This summer with all of our activities and things, I still wanted to keep a general schedule going. As you know I am a scheduler and my kids like routine and schedules as well. If I don't have a schedule and some goals then nothing get accomplished. So here is how our summer will going this year. Just a reminder that I put times but the times are just a general guideline for me to follow, its not as strict as it looks.
8:00 Breakfast
8:30 Character Quality/ Devotion
9:00 Star Challenge Activities
Handwriting page, Math page, reading
10:00 Outside, Library, Park, Play date
11:30 Lunch
12:00 Nap for Zach, Read Aloud for the rest of us
1:00 Rest time, movie, downstairs lego building
3:00 Snack time, outside water play
As you can see I try to keep our morning pretty structured and "normal". In case you are wondering what Character Quality education we are using, we are using Confessions of a Homeschooler Character Study. So far we are enjoying it and I think it will be a great addition to our summer learning.
Here are the summer goals I set out for my boys.
Elijah:
Practice cursive writing
Read 30 minutes a day
Keep math facts fresh
Noah:
Practice handwriting
Reading practice 15 minutes a day (we will be using All About Reading Level 1 this summer)
Zach:
Potty train! (yes I know, I wrote a while back what was working for us in potty training, well since school began in the fall he fell off the wagon! So we are back at it this summer! So far he is doing really well.)
Hopefully with this schedule and these goals our summer will run smoothly and it will be a wonderful refreshing time for everyone.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Summer Fun
Summer has officially began at our house! Well, at least last week it did. This summer we are venturing into new territory, baseball! Elijah decided that he would like to play baseball this summer, which is great! Noah wanted to play Tee Ball but we said not this year. Since our soccer debacle a few years ago we now do not allow them each to play the same sport.
What was the soccer debacle you ask? Well two years ago, we thought it would be fun to let them both play soccer in the fall. What ended up happening is that they each had 2-3 games per week, that meant we were at the soccer fields pretty much every night of the week, and every saturday morning (sometimes twice on saturday because of games that had big gaps between them). Most of their game times overlapped! After that we decided that until our kiddos were a bit bigger, meaning we didn't have a toddle to chase around, we were not allowing them to play the same sport. The reason we came to this is because neither one of them were really all that interested IN the sport, just the IDEA of the sport.
Noah this summer will be doing a soccer camp, its one morning a week for 6 weeks. That satisfied his need for something to do and it doesn't conflict with baseball.
Our other summer plans include 3 Vacation Bible Schools, a garage sale, a trip to Six Flags and a trip to the Creation Museum, also lots of time with nana and papa who will be visiting us this summer from down south. We will also get a rare visit from some cousins who live out of state and we haven't seen in 2 years.
What was the soccer debacle you ask? Well two years ago, we thought it would be fun to let them both play soccer in the fall. What ended up happening is that they each had 2-3 games per week, that meant we were at the soccer fields pretty much every night of the week, and every saturday morning (sometimes twice on saturday because of games that had big gaps between them). Most of their game times overlapped! After that we decided that until our kiddos were a bit bigger, meaning we didn't have a toddle to chase around, we were not allowing them to play the same sport. The reason we came to this is because neither one of them were really all that interested IN the sport, just the IDEA of the sport.
Noah this summer will be doing a soccer camp, its one morning a week for 6 weeks. That satisfied his need for something to do and it doesn't conflict with baseball.
Our other summer plans include 3 Vacation Bible Schools, a garage sale, a trip to Six Flags and a trip to the Creation Museum, also lots of time with nana and papa who will be visiting us this summer from down south. We will also get a rare visit from some cousins who live out of state and we haven't seen in 2 years.
Monday, June 9, 2014
Super Summer Challenge
Just because its summer does not mean that we strop learning at our house! I really hate that we have to spend so much time at the beginning of our school year going over things that may have been lost over the summer, so we keep up with those skills. A few years ago a friend shared with me what she does with her family over the summer to keep them motivated and to help curb the boredom. Its called a Super Star Challenge. It works fabulously!!
The basic concept is that they earn a certain number of stars for doing certain things. There are 5 aspects of it, health, leaning, helping, Spiritual growth, and caring. They have daily and anytime stars that can be earned. For example, under Spiritual growth they earn 5 stars each for Bible reading, devotion and prayer. Under leaning they earn stars for doing math pages, doing something crafty, reading, etc. Under helping and caring they earn stars for helping their siblings or mom and dad with chores around the house. Under health they can earn stars for bathing, brushing their teeth, going to bed on time, etc. Those are daily stars, they can also earn anytime stars in those same categories. Like learning a bible verse, swimming, doing extra chores, and things like that.
The key to this all working is that they have to earn a crazy amount of stars to get their prize at the end of the summer. This summer our total number per kid is 2000 stars, over an 8 week period. Their prize at the end of the summer is a trip to the Legoland Discovery Center. Its a great incentive for them, this is our third summer doing this and each year they get a different reward.
What do you do to keep your kids motivated over the summer?
The basic concept is that they earn a certain number of stars for doing certain things. There are 5 aspects of it, health, leaning, helping, Spiritual growth, and caring. They have daily and anytime stars that can be earned. For example, under Spiritual growth they earn 5 stars each for Bible reading, devotion and prayer. Under leaning they earn stars for doing math pages, doing something crafty, reading, etc. Under helping and caring they earn stars for helping their siblings or mom and dad with chores around the house. Under health they can earn stars for bathing, brushing their teeth, going to bed on time, etc. Those are daily stars, they can also earn anytime stars in those same categories. Like learning a bible verse, swimming, doing extra chores, and things like that.
The key to this all working is that they have to earn a crazy amount of stars to get their prize at the end of the summer. This summer our total number per kid is 2000 stars, over an 8 week period. Their prize at the end of the summer is a trip to the Legoland Discovery Center. Its a great incentive for them, this is our third summer doing this and each year they get a different reward.
What do you do to keep your kids motivated over the summer?
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Where have I been?
In case you were wondering, yes I am still alive! These past almost 6 months have been insanely crazy at our house and blogging was put on the back burner. I did want to come and give a brief overview of how our schooling went the our second semester though. So here it is!
For Elijah, we finished up Adventures in U.S. History by studying the 50 States and when they came into the union. We also studied some inventions and inventors that were important to our country. In math he continued in Math U See Gamma, learning his multiplication facts. We stopped about half way through the book, and will pick it back up next year. He finished out his school year very well, and we look forward to all that we will learn next year!
Noah finished up his Kindergarten work in April and for the last few weeks of our school year we focused on learning to read and improving his handwriting skills. At the beginning of the school year he just wasn't quite ready to read yet, so I put off the reading lessons. In about January we picked up with Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read, and that worked really well for us, for about a month. After that it was a struggle to get him interested in doing his reading lessons. So I picked up Ruth Beechick's book A Home Start in Reading, it gave me a lot of great information and tools to use in helping him learn to read. After implementing some of her ideas he began doing really well. We played sight word games and used our letter tiles from All About Spelling that Elijah is using.
We finished up our official school year on May 21, and I must say that we were all ready to be finished for the year! All in all I think our school year was a success. The boys both learned a lot and finished strong. I am very proud of what they accomplished this year! I look forward to see what the Lord has in store for us next year. Stay tuned to see what we will be using next year for our curriculum.
To stay with tradition, here is our side by side comparison pictures of the first and last day of school. Enjoy!
For Elijah, we finished up Adventures in U.S. History by studying the 50 States and when they came into the union. We also studied some inventions and inventors that were important to our country. In math he continued in Math U See Gamma, learning his multiplication facts. We stopped about half way through the book, and will pick it back up next year. He finished out his school year very well, and we look forward to all that we will learn next year!
Noah finished up his Kindergarten work in April and for the last few weeks of our school year we focused on learning to read and improving his handwriting skills. At the beginning of the school year he just wasn't quite ready to read yet, so I put off the reading lessons. In about January we picked up with Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read, and that worked really well for us, for about a month. After that it was a struggle to get him interested in doing his reading lessons. So I picked up Ruth Beechick's book A Home Start in Reading, it gave me a lot of great information and tools to use in helping him learn to read. After implementing some of her ideas he began doing really well. We played sight word games and used our letter tiles from All About Spelling that Elijah is using.
We finished up our official school year on May 21, and I must say that we were all ready to be finished for the year! All in all I think our school year was a success. The boys both learned a lot and finished strong. I am very proud of what they accomplished this year! I look forward to see what the Lord has in store for us next year. Stay tuned to see what we will be using next year for our curriculum.
To stay with tradition, here is our side by side comparison pictures of the first and last day of school. Enjoy!
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