Back to our Homeschool Routine!

I had hoped to post updates on Alexis' school experiences this year on a regular basis - however, that has not happened yet.  We have had a few things going on in our lives over the past several weeks. Instead, I am sharing my notes from the start of the school year to date in this one blog post.

I found that the Eastern Hemisphere Explorer takes a lot of Alexis' time each day.  Too much time...  So, we quickly made some adjustments to a way that Alexis can work well with it.  I can't take credit for these tips, as I read and took these suggestions off of the Sonlight Boards.  I'm making note of these adaptations in hopes that it will help someone else.

*****Because***** we need to make the most of each day, we may not use the SL IG schedule for EHE in order, but by day 5 we will have covered all lessons with the exception of the *Book Box section.  Please see why below.  

After I take a look at our week ahead and determine how much time we can spend on the EHE each day, the following is how we will utilize it each day.

For the study of specific areas - i.e. Island Study, Great Barrier Reef, Ring of Fire, etc.  Alexis will spend about 20 minutes to 1/2 hour to search for the information in the World Book.  If she has not completed all the questions, but feels that she has found everything she can find, I will look through WB to see if there are any answers remaining.  Not all information in the EHE can be found in the WB.  If there are more answers to be found, I will give her clues - like look in the 2nd paragraph, look under the caption "Government" etc.  When we have determined that WB resources are spent, I will have her Google the questions with me - and after 5-10 minutes, if we cannot find the answers, I will hand her the answer key to finish up.

This is something that has taken me many years to feel comfortable doing, but it helps to remind myself that Alexis will spend an entire year practicing her research skills with EHE, so I am trying to stay keenly aware that this is a process.  How often did we come home from school with some touch homework and a family member gave us some help?  

If our day is full - I may copy a page out of the answer guide, cut the answers out for the page she is working on, (a good example would be a Just the Facts page,) then Alexis will go through the stack of cut out questions, to find her answers.  

An accidental surprise - between watching the Netflix DVD's and "getting behind" with the EHE, we've found that Alexis can go through the questions on the Just the Facts pages and answer many of the questions.

The mapping pages are what I would consider a little difficult to do solo from the start for an average 5th-7th grader.  Because many moms concur with this on the SL Boards, I decided to give Alexis the map from the answer guide, and have her use it as she goes through the instructions in her book to fill in the map.  If I handed her a map or an atlas and said go - it could easily throw our entire day/week off.  Again, this is a process, and she is still learning by doing this.  She is following directions, finding locations, and information as requested.  Important skills to have...  When Alexis is finished with her map, we look it over and compare it to the globe to see how that country fits spatially form the perspective of looking at the whole planet.  The atlas, to see rivers, lakes, regions, and more.  All this helps to see the whole picture of her mapping assignments.  It's actually one of her favorite things she works on in the EHE.

Even though the Book Box pages are scheduled prior to a book being read all the way through, Alexis does the Book Box after she has finished reading the entire book.  this is a much easier way to complete the information requested from this section.  However, it does require remembering to go back to the section sometimes a week or so later.

———————————————————————————

~Week Ending August 28th, 2009~

Monday started out great.  Tuesday we went on a field trip to Bruster’s Ice Cream for a back to school kick off, and also enjoyed some bonding time with David shopping at Wal-Mart to load him up with food and goodies to take to college

The evening before David as due to leave for college, Alexis began getting a cough and sore throat.  As he and his Dad were packing up his car and our van to leave for school Thursday AM, I was out the door to take Alexis to the doctor.  She had the flu.  We managed to get home just in time to see David off.  He is a junior this year, so you would think I would be used to him leaving by now, but I am not.

Alexis when first ill, was preferring to listen to me read over watching TV.  (How can you turn a sick child down?)   So I have read all read aloud readers through The Master Puppeteer, and finished Call it Courage reader.  I even read September’s book club book to her. 

I am thankful for Alexis’ desire to "hear" the Sonlight stories and other books while sick. Although it will ultimately make life easier catching up with school when she is well again, it has been a sweet time spent together too.

Monday and Tuesday, we began Alexis' spelling and Latin lessons, but they will probably have to be repeated when she is well again.  We "checked out" Nim's island from Netflix to end our "Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia Island Adventure," and watched it over the weekend.  Alexis made Pavolova to kick off our Australian Adventure.  I'm glad she got to enjoy it before she got sick.  I even ate some.  (I could use the excuse that I didn't have dessert on Amanda's birthday.)  It had sugar, but no wheat!!!  We all loved it, and hope Alexis makes it again! .

1st Field Trip of the Year

 ———————————————————————————————————–

~Week Ending August 21, 2009~

So far, so good.  The Eastern Hemisphere Explorer is going about as well as I had expected.  I'm still working with Alexis on it, but I see progress with her researching information.  I had hoped we would have completed 3 weeks of the Core, but it is more like 2+.  With Amanda getting her tonsils out, naturally, my attention needed to go in caring for her, so most of our homeschooling stopped for a few days.

We’ve finished Henry Reed, Inc. as a read aloud.  Loved it.  Both Alexis and I laughed the whole way through.  It was a great way to start the school year.  We listened to Island of the Blue Dolphins on cd – because Alexis read it last year for her girl’s book club. We are still plugging away with Torches of Joy, and will wrap up with Seabird next Monday.  I am pleased with her response to Core 5.  She seems to be enjoying everything we are doing!

We liked watching Wild Pacific – both DVD’s were worth viewing.  They were close to 3 hours each!  I don’t think I’ve watched that much TV in a week’s span in years!  We fast forwarded through some of the details at the end of the 2nd DVD.  Although interesting to some I’m sure, it was not for us.

Another great thing!  Alexis has completed 3 weeks of math, and is enthralled with Teaching Textbooks – which is a bonus.  Although she has always been good at math, she hasn’t always liked it.  This year it is one of her favorite subjects!  We will add Spelling and Latin into her schedule next week.

——————————————————————————
 

***Note I did not update the week of August 14th.  We had a productive week of school and stayed caught up with Alexis' assignments.  I will post some adjustments that we are making to the EHE on my next post.

—————————————————————————

~Week Ending August 7th, 2009~

We are off to a pretty good start, though not as impressive as a few of the other SL ladies!
 

With Amanda having her tonsils out on Thursday, our plans were to do 3 days of school this week. We didn’t get it all done, but it’s all good. We will start back on Monday and hopefully have a good full week of school.

We opened a Netflix account this past week.  They have been great with the turn around on the movies!  We first watched an I-Max movie called Hidden Hawaii – and thought it was just so so.  I guess I expected more out of an I-Max movie.  We also saw Molokai: The Story of Father Damien and thought that it was very good.  I wish I had taken a few notes while watching – there are a couple of scenes that I think would be great for discussing our Christian worldview.  One scene in particular stood out, where Father Damien spoke about something very similar to a scene in the book Bruschco.  His response was very much like Bruce Olsen’s too.  Interesting.  We have the Wild Pacific on its way as well. We’re looking forward to it, as it was recommended highly from several of the SL ladies.

We skipped the intro to 100 Gateway Cities.  This was an extremely astute suggestion from a veteran Core 5 mom from the boards.  (I read through it myself last week, and we discussed some of the noteworthy points briefly during the week.  Core 5 begins at a fast pace, and this very much helped give us some breathing room as we worked our way into a  new routine.

We started and ended the majority of our 1st day of school before 12:30 - so we could have lunch with some friends - a pleasant way to start our school year! 

Prior to starting school, I loaded World Book onto the computer, and checked out the fundamentals of navigating around it.  I also opened up the Eastern Hemisphere Explorer - in order to practice attempting to find answers to the 1st 3 questions in "Search Smartly."  No problem, I thought!!!  Found them!  I assumed that my research skills were solid - so I closed the program and did not try opening it again until Alexis and I sat down so that she could try it out.  I showed her how to open WB, and where to find the information to type in a search.  She easily found the 1st three answers, (like me,) but when she got to the 4th question - and could not find the answer, I took control to help her out, and realized that I couldn't find it either!      We both were blurry eyed, because we had had eye exams earlier in the day, so I went to the trusty answer guide to find the answer, but it was no help...  The answer guide does not include answers to the "Search Smartly" questions.  The thought of continuing on in a book when you can't find answers to the practice page is a bit intimidating.    


Thankfully, as we forged ahead with the EHE, there were no more problems.  Alexis said that she had a really fun 1st week, so I consider it a success!