The Colton Family Schoolhouse

Nearly half the school year has passed with not a word from me here. The Colton Family Schoolhouse has been busy and to be honest in my scant free time I would rather do something more brainless than blogging. I had forgotten how draining toddlerhood is!  But I’ll use a few minutes here at the last swim lesson at the Y to write about a few highlights.  Anya and I started a daily free write about a month ago. We don’t worry about spelling or punctuation or mechanics, instead we just write whatever we want! It has been so fun to see Anya’s creativity. She is eager to write and eager to share.  Our morning snack time, although somewhat chaotic with Olivia’s messy and noisy eating habits, has become a favorite time for all of us—we read a Bible story, work on poetry memorization, and then read Alina’s preschool book. Both girls are quick memorizers. Alina has a flair for the dramatic in her recitations. The other day, Anya said, “let’s memorize another poem, and then another,...

So far history has been a hit. We are reading Story of the World: Ancient History, volume one of a set of four world history books written for kids Anya’s age. The book itself is a light, story-driven tour of ancient history, and I also bought an activity guide which has tons of recommended extra books and crafts.  We’ve made:  - a model of the Nile delta in a giant pan  - sugar cube pyramids  - cuneiform writing in clay  - Sumerian clay seals  We really liked a library book called Ancient Egyptians and their Neighbors. A section on Mesopotamia talked about architecture, art, clothing, food, and work, and included some projects. Anya picked a weaving project. Mesopotamian weaving was done vertically.  Anya is keeping a history notebook—about once a week she narrates to me what she remembers on a certain topic, and I write it down. It is fun to hear what she remembers and she’s interested enough to narrate long paragraphs without prompting, telling me “...

School has been in session for a full month now, and it has flown by! I have started a blog post about it several times and never finished. There seems to be too much to say, as there is a lot going on here for the second-grader and preschooler. And for me! The summer was a time of learning and processing for me, and now I get to experiment with what I absorbed from multiple books on homeschooling.  I read:  - Family Matters  by David Guterson  - The 4-Hour School Day by Durenda Wilson  - Homeschool Bravel y by Jamie Erickson  - parts of The Well-Trained Mind and Writing with Ease  by Susan Wise Bauer  - I’m starting Teach Your Own by John Holt The biggest takeaways?  One of the biggest benefits of a homeschool education is that it is, in fact, not school at all. This is a terrible paraphrase of a really good quote in one of the books I read. I think it synthesizes what I learned about how a lot of what I think of as "school" or "educ...

We finished Anya's first grade school year about three weeks ago, with a little popsicle celebration on the porch. We paged through a little book I've kept throughout the year of various projects; skimmed through some math workbook pages; looked at the first short story reader she started with back in September. It was fun to be reminded of where she started, and how much she's learned this year.  I’ll share some photos.  Math: where we started  Math: where we finished up  Handwriting/writing: where we started  Handwriting/writing: where we finished up  (Paragraph mapping)  (Rough draft paragraph)  (Final draft paragraph)  Reading: where we started  (This was review from kindergarten since we switched programs)  Reading: where we finished Beyond all of these skills, and much more important, I am so pleased and proud about the girl she's becoming. Our family experienced a lot of change this year, as we welcomed and adjusted to anothe...

(I wrote this in April, wanted to add pictures, and never did. Posting now!)  "Slow and steady" is the theme of school this spring. Or, Keep It Simple, Stupid!  My attention is divided and my brain is tired from sleep with a baby (even though Olivia is a pretty good sleeper, for a baby). But, by steadily plodding away, by keeping it simple, we are still having a fruitful spring.  Math:  We worked through addition facts in the teens and now are doing subtraction facts in the teens. Each different set of facts has had its own game: Adding 9s Bingo, Adding 8s Crash, tic-tac-toe for adding 6 and 7.  The games keep the lessons from feeling repetitive or rote. With the ten-frame, she learns the process in an intuitive, visual way rather than just memorizing answers. Interestingly, I’ve noticed she can know the facts right away in the game setting but sometimes seems to completely forget them when going through a worksheet later. Or, one day can to rattle them off easi...

We celebrated the last lesson of All About Reading Level 1 with a tea party today. Tim joined us, and we drank tea and ate chocolate while she read the final two short stories, "Hal and Gus Go on a Trip" and "The Best Lunch."  I can't say enough good things about this curriculum. It has worked so well for both of us. Her skill, confidence, and speed as a reader has exploded the last few months because of the thorough practice gained in these lessons. I am proud of her.  Hey, I even learned some things in the last few lessons--about short and long vowels, and open and closed syllables. I supposed I learned the same things in first grade but had forgotten. Now we both know why the e in "he" says a different sound than the e in "hem," and how to decode open and closed syllables. Neat!