Mama Kay

We had our convention this past weekend and it was wonderful as usual! It’s so nice to spend time with friends, listen to encouraging speakers and shop for homeschooling books!

My favorite session was Shelley Noonan’s Mentoring Your Daughters. She talked about purposefully teaching your daughters. She recommended spending 1 hour each week one-on-one time with each daughter. With 5 girls I’m not sure how I’m going to achieve that. She wrote A Companion Guide for Beautiful Girlhood. I bought this and intend to start it with 1potato (who is 9 1/2). I already had Beautiful Girlhood but we haven’t read it yet.

Dh went to one called How Do You Know What They Know? by Teresa Moon. He suggested I get her book Evaluating for Excellence. I think it is just what we needed! With more students this year dh & I have been talking about how we need to have more definable goals and ways of measuring their progress. This book is filled with forms to help diagnose where they are, set down your goals and measure their progress. It comes with a CDROM (which they are mailing to me) that you can print the forms out if you don’t want to make copies from the book.

This year we decided to switch from Making Math Meaningful to Math-U-See. Dh is going to take over teaching them math so I won’t have to worry about it. We are really excited about it. I bought the Primer for 3potato who is doing Kindergarten this year and Gamma for 1potato. Some friends of ours are going to give us Beta for 2potato as soon as their son finishes it (he’s almost done). We are already enjoying listening to the skip counting songs.

I’m very excited about the books we got for language lessons this year! They are from Queen Homeschool. The include full color art work for picture study, poetry, creative writing, grammar and more. They are so lovely to look at and are directed to the student so a lot of it they will be able to do on their own. 1potato also picked out Pictures in Cursive Book D to practice her cursive. It is a daily cursive writing practice based on picture study lessons

1potato got very excited about lapbooking at the convention. She got to go to a workshop where they made one. So we got Dinah Zike’s Big Book of Books and Activities. We also got a kit that has 12 folders & papers to make lapbooks with. I’m hoping she will make a lapbook every month and it will help her study skills.

We also got the Keepers of the Home Handbook. We are hoping to start a club using it this fall.

We are going to continue with our Mystery of History Volume 1 using figures from History Through the Ages for our timelines.

We are also going to continue using Draw to Learn: The Book of Psalms for drawing and Bible. We love it. We are using some hardbound books from Miller Pads & Paper to do our drawings in and Prismacolor Pencils. I’m doing it with the girls and it is so enjoyable and really helps focus on what the Bible is saying to us.

We are planning on starting back to school August 4th with everyone else around here. I’m using this planner from Simply Charlotte Mason to pull it all together. I’m really looking forward to this year—I think its going to be a great school year!

Cindy Rushton is hosting the Ultimate Homeschool Expo again this year. It starts on Monday. I’m so excited to be “attending” this great convention from home with over 50 speakers, a virtual vendor hall and free gifts. Tickets are on sale now if you want to participate too. Get More Details at: http://www.cindysaffiliates.com/go.php?offer=kbickel&pid=1

Cindy said I could post this article she wrote here so you could get a peak at the great information available at the expo. We love notebooking at our house!

Let’s Try Notebooking
By Cindy Rushton

Notebooking … ahhh, just the thought makes me hyper! If I could ask every homeschooling family to do just one thing, it would be to just give notebooking a try. This is the one technique that pulls everything together—studies, research, real life, personal interests—everything! It reaches even the most reluctant writer! It makes homeschooling fun and easy! Who wouldn’t want to try that?

Not just that! Everything that normally clutters up the busy homeschool home can be tucked away into a notebook! All of those precious narrations can be safely protected in notebooks. All of those daily copywork lessons can find their home in notebooks on each of the topics that your children love so much. Even those awesome handouts that you have piled up from field trips can find the perfect home in your notebooks! Homeschooling is recorded. An heirloom is built!

Want to Give It a Try?

Getting started is as easy as ABC. Let me take you through the easy steps:

1. Gather your supplies. Your supplies can be as simple as a three-ring binder per child, plastic sheet protectors, and a pencil per child. You can make this as simple or as crafty as you like! Over the years, notebooking has worked so wonderfully in our home that we are constantly on the lookout for different and fun supplies during our daily notebooking time. By doing so, our daily lessons are as fun as a scrapbooking party—every day! If you have no idea where to begin, see our shopping list on www.TheHomeschoolMagazine.com for quick ideas on supplies that work great!

2. Make your supplies accessible. Set aside a place for your material and a place for your children to work. There is something wonderful about having a place fore everything and everything reliably in its place. The work in the beginning is well worth the time during the school year. We have a shelf that contains books that I find along the way with great copywork that I would like for my children to add to their notebooks on those “no ideas are flowing” days. Just having everything there, ready to go, is such a blessing on those busy mornings. Plus, I have learned over the years that this is the best way to really utilize the resources that I have on my shelves.

Just file away any pages or pictures in either manila envelopes or file folders. If the children know where they are, they are more than likely to use them on their own. Also, you will want to use anything else that you have in your home. I keep our paints, papers (plain and colored cardstock and 20 lb. paper; writing paper, etc.), glues, templates, cutting utensils, rulers, markers, pens, pencils, etc. on a shelf and in plastic bins by our dining table (where we do our daily lessons). They are in their spot and that spot is close by. If we want to encourage our young writers, we must give them free access to the best materials.

3. Turn your children loose! Yep! This is all that is left! Inevitably, when I teach workshops on notebooking, I can almost see the brains of mothers clicking away with one tough reality—“If only I had more time to do this!” Oh, beloved! Notebooking is not another thing for you to do! The hard part is learning what this is all about and how to get everything together so we can turn our children loose!

When we began notebooking, I copied a Bible verse a day as a model for my son to copy. As he copied his verse, he would place his page for the day in a plastic sheet protector and add it to his notebook. The next day, his page for that day would slide in behind that page. The next day, he would add another page in another page protector. We built the entire notebook; not specific divisions or subjects. We chose not to divide by subjects because we wanted a nice full “product” built over time. As we added to the notebook each day, I could see the delight building in my young writers. they would sit and just flip through the pages. They loved seeing success. They loved seeing the notebook build up.

As time went on, my son began to find and copy poems that he liked, songs from the church hymnal or from his history lessons. He began a collection of art prints. He added maps that highlighted journeys. At the end of the first year, we had a bulging notebook and a young writer who had gone from reluctant to really excited! The notebook quickly became “his own” notebook. At the end of the year, we divided our notebooks (there was no room to add anything else) into obvious divisions. We had a Bible notebook, a history notebook, a poetry notebook, and another copybook. All of these have continued and several have divided into other notebooks through the years (he now has four history notebooks—Great Men and Women of the Civil War, Battles of the Civil War, Military Notebook, and World History Timeline Notebook! And that is just history!). As your children dig into their interests, they may have other notebooks that develop. Let them go! You will learn more about your children as they learn more about topics and writing!

So, What Do You Think?
Want to give it a try? If I could ask every homeschooling family to do just one thing, it would be to just give notebooking a try. So, think about it. Pray about it. Then, get those supplies. Set aside a spot for your supplies. Then, turn those budding young writers loose!

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About Cindy Rushton…

Cindy Rushton is the hostess of the Ultimate Homeschool Expo, the very first online homeschool convention. She is recording Preview Chats for the Ultimate Homeschool Convention RIGHT NOW! Join her wonderful guests FREE for the next weeks as they count down to the Ultimate Homeschool Expo (April 28-May 3, 2008—BUT! NEVER ENDING because it is an ONLINE Convention!). Get your ticket NOW and receive her awesome A Quick Start for Notebooking Mini-Set FREE today! Check out all of the details here:

http://www.cindysaffiliates.com/go.php?offer=kbickel&pid=1

1Potato has loved playing the piano since she was 4 years old. She has a great ear for music and can play almost any melody she hears. In March 2008, she started having piano lessons to help her with music theory and rhythm. Last Friday, she had her first recital after only 1 month of lessons. She was very nervous but she did great!

Here she is…

One of my favorite homeschool resource stores changed their name this week. They used to be the Homeschool E-Store. Now they are Curr Click: Curriculum in a Click. I love the resources we have available these days. Lots of homeschoolers have written curriculum for their own families and are able to easily share it with the rest of us saving us time and energy. CurrClick is having a sale this week to celebrate their “Grand Opening.” Check it out.

“Children should be influenced by books that vividly portray life in
all its trials and victories. Divine providence should echo
throughout its pages. Characters who suffer wrongfully in a righteous
manner, and display humble dispositions, will lay a secure foundation
for the time when childhood may be stolen away; perhaps through the
death of a loved one, sickness, calamity. children need informed
instruction, and models of heroes and heroines of righteousness to fill
their reserves for such a time. In literature as well as in history,
God who doeth all things well, must be seen through the filter of His
divine love and tender care for His children and as an avenger of all
who harden their neck.”“

Francois Fenelon 1687
from
Education of A Child, The Wisdom Of Fenelon

This week we have been having several discussions about what a good book (or movie) is. My oldest daughter is noticing that what we approve of is not the same as what her friends’ parents choices are even though her friends go to the same church we do. She began by saying that I don’t like anything she wants to see or read. Of course, there are so many things that are inappropriate material for our children but I tried to change the conversation to what are the things that we do approve of and why.

I decided to write out some guidelines for what we consider appropriate material for our children and I thought I would share it here.

Our family has 2 defined purposes that we try to filter everything through:

1. Glorify God

2. Bring Joy to Others

1. Does reading this book or watching this movie help us to fulfill our defined purposes?

2. Does the material inspire us?

3. Is it a living book?

I love this quote from Ruth Saywer which I think gives us a good picture of a living book:

Stories that make for wonder.

Stories that make for laughter.

Stories that stir one within with an understanding of the true

nature of courage, of love, of beauty.

Stories that make one tingle with high adventure,

with daring, with grim determination,

with the capacity of seeing danger through to the end.

Stories that bring our minds to kneel in reverence;

Stories that show the tenderness of true mercy,

the strength of loyalty,

the unmawkish respect for what is good.

Not everything we watch or read falls in line with this but it is our goal to keep to these guidelines as much as possible.

Do you have any guidelines for what you allow your children to watch or read? I’d love to hear them.

A new year is just beginning and I have such high hopes for this new year! Here’s my list:

1. Seek the LORD more. Consistently read my Bible every day and take captive each thought for the LORD.

2. Learn to show dh respect in a way that communicates my love for him.

3. Keep a cleaner home. My first step for this is to keep my kitchen counter cleared off. This is a big Hot Spot for me and I am determined to win the war against clutter on this spot.

4. Be a thermostat instead of a thermomentor in our home.

5. Assist dh is acheiving our dream of a small house/big yard. We want to sell our current house and buy a house in “the country” but still close enough to town for dh to easily commute to work.

This video is so cute—you’ve got to watch it!

http://www.doublesharpevideo.com/HomeSchool2/Homeschool2.html

This is an amazing post about our priorities as Christians, wives and mothers. Very convicting!

Since the homeschool convention our family has been going through Proverbs at dinner. My dh has been posting his thoughts on Proverbs on his blog. Check it out at www.binarykingdom.com.

My husband and I went to the annual AFHE convention this past weekend. This was my 6th year to be able to attend. The theme this year was Learning, Loving and Growing Together. It is always a wonderful time of encouragement, learning and fellowship with other homeschoolers.

This year the keynote speakers were Kevin Swanson and Mike Smith from HSLDA.

The main message that I took home was that I need to praise our children more, that we should go through the Proverbs with them daily and that we need to keep our eye on future generations. That what we do now effects the future greatly.

Kevin Swanson had a great analogy about a family that were assigned the task of taking a space ship to a place that would take 200 years to get to. The first generation knew that they would never survive that long or that their children would not survive that long so they had to pass on the vision to their children of the destination. Then their children had to pass the vision on to their children. That is how we should be. We need to keep passing on the vision to future generations that God is good and that our purpose in this life is love God and glorify him.
For our coming year I purchased the following resources:

(This year we will be doing 3rd/4th grade with 1potato; 1st grade with 2 potato and Pre-K with 3 potato.)

Making Math Meaningful Level 1 for 2potato & Level 3 for 1potato

Classically Cursive: Attributes of God by Veritas Press for 1potato

First Language Lessons Level 3 for 1potato

Christian Liberty Nature Reader Levels 4 & 5

Discover 4 Yourself, Children’s Bible Study Series: God, What’s Your Name? by Kay Arthur for 1potato

Heros: Then & Now by YWAM
Hudson Taylor
Brother Andrew
Jim Elliot
Rachel Saint
John Wesley

I also purchased 2 Timeline books from Knowledge Quest during their sale last week.

(I hope to be getting the timeline figures from Homeschool in the Woods soon to use in the timeline books.)