This award-winning movie was made by 40 homeschooled students.  It’s a movie based on moral character and that’s always a good thing.  I’m looking forward to watching it.

http://www.comewhatmaythemovie.com

I love books.  I love to read them for myself, but I think I enjoy researching new books for my children even more.  I become giddy when I pack my library tote chock full of great reads.  I find such pleasure in watching the little eyes sparkle as we read a new story. The wheels turn…relationships are being made through our books.  Acting out the stories, reading them time after time after time per my oldest son’s request.  Discussions about the characters and why things happened.  Nothing like it.

Our latest find is a very heartwarming tale about three trees who have their own ideas of what they want to become.  But someone had other plans for them, humble plans, that proved to be bigger than anything they could have imagined for themselves. That’s just like God, isn’t it?  We might have our own ideas of what we will be one day, but God’s plan for our lives are often much bigger than we realize.

Read it.  It’s a wonderful story.

The Tale of Three Trees, a Traditional Folktale retold by Angela Elwell Hunt

Today marks the first day that Evan is reading.  I’m thrilled.  He recognizes all of his letters and he knows their sounds phonetically.  So naturally we started putting letters together and, viola!  As a side note, the curriculum we are using is fantastic and I couldn’t be happier with our choice.  I like the gentle approach it takes and the reading plan is right on.

We broke out our blend ladder today and began blending sounds.  Evan read words like, “sat, Sam, man, Ann and tan.”  He was so proud of himself.  And as his mom, watching the lightbulb click on and seeing him read is THE BEST.  Lots of smiles and high five’s today…oh, and a marshmallow.  It’s good incentive. :)

Teaching him to read is incredible.  We’ve just embarked on our “road to reading” and it’s going to be great.  We’re breaking out the Bob Books this weekend!

We are about to start week 4 of homeschooling.  Yay!  So here as what we’ve been learning about so far…

Our first week was the 7 days of Creation.  We really enjoyed this.  We made a Creation book to wrap up the week as you can see in the pictures.

Our second week was “S-s Sun.”  We learned a few facts about the sun and what it looks like from outer space.  Evan loved looking at space flash cards I have that show realistic pictures of the sun.  We made a “shiny S,” “s cookies,” sun tea, used a flashlight and our globe to illustrate how the sun rotates around the earth, drew Evan’s shadow on the driveway and talked about how the sun casts a shadow on objects, painted and colored and, as always, read lots of good books.

One of our favorite weekly projects is to make our badge for the week.  Each week, we make a badge and write our “words to remember” on it.  The “sun” lesson was: “Jesus is the light of the world.”  And our moon week was: “I am the light of the world.”  We read our daily devotional and discuss a bit about what those words mean.  It’s a sweet time with my boy, for sure.

This past week was “M-m Moon.”  We started off with our mmmmmmacaroni M’s along with a few facts about the moon.  I explained how the surface of the moon was dusty and sandy.  We looked at more space flash cards with pictures of the moon.  He particularly liked talking about the astronauts and how they landed on the moon.  The pictures of the “moon buggy” was a favorite.  We focused on the number “8″ this week, color purple and the shape of a crescent.  Evan learned the phases of the moon too.  Our treat in the kitchen was “marshmallow treats.”  YUM.  I think mommy could have eaten the entire pan full!  We wrapped up the week with making a mobile to hang in Evan’s bedroom with a sparkly moon and stars hanging from it to represent day 4 of creation.  And what lesson wouldn’t be complete without a trip to the moon.  We converted our kitchen table into a rocket ship, Evan insisted on getting decked out in his “space outfit” and away we went.  BLAST OFF!  Tanner even joined in the excitement.

One of my favorite moments this past week with Evan was when we were pretending to be on our rocket ship.  We landed on what I thought was the moon.  We got out of our rocket ship and began to explore the dusty surface of the moon.  But, wait, something’s wrong!  Evan, “Mom!  We landed on the sun!  Oh, no!  It’s so hot.  It’s burning my feet!  Hurry!  Back into the rocket ship!”

The lesson on deck is “L-l leaf.”  A nature hike is in order to collect various types of leaves.  We’ll be doing some fun projects with those.  We’ve been discussing a little bit already this weekend about leaves and tress.  One of our favorite books is “A Tree is Nice.”  Evan really wants to plant a tree.

Our classical music fun this week involved Mozart.  We danced and had fun.  One day, I put the CD in while Evan was painting and he got up and started dancing around the living room.  ”Tanner!  This is Mozart!”

With all of our lessons we include days of the week, weather, fishing for letters and numbers and fun learning games with numbers, letters, colors and shapes.  One of my biggest goals for Evan is to teach him to love to learn.  I know we’ll have our moments where he won’t want to do something but I think that’ll will be an exception, not the rule.  Keeping school rich in good books and hands on fun will help foster that love.

So here’s to the upcoming week 4!  For this mom, one of the big perks about homeschooling is doing it in our pj’s sometimes.  Seriously, you can’t beat that. :)

Days of Creation Book

"Shiny S"

"How the sun works"

Our "S" week

Pattern Fun

Our "M" week

This week marks the official start of our homeschooling journey.  After much discussion and prayer with my husband, we decided to start schooling Evan at home this year instead of having him go back for another year of preschool.  We feel so blessed to have been able to have Evan participate in the 3-year-old program at The King’s School this past year.  He learned a lot and had fun doing it.  It was a wonderful experience.

However, I am excited to have begun our school days at home.  I say it’s “official” now even though we’ve been having “school” most of the summer.  But after much research we now have a curriculum for this year.  In addition to our curriculum, we have a very handy “homeschool cabinet” that I have stocked with all sorts of goodies.

The curriculum we have chosen this year for Evan is the Kindergarten program through My Father’s World homeschool curriculum.  We are gently using it and keeping it fun.  We add in a little poetry, nature walks, classical music fun and lots of wonderful books to read aloud.  My Father’s World incorporates unit studies, Charlotte Mason ideas and also classical education.  A nice variety.

Today, was day three of homeschooling and we are really enjoying it.  Our days start out with a 10 day study on Creation.  What better way to start our home school than to learn about God and how he created this amazing world we live in?  Along with our 10 day study on Creation, Evan is learning letters by playing a couple of games, singing songs and mom being creative.  We’re working on upper and lowercase letter recognition too and he knows almost all of them.  After our 10 day Creation study is complete, Evan will have put together a “creation book” to look back on and tell the Creation Story.  Once our Creation Days are done, we will start on Lesson 1, The Sun.  Learning the letter “s,” the sound it makes, and getting our hands involved in fun activities to reinforce our lessons.

School is “in” in the Byron home and I couldn’t be more excited to see the year unfold.  I feel so privileged to be able to do this!

Handy Homeschool Cabinet

First Batch of Homemade Clay

Clay Letters

The Creation Story (more to come!)

This morning I sat with three wonderful ladies who have, are, and want to homeschool their children. I enjoyed this time together so much. We discussed the philosphy of the late educator, Charlotte Mason. We’ve got a “resident homeschooler” in this mix of ladies and she is such an encouragement to us “newbies.” We talked of our desires for our children and how to go about using the CM method to accomplish that. It’s so much more than simply giving your child an education. SO MUCH MORE. I left our meeting feeling refreshed and renewed in my mind and spirit. I’m excited for what is to come for us as a family. I’m so thankful to be at this point in my life right now, here, surrounded by these people. Wow. God is always with us and that is just awesome.

With Thanksgiving swiftly approaching, I wanted to teach Evan about the pilgrims that came over from England back in the 1600’s. I have a really neat book that explains all of this with nice pictures. So today we started our journey in learning who the pilgrims were, why they came to America, what kind of food they ate and what they looked like.

After reading our book and Evan looking at all of the pictures while I explained them, we sat down to do some coloring. I found a coloring sheet of the Mayflower and Evan enjoyed that activity. It’s fun asking him questions about what we just read about and hearing him answer them correctly. “What’s the name of the big ship the pilgrims came to America on?” “THE MAYFLOWER!” He’s very excited when he answers.

As we were just finishing up our Thanksgiving “lesson” our electricity went out. How fitting! We could be modern day pilgrims! I explained to Evan how the pilgrims didn’t have lights back then. I lit candles and we started eating our lunch. Evan decided to have his usual lunch, PB&J. We talked about what the pilgrims did to cook their food with no stove or microwaves. I could see Evan’s wheels turning as I talked about all of this. Then, he pipes up, “Mom, pilgrims didn’t have peanut butter. They had turkey and corn.”

This is going to be a fun-filled month learning about the pilgrims, Native Americans and giving thanks! The art project on deck? A pilgrim hat of course. Pictures to follow. =)

My son is a part of a homeschool co-op group with two other families in our church. Even though we haven’t “officially” started homeschooling Evan yet we are participating in this group. I don’t have a set curriculum per say I use for Evan as of yet but I still consider us “home schooler’s.” I know I am going to home school him once he starts kindergarten. We do a lot of “schooling” in our home just in the simple things we do on a daily basis. Whether it be read a book about a particular subject Evan is asking about, doing a handy craft for an upcoming holiday or season or cooking together in the kitchen. So…I guess we are homeschooling after all! :)

Fridays is our co-op day. We meet and learn about one of three things; nature, music or art. Today was nature. One of the families we are in co-op with has been blessed with beautiful property. It’s a child’s paradise. Lots of woods, a pond to romp in, a bridge crossing a stream, the sounds of various birds. Yeah, it’s awesome.

Today we went on a nature scavanger hunt. We learned to identify lots of different kinds of tree leaves in the process. I am learning just as much as Evan. We discovered the difference between birch, maple, oak, walnut, spruce, cypress, white walnut, black and yellow birch leaves and bark. It was amazing! Did you know there are over 20 various types of maple trees? I didn’t. And did you also know that wintergreen gum used to be made from black birch trees back in the day? If you pick the bark off deep enough from a black birch tree you can smell the wintergreen I’m told. Neat!

We made a sun catcher from the leaves we collected today and it’s gracing my kitchen window. We also have a nature collage to put together tomorrow from our findings of the day.

Learning alongside my son and seeing him explore and “get” something for the first time is a treasure. And all the little tidbits I’m learning along the way is a bonus too. I’m excited to see what we learn next!

A lady I follow on Twitter posted this. I thought it was very interesting…

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/prodoceo/603692/

There are so many homeschool curriculums out there. Which one to choose? I had no clue. But I have a few friends who used the Charlotte Mason method in their homeschool teachings and they loved it. I didn’t take their word for it. I ordered a few books online and did a lot of research on my own about this method. I learned who Charlotte Mason was and what her principles were for teaching. I read a couple of books from other woman who used her methods. Talk about information overload! I read for months. I compaired the CM method to other methods and read about those as well. After all was said and done…I just love the CM approach. Charotte Mason was a Christian woman who believed in using “living books” to teach her students; to use lots of hands on activities to teach and to give children free time on their own to explore and use their imaginations. I love to read. So the idea of using a literature based program for our children is exciting to me.

The only thing that “scared” me about the CM method was that there wasn’t a curriculum “in a box” so to speak. One had to do their own research and pick the books, etc. That intimidated me a bit. There are online aids like amblesideonline.org but even that isn’t as clear cut as I would prefer. It’s still a great resource and I know I’ll use it.

In my late evenings of research, I discovered livingbookscurriculum.com. It’s a CM based curriculum all layed out in a nicely constructed format! I was THRILLED to say the least. They offer online support and a teacher’s manual. Since I’m such a “newbie” at homeschooling, I had a “veteran CM’er” take a peek at the curriculum for me and she too said it looked good. Note: This curriculum, however, does not include math. There are a lot of math programs out there. It’s the parents choice to choose which program best suits their children’s individual needs.

I’m so excited to see what our future looks like as a homeschooling family! We’re also blessed to have a couple of families in our church who also use the CM method. The support is so helpful. We have a weekly co-op session together where we are learning about nature, art and music. Evan is young, only 3 1/2, but he enjoys our co-op time and he is learning while having fun.

So take some time to check out Livingbooks if you’re searching for a curriculum for your children. Oh, and one of the best things about this curriculum is you get a TON of books when you purchase the program. Your “living book” library will quickly increase using this curriculum!

Happy Homeschooling!