See, THIS Is Why I Picked Sonlight!

I had two emails in my inbox this morning- one was from Sarita Holzmann, who is one of the founders of Sonlight and sends out a weekly thing with tips and tricks to make school go more smoothly. I'll be honest and say I just started actually reading them last week, and I really wish I had started from the beginning. We haven't been doing an animal scrapbook and I'm going to go back and make one. Lots of other neat ideas in there too. It's a great resource that I hadn't been taking advantage of properly.

The other email was a notification that my last post had a comment from some guy named Luke. About three people read this blog, so I was curious. And it was Luke Holzmann, Sarita's son, who is now grownup and works for Sonlight and was sorry we are bored with the book and had even more ideas for us.

Thank you guys! This totally makes me want to get back on track and work harder to like the book and implement more of the strategies and all that stuff. Maid Marian was really excited about the comment from Luke after I told her who he was. WOW MOMMY! He reads the blog about my school? OH MY GOODNESS!!

He's right. Sonlight is not just a company that sells you books and leaves you hanging out there. We have felt all along like these people actually care whether or not school goes well for us, and that makes me so grateful.

What Week Is This?...

I want to keep posting for the accountability, but there hasn't been anything terribly exciting to say. I suppose that's life, so here's a recap....

The book we started reading after we finished The Boxcar Children is The Apple and the Arrow and I find it excruciatingly boring so far. It's hard to keep her attention- I think it's pretty far above kindergarten comprehension level. Amazon.com says ages 9-12. Hmm. Sonlight always says to tailor the curriculum to suit your family, but I feel guilty just throwing something out, and I'm not sure what to put in its place. Right now we're avoiding it and working on other things. She says she wants to learn all about dinosaurs, and I don't really have anything to give her for that, so maybe we'll go to the library this week and get some books that are more interesting.

Officially it's week 6. We're in week 7 for math, right on schedule for Bible and language, and a bit behind in poetry. We've been doing lots of Bible stuff lately- they're memorizing the books of the Old Testament in her Sunday school class and I think she only knows up to Judges so far, but she's supposed to know through Psalms. :) For me she's memorized Romans 3:23, Acts 16:31, Colossians 3:20, and Matthew 7:12 so far. We're using Sing the Word from A-Z (music in the link, watch out!) and she'll be learning 26 verses throughout the year, one for each letter of the alphabet. They're fun. Typing this I was singing in my head, "Colossians 3, verse 20, obey obey, Colossians 3, verse 20, obey obey, Colossians 3, verse 20, obey obey, for this pleases the Lord!" I like the way they include the address in the song. We have Steve Green's Hide 'Em in Your Heart, and she knows a lot of those verses but he doesn't work the reference into the song so she never learned where they're found in the Bible. This is better for that. We're both learning.

Robin Hood is making good progress on his animals and colors. Right now he's obsessed with rabbits. He likes to throw them at people and then look at me innocently and say, "HOP!" Like, this is what rabbits do, mom, don't get on my case!

Story Elaboration

Today the language book gave us a very short and boring story and Maid dictated some more details to me. We talked about how to ask questions and to give information that makes the story more interesting to people that are listening. (and that when Daddy asks her today how was school, she should remember elaboration and say something other than "good.")

Here's the original story:

Luke swam. Luke won.

Questions it suggested I ask her to include: How did he swim? When? How many other kids were in the race? What did he win? How did he feel?

Here's her elaboration:

Luke swam in a swimming pool on October 29 and he had one thousand kids with him swimming. He was very short, but he was the fastest of everybody! He won candy in a silver cup, and also a gold medal. He felt glad and happy and then he went home. The End.

Not too bad for a first attempt. Some of my sixth graders didn't get that many details on the first try. :)

Week 4

We're settling into a kind of routine, I guess, but on the other hand it feels like every day is different. Officially we're still in week 3, because we haven't done everything it called for us to do, but we're also half way through week 4 in some things, and in week 6 for math. As long as we're getting work done every day I feel good about our progress.

Somebody gave us a copy of the kindergarten science program, which I hadn't ordered, and Maid Marian is really excited about it. Most of it deals with nature and trees and the way God made the world, which is right up her alley. It looks like it's going to have a unit on simple machines though, and some other stuff that it will be good for her to know. We went on a nature walk last night and picked up a bunch of leaves, and then brought them back and looked them up in the field guide we got from the library. She's having a good time.

We've finished The Boxcar Children and are going to be starting part of James Herriot's kids' stories next. The math is getting a bit more challenging- she's learning to count by tens and do simple addition problems properly. It's still pretty easy for her, but she does have to think about it now.

So, off to do some reading while she does copywork. If you'd like her to write you a letter, tell her! She's getting good at writing and loves sending out mail.

Ancient Egypt Connections

We've been reading the "story of people" in Usborne's Children's Encyclopedia the last two weeks. It's amazing how meaty it is. We've had discussions about evolution vs. creationism already, and discussed cave people, ancient Egyptians, ancient Romans, and people of the middle ages. Next up is the Industrial Revolution. It's very cool- it just lays it out in a very basic way, what people wore, what kind of houses they lived in, jobs they did, how the government was, stuff like that. Nothing goes into great depth this year, but I think it lays a great foundation for basic knowledge and making connections of how the world works. She's asking lots of questions and we've looked some stuff up on the internet that she wanted to know when it wasn't in the book.

So. Last night we were out and were driving by this really smelly open area a few miles from our house. I'd always thought it was an old landfill, although my mom informed me later she thinks it might be a water treatment plant instead. But anyway, it smells like the dump. Things have gotten better lately- there used to be trucks there, and bare dirt, and birds circling around. Now it looks like they've finished using it or are trying to make it better- grass has grown over the top of it and it only smells on really hot days.

She was noticing how nice the houses were in the neighborhood right next to it, and I told her we had looked at a few of them when we were buying our house but decided not to move there because of the smell. As we drove by the plant, she saw the grass, and realized that it didn't smell anymore.

Light bulb moment for a five year old, I think!

She said, "Oh, there's grass now. So the yucky stuff is buried and it doesn't smell so much. It's like when the ancient Egyptians used to put spices on the dead people and bury them in the pyramids. The grass is like the spices, so we can't smell the dead stuff."

maybe it's not a perfect analogy, but I love that she's thinking about the things she's learning and trying to make connections in her world. So smart, my girl.

Boomama interviewed Alex today, and the results were so fabulous that I had to immediately steal her questions and do some interviewing my own self. Here's what Maid Marian has to say:

What do you want to be when you grow up?
“I would like to be a doctor.”

Really? I had no idea. What kind of doctor do you want to be?
“A vet! For cats and dogs and small stuff. But only small dogs. I like small ones but not huge dogs.”

Okay. Well. Where do you want to go to college?
“Um, by my house.”

Where will you live after college?
“Um, home! I think so. Maybe? Where are you supposed to live after college? Don't say that I want to live home.”

Do you want to get married?
“Yes, I want to get married, whenever God wants me to.”

What’s your favorite place in the whole wide world?
“Um, home and the farm.”

Besides that?
“Um, I think that is Faraway City, going to see Daddy at his job."

What’s your favorite thing to do with your daddy?
“Have special dates- I like to do lots of things. I like to color and go to restaurants with him and give him lots and lots of hugs and kisses.”

What about with me?
“I think doing school and hugs and kisses and going shopping."

What are your favorite books?
“My big princess book. And also my Bob books because I can learn different words and read by myself."

What are your favorite toys?
“My carriage and all my dolls."

What’s your favorite thing to do outside?
“Take walks."

What’s your favorite song?
“‘I've got two favorites, the one you sing to me every night and the one you sing to my brother."

(That would be Annabel by Don Henley with her name in place of Annabel, and Away From the Roll of the Sea, which is a gorgeous lullaby type thing I learned in high school choir.)

What are your favorite movies?
“The Princess Bride and Sleeping Beauty. And Ariel. Those are my most favorite.”

What is your favorite game?
“The one where you.... oh, bingo on the TV and also the one with the little guys. You know, the one on the tv where you watch and get Nemo... oh, never mind...."

(she means Disney Scene It, I think)

What do you know about God?
“I know that He is powerful than us. And He's way far away from us. I think. Yeah. And He loves us lots and He died to save our sins and... that's all. I think."

What do you think about kindergarten so far?
“I love it. My favorite thing of the day! The reading, and the math, and mostly all of it."

Anything else you want to say?
“Uh, can I say I love being together as a family? I love being a family. And I hope ... would it be okay if we invite friends over? And can you help me pour some milk now? I'm done talking." That's all I want to say. Thank you. This is Maid Marian."

Well. Fair enough, then.

Week 2

So much for posting every single day. :) I knew that wouldn't last long.

The Labor Day holiday has thrown us off a bit for week 2, plus we've had other things going on and she hasn't been in much of a school mood. I finally told her today that it wasn't a choice, that everybody who was five HAD to do kindergarten, and it was her choice whether she would listen to me and do work here, or if we needed to think about sending her down the road. I hate to use that as a threat- if we ever do decide to send her to public school I don't want her to think it's a punishment. On the other hand, I DO sort of feel like it would be a punishment and I don't really plan to do it. There's no teeth in that argument, but just the thought of having to go away to school made her buckle down and do some work, so there you have it.

Now she's leaning over my shoulder watching me type and saying, "Dog. You almost typed dog before, with the capital letters, but you didn't put the G. What word is that? Dog with no G?"

Anyway, what's working this week is to let her pick one book or activity, and just to keep working with it until she's tired. We've done all the poetry for the week and she's on lesson 16 I think in math. She says after lunch she wants to do Bible stories, and I'm just going to chug ahead until she begs me to quit. The curriculum is a guide, not a stranglehold around our necks. We can adjust it to suit ourselves.

And on the animal front, Robin Hood will roar at me now if I show him the fisher price lion. He still calls it a dog, and he watched a documentary on lions with his daddy and didn't recognize that's what they were. So clearly there is more work to be done. But his roar is adorable.