The Colton Family Schoolhouse

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! 

We started a new writing curriculum in January. The first lessons focus on "getting started": what is a sentence? what does a sentence need? She will tell you the four things: (1) capital letter, (2) spaces between words, (3) ending punctuation, (4) subject and predicate.  We'll spend a few weeks on how to add details to sentences and how to construct paragraphs. Later this spring we'll spend quite a few weeks on narrative writing. (I don't think we'll get to the rest of the types of writing until next year.)  But a key concept early on was "use your best spelling." Obviously Anya doesn't know how to spell most words, and that has definitely slowed down her attempts at writing in the past. But, she seemed to find this lesson very freeing and a confidence booster. Slowly sound out the word and make your best guess. Just go for it!  I thought I'd share a few of my favorites. 

I guess it's been harder for me to make time for writing a weekly blog post since Olivia was born. Homeschooling has been harder too. I'm still getting used to trying to work through a lesson with a six-year-old, entertain a three-year-old, and bottle-feed a two-month-old all the same time. Actually, I have recently given up on trying to bottle feed during school lessons. If Olivia needs a bottle, we take a break and read Little House.  I'm also getting used to accepting the limitations of this season. There is so much I'd love to do with Anya, but it's just not possible to do it all. After a week or two of trying to do too much, and feeling disorganized and chaotic, I'm embracing the following philosophy for the remainder of the year: do less better, rather than more badly.  We are sticking with the basics: plugging away with math, handwriting, and reading every day. Alternating days for grammar and writing. I will soon add in a daily spelling lesson. Tim and A...