Fun With Write Shop Primary B

I am very passionate about writing. I began writing short stories when I was only 6. Having a strong background with this skill has greatly influenced how I want writing taught in our homeschool. For a time, I thought about letting it occur naturally, but then I decided that we needed more direct instruction. My oldest takes everything very literally, so she does better when given steps to help her reach an end goal. After much researching we ended up with Write Shop Primary B.

Once I received the teacher's manual, I began reading it cover to cover. Initially, I was very overwhelmed. There was so much in the preparation part. It told me I needed pocket charts, large easel paper and all kinds of things I didn't want to buy. I was very close to not touching it this year. After taking a breather, though, I came up with a plan. I would do the lessons as listed but in a way that fit our homeschool. It really didn't take much changing. We just don't use chart paper or any of the fancy items.

Now, I will walk you through a lesson.

Each lesson begins with guided writing practice. You are given a prompt to follow each day to get you going. Tips for helping the student form their ideas are also in the manual. We usually write ours on our large white board or my daughter and I buddy write on a piece of paper. Sometimes, the day stops here. Other days, you work on your writing project for the unit.

Each unit has a writing project that you work on throughout each section. Our most recent one was definitely fun. Brina had to come up with our story about outer space. Her story was titled the Trip to Mars. Write Shop takes you through the whole writing process.

Pre-writing During the Pre-writing process, we used a star shaped graphic organizer and a short outline to organize Brina's ideas.

Rough Draft

Next comes the rough draft. Children are urged to work closely with the parent and use their graphic organizers to write their story. Write Shop suggested only 4-5 sentences. During the stage of writing, there is to be no focus on handwriting or spelling.

Editing and Revising This stage in our writing was so cute and simple. Brina sat down with a stuffed animal and went through trying to correct her work. I sat down with her as well. We made the correction right on the paper.

Final Draft Finally, Brina wrote her final draft. She used her rough draft and made the appropriate corrections. The curriculum wanted us to make a rocket ship out of an oatmeal box to stick her story inside. We came up with an easier idea. Her work is proudly hanging up on our school room door.

During this last 3 weeks of writing lessons, I think it finally hit me as to just bow great this writing program is. She is actually learning the steps in the writing process and also about different types of writing. It has just enough fun as well. The lessons are usually very short. Most days take about 10-15 minutes. I hope this helps anyone looking for a fun writing program. I will be sure to update again after the next 2 sets of lessons.

Kindergarten Selections for 2015-2016

I just can't believe it. My youngest child has started K this year. Siriana will be 6 in November and is very enthusiastic about school-most of the time. She is a very serious, smart girl that we just couldn't live without.

Here's a pic of our beauty. Don't let the sweet smile fool you. :)

So Siri has the advantage of being the second homeschooled child. She was started earlier than her sister was. She has completed the majority of Heart of Dakota Little Hands to Heaven and about 10 units of My Father's World Kindergarten. She has also completed half of All About Reading Level 1, Singapore Essentials K math and half of Christian Light Education's KII series. She has been a busy girl.

I had originally planned to use Heart of Dakota's Little Hearts for His Glory with her, but, just like with her sister, we have switched gears this year. I scoured the internet, read blogs and did my research. Here is what we have chosen.

For our core, curriculum, we will use My Father's World Learning God's Story. We are using the entire kit for now minus the art. So far, the selections are working quite well for her. She is currently on week 4.

Math: We will likely add more math at some point in the year-probably after Christmas. We will use Christian Light Education's 1st grade program.

Art: For art, we are using Home Art Studio's 2nd grade program with both girls. We have done 2 lessons from this DVD and it's a hit. The art lessons are based around fairy tales.

Siri is also following along in My Father's World Adventures with her older sister. Hopefully, I will have some posts of our school days up soon. It has been an amazing year so far, so I would love to share how our days are going. 

Our 2nd Grade Curriculum Choices

So much has changed throughout our homeschooling adventures! Last I wrote, we were using Heart of Dakota's core curriculum with both girls. At the time, I thought we would for sure be staying with them for the long haul. Word of advice: never claim you will stick with a curriculum. You never know where life will take you. Your homeschooling needs could change at any second. Last year I began working from home part of the year. This requires me to be on top of things and also use some curriculum that can be independent at least part of the time.

So now to update.

Brina is now a 2nd grader. I am still not sure how this happened exactly. She is a wonderful reader and catches on to most things quickly. She is, however, very literal in how she understands things. Abstract concepts are very difficult for her. Knowing this has helped me narrow down curriculum choices for her. Here is her curriculum lineup:

Core Curriculum: My Father's World Adventures
I chose this curriculum after deciding to leave Beyond Little Hearts. We greatly enjoyed Beyond, but I wanted to try a curriculum where I could combine my girls. I also just needed a change. When looking for a new core, I had a list of wants. I wanted something I could combine the girls in, something that used a combo of classic literature and more up to date suggestions, something with hands-on learning and hopefully something Christ-centered. After much deliberation, we took the plunge into MFW Adventures.

Math: Christian Light Education Grade 2
This is the second year we have used CLE. Its traditional, spiral approach provides a great math foundation.

Grammar: Growing with Grammar Level 2

Spelling: Soaring with Spelling Level 1

I had a hard time choosing spelling. We loved All About Spelling but it is very teacher intensive. I am hoping this works out for us.

Writing: Write Shop Primary B

While I know that writing is not necessary at this age, it is a skill I am passionate about. I want writing to be fun while teaching them how to convey messages in a coherent way.

Reading: Lots of good books

I want to instill a love of reading in my children. To reach this end goal,  I have decided to give Brina an array of books to choose from during the year. We might complete one or two literature guides, but she will get to assist me with those choices.We have forever to worry about analyzing literature. I am more worried in her finding the joy in curling up with a good book.

We are currently about to begin our 6th week of this school year. It has been going amazingly well. We will take a week break after this week for planning and refreshing. I am hoping a Sabbath schooling schedule will work well for us this year. I hope you enjoyed hearing about our 2nd grade curriculum selections! I will post Siri's kindergarten lineup sometime this week!

New Year: New Curriculum

No, we have not dropped our core curriculum. We are still using Heart of Dakota's Little Hearts for His Glory and Little Hands to Heaven. We are very happy with these choices. We just needed to stir things up a bit and make it fit our family's needs. I thought I would give a nice synopsis of how we are doing things now.

I will start out with science. Heart of Dakota LHGHG does include 2 days of science each week. The science lessons are connected to the history readings. We are still doing these days of science, but my oldest is a science nut and just can't get enough. After doing tons of research, I decided to use one of Elemental Science's preschool series. It is listed to be used for preschool and Kindergarten, so I thought it would be perfect.

 

 

We have completed two weeks of this science curriculum so far and the girls have loved it. It includes both a 2 day a week and 5 day a week schedule. We are doing the 5 day schedule and it is working beautifully without making our day too lengthy. I will do a dedicated post for this science curriculum by the end of this week. I would like to blog all the way through it.

 

Brina has now moved on to AAR Level 2. This reading program is phenomenal. I really can't say better things about it. She is on Lesson 24 of Level 2. I expect she will complete it before the end of the school year. If she does, we will finish out the year with reading through HOD's emerging reader book list. Then, we will start Level 3 in the fall.

 

 

On top of the changes I have already mentioned, we have also added in the beginning spelling lists for Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory. Brina is doing well with these words and also enjoys spelling. We have also moved on to Singapore 1A. I am still not sure if we will stick with Singapore at this point. I will reevaluate at the end of the school year.

 

Siri is also doing well with school. We have now started doing Little Hands to Heaven at double speed. We are completing two units each week. This will cause us to finish sometime in March. I am not sure if we will move on to our new curriculum at that point or wait until the fall. I suppose we will decide at that point.

 

I'm sorry it has been so long since I have updated on the school year. I will do my best to keep the blogging up!



Field Trip to see the Da Vinci Exhibit

I have really let this blog fall to the wayside. I need to get back on this! We are now halfway through Kindergarten and preschool. The year has been wonderful so far. The girls are both learning so much. Thanks to co-op, Brina and I have made some wonderful friends. During an awful cold spell, we decided to head out to our local Space and Rocket Center for a day out with those friends. I thought I would share some pictures from our fun day.

We had a great time playing with the models of his inventions. It was definitely nice to get out as our heat was acting up and the temperature was a high of 20 degrees F that day. Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Beginning Little Hearts

Hi all! It has been quite some time since I have taken a moment to blog. I hate that I let it fall by the wayside, but we were just way too busy this summer. We are in our second week of Little Hearts for His Glory and having fun with our kindergarten year. I just wanted to share some pictures. Some are from this summer and some from this week.

Coin rubbings during Little Hands to Heaven

Over the summer, Brina finished the second reader from All About Reading Level 1.

Someone is making a silly face while coloring. :)

Concentrating on coloring for her etching

 

Finally getting close to a finished product! She used mine as a guide.

Making a ten staircase with cusinaire rods. I highly suggest checking out education unboxed videos. These are great for developing number sense and working on place value.

We are using Singapore Essentials K for now. The A Book is very easy, so we are doing a couple pages from it every day.

Then, we move on to a couple pages in book B as well. I want her to feel confident and challenged at the same time She is doing well with both. We were using unifix cubes for addition problems, but she seems to understand them better with cuisinaire rods since working through some of the videos I mentioned before. She was able to quickly pick out which rod would answer the number sentence.

 

We have moved into our makeshift school room. It is nowhere near done right now. Honestly, I'm a little embarrassed to have pictures of it, but I thought it might be nice for other people to realize that not all homeschoolers have perfect homes. You all know what I mean! Also, we often do school in our pajamas. My kindergartener has sensory issues and feels that most going out clothes are too binding. As you can see, she also has favorites. I don't know how we ended up with the same gown in the pictures as they were taken probably around a month or so apart. Oh well, I aim to show real life and that is exactly what you are getting!

 

We have had a great first two weeks with Little Hearts! Here's to hoping for many more!

Update on my KINDERGARTNER!!!

That's right! I am officially calling Brina a kindergartner now! We started her K4 year last August using My Father's World Kindergarten curriculum. It was a very laid back curriculum that focused on Bible/character lessons, letter sounds, blending and science all centered around one theme each week. It has truly been a wonderful year. We kind of let it fall to the wayside some because many of the activities became too easy. We were ready to move on to a more rigorous phonics program. We will likely at least finish our butterfly unit just to do the butterfly habitat. :)

Since straying from the prescribed sequence in MFW K, we have done a few new things. We are currently using All About Reading Level 1 for phonics. Brina is thriving with this program! I can not say enough great things about it! She does get a little agitated at the fluency sheets, so we break them up over a course of a couple days. She loves the readers though. I am so glad we invested in this program .

We finished up Lesson 16 and 17 in AAR today. Lesson 16 teaches the sounds of consonant team "th." We learned the new sound, practiced it in words on our magnetic board and then played a super fun game.

She really enjoyed this game! She read the first side of this lesson's fluency sheet and will either do the rest later today or tomorrow. It's whatever she wants to do on this really. Sometimes she chooses to read it to Daddy at night. She requested to read out of the reader so that is why we ended up doing two lessons. We will just read it again tomorrow though. :p

For handwriting, we are now using Happy Handwriting. Brina is enjoying decorating the border and then coloring in her letters. Lol! Each letter has a little poem to help you remember how to write it.  Okay, so she's not the best at coloring, but it's not her favorite. We're working on it. She has come a long way. I am trying to stress now to stay on those lines. Our goal for the first semester of kindergarten is to get those letters on the correct lines. :)

This is pretty much how our days go. We are also doing Singapore Essentials Math K though as well. She is slowly working through that material. In July, we will start Heart of Dakota's Little Hearts for His Glory. I hope we are all up for the challenge!