Saturday, January 23, 2010

Homeschooling Update


Here's what Christian and Sophie have been doing....

Sophie (age 4)

I'm not doing anything formal with Sophie right now, but she loves doing "school". She has a cute little desk in the livingroom that holds a number of preschool books. She has two preschool activity wipe-off books that she uses everyday. One is called "My Big Activity Workbook" and the other is "Let's Learn to Write Letters". Another thing that she uses almost every day is a book of reproducible cut-and-paste patterns called " Paper Shapes and Art Projects" from Frank Schaffer Publications. It says it's for grades 1-2, but I think it's awesome for the preschool/K ages. In her desk she also has some "wondercolor" coloring books with the special markers. Sophie also has a computer time each day. She enjoys using "Reader Rabbit's Reading" formerly called" Reader Rabbits Interactive Reading Journey". All my kids have used it, I still think it's the best learn to read computer cd out there! She also enjoys using starfall.com a free online phonics based learn to read site.

Christian (age 9)
When Christian is interested in something he will learn everything he can about the subject. He will get books out from the library, research on the internet and talk to anyone who will listen about what he's learned! He also has an amazing memory, especially for dates. His latest passion/ interest is comics-especially Garfield. He spends hours reading, researching, drawing, and writing his own comic strips and short stories.

He was using the Time4Learning website for Math and Language Arts, but he recently finished the 4th grade Grammar section so I decided to cancel our subscription. This week I started using Total Language Plus with him (two of my other boys used it a couple years ago).  Each workbook is has activities that are based on a novel and covers grammar, spelling, vocabulary, comprehension questions, and enrichment projects. We are using the workbook that's based on The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman. The first two days Christian put up a fuss about the switch, but I think he's starting to enjoy it.

For math right now he is using http://www.mathplayground.com/, Math Blaster computer cd, and Math Turbo-Twist. I hope to have him start using Saxon math by the beginning of February. Isaiah switched to Saxon from Math-U-See this year and I love it. Before this year we always used Math-U-See.


3 comments:

  1. Your two youngest are the same age as my youngest. Your son sounds a lot like mine - especially with the memory for dates! Unfortunately, my four-year-old daughter wants nothing to do with school or learning. I will have to check out the reading/phonics resources you listed, maybe one of those will inspire her!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I had to come back and thank you for the tip about Starfall.com. We checked it out last week and my four year old absolutely loves that site! She is actually interested in learning and is making progress (even after just a few days). Thank you so much for this tip!

    ReplyDelete
  3. That is so awesome! It is such a great site. We've used it for a number of years now.

    ReplyDelete