tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-351800092012-02-16T02:55:28.475-08:00Reflecting and recording home education with Jewel and FlowerMiriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.comBlogger221100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-71814141208975707832010-02-01T01:34:00.000-08:002010-02-01T01:34:29.544-08:00

Edited to add: Now this is an October thru January Summary. We have just completed week 11. Thankfully I'm better at teaching my children than I am at remembering to hit "publish post" since this has been ready for three weeks! We are eight weeks into our studies this school year. That may not seem like a lot to you, but I'm not bothered about how long it takes us to get through the formal

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-87821201193874416722009-09-28T00:54:00.000-07:002009-09-28T01:27:00.704-07:00

It is obvious that I am unable to keep up with two different blogs. I started a separate home school blog with intentions of getting more involved in the online home school community and thought that having them separate would facilitate that. Instead, I find that it just falls to the wayside. My life is separated into "school" "family" "church" and "other", so why should my writing life be

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-43254549898702747912008-11-24T05:21:00.000-08:002008-11-24T05:29:30.716-08:00

We had a great week last week. Jewel is getting so much more confident with math, and is plugging along with her addition facts. We have finally arrived at more concrete history studies in the curriculum (as opposed to social studies of people groups and housing). Jewel is fascinated with early history. She is asking lots of questions and is very engaged with the study which is great for her

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-50942961822474678252008-11-24T05:15:00.000-08:002008-11-24T05:21:33.826-08:00

We recently completed Homer Price as our lunch time reader. One of the favorite Homer stories is when the doughnut making machine goes haywire. In honor of finishing the book, we made doughnuts. The girls helped cut them out, I fried them and then I glazed half of them. The other half, we covered with chocolate sauce and the girls decorated with sprinkles! What a fun way to end a book!

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-28145311224598014462008-11-24T05:12:00.000-08:002008-11-24T05:15:35.301-08:00

I finally uploaded the pictures of our carnations that we changed the color.Here they are on day 1:Here they are on day 10. Jewel's is red, Flower's is blue and mine is green. Green doesn't work very well.

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-33004317931080945082008-11-08T03:42:00.000-08:002008-11-08T03:58:59.331-08:00

Wow, I'm actually getting a wrap up done within a couple days of the completed week. What a concept! We had a great week this week. It started on Sunday, when our family presented about our recent mission trip to Romania. (You can read more here, there are five posts in total) German and I led the service, Jewel and Flower sang with the praise band and then we hosted a typical Romanian meal

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-33867882012568389912008-10-22T07:41:00.000-07:002008-10-22T07:51:36.577-07:00

We are now into week four of this school year, and finally settling into a pattern. Once again, I really love Sonlight's use of literature. Jewel's absolute favorite things we are doing is Missionary Stories with the Millers and From Abeku to Zapotec, both about mission work in the world. I love watching her eyes light up as we discuss how people are serving God. She has memorized Psalm 1:1-4

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-61802910450287391692008-09-30T13:30:00.000-07:002008-09-30T13:30:01.380-07:00

Just a note, this was written on Saturday, but I couldn't add the pics so I didn't publish it. We did start yesterday and updates will come.I am probably getting the latest start of school of anyone out there, but there was a definite method to our madness! And it was totally blessed because our last two weeks of "summer vacation" have been a gorgeous Indian Summer! Jewel has had opportunities

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-12674878803584001232008-08-07T06:24:00.000-07:002008-08-07T13:18:54.055-07:00

Maybe that is a little excessive. Nine months! You know what they say about good intentions...Well, here is the update! Today, we finished Kindergarten!!! It has been such a great year!When we started, Jewel was reading letters and sounds, but not doing much in terms of words. Today she is reading fairly fluidly, even learning to read in her head. She loves to read! I find her reading to Flower

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-12772650801436549502007-11-01T12:11:00.000-07:002007-11-01T12:12:58.380-07:00

I am not intending to ignore this site! School is continuing and we are making good progress. However, I returned home from holiday to a letter stating that the Local Education Authority would be coming to evaluate our education process. That meeting is Friday. So, I have been trying to organize things so that it is obvious what we are doing. It is rather nebulous what they expect. The law

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-45520097329170418982007-09-19T05:45:00.000-07:002007-09-19T05:58:35.271-07:00

A week before we finished up summer school, this arrived!The big box from Sonlight! Flower was sure enjoying seeing what all we had. It was a major effort to hold Jewel off for a week, lol.We officially started Kindergarten on 10 September. This year we are using Sonlight K (Core C) with 1st grade readers, Singapore Math, Handwriting Without Tears, Explode the Code, and continuing Rosetta

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-38186743312136797052007-09-19T05:38:00.000-07:002007-09-19T05:45:53.500-07:00

We had such a great time with school this summer. Our focus was Geography, German and Art. The geography text was over Jewel's head at times, but we supplemented with Australia to Zimbabwe, Children Around the World. I can't say enough good about this book! The pictures are gorgeous, and Jewel is fascinated with how the kids live. It has led to many a great discussion. We couple it with

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-59888950376244631472007-08-07T01:07:00.001-07:002007-08-07T01:11:23.190-07:00

I can't seem to get comments to show up on the new template consistently. I have them enabled and on my much older posts they are there, but not on yesterdays. It seems to be working on this post--so feel free to comment here on the recap post. *shrug*

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-83909436204737621202007-08-06T06:54:00.000-07:002007-08-07T01:09:33.298-07:00

I really thought that I could keep up with my regular blog and a homeschool blog, but I think I was wrong. 8 months without a post. Shame on me! I am determined to get more disciplined in how I maintain info about school.For the recap:We completed our first year of home ed at the end of June. We used Sonlight Pre-K curriculum with Singapore Early Bird Kindergarten Math, Handwriting without

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-37923832268969052112007-01-22T05:58:00.000-08:002007-01-22T06:06:02.849-08:00

Actually plodding sounds like it has been hard work, and it really hasn't. Jewel is really enjoying the Get Ready for the Code workbook. The first day she insisted that we do an entire lesson on one of the letters. She got tired and frustrated before we were done, and it became a chore. Since then I've limited her to 4 pages at a time. She is doing so much better. And enjoying it. Today

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-6599189356833366612007-01-08T08:06:00.000-08:002007-01-08T08:14:48.808-08:00

Well I am back. I must say that keeping up with a homeschool blog has proven more than I could manage. But I hope to be better this year of at least posting once a week.We started back today after almost 3 weeks off. I was a little apprehensive of getting back into the routine, but there were no problems. We did our Bible Study, introduced the new memory verse, read a couple of stories and

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-1162998631863465092006-11-08T07:06:00.000-08:002006-11-08T07:10:31.870-08:00

In general school is going very well. Jewel hit some issues last week with not understanding "first, second, third, etc" and decided she could not do anything. So we took Friday off for her to have some down time. By Saturday she was begging to do school again. We talked about the concept of first/second/third while walking or playing, but did no school until Monday at which point she was

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-1161846799378478422006-10-26T00:06:00.000-07:002006-10-26T00:13:19.383-07:00

When everyone needs a "timeout" you can take one and not get behind.Yesterday Jewel was struggling with her Singapore Math lesson, It was "count the ducks/cows/pigs and write the number in the box. She would count it without any problem, but when she would go to write the number she was consistently writing a different number--2 instead of 5, 4 instead of 8, no real rhyme or reason. I'd ask

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-1161073218923489512006-10-17T01:14:00.000-07:002006-10-17T01:20:18.930-07:00

Thursday's SEBMath assignment was to measure cups and bowls of water to get accustomed to the concepts of holding more or less. Jewel had a great time counting and pouring water into various sized bowls.Then yesterday the assignment was to use a balance scale to learn the concepts of weighs more or less. We don't have a balance scale, so we built one.

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-1160553701570940292006-10-11T00:51:00.000-07:002006-10-11T01:01:41.576-07:00

Well I am already proving that I'm not very good at blogging our homeschool journey. I'm sure it will get better. Still just working through the Sonlight schedule. We did add the HWT workbook last week and Jewel loves it. Her straight lines have already improved and she is making L's and F's every chance she gets. We hit a snag in SEBM in that it asked the student to write numbers in the

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-1159884102898237222006-10-03T06:38:00.000-07:002006-10-03T07:01:42.916-07:00

Fridays are absolutely crazy so I won't be blogging then. We have a ladies Bible study at my house on Friday mornings and then lunch, naps and finally school. But we got it all done and then managed to convince Daddy we needed to go out for Chinese food for dinner.Monday we got up at 715 (yuck) and the girls watched Dora, Backyardigans and Fifi and the Flowertots while I blogged, did email and

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35180009.post-1159447645325248552006-09-28T05:34:00.000-07:002006-09-28T05:47:25.336-07:00

On Monday, September 18 Jewel woke up, came running to me and asked "Is Dora on?" (her first question every morning) followed by "Are we doing school today." I answered "not yet and yes" and was greeted with jumping up and down with clapping. She was so excited to start school.We are using SonLight Pre-K material along with Singapore Early Bird Math (SEBM) and (evenutally) Handwriting without

Miriam Paulinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18418972749843611051noreply@blogger.com2