
The way of the whirlwind by Mary Durack.

Science: There are a list of living books and activity books here:


A House Is a House for Me, Mary Ann Hoberman
First Guide to the Universe, Usborne
Christian Liberty Nature Reader, Volume 1, Florence Bass
Usborne Book of Science Activities: Volume 1, Various
The Reason for a Flower, Ruth Heller
A Picture Book of Thomas Alva Edison: Young Inventor, Louis Sabin
Wild Places: Mountains, jungles & deserts, A. Wilkes
What’s Alive?, Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld

Nature Study:
Handbook of Nature Study, Anna Botsford Comstock
We also use: The wonderland of nature by Nuri Mass and various field guides for Aussie birds, flowers and trees.

Art:
Little Hands Art Book, Judy Press


Picture Study:
Come Look with Me: Animals in art, Gladys Blizzard
Come Look with Me: World of play, Gladys Blizzard

Music:
Stories of Great Composers (Book and CD),
June Montgomery

Geography:

Are we there yet by Alison Lester

World History:
The Story of the Ancient World, Christine Miller

Australian history:

My place by Nadia Wheatley
You and Me Murrawee by Kerri Hashimi and Felicity Marshall
Greatest events in Australia's history - Boardman and Harvey

We also are doing Spanish as Rebekah has taken an interest in Spanish from watching "Dora"!
For this we are using: Play and learn Spanish, A Lomba


Next I will try to post our weekly schedule and how we do "school" here:)

p.s. How embarassing - just goes to show, I shouldn't be trying to do any blogging late at night (which is when I was working on this - late last night!)
Anyway, I forgot to include our "Bible" component and "maths".

For our Bible study we use the one that came with this curriculum - "Early Reader Wonder Devotional Book" by Lynda Pongracz but we also use "Leading Little Ones to God" by Marian M Schoolland which is a much better one in my opinion!

Maths does not come with LBC, so we are using (and absolutely loving) Singapore Maths!

Our first year of structured but "unofficial" homeschooling

Where we live, we don't need to register as a homeschooler / get exemption from attending school until a child is about to turn six. So, Rebekah turning 5 this year, I decided to start a practice/ trial year of homeschooling mainly for our own benefit, just so I can say to all those people out there that ask me why she is not at school that I am homeschooling her (wink wink) and also I wanted to trial a schedule for her and get her used to some more structured work before we embark on the real deal next year.
I chose Living Books Curriculum to do this as they have a teachers guide and lay it out all there for you, rather than me having to fend for myself.
Yes, I know there are lots of freebies out there etc etc but I felt I was spending too much time trying to research and put something together myself and also not being experienced at this, I felt it would be great to have my hand held so to speak while we start out.
I love the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling and while I don't do everything she suggests, I do "try" as much as possible to follow her philosophy as I can see the huge benefits of it.
I will post more on some of her methods in the future, and some things that have worked for us and have really been "proved" here at our place.
So, we are doing a Kindergarten (sort of) year for Rebekah this year.
We commenced in January and have just finished week 8.
Woo hoo!
We are both having a ball!
I will post more on the books we are using etc along with some pictures. By the way, the above picture was of Rebekah's "first day of 'Kindy' ", Jan 5th 2009 with her folders and books in the background.