Notebooking!

I am a big fan of notebooking.  We haven't done a whole lot yet since my children are still young, but what we have done we LOVE.  There is something so magical about looking back on the year and having a whole done up notebook to show for it!  Right now for my kindergartener we didn't think she was ready for our CC notebook so for her, we are doing the sight word interactive notebook which she is in love with. here it is at the TPT store  If you want to try before you buy here is her freebie.

Now for my oldest, she wasn't quite ready for a real notebook, since her sentence structure isn't the greatest- so I designed a transition notebook.  Next year or maybe the year after she might be ready for a researching notebook, but as for now she is using our CC notebook, which I am so excited to use!!

 

I have everything in there from Timeline to Fine arts, if you are part of the Classical Conversations community (or even not in a community and doing it at home) this is a great resource.  Even if you only use a few pages from it, it's going to make learning memory work REALLY fun.  So let me run you through the notebook real quick.

For every week you will have a page for each subject.  We divided them by weeks in a 2 inch binder.  I have a smaller "weekly binder" so that she isn't overwhelmed by the CC notebook.  I will put each weeks work into the weekly binder and then I will switch it out at the end of the week (put the week she's done with back into the CC notebook and the work she needs to do into the weekly binder).

So in each week you have the following subjects:

• Prayers (record the things you prayed for in CC)
• Presentations (write your presentation-would be a super handy tool the day before community!)
• Timeline - every week has a cut and paste timeline sheet, the first 8 weeks are in black and white but on the connected website you can look for the first 8 weeks in color and replace the black and white ones.  Also not included in the notebooking pages but also on CC connected are for those little researchers and writers the notebooking page for timeline.
• A history work page where it is drawing and writing out the sentence.  In the back of each file is also a notebook page for the older ones with more lines and a tiny box to draw on.  I also have a few other history sentence review pages on the connected that would be great replacements or additions.
• Math page- there are older children math pages in the back of some files too.
• Latin-usually either a copy work or mini book or activity page
• Science experiment page and a science memory work page
• Geography cut and paste and a geography color/map
• English page
• and my favorite FINE ARTS!  there is a fine arts page in every week pertaining to either great artists, what your child will learn in drawing, or tin whistle, and composers.

And all of those pages you can find weekly on my username SHERIELLIS at CC connected (there is a subscription fee, $6 a month if you are a member of community or $60 if you are not.)

SHERI ELLIS AT CC CONNECTED

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Tri-fold board

This is the board I made for use in CC...  You can get the instructions HERE

OiLS

So in classical conversations, one of our art lessons is on OiLS.  Not the oil pastel kind, the drawing component kind!  This was awesome to me when I first learned about this.  You really can break down everything you draw to those 5 components.  Here is a quick cheat sheet to learning them:
click HERE to download them.

I had a cute fun little practice lesson with my kids before CC starts and it was so much fun!  I can't wait to teach a whole class of these little guys and watch them draw!

So for the first part of our 30 min segment we introduced the sheet above, the OiLS and let them practice them for about 3 minutes.  Then I did some board drawings, instructing them to follow along.  Here they are:

 

The cute little mouse I learned on a facebook page : ART FOR KIDS, The Alligator I got from an ED Emberly book.

The kids had fun Here are theirs, I really wish I would have had them use black marker, it would have looked so much better.  So in our actual class that's what we will do:

 

Then we did a final project as I instructed them in a clown fish:

 

DIY Scientific Method Visual

Most children of ages 3-6 are very visual.  Having something for them to look at as you teach I have found to be extremely helpful.  I threw this cute little visual together in about 10 minutes.  You can get the little cards HERE

 

So here's what you will need:

About a yard and a half of a thick ribbon

6 peices of a thinner ribbon about 4in long each

6 binder clips

1 binder ring

glue gun

Here's how:

I first "hemmed" my ribbon by folding the ends back and gluing them.  I then slid my binder ring onto the long ribbon and folded down onto the back, then glued that down.  Then I wrapped each thin ribbon around my long ribbon.  I glued the small ribbons to the back of the long ribbon first then wrapped it around and glued it back on itself.  I trimmed the excess short ribbons off, then I clipped my binder clips onto the small ribbons and clipped the cards on.  The small ribbons were glued about 14cm apart from each other.  Then I glued my "title" to the top below the binder.  

There yah go! DIY scientific method visual!

The Kids and That Room.

Just wanted to throw a quick post out there for anyone wondering about curriculum choices, or the kids, the school room :)

OUR KIDS

We have 4.  Summer our oldest is 6, she's in 2nd grade this year and our firecracker.  We are usually dealing with impulsiveness due to ADHD.  She also has a severe tree nut allergy.  Acaydia is 4 and is in K.  She's the sweet quiet one, does what she's told, schools quickly, and everyone loves her.  Malachi is our fun loving boy. Sometimes he's bright, sometimes not so much-but always thoughtful and always sweet.  He's 3 and while he will be attending our CC class on tuesday mornings, and engaging in *some* of our home activities, he will be enrolled in an early pre-k class in afternoons.  Then we have Kaemon.  He's a challenge too, He's only 18 months but he has a temper.  Sweet most of the time, until he wants something and you don't have it or won't give it.  They all have great strengths, and all have weaknesses we work on.  We love them all the same though and wouldn't give any of them up for a second.

OUR ROOM

 

OUR CURRICULUM

This is the first year where I feel confident in our choices of curriculum.  In previous years (ask me about MFW) we tried out different things and not a whole lot seemed to fit.  I've been pretty solid on our Christ Centered Phonics since shortly after we started (tried Abeka phonics but it wasnt a good fit either).  One thing I did realize is that a "boxed" curriculum was NOT for us.  They just were too much, too overwhelming.  This year I am happy with our choices.  We are a week into it and we all seem to be gelling well.  There was no "adjusting" it just all worked.

Summer-2nd grade:

 -Saxon 2
-Christ Centered Phonics C:2 toward the end
-Apologia Astronomy - we are doing C3 in CC and it's anatomy but she was really wanting to do astronomy so that's what we went with.
-Story of the World Ancient Empires - again this doesn't line up with our CC material, but we really wanted to start at the beginning.
-Song School Latin - we don't have a lot of extra time so this will be a once a week/every other week thing most likely.  It's fun and it's good copywork ;)

Acaydia-K:

-Abeka Math K
-Christ Centered Phonics B:1
-She will also be doing Apologia and SOTW with her sister :)
-Interactive Sight Word Notebook.  We used something similar to this with summer and it's so much fun, we found this and she is LOVING it.

 

Get it here

A Classical Tomorrow

Classical Christian education is an approach to learning which emphasizes biblical teachings and incorporates a teaching model from the classical education movement known as the Trivium, consisting of three parts: grammar, logic, and rhetoric

From the Wikipedia article.

As I sit here and write this post, my children are most assuredly spilling cracker crumbs all over the floor.  My oldest is running around screaming "SIT DOWN" to my 1 year old.  I don't have it all together.  I don't claim to, infact sometimes I wonder if I have ANY of it together.  I do know I love every second  okay most seconds(you should have seen my middle child yesterday after our darling oldest decided to give her a haircut) of my life.  I LOVE homeschooling my kids.  Teaching was my major, teaching was my passion.  Every opportunity to teach I take-it EXCITES me!  

Just 4 years ago my oldest started to read.  at 2!  I hadn't even thought of how I would homeschool yet, I still had some idea in my mind that I would be able to teach my kids and teach other kids at the same time and had no idea how I would do it!  She took off like a rocket, reading book after book and at 3 I couldn't keep up, I decided to start her in Abeka K.  I didn't like Abeka, I felt there were too many gaps, it was too simple.   They didn't memorize the blends, digraphs (phonograms), and it bugged me.  A dear friend of mine showed me Christ Centered Phonics and I fell in love!  We have continued with it now for 3 years.  This is our 4th, and our oldest is thriving.  6 years old and reading at a 5th grade reading level.  A few years ago I started to study classical education.  I LOVED the idea, the stages of learning really made sense.  It all made sense, why don't the public schools teach like this anymore?  I yearn for the day when the school systems will realize what they have done and go back to where they should be. 

2 years ago a friend from my church decided to try out "Classical Conversations".  Just following the curriculum, not really doing an official "community", but they met together.  6 weeks into the school year I started coming just for small portions of it, and once again I found what made sense.  Our friend started the community last year and it was such a huge blessing!  My oldest's tutor was so amazing, he made it fun, engaging.  I love the program, everything about it.  This year, more people heard about it and got on board, my director asked me to become a tutor and I agreed.  This year will be my first year as a tutor.  I am so incredibly stoked at this blessing!  I never thought that God would come up with such a brilliant plan for me to have everything!  I get to homeschool my children, and enjoy teaching others?  He has worked it all out for me perfectly.

 I was asked by several people if I blog.  And the truth is I have tried.  I usually get this far, a nicely done blog.  a first post.  maybe another few posts in the same week and then *spzzzz* it fizzles out and I don't get to it for another year or so.  In the last 7 months or so, I have had so much I wanted to share and no where really to share it.  I thought maybe now I will start a blog and actually want to keep it up.  We'll see.  At least now I have a place where I can share my ideas.  My files.  The things I make for us, that I know would bless others!  Maybe all of you can keep me accountable.  Remind me to share :)  Thanks for looking, and have a super blessed school year!

Sheri Ellis