All About Reading Level 1, complete

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!

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Homeschool reflections

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...

The start of a new year

I'd like to share semi-regularly about what we're up to at the Colton Family Schoolhouse--our schoolhouse being not only our school room in the loft, but the school of life with our girls. We're in the start of our third year of homeschooling with Anya. We have grown from using a tiny preschool table in one corner of the loft, to now a big desk and a whole half of the loft for our daily lessons. And, we've grown from short and hands-on preschool activities and books to six formal subjects. We're now going into week six so I'll share a little about our regular routine. Breakfast: We are meditating on Gentle + Classical “morning virtues: joy.” This isn’t school time but just part of our regular morning routine. We’re learning the verses to Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee, memorizing some scripture about joy, and reading from Luke. Morning lessons: Morning circle: This is quick and mostly for Alina but it’s a nice way to open up morning lessons. Each girl ha...

Calendar time

We start out each school day with calendar time. It signals the shift in our morning--school has started, and it's time to focus. It's also good practice for Alina. This is the only "school" activity that she has to participate in... after calendar time, she runs off to play. We follow the same pattern every day. First we practice some slow, deep breathing, and the girls and I take turns with coming up with fun ways to do this. Some favorites are "curtain breathing" (made by Alina; you start with your hands over your face, and take a deep breath in while moving your hands out and away), the yoga move "cat/cow," and full body breathing (lie on the floor, and take in a deep breath while lifting up your legs and arms into the air). I don't participate in that last one right now, being 35+ weeks pregnant! Next we look at their calendars and figure out what date and day of the week it is. We have a "days of the week" song that we someti...

The Colton Family Schoolhouse

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