Your best spelling

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.

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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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