Christine's blog listings.

Is Anyone Out There?

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:56:04 -0500

Hey everyone,

I hope you all had a great schoolyear. Ours is finally winding down and we are ready for a summer break!

I have noticed that this site is not very active and it looks as though I am as much to blame as the next person. I really should post to my blog more than twice a year!

Anyway, Allie finished 3rd grade. We did chemistry and early modern history (1603-1850). Next year, we will be studying physical science and modern history (1850-present). After that, we'll start the cycle over. She has only 5A - 6B to finish in Singapore math and I am still trying to decide what program we will be using for math after that. She likes working from a workbook, so maybe another text that comes with a workbook.

Andy is 14 months old now. Having a baby around while trying to do school has definitely made for an interesting schoolyear.

Next year, I am going to try something new with our schedule. I am going to give Allie all her lessons in the morning and then let her work on assignments in the afternoon. I have to be to work at 4 Mon-Thur, and I am hoping this will help decrease the feeling of being rushed in the afternoon. We'll see how the trial goes!

Hope everyone had a wonderful school year!

Christine

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Starting a New Year

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:07:57 -0600

Happy New Year everyone!

We are about halfway through our school year. It has been a challenging year with a baby and my returning to work in the evenings. We have somehow managed to remain on track though :)

We are still using the same curriculums as last year. I’ve been really happy with History Odyssey. Allie and I both enjoy all the read alouds. We enjoy the Real Science labs too, but I have to add to this program to beef it up. Secular science programs for homeschoolers are hard to find.

Allie got a new puppy for Christmas! He’s a golden retriever and was born on October 18th. She named him Teddy.

We’ve enjoyed Christmas break...time to recuperate...but I am ready to get started again on Monday.

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New baby, end of school year, etc

Wed, 27 May 2009 11:49:46 -0500

Andromedus Babatunde Ajayi arrived on his due date of March 23, 2009. He weighed 10 lbs and measured 21 inches. I don't have small babies! Babatunde is Nigerian for "father has come back."

He is now two months old and doing well (other than a case of pink eye. Ugh!) He weighs 14 lbs 6 oz and is 24 ½ inches tall. He smiles, coos and laughs a lot. He cries mostly when he is hungry, but once he's fed, he's usually pretty happy.

Allie has finished her second-grade work and his enjoying her time off. I'm only requiring her to read over the summer. We will begin her third-grade curriculum in August. We will be using all the same programs: Singapore for math, REAL Science for chemistry (released just in time), History Odyssey Early Modern, Voyages in English for grammar and writing, Spelling Connections. We are also adding French and typing. For French, we are using workbooks and audio cds. If she's still interested in learning French by fourth grade, I'll look into more expensive programs. We are using a software program called Type to Learn for her typing.

This week, Allie will be having her ballet recital. There are six girls in her class and they will be dressed in pink and blue and dancing to the lullaby "All the Pretty Ponies." She is looking forward to performing on stage for a second year. Next year, she is thinking about signing up for the beginning Hip Hop class.

I've posted a few pics of Andy. After Allie's recital rehearsal, I'll upload video of her practicing.

Christine

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Happy New Year!

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:44:58 -0600

Happy New Year, everyone! I cannot believe that I let half a schoolyear go by without posting a blog. Shameful.

Second grade has been going well for Allie. She finished both 3A and 3B of the Singapore math series and will begin 4A after break. She is studying medieval history this year. I've incorporated a lot of folk tales and myths into the lessons to give her a flavor of each culture. For science, we finished studying the Earth and have moved on to space. She really enjoys science and I've supplemented the REAL science program with other resources and books from the library.

As for me? I've been pretty tired these past few months...Allie's little brother is due March 23rd :) Some days its a struggle to get the schoolday finished so I have time for my afternoon nap. Somehow, we have managed to stay on schedule so far. Spring break will begin the day he arrives...not sure how long it will last, but as long as we need :) Since we gave Allie a Greek name (Alexandria Demi), I wanted to give her brother a Greek name as well and chose Andromedus Theodore. We'll be calling him Andy.

Christine

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End of School Year

Sun, 25 May 2008 14:12:38 -0500

It's been a while since my last post and since we're nearing the end of our school year, I thought I better get on it :)

We have just 9 days left. Yay!! Our last day will be on June 6th. We will be finishing up Ancient History, then. We are about halfway through Singapore Math 2b, but will pick that back up in August when we start our new year. We finished Voyages in English grade 1 about 2 weeks ago, so we won't be doing any more grammar or writing until the next school year. Overall, we have had a pretty good first year and we will be doing all second grade work next year. She will soon be starting 3rd grade in math :)

While I do think Allie is smart, I think the main reason she has been able to get ahead is the one-on-one instruction that homeschooling allows. It has been great and I can't wait to see what we can accomplish next year:)

The main changes I have planned for next year: A more fleshed-out science program. Our science barely lasted more than half the year because of Allie's enthuciasm for that subject. I will also be having her keep a reading log to help her with phonics and reading comprehension. I've been satisfied with the curriculum choices I made, Real Science, History Odyssey, Voyages in English, Spelling Connections, and Singapore Math, so I will be using those same curriculums for second grade.

Have a wonderful summer break everybody!

Christine

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New sofa in school room

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:15:17 -0500

This weekend we finally found a decent used sofa to put in our school room so we could sit comfortably to do school. Yesterday, it made such a big difference. My daughter fully cooperated for a full two hours! A record for her :) Normally, she is wanting to move all over the house and asking for a snack every hour. Hopefully, this will be a trend.

At first, the incentive program I started a week ago, was not improving her cooperation much, but maybe it was the sofa we needed...we will see in the week to come.

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Incentives

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:12:54 -0500

I'm trying something new with Allie. For each assignment that she cooperates about getting it done, she will be awarded a star. She can turn her stars in for prizes. I'm making the prizes worth different amount of stars based on their value. Hopefully, this strategy will eliminate taking over an hour to get 20 minutes of math done! It went well today. She was done with her schoolwork by one o'clock :)

Does anyone else find they are running out of material at grade level? Allie has only a few assignments left in her 1st-grade grammar workbook and I really don't want to start the 2nd-grade workbook until we start the next schoolyear in August. I may just have her practice sentence writing in a journal for the rest of the year and let her write about whatever she chooses.

We are raising butterflies for science. We started out with six caterpillars and now have four left that have reached the coccoon stage. Hopefully, we will have butterflies in a few days. We will keep them for a couple of days before releasing them.

After spending several days in Ancient Greece, we are now visiting Ancient China. We have been reading tales of Ancient China from "The Ch'I Lin Purse." It is interesting to see how different Chinese fairy tales are from the ones we grew up with. I checked out a book from the library about Chinese festivals that includes several crafts. We will be making some of those and I'll post pictures. The only project we did for Ancient Greece was a Trojan Horse. I'll post a picture of that.

Since the weather is finally getting warmer, we are meeting other homeschoolers on Thursday's for park day. I gave Allie the choice of either having a longer schoolyear or doing school on Saturdays to make up for taking Thursday off. She chose the Saturday school, so she can have a longer break. So, we still plan to end the school year on June 13th and begin the next schoolyear on August 11th.

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New Camera

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:03:41 -0500

I bought a new camera this weekend, a Kodak Easyshare Z885. The prices have really dropped!! I paid less than half what I did for my old one (Kodak Easyshare DX7630) and the new one is smaller and much better quality :) I look forward to using it to take pictures of Allie's new projects. In a couple of weeks, I'll take more video of her doing her gymnastics, too.

This week, we will begin our study of Ancient Greece. I checked out a bunch of books from the library, including a couple by Mary Pope Osborne. Allie loves the Magic Tree House series by her, so I think she will enjoy these as well.

Last week, Allie read some independently...this week, I've had to fight with her to get all her reading done. I think she will grow to like reading more as her skill level improves. When I read MTH to her, I sometimes have her read a page. She still needs help with a lot of the words, but I'm hoping that by encouraging her to read stories that she loves, it will motivate her to want to read more.

She has been working on her 3x table. She can figure out the answers by counting by 3s. We'll keep practicing until she has the table memorized.

I ordered a butterfly kit, so we will soon be caring for caterpillars and watching them grow into butterflies. Allie is really looking forward to this science project. Science is her favorite subject. We've been using Real Science Life. We've enjoyed most of the labs. Allie's only real complaint is there isn't enough! The program was designed for 2-days a week and Allie wants to do science 5 days a week. If I'd known she'd enjoy science so much, I would have fleshed the program out more...that is exactly what I'm doing for next year when we study earth/space science. We'll be using the labs from Real Science again. I'm adding lots of reading, videos, worksheets, Internet activites, etc to flesh it out to a 180-day program.

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Good Friday

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 10:03:45 -0500

Would you believe I let my daughter have Good Friday off from school and she starts talking about wanting to do school? When I have stuff planned, I usually have to constantly get on Allie to concentrate on her schoolwork. Now, she is only six, so I am sure it is because she is so young, short attention span. She does show an interest in learning. Her attitude on Good Friday seems to prove this point.

We are currently studying the Ancient Israelites in our History Odyssey program. We made a warrior's headdress like the Philistines wore and a model hearth house to show how the Ancient Israelites lived. I will upload some pics of these projects. We read some children's stories from the Bible and watched videos on Moses and David and Goliath.

Allie finished her first grade speller this week. At times, she wanted to do more than one lesson a week. I saw nothing wrong with that since she was spelling almost all the words correctly. So, we will begin the second grader speller on Monday!

She is starting to show some enthuciasm for independent reading too :) Yesterday morning she came to me and showed me the books she had read the evening before. I am always reading in front of her, so I was thrilled that she finally took the initiative. :)

Allie is farthest ahead in math. We have been using Singapore math. She is working in the last chapter of book 2A and is working on learning her 3 times table. We have moved fast through these books, but as long as she continues to average above 90% on all the assignments, I don't see any reason to slow down. When she comes to a concept she finds difficult, we'll slow down then. Math has always come easy to our family...that's why I work a few hours a week as a math tutor.

What's happening at Christine's Country Units? I am waiting on my artist's contributions for the Newton unit. It should be published in the next few days. I am also working on units on Einstein and Canada. If you want to check out my website and help support a homeschool mom go to www.countryunits.com. Thanks!

Christine

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Christine's Blog

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 15:33:29 -0500

March 9, 2008

Hello and welcome to my very first blog. I've been around the Internet for better than 10 years, even have my own online business, but I've never gotten the bug to create a blog. Then I found this place and since I'm a dedicated homeschool mom, I thought I'd give it a try.

I've been homeschooling my daughter, Allie, for almost a year now. She has never been and never will be in public school. We use the classical method of teaching. She is learning about the ancients through History Odyssey and about life science with REAL Science. The only problem is she wants to do history and science 5x a week! So I have to flesh the programs out quite a bit to meet her needs.

We are using Singapore math. She finished the 1st grade level in December and is about 2/3 of the way through the 2A book already. Maybe the fact that I am a math tutor accounts for her rapid progress in this subject. There is a math gene!

Allie also does well at spelling. She will be finishing up th 1st grade book of Zaner Bloser's Spelling Connections this week. She is proud that she will be starting the 2nd grade book before we are done with the first year of our homeschool.

About me, I love to read and to write. I have been writing almost as long as I've been reading. For many years, it was just a hobby. I wrote fan fiction and was content just to be read. Then about 5 years ago, I began writing country unit studies and actually was making a little income from my writing. Since then, I've written units on all the States and have begun writing units on famous people. You can check out my units by going to www.countryunits.com

Christine

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