I am SO excited for all the curricula I bought for this coming school year! I found most of it through the Great Homeschool Convention, which I was going to attend, but it abruptly shut down due to COVID-19. I was disappointed, but I went on the website and combed through every website of every vendor to find materials. I really wanted to be able to look at the materials in person--websites for homeschooling stuff don't always provide enough information--but I did the best I could, and I'm really excited about everything I got!
RightStart Math Level A
This was by far the most expensive curriculum I bought, coming in at a whopping $300 for the books and supplies. I dithered over buying it, but it looked so perfect that I finally took the plunge. (And if I continue with RightStart after this year, I can continue to use the supplies, and only pay about $90 for each year's books.) I was looking for a math curriculum that was comprehensive, open & go, and most importantly, fun. The last thing I want is to put Rhonda off of math because the curriculum is boring. RightStart incorporates tons of games--they say that games are a much better way to practice math facts than flashcards or worksheets. And I agree! It has a lot of manipulatives (one of the reasons it's so expensive). And it is a completely comprehensive curriculum that requires no extra planning from the parent. No other curriculum I saw seemed as wonderful as this one. And since my other curricula were much cheaper, I ultimately decided I could afford to spend more on this one. And if I'm going to be spending a lot of money on one thing, it certainly ought to be math!
Jot It Down! from Bravewriter
This is one I've actually been hearing about for quite a while, so I didn't find it at the homeschool convention. This is a writing curriculum, but it's actually more of a "lifestyle" that includes a lot of activities that encourage creativity. There are projects for each month. I think Rhonda will really love the projects. They call this curriculum "open & grow" because you can re-use it with the same child. It's a non-writing approach to writing. (The child dictates and the parent does the writing.) So I could potentially re-use this with Rhonda. The curriculum cost $49, but it's in PDF format, so I may also end up paying to print it.
Berean Builders Science in the Beginning
Another find from the homeschool convention. This one is interesting because it's a lot more religious than I was really looking for in a science curriculum. The format of the book follows the seven days of creation. But despite how very Christian it is, it actually looks like a really great science curriculum. I was looking for something that would introduce Rhonda to a lot of different science topics in a fun way--and, importantly, something not too expensive, since I don't consider science an essential subject at this age. (The main reason I looked for a science curriculum at all is that Rhonda is so fascinated by it.) A lot of the science curriculum I've seen for young kids is nature study--aka, go outside and find some stuff and look at it. There's nothing wrong with that, but Rhonda is really interested in a lot of other science topics, too--so I wanted more.
This curriculum really fit the bill. Every lesson has an experiment that goes with it (and most of the experiments use common household items). The lessons are short enough to read to Rhonda without losing her interest, and the book seems to be written in a way that will be easy for her to understand. Since it follows the seven days of creation, it will introduce her to the science of light, air, water, plants, animals, planets, the human body, and more. And it was the right price: $40! She is already so excited to start.
ARTistic Pursuits Art for Children, vol. 1
I wasn't really looking for an art curriculum, but this one looked so fun, I decided to get it. There are 18 formal lessons in the book. I figure we can plan on doing two lessons a month, and then one non-lesson art session the other weeks in the month. This book introduces really basic concepts in art and explains it in a very simple way that a 5-year-old could understand. It will also be a really fun opportunity for Rhonda to use different mediums that she hasn't tried before (watercolor pencil, oil pastels). I'm actually really looking forward to it too, and hoping that I can get in on the fun! (I'm not particularly good at art, but I do really enjoy it.) At first I was slightly concerned that she might not be ready to follow an art lesson, but we started doing short drawing videos from Art Hub for Kids on YouTube, and she loved them! I was actually really impressed with how far her art skills have come in just the last few months. And I was so proud of her for being able to follow the video without getting frustrated. If there was something she was having a hard time drawing, she just cheerfully moved on. I think that is such a great skill to learn, so I think art will be great for that.
The book cost $40, with an option to buy all the art supplies with the book for $108 total. I thought that seemed a little steep, but I found a website, Miller Pads & Paper, that sells art supplies for a really good price! I found almost everything we needed on that website for only $38. So all told, with shipping and one extra thing I had to buy on Amazon, I paid about $90 for the complete curriculum.
I debated over starting history this year. The classical model for learning history breaks it into four parts, to be learned over four years: ancient history, Middle Ages/Renaissance, Renaissance/early modern, and modern. Then you start over and do them twice more throughout the child's educational years. This makes sense to me, and it seems to be a model that almost every homeschool curriculum follows in one way or another. Even our art and science curricula follow it in the next volumes.
Ultimately, I decided not to start with history in kindergarten. I think it will be easier and makes more sense to wait until first grade. Then all her other curricula will coincide with the history curriculum. And I really don't think history is necessary in kindergarten.
We will continue with dance next year...hopefully. The dance studio is having a very difficult time right now. We are continuing to pay tuition (they're doing classes online), but not everyone is. I'm just hoping they'll be able to make it through.
For literature study, I'm going to take charge. I feel fully comfortable finding books on my own, and now that Rhonda is getting pretty comfortable with chapter books, I'm excited to do lots of fun read-alouds! We will continue to read picture books as well.
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
Friday, March 6, 2020
Rhonda's 5th Birthday Party
We had Rhonda's party in February. December is just too crazy, so now it's a habit to do it in the month or two after her birthday. The bonus is that more of her friends can come, too.
I'm proud of myself for keeping the party as minimal as possible. The food wasn't particularly elaborate, and I didn't plan any games, since the kids have just as much fun (or more) just playing, anyway. We only invited four kids (three came)--I thought a tea party with a ton of kids, many of whom would be boys, would just be too rowdy. So, we ended up with a nice group of four girls. I thought it was perfect--it was a big enough group that it felt like a special occasion, but they weren't difficult to handle.
We put accessories on the entryway table for the girls to put on when they came in, so they could be completely fancy. The accessories doubled as party favors.
For the tea party itself, I got cute little tiered trays from Amazon. I served mini cupcakes, cookies, little sandwiches, apple slices, and baby carrots. I actually BOUGHT THE COOKIES FROM THE STORE, which felt quite sacrilegious to me, but I really didn't want to stress myself out and overdo it.
Of course I got a tablecloth, plates, and napkins from Walmart, but you can't really have a tea party without teacups, right? So I got adorable paper teacups from Amazon, too. They were cute and fancy but not breakable!
The dish in the middle is one I already had, and the banner on the wall was a leftover from a past birthday.
For the "tea," I made hot chocolate and served it from the slow cooker. I wanted to allow the girls to pour their own, because I knew how much they would love it, but I couldn't find an appropriate (small, plastic) teapot.
The girls had a lot of fun! I was debating whether to let Sierra stay for the party because I knew that Rhonda would prefer to play with her friends without her sister intruding. But Sierra was so excited seeing everything get set up, I let her stay just for the tea party portion. Once everyone ran off to play, I sent Sierra off with Doug to Chick-fil-A. I think it worked out perfectly.
The girls opened presents, then they played for a while. I'm curious: what is your policy on opening the presents (like actually taking them out of their packaging to play with them) at the birthday party? I let the kids open stuff at the last party, and it was pandemonium--they fought over everything. At this party, I didn't let them open a single thing, and Rhonda was quite annoyed with me. How do you approach this?
Overall, it was a great party. Rhonda loved it!
Preschool: Africa study + recent events
After we left Europe, we went to Africa! This has been a fun unit.
I appreciated how the curriculum introduced several different parts of Africa. A lot of kids (and many adults) consider Africa to sort of be one giant country with the same culture all throughout it. I thought the curriculum did a fairly good job of focusing on different cultures throughout the continent.
Instead of reading one or two longer books, we read several short ones, including Jambo Means Hello: A Swahili Alphabet; Africa is Not a Country; and The Day of Ahmed's Secret. In addition, we read several folktales from Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales.
While we read Jambo Means Hello, we made our own alphabet book of things from American culture, which was a lot of fun! Rhonda helped think of words and did all the illustrations. (I supplied words when she couldn't think of any.) I think the book turned out very cute.
In the book The Day of Ahmed's Secret (spoiler alert!), the main character, who lives in Egypt, learns to write his name. So Rhonda practiced writing her name afterward. Actually, as far as I can remember, this was the first time she'd ever tried writing her name. For a first attempt, I think she did a really good job!
She's gotten very interested in writing since then. When we made her goals for Primary, she said she wanted to learn to write and she's been taking it pretty seriously! She has a lot of fun practicing the letters. She's written her name lots of times since then and can pretty much do it on her own (sometimes she needs help remembering which letter comes next). This is a somewhat recent attempt, although her writing has gotten neater since I took this picture.
I'm proud of her for trying so hard. I think it's interesting to see the different experiences she's had with reading versus writing. Unfortunately, I think I've pushed her too much with reading in the past. I'm not doing that anymore, but I think it's put her off wanting to read a little bit. However, I've never pressured her to learn to write. And now she's really interesting in it! It's completely fun for her. This is a good learning experience for me. I know that she will eventually be interested in reading. But it really helps me back off when I see that she can motivate herself to learn something, even something hard like writing. (And if she keeps up with what she's doing, the writing practice will definitely help her learn to read without her even knowing it!)
During our Africa study, we subscribed to CuriosityStream, which is a documentary streaming service. We got a year for $12, which was so cheap it almost seemed silly not to try it! So we've been watching documentaries sometimes. Usually Doug will watch them after he gets home from work, since he likes documentaries a lot. The kids usually don't pay a lot of attention, but sometimes Rhonda will sit and watch with him.
Rhonda has developed quite an interest in science. I think it partly comes from watching shows like StoryBots and Magic School Bus, and listening to the Wow in the World podcast, but I also think it's a natural interest for her. It's exciting to see her develop her own interests! I've been trying to encourage it and give her some fun new ways to learn without putting any pressure on her.
When she saw the SuperBowl commercial about female astronauts, she said she wanted to be an astronaut. She's also been talking a lot about space and asking questions about it. So I got some books out of the library. Her favorite is "The Biggest, Baddest Book of Space" (which seems like an inaccurate name to me, because it's actually a pretty small book). She really likes learning about the stars and planets. We've also been reading a couple of other books about astronauts, and I bought a book at the library called "My First Book About Space" that she's been really enjoying.
I saw a book of 365 Science Experiments for Kids at Aldi for just a few bucks, so I picked it up and we've been doing some of the astronomy experiments. I don't love the book and would like to find one that clearly explains the results of the experiments better (I'm open to suggestions!), but it's been a lot of fun to flip through it and find some ways for Rhonda to learn. Here are some of the experiments we've done:
For understanding gravity and the Earth's orbit around the sun, we tied a small toy bucket to a string and swung it around in a circle. Then we put water in the bucket to see what would happen. Rhonda was pretty impressed that it didn't fall out!
For another gravity experiment, we tested how things fall to the earth. We got a penny and cut out a penny-sized piece of tissue paper and dropped them. The penny fell first. Then we put both the penny and the tissue paper in identical containers and dropped them, and noticed that even though they were different weights, they landed at the same time. We had fun finding other things to drop and watch everything hit the ground at the same time.
To learn about the movement of the sun/earth, we blew up a balloon and drew our country on it. (Rhonda just drew a circle.) I let her hold a flashlight in the dark room and told her to hold it still, then I slowly rotated the balloon so we could see the sun "rising" and "setting" on our little earth.
She always gets so excited about our experiments! It's fun to plan them.
In dance class, the kids got parties in their classes on Valentine's Day. They had a great time and loved the little props. Sierra is getting better and better at participating. She seems to prefer the more organized activities over free dance (the apple doesn't fall far...). Rhonda is getting very good at using the skills in her dance class. They always learn routines in addition to the other things that they do, and right now they're learning a dance to the song in Frozen 2, "When You're Older" (Olaf's song). Rhonda adores the dance and is actually very good at it! She used to have a very hard time learning the routines.
We had one single day of snow in January! Rhonda was very excited about it, but unfortunately, we couldn't do much with it because by the time we got up in the morning, it had mostly turned to ice. There was a little bit of powdery snow on the fence where the sun hadn't shone yet, so I used that to make a tiny snowman. The girls didn't want to touch the snow. It was melted by noon.
The other big things that have happened recently are our big home library renovation and Rhonda's birthday party. This post is getting long so I think I'll do separate posts for those things.
I appreciated how the curriculum introduced several different parts of Africa. A lot of kids (and many adults) consider Africa to sort of be one giant country with the same culture all throughout it. I thought the curriculum did a fairly good job of focusing on different cultures throughout the continent.
Instead of reading one or two longer books, we read several short ones, including Jambo Means Hello: A Swahili Alphabet; Africa is Not a Country; and The Day of Ahmed's Secret. In addition, we read several folktales from Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales.
While we read Jambo Means Hello, we made our own alphabet book of things from American culture, which was a lot of fun! Rhonda helped think of words and did all the illustrations. (I supplied words when she couldn't think of any.) I think the book turned out very cute.
In the book The Day of Ahmed's Secret (spoiler alert!), the main character, who lives in Egypt, learns to write his name. So Rhonda practiced writing her name afterward. Actually, as far as I can remember, this was the first time she'd ever tried writing her name. For a first attempt, I think she did a really good job!
She's gotten very interested in writing since then. When we made her goals for Primary, she said she wanted to learn to write and she's been taking it pretty seriously! She has a lot of fun practicing the letters. She's written her name lots of times since then and can pretty much do it on her own (sometimes she needs help remembering which letter comes next). This is a somewhat recent attempt, although her writing has gotten neater since I took this picture.
I'm proud of her for trying so hard. I think it's interesting to see the different experiences she's had with reading versus writing. Unfortunately, I think I've pushed her too much with reading in the past. I'm not doing that anymore, but I think it's put her off wanting to read a little bit. However, I've never pressured her to learn to write. And now she's really interesting in it! It's completely fun for her. This is a good learning experience for me. I know that she will eventually be interested in reading. But it really helps me back off when I see that she can motivate herself to learn something, even something hard like writing. (And if she keeps up with what she's doing, the writing practice will definitely help her learn to read without her even knowing it!)
During our Africa study, we subscribed to CuriosityStream, which is a documentary streaming service. We got a year for $12, which was so cheap it almost seemed silly not to try it! So we've been watching documentaries sometimes. Usually Doug will watch them after he gets home from work, since he likes documentaries a lot. The kids usually don't pay a lot of attention, but sometimes Rhonda will sit and watch with him.
Rhonda has developed quite an interest in science. I think it partly comes from watching shows like StoryBots and Magic School Bus, and listening to the Wow in the World podcast, but I also think it's a natural interest for her. It's exciting to see her develop her own interests! I've been trying to encourage it and give her some fun new ways to learn without putting any pressure on her.
When she saw the SuperBowl commercial about female astronauts, she said she wanted to be an astronaut. She's also been talking a lot about space and asking questions about it. So I got some books out of the library. Her favorite is "The Biggest, Baddest Book of Space" (which seems like an inaccurate name to me, because it's actually a pretty small book). She really likes learning about the stars and planets. We've also been reading a couple of other books about astronauts, and I bought a book at the library called "My First Book About Space" that she's been really enjoying.
I saw a book of 365 Science Experiments for Kids at Aldi for just a few bucks, so I picked it up and we've been doing some of the astronomy experiments. I don't love the book and would like to find one that clearly explains the results of the experiments better (I'm open to suggestions!), but it's been a lot of fun to flip through it and find some ways for Rhonda to learn. Here are some of the experiments we've done:
For understanding gravity and the Earth's orbit around the sun, we tied a small toy bucket to a string and swung it around in a circle. Then we put water in the bucket to see what would happen. Rhonda was pretty impressed that it didn't fall out!
For another gravity experiment, we tested how things fall to the earth. We got a penny and cut out a penny-sized piece of tissue paper and dropped them. The penny fell first. Then we put both the penny and the tissue paper in identical containers and dropped them, and noticed that even though they were different weights, they landed at the same time. We had fun finding other things to drop and watch everything hit the ground at the same time.
To learn about the movement of the sun/earth, we blew up a balloon and drew our country on it. (Rhonda just drew a circle.) I let her hold a flashlight in the dark room and told her to hold it still, then I slowly rotated the balloon so we could see the sun "rising" and "setting" on our little earth.
She always gets so excited about our experiments! It's fun to plan them.
In dance class, the kids got parties in their classes on Valentine's Day. They had a great time and loved the little props. Sierra is getting better and better at participating. She seems to prefer the more organized activities over free dance (the apple doesn't fall far...). Rhonda is getting very good at using the skills in her dance class. They always learn routines in addition to the other things that they do, and right now they're learning a dance to the song in Frozen 2, "When You're Older" (Olaf's song). Rhonda adores the dance and is actually very good at it! She used to have a very hard time learning the routines.
We had one single day of snow in January! Rhonda was very excited about it, but unfortunately, we couldn't do much with it because by the time we got up in the morning, it had mostly turned to ice. There was a little bit of powdery snow on the fence where the sun hadn't shone yet, so I used that to make a tiny snowman. The girls didn't want to touch the snow. It was melted by noon.
The other big things that have happened recently are our big home library renovation and Rhonda's birthday party. This post is getting long so I think I'll do separate posts for those things.
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