Curricula Fair!

I am excited about this year of homeschooling and feel pretty settled about our choices. 

 We will be delving into The Story of the World, Vol. 3: Late Renaissance and Early Modern Times. 

 History is Emily Anne's favorite subject, and we have loved Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of the World. Will will be officially joining us this year on our journey of history. Both kids are really excited about making their own tartan in Chapter 2!

 Susan Wise Bauer will also be making an appearance in Seven Pillars Academy through Writing with Ease, Level 3. We have really enjoyed the thorough but gentle approach of writing in this curriculum. She is narrating well (although we often have to prune details) and is doing dictation well. Last year, IEW was offered in co-op, and we did it along with Writing with Ease, Level 2 at home. Emily Anne really did not enjoy IEW, and she enjoys writing and goes through reams of paper writing unassigned stories every day. I did not want her to get a bad attitude about writing this year and think that since she is strong in the humanities that she will pick up on organization well without IEW (which I do think is a strong program for those children whose talents are in areas other than writing). A bonus feature of the Writing with Ease books are the selections that Susan chooses for narration; they have piqued Emily Anne's curiosity and led us to books we might not have read on our own. I am excited to hear that Susan's writing program for logic-age children will be available soon!

 After reading through The Child's Story Bible by Catherine Vos for two years, we did topic studies last year, using For Instruction in Righteousness by Pam Forster. This year I felt led to do a study of Psalms and Proverbs and will be studying a different psalm or proverb each week. Emily Anne's cursive copywork will come from these psalms and proverbs. I made my own with a free cursive font.

 Emily Anne will be starting Saxon Math 5/4 this year. The format is different from the earlier Saxon volumes, and I had a little trepidation about this change. I have sat down with it, though, and have seen that it is not really different in practice that how we were doing Saxon 3. It helps to know that I can always fall back on the Dive teaching videos if this humanities mama needs help!

 Emily Anne is working through the rest of Spelling Workout C and D this year. She was not too enthused about the alien grasshopper on the cover of C! I have to say that at first, I was not very impressed with Spelling Workout A & B, but now that I've reread The Well-Trained Mind and have been writing the Spelling Tips in our Spelling section of the Language Arts notebook, it is going much better.

 Emily Anne will be taking Prima Latina through our co-op this year. Joel took Latin in high school, but I've never had the opportunity to learn it. I am exicted to learn along with Emily Anne!

 Science will also be taken through co-op. I am so thankful that I do not have to teach science! I would not enjoy setting up those experiments! This physics class will be using God's Design for the Physical World.

 Grammar will be learned through First Language Lessons, Level 3, another offering by Peace Hill Press. We will be starting diagramming this year, and I know how nerdy this sounds, but I can't wait!

 Will is starting off math with Saxon Math 1. He is so excited to start math and says it is his favorite subject.

 Phonics will be accomplished with Jessie Wise's Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading and Bob Books. OPGTR worked so well for Emily Anne, and I am eager to start reading with Will!

I've decided to use Zaner-Bloser Kindergarten for Will's handwriting. I had tried various things with Emily Anne before hitting upon Zaner-Bloser with her cursive learning last year, and it seemed to work best with us.

Emily Anne and Will will also be taking Art at co-op; it will be Emily Anne's third year and Will's first. Emily Anne will be taking her second year of piano lessons, as well.

We are looking forward to a wonderful year!

Schoolroom

 While the kids were occupied this week at art camp, I used the opportunity of  rare time to myself to organize the playroom. I started with the bulletin board. I kept the blue gingham background and added a fun polka-dot border I got from the dollar store a while back. I put up last year's picture of the kids and added the border around it, too. I used some of the back-to-school printables from Birds Party again to decorate the board. I don't think you can read it in the picture, but one of them beside their picture reads, "Teacher's pets!" Also on the board is a border-framed verse: James 3:17. This verse is the anchor verse for our homeschool. The cards on rings on the side of the board are the review cards for each year of History. We will be adding more for The Story of the World, Vol. 3 this year. There is space below the verse for other learning reminders; in later pictures you'll see a strip of the American Presidents, one of the kids' memorization projects for this year.

 Here is a picture of the bulletin board above the kids' workboxes. Each subject's work is put in a drawer, and the velcro number is put on the drawer. Once the work is completed, the children can put the number on the workbox grid on top of the workbox tower. By the end of the school day, all the numbers are off the drawer and on the grid. They can tell at a glance how much work is left for them to complete each day.

 Here is a little corner for independent work. This desk was one that I used when I was little. Blank notebooks are housed in the open space, and the little yellow bucket holds bookmarks. My favorite Mary Engelbreit prints that hung in my classroom grace this little nook.

 We are so blessed to have so many shelves and cabinets in this room! The top shelf houses math manipulatives and magnetic letters for Will's phonics lessons. Curricula and baskets with flash cards and my office supplies (post-it notes, thumb tacks, reward stickers, rubber bands, etc.) live on the next shelf. The third shelf down is divided into history resources and literature. The counter holds binders for various subjects, the electric pencil sharpener (We finally have one that works this year!), the hole puncher, and the printer.

 Here is our curricula for 2010-2011. You will notice a lot of resources from Peace Hill Press. I don't know why The Story of the World wasn't up here on the shelf; I think I was using it to track down extra reading for the history chapters.

 Here are the binders ready to collect work! 

 This table is where the magic happens! I have my laptop set up for lesson planning using Homeschool Tracker.

Here are the school supplies organized and ready to go on the lazy susan. 

Here are the shelves on the other side of the TV. The top shelf is the teacher's shelf that contains portfolios from past years, old lesson plans, and books on homeschooling. The Science shelf is the next one down, with science books, field guides, bug collecting equipment, and the microscope and slides. Art supplies and art books are on the next shelf, along with a bin for educational games like Quiddler. The counter holds a listening station for books on CD (We really like the stories of Jim Weiss) and classical music (Beethoven's Wig are favorites at our house . . . and in the car!). There are also paper trays for notebook paper, handwriting paper, and construction paper.

We use these stepstools we got from Target to reach things on the higher shelves.

Here is a photo of the whole shelving system, including the Quantum Leap Globe (a gift from my sister and much used!), as well as the Wii (perfect for PE on scorching hot or rainy days!).s

Here is a favorite part of the playroom / schoolroom--the reading corner! Joel made the rain gutter bookshelves at my request last year, and they are my favorite thing in the whole room! I love being able to put out the books that go along with what we're studying in history and science for the week! Having the covers facing outward really sparks the children's curiosity and desire to pull a book off the shelf. Some of Emily Anne's artwork hangs above the bookshelf; I think I'll have to add some of Will's recent masterpieces to the collection. The comfy beanbags can be moved around easily, too.

Here are the windows and window seats around the rest of the playroom. The windows let in a lot of light, and the drawers in the window seat hold toys. We have stored the cushions in the attic for right now because the window seat level is the perfect height for setting up battle scenes of toy soldiers and creating card-stock bands (complete with drum sets) for Barbies. I love the windows, but they don't allow for much wall space for posters and such. In a few years when Emily Anne reaches logic stage, and we add a timeline to our history study, I imagine a timeline stretching along these windows.

More windows, with the white board and dog crate for our Goldendoodle in the corner.

A shot of the workboxes and french doors into the screened porch. Addie is the official Seven Pillars Academy mascot!

This beautiful oak tree can be seen out the playroom windows. We're hoping to do put up some feeders and do some backyard bird watching this winter. Joel added the stepping-stone walk this summer, and I added hostas and coleus. They're growing well although you can't see them well in this picture.

Another view of this side of the schoolroom . . .

and one with the dog crate slid out of the way to allow access to the white board.

An inspirational quote for the first day of school

We'll see if the schoolroom stays clean for the first day of school on Monday!

Art Camp

The kids just finished up Art Camp today, and it was a wonderful week! They were so enthusiastic every day and couldn't wait to get to Art Camp each morning. They had a brief show today at the end of the week, and Joel and I were so impressed with the variety of media used and with the skills learned.

 This is Will holding his name in calligraphy. They had practiced all week writing the alphabet and Bible verses with a real calligraphy pen and ink. I thought Will did a good job, considering that he is still working on manuscript handwriting.

 This was Will's watercolor rendering of a lake scene. I was blown away by the trees and reflections in this piece!

 This was Will's project of pomegranates in soft pastels.

 This was Will's acrylic piece of mountains with a field of tulips. I love the perspective of the piece and how his flowers look more like wildflowers in the foreground. Each student's personality really came through their work!

 Here is Emily Anne in front of her display table.

 This is her bulletin board above the display table.

 Emily Anne used soft pastel crayons on these pomegranates. I'd like to hang these in the kitchen.

 Oil pastels were used on the flamingos.

 Emily Anne's watercolor rendition of the lake. Beautiful reflections!

 Gorgeous mountains with a sea of tulips by Emily Anne.

 The students also transferred line drawings to rubber, carved out a stamp, and coated them with ink to make stampings. This horse was Emily Anne's creation.

Will's flamingos

They also carved and painted. Will's shark started out as a rectangle of a material like styrofoam.

Emily Anne's Irish Setter--You can't see it from the picture, but the texture on the ears was wonderful!

Their talented art instructor's name is Debra Carmona. You can visit her website here. Emily Anne has taken lessons with her for two years now at Co-op and will be continuing lessons this fall with Will in his first year of Art. We are so blessed to have her expertise available to our children! This week's camp was a fun and intensive time to enjoy a variety of projects in a relatively short amount of time. They both thoroughly enjoyed their time there!

Schultute!

The kids have been at art camp all week, so I have been using my time in preparing for school, which we'll begin on August 1. It is so darn hot here that it is too miserable to do anything outside, so we're starting early so that we can finish the school year earlier. I love the flexibility of homeschooling!

One of the projects that I've been working on this week is a schultute.  I have seen these around the web and thought that they would be a great way to get this school year off on the right foot. I was helped out with a lot of inspiration from the Internet. I used a couple of sheets of poster board I had and decorated them with some gingham ribbon and some cute printables.

 The cute gingham tags that you see are free printables from Birds Party. They are so cute. I've used them to decorate school binders, too.

 In addition to school supplies (pencils, erasers, new scissors, crayons, and the ultra important colored pencils), I included some school-themed candies. 

 The idea for these pencils came from The Blackberry Vine. She used a roll of Rolos, but I couldn't find them, so I used canisters of M&Ms I find at the grocery store checkout line.

 Perfect, right? I remember in my sorority we use to have a Smart Cookie Award. I don't know why I haven't thought of this before! The Busy Budgeting Mama helped remind me. For my tags I used the cursive font I use for Emily Anne's handwriting/copywork and more of the printables from Birds Party.

 The English teacher in me had a little problem with the creative spelling in this tag, but it was too cute to resist. This idea came from a great teacher's blog, Fabulous in First.

 These bookworms are my favorite. What could be better than sitting in a cozy corner eating candy while immersed in a great book? The original ideas came from Sweet Serendipity 23.

I apologize for the poor photography in this post. Photography is not my strong suit anyway, and I was hurriedly trying to take pictures before I had to hide the schultutes and pick up the kids. We'll see if they stay hidden until Monday morning. I'll try to take photos of the kids with them before they rip into them!