Week #7 In Review

I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but this school year is just zipping along. I'm truly amazed that we have finished seven weeks of homeschooling. What did we accomplish in week #7? Here's the rundown:

LANGUAGE ARTS: We did SWR quite differently this week. I gave the Section G words to Grace in an oral pre-test, then we just focused on the missed words during the week--with a final test on Friday. As much as I love the methodology of SWR, it has become a huge burden on us timewise. After much contemplation, next week we'll be making a change in our spelling curriculum. We spent Friday afternoon at our local homeschool bookstore pouring over all the other spelling choices that are in workbook format. You know...easy pick-up-and-go type programs. I narrowed down the choices & had Grace look over them. And the winner is...{insert drum roll here}...Spelling Workout. The parts of SWR that I will continue using are the phonogram cards & spelling rules. Those are like spelling gold!

FLL is moving along nicely now that we've fast-forwarded to the second half of the book. Our lessons this week focused on the state of being verbs. I've still got the chant stuck in my brain:

am [clap]
is [clap]
are, was, were [clap]
be [clap]
being [clap]
been [clap clap]

CHARACTER: Since manners are so important, we continued this week with house rule #6--show respect to others by using good manners. Here are a couple of good reads we picked up at the library:

And since we're on the subject of good manners, we finished thank-you notes from Grace's birthday & mailed them out at the beginning of the week. Here is the young author in action...searching for just the right words, then putting pen(cil) to paper.


READING: Grace's reading confidence, fluency, accuracy, speed, etc. is increasing every week!!! This week she continued reading Junie B. Jones to herself and read the first three chapters of M&M and the Halloween Monster aloud to me. We finished our read-aloud of Bridge to Terabithia, and one of Grace's copywork passages was from the book:


MATH: We have made it through Lesson #20 in Horizons 2. For Grace, math is best done as our first subject...lying on the kitchen floor...in her gown. :)



SPANISH: We did our fourth lesson from the Elementary Spanish video program, and Grace completed the activity sheet. We also played Spanish Bingo--including Emma. Lots of fun!

HISTORY & SCIENCE: We read the first half of Ch. 4 in SOTW1...Ancient Egyptian Mummies. We didn't finish the second half of the chapter, because we got so "wrapped up" in our studies. (Man, do I love a bad pun!) To continue with a Halloween theme, in life science we started learning about bats. Of course, you can't study bats without reading Stellaluna.

Throw in co-op and our continuing composer/artist studies from Ambleside Online, mix well, and that's a wrap. (Sorry...couldn't resist one more mummy pun.) Thanks for stopping by. No scrapbook pages to share this week, but be sure to read the post below about Digital Scrappin'.

Digital Scrappin' 101

How do you get started in digital scrapbooking? And what do you do to get your completed layout from screen to album? I've had inquiries like these a time or two, so I thought I'd formally address this in--what else--a blog post.

First, a little background info about me...I started scrapbooking traditionally (i.e., paper, scissors, glue stick) when Grace was about 6 months old. It was a painfully slow process for several reasons, namely:

1. Grace was only 6 months old. :)
2. I am extremely terribly immensely remarkably quite indecisive.

#1 meant that I had very little time to spend on scrapbooking.

#2 meant that I spent most of that precious time trying to decide on the perfect placement of every photo & embellishment.

In this case, 1 + 2 = very few completed layouts. Not that any of this stopped me from snapping 1000's of photos...literally.

Fast forward to Christmas 2003...or, as I like to call it: If You Give a Mom a Digital Camera. We treated ourselves to our very first digital camera. Digital camera=photos on computer. This led to "I'm printing them out anyway, so why don't I add a little here & a little there." And then, "Oh...what's this crazy new thing called digital scrapbooking all about?" Once I dipped my toes in the water, I quickly decided (yep, quickly) to jump in with both feet. And I haven't looked back since. Not once. Why? Here's another handy list:

1. Set-up & clean-up takes only as long as opening & closing my laptop.
2. No sharp objects lying about tempting those little munchkins.
3. No unfinished layouts lying about either that the aforementioned munchkins might decide to "help" with.
4. If I don't have that perfect shade of pink paper to coordinate with my dd's outfit in the photo, no problem. I can shop online at midnight or make it myself.
5. Remember that problem I have with indecisiveness? Let's just say that CTRL-Z (undo) is my best friend.
   
6. Digital layouts are easy to share. I can print multiple copies...one for Nana, one for Mamaw, and one for me. Plus, I can e-mail them to Matthew at work, my sister in Memphis, Kristi & Keith in Texas (you get the idea) or share them on my blog. :)

So...what kind of software should you choose? First, think about how much time you want to invest in learning a new program. {I hear all the homeschoolers out there laughing maniacally at this statement. Time? For me? To learn something new?} There are many software choices that range from super easy drag-and-drop, print-and-done types to the high learning-curve graphics-editing behemoth that is Adobe Photoshop CS3. I personally use CS3's little brother Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0. The learning curve is not quite as high as CS3...and neither is the price.

Now...how do you actually go about creating your first layout? Instead of reinventing the wheel by giving you all the nitty-gritty details of my workflow, I'll point you in the direction of some great tutorials:

• The Shabby Shoppe ~ Good "how to create your first layout" tutorials for CS2/CS3/PSE, including a *video* tutorial.
• Two Peas in a Bucket ~ Another good "how to get started" tutorial.
• Scrapbook Bytes ~ Even more tutorials.

Next...free digital kits (paper, embellishments & the like) to get you hooked started:

• Shabby Princess ~ The *free* side of The Shabby Shoppe.
• Two Peas in a Bucket ~ Freebies.

Plus...some good layout galleries for inspiration:

• Scrapbook Bytes
• Two Peas in a Bucket
• Digi Shop Talk

And...now that you've become a digi-addict...some great places to shop:

• Designer Digitals
• ScrapArtist
• Shabby Miss Jenn
• The Shabby Shoppe
• Jen Wilson Designs
• Heather Ann Designs
• Digital Design Essentials

Whew! Now on to printing. I like convenience. That means I print everything at home on my Epson Stylus Photo R220 printer using primarily either Epson Matte Paper Heavyweight or Epson Semigloss Scrapbook Paper. I scrap square sizes (8.5x8.5; 8x8; 6x6) & rectangular sizes (8.5x11 or 11x8.5). Still want to scrap 12x12? Check out Costco's photo center, if you have one nearby. And while I did start out scrapping 12x12, I really don't miss it now. Plus, the smaller sizes are easier for the kiddos to hold while looking through them. And you don't have to make them wear protective gloves & handle the scrapbook like it's a fine piece of your great-grandmother's china because it's the only copy you have. While re-printing a damaged layout might be inconvenient, it's definitely not disastrous.

So, that's my *summary* of the hows & whys of digital scrapbooking. Congratulations! You made it to the end of this rather lengthy post. For that, I'll give you my best Paul Harvey impression. Remember If You Give a Mom a Digital Camera? And now, for the rest of the story...

When we bought our first digital camera, we went with a middle-of-the-road Canon PowerShot (point & shoot) because "we didn't need anything too big or fancy." Famous last words. Since then I've upgraded...twice.

Happy scrappin'!!!

Week #6 In Review

Fall is one of my favorite times of year. It's also one of those times of the year that seems to just fly by. And that was before we started homeschooling. This week was no exception. However, despite several distractions...beautiful weather, Emma's impending cold, and a mid-week "date" night...we managed to get quite a bit done. Here are the highlights:

LANGUAGE ARTS: This week in SWR we concentrated on reviewing the 70 phonograms, as well as a few key spelling rules. We picked back up in FLL with the second half of the book, which has a much better pace, IMHO. For fun, we added in some Schoolhouse Rock to review all those parts of speech. Our main selection for copywork & memorization was "Table Manners" (aka "The Goops") by Gelett Burgess. This also tied in nicely with our CHARACTER lesson.

READING: We're still working through Bridge to Terabithia as our read-aloud. Grace's independent reading consisted of Owl at Home, Young Cam Jansen & the Zoo Note Mystery, and...drum roll please...her FIRST EVER READ-TO-HERSELF CHAPTER BOOK. It's a Junie B. Jones book that she picked out on our last library visit. I'm sure Charlotte Mason would consider it twaddle, but I'm tickled that she finally wants to read something all by herself...to herself. I just had her give me a summary of each chapter as she finished it, then one night she read a chapter to me...just so I could see how she's doing. Two thumbs up!

MATH: Grace completed four lessons in Horizons 2. And since we are working on skip-counting by 3's, we watched...you guessed it...Schoolhouse Rock's "3 is a Magic Number." Ahhh...good times...

CHARACTER: House rule #6--show respect to others by using good manners. See LA discussion above...love those Goops!

SPANISH: We did a combination of UnitedStreaming's Elementary Spanish (unit1, lesson3) and Spanish for Children (lesson1). I know...I know...I still need to post our Spanish plan. It's on my to-do list. :)

Add in a co-op day and some beautiful, sunny days in the Pacific Northwest, and you've got a full week. In closing, here are some photos taken at our trip to the pumpkin patch today. Thanks for stopping by!




Credits: Created in Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0. Templates by Jen Caputo & Heather Roselli. "Cherrywood Farm" digital kit by Shabby Miss Jenn. Staples by Amber Clegg. Fonts used--Shalimar Swash & Linenstroke.

Week #5 In Review

Well...another week of Evergreen Eclectic Academy's inaugural year has come and gone. Here's the summary:

LANGUAGE ARTS: We plowed through Section F of SWR this week. To add some excitement to our spelling--not that spelling isn't exciting enough on its own--I added a crossword puzzle, word search, as well as a couple of silly sentences for dictation (& illustration, of course).


Moving on to FLL...or should I say moving on from FLL??? I'm torn. I really, really like the concept of FLL. It uses a slow, gentle pace (think of the snail in the Frog & Toad story "The Letter") with repetition...LOTS of repetition. LOTS & LOTS of repetition. LOTS & LOTS & LOTS of repetition. You get the idea. I'm just not sure this is our cup o' tea. I originally started the year with the idea of covering the entire book quickly. Now I may just skip ahead to the 2nd half of the book or abandon FLL entirely. I just can't decide. So...for this week anyway...we just focused on identifying the nouns in our copywork passage.

READING: We finished reading aloud Little House in the Big Woods, and began reading Bridge to Terabithia. Grace has seen the movie and wanted to read the novel, so I let this read-aloud be *her* choice. So far it's going well, although I am doing a bit of {beep} censoring on some of the {beep} language. Maybe I'm turning into an old fuddy-duddy, but I'm just not ready to explain the meaning of "b*tch*ng" to my 7yo daughter.

More Frog & Toad for Grace's independent reading. This week's selection: Days with Frog and Toad. For all my fellow procrastinators, I highly recommend "Tomorrow." No hurry...just whenever you get around to it. :)

MATH: We're cruising along in Horizons 2. We completed Lessons 9-12, including our first "test." We're still playing "Go to the Dump" and working on those completing-the-ten addition facts. Multi-digit addition appears to be Grace's friend. I'm so happy!

CHARACTER: House rule #5--exhibit patience & self-control. Favorite fable: "The Crow and the Pitcher."



HISTORY & SCIENCE: We were having so much fun on the earliest writings (from SOTW1 last week) that we extended our study of it into this week. The girls each made their own cuneiform using Sculpey Clay. Now, I don't know how many of you have had the opportunity to work with Sculpey Clay, so you may (or may not) be able to appreciate this next little gem. While *patiently* working to get the Sculpey Clay {ahem} "sculpt"-able...yeah, I know it's not a real word, but I love a bad pun...Grace made the observation that "little by little...does...the...trick!" I loved seeing the light bulb go off in her head as she made the connection to our earlier discussion of "The Crow and the Pitcher." So we managed to get the cuneiforms sculpted, carved and baked. Next step: painting! Then photos to follow.

Another afternoon I read about the Rosetta Stone from The Mystery of the Hieroglyphs, as the girls stamped with a hieroglyph kit I found at B&N. We also read some of Ms. Frizzle's Adventures: Ancient Egypt and caught up on map work & coloring pages from SOTW1, Chapters 2-3.

Our science "creature of the week" was the spider. We scored several great library finds on this subject. One of our long-time favorite tales to "spin" (yes, another bad pun intended) is The Spider and the Fly by Tony DiTerlizzi (based on a tale by Mary Howitt). If you're looking for something a little creepy--with a message--for some Halloween reading, be sure to check this one out!



SPANISH: Our new venture this week was Spanish. I originally planned to use ¡El Español Facil! Level 1 as our spine. Then along came the Homeschool Buyers Co-op with a group buy on Discovery Education's UnitedStreaming (which is still available, by the way...check it out here)...so we're using Elementary Spanish via UnitedStreaming as our main program with lots of supplementary materials. Stay tuned for a post on un plan Español ecléctico...coming soon to a blog near you.

OTHER: We are still listening to Rimsky-Korsakov and studying da Vinci. Grace also did a few GeeArt lessons on the computer this week. Co-op is continuing to go well. We even had a break from the rain this week to get out & do a little informal "nature study" at our local lake. We spotted tons of spider webs...some even occupied.

Well...that about wraps things up for this week. Thanks for listening! ¡Adiós!

"Ambling" Through Our Fourth Week

Wow! It's amazing how quickly these first four weeks of homeschooling have gone by! Each week we've added a bit to our *core* curriculum of the 3 R's. Week #4 brought "Art & Music Appreciation"...CM style. If you've never been to the Ambleside Online site, take a stroll on over. You'll find an amazing wealth of information on Charlotte Mason, including a free curriculum outline. While our homeschool is not 100% CM, I do find the AO Artist & Composer Studies to be an exceptional addition to our plan for several reasons:

(1) I know diddly about art, artists, art appreciation...you get the gist. After all, I am a CPA. I can do your taxes, but please don't ask me which art movements occurred during the transition from the Renaissance period to Neoclassicism. That's what Wikipedia is for.

(2) I know squat about music, composers, and the like. I did take piano for a few months in the 4th grade. I did a fine rendition of "Blueberry Hill" at my recital...but not quite Carnegie Hall material, if you know what I mean.

(3) The AO Artist & Composer Studies are completely planned out for you. And they are free. Now that's what I call a great combo. Even better than the *Souper Sandwich Combo* I had last night at Red Robin. (Which was fabulous, by the way.) All kidding aside, the thought of choosing which artists/composers, then which works by said artist/composer was just WAY too overwhelming for this left-brained gal. AO does all the work for me. There is even a newly-formed Yahoo group (AOArtPrints) where you can download the artist's works and print them at home. That is very well-suited to my typical planning-for-the-next-thing-at-midnight scenario.

So...to make a long story short...we added in our study of Leonardo da Vinci and Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov this week. For those of you who may not be familiar with Rimsky-Korsakov's name, check out this interpretation of "Flight of the Bumblebee." Makes me wish I had taken guitar lessons instead of piano.

Now on to the nuts & bolts of our week...

LANGUAGE ARTS: SWR continues to rock. We finished Section E, and after Grace wrote her "best original sentence(s)" for the week, she quickly ran to get *props* from her room to act it out! {Warning to all long-time SWR users: I allow Grace to use purple pencil to mark the words in her learning log. *gasp*}


We also completed several lessons in FLL this week. Still reviewing nouns...

READING: Grace's independent reading this week was "Frog and Toad Together." And we read the first nine chapters in our new read-aloud, "Little House in the Big Woods."

MATH: We completed Lessons 6-8 in Horizons 2. Then, in preparation for the multi-digit addition that appears in Lesson 9, we did this *fun* worksheet.


HISTORY & SCIENCE: Read Chapter 3 in SOTW1; completed narration & coloring page. Didn't quite get to making our own cuneiform, so that's on the list for this coming week. For science, we studied ants. Lots of reading here: Kingfisher First Encyclopedia of Animals, "Are You an Ant?," "Magic School Bus Gets Ants in its Pants: A Book About Ants," several Aesop's Fables dealing with ants, and "The Ant Bully" by John Nickle. Kind of partial to the last one, since my dh spent 2 years of his life working on the major motion picture. :)


CHARACTER: House rule #5--obey the first time. Favorite reads: "Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore" and "My Own Self."

MEMORIZATION: "Whole Duty of Children" by Robert Louis Stevenson.

And so I bring my rambling for the week to an end. In closing, I leave you with Grace's interpretation of da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and "Self-Portrait."

Week #3 In Review

We're continuing to figure out the lay of the land in Homeschooling World. Luckily we have a compass. And snacks. Especially coffee & chocolate for the teacher. :) I'm happy to report that LOTS of things are going well. Here are highlights from this past week:

LANGUAGE ARTS: Hooray for SWR! We completed Section D this week & spent time on multi-letter phonograms covered in Lists A-D. We even had a rousing round of Phonogram BINGO, which did double duty with the soon-to-be-3yo set. I gave Emma card #1 (single letters only) and Grace card #3 (multi-letter phonograms), then took turns calling sounds to each of them. The first to cover the entire card "won." Of course, I made it so that they basically came out even. It was great to see Grace helping Emma with the few sounds that she didn't know. We also did a couple of lessons from FLL focusing on picture narration & story narration. I decided to take a break from nouns this week. I'm pretty sure Grace didn't mind.

READING: We finished our read-aloud selection, "Charlotte's Web." Man, I'd forgotten what a gut wrencher that one is. It's not like I didn't know Charlotte was going to die...it's the way she dies. Or, more specifically, the way E.B. White writes about her death. Heart-breaking...even if she is a spider. If you haven't picked up a "classic" children's book in a while, this one certainly gets our vote. In other notable news, Grace's independent reading consisted of two "Amelia Bedelia" books, "Little Bear," and a Halloween book that she picked out on our most recent library trip..."The House That Drac Built." I also have her *help* me read whenever possible. I think she's on to me, though. Tonight I asked her to "help me out" with a book, and she groaned & said, "Oh no! That means I have to read the whole thing!" Out of the mouths of babes...

MATH: Not much has changed this week. Grace still LOVES it when we play Pyramid and Go to the Dump; and she LOVES her MathShark. But she groans, moans, and drags her feet anytime I pull out a math worksheet. Despite this, we still managed to get a couple of lessons done in Horizons 2, and one in Singapore PM 1A. Slowly, but surely, she's getting the "making 10s" concept down. BTW, Math Mammoth is good "extra practice" for Singapore. We used the "Adding with 9" worksheet in Math Mammoth 2A alongside our lesson in Singapore.

HISTORY & SCIENCE: We completed Ch. 2 "Ancient Egyptians Lived on the Nile River" in SOTW1, including narrations, illustrated copywork, and some videos on Ancient Egypt from United Streaming. We shared the reading of "Archaeologists Dig for Clues." (Yes, I know this technically *goes* with last week's SOTW chapters...) In life science, we discussed habitats & food chains using Kingfisher's "First Encyclopedia of Animals" and "First Picture Atlas of Animals" as our spines. We also did a shared reading of "Magic School Bus Hops Home: A Book About Animal Habitats" and "Magic School Bus Gets Eaten: A Book About Food Chains." Gotta love the Friz.

CHARACTER: This week we focused on house rule #3--"Always tell the truth." Plenty of good reading on this subject. Our favorites were "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and "George Washington and the Cherry Tree." Versions of both stories can be found in "The Children's Book of Virtues" by William J. Bennett.

CO-OP: Still going well. In art class, Grace started working on her paper mache bowl...using a balloon, a large yogurt container, and the lid from a small yogurt container. In musical theater, the class started learning the song & dance for "Zippity Do Da." Emma joined in from the back row. In gymnastics, Grace is learning how to do a handstand. As for Emma...she was definitely more comfortable in preschool storytime this week...she even left my side! :) Next week--across the room?!?!? You'll have to stay tuned to find out...

Grace's First Scrapbook Layout

So, last week I mentioned that we finished our dinosaur lapbook...and that Grace created her very first scrapbook layout. Those of you who know me can just imagine the excitement that I felt...tee hee. And the icing on the cake was when she said, "I can't believe it. I'm scrapbooking. And I LIKE it!"

Now, I suppose I could just post pictures of this milestone. But then what kind of a scrapbooker would I be??? I have to scrapbook it, of course!

Credits: Created using Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 and “Paris Flea Market” kit by Shabby Miss Jenn. Fonts used: Adobe Casion Pro, BlueCake and Carpenter ICG.


And here's a shot of the layout she created:


The two larger photos were taken when we went to "Walking With Dinosaurs-LIVE!" this summer. I found the smaller photo on the internet. The background papers are from the "Paris Flea Market" digital kit by Shabby Miss Jenn. I printed the papers out on my color laser printer so that Grace could use them for *traditional* scrapbooking. The hot pink cardstock is a leftover from my days as a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator. We picked up the dinosaur stickers at an office supply store (Office Max, I think). Overall, I think she did a great job! But I may be a wee bit biased. :)