Getting Ready for School - Part 2

This entry may be MEGO inducing for you non-homeschoolers (My Eyes Glaze Over), but for the homeschoolers amongst us, as well as the grandparents and other interested parties in-how-well-our-children-are-being-educated (!) I wanted to share some of the other preparations I have made for our school year.

In many ways this preparation has taken much more time, thought and effort than the organizing. It started and continues with much, much prayer. Prayer is the foundation of all that we, as a homeschool family, strive to accomplish. Prayer for the character development of each of our children (and the teacher!), for insight and discernment into their unique learning styles, for wisdom in choosing curriculum that is best suited to each child, for strength and patience for the teacher and principal, for courage and hope on the dark days, for humility on the good days. I continually marvel that as a child of God I have such immediate access to the King of Kings, and I am continually blessed by the privilege that it is to pray so intently for my children. I am confident that no matter what other teachers my kids may have, none of them will bathe our children in as much prayer. It's one of my greatest joys as a parent!

During my prayer times for our homeschool this spring and summer, the Lord directed me to find ways to streamline the school process as much as possible so as not to exasperate our children (Eph. 6:4) and to help me avoid burnout. To that end we are eliminating several subjects for our younger students and combining them all into two practices called copywork and dictation. Dictation is writing down the words or sentences that your teacher quotes to you, and copywork is the natural extension of that, copying appropriate passages into a notebook. Both copywork and dictation, when done properly, cover spelling, penmanship, grammar/english, and listening skills.

I purchased the following copybook (e-book format) from http://knowledgeboxcentral.com/ that is filled with quotes from Benjamin Franklin. We will be studying early American history this year so it fits perfectly! I printed out all the pages of the e-book and our daughter G put them into a 3 pronged folder.

This quote from the copybook was rather convicting, as I have been sleeping in a lot this summer and letting the children wake me up!!

I learned so much just from printing these pages out! For instance, I'm sure you've heard of that saying, "there's nothing certain in this life but death and taxes" but did you know that it is really part of this larger quote from Ben Franklin?
This copybook will be for our daughter, a fifth grader. She will copy the quote in her best cursive writing and then write what she thinks it means. Our third grade son is also using a copybook, and our second grade son and kindergarten son will be doing dictation with me.

Something we are adding this year just for our fifth grader is a notebook timeline. I purchased this "Book of the Centuries" from http://www.rainbowresource.com/.
We will be skipping ahead to the 1600 page since that is where we are starting in history this year, but Lord willing our daughter will get to fill in the previous pages when we do our next history rotation! I purchased this CD of timeline figures to print out from http://www.homeschoolinthewoods.com/.

My friend and fellow TOGGER (user of Tapestry Of Grace) Beth shared with me that children need about 2/3 input for 1/3 output. In other words, they need to take in information twice for every time they spit it back out (did I get that right Beth?). Our second grade son L is still struggling to learn his math facts, so using this information from Beth, I made a custom set of flashcards for him that has the answer written on every card (it's impossible to find commercial flashcards that have the answers on the front!). He will say the whole problem outloud, with answer, several times before I cover up the answer with my finger and expect him to recall it. Hopefully this will prove a useful tool for us this year!

I have read, re-read, and re-re-read the teacher's notes in our history notebook. Some of my fellow TOGGER's may be aghast to learn that I do write all over my pages! (insert audible gasp here) I have thoroughly enjoyed preparing for our history studies and can hardly wait to start. We will be doing lots of fun hands on things this year, as well as taking a week long educational field trip/vacation to Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown!! More on that later.

I still need to gather everything we need to put together our science notebooks, but that should be quick and easy. Once I have the materials, each of the children will make their own notebook. This is our first year to do "formal" science and we are really excited. We will be learning about birds and insects (Apologia's elementary series, Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day).

We have also done some fascinating research into how the brain stores information, and the subsequent implications for our homeschool, but I'll save that for another post as this one is already a novel!