07 Sept 2011

I know, I know, I haven't being blogging for sometime now...more than one person has reminded me that....I started one last night and gotten too sleepy and decided to go to sleep instead...you see, to blog, I have to sacrifice my sleeping time...most of the time....but then lesson preparation/researching, reading for pleasure, The Mentalist (on my defense, that is the only TV I watch!...ok...may be also Bones!) etc etc also eating my sleep-time away....I always wonder how does other homeschooling mom does all these and yet get to have enough sleep?


Another reason for not blogging? There were so much happened for the past four months, I don't know how to blog about them all...so I've been procrastinating....I have finally came to the decision to just simply ignore the past few months and start from TODAY! ^^


Yesterday was a bad day....I planed a packed school day (we don't study every day, so our school day usually are long - 2-5 hours), Den ended up taking one and half hour finished her lunch...that make me crazy and did all the huffing and puffing....and then later we were stuck at math. Took us 1.5 hours....and I realized Den is still  confused about place value (I'm very glad I found out about that though!).


Today was a good day. Everything went super smooth and had extra time for extra activities.


I woke Den up at 10am...this is something new that I just started about 2 months ago...I actually wake her up for study instead of just let her sleep in...^^


After breakfast, I taught her how to separate the whites and colors and put them into washer. I also showed her how to run the washer and later she helped folding and putting the washed clothes back to closet. The only thing I didn't allow her to do was to put the detergents into the washer....after watching the thought provoking video from TED - 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do....I am thinking now, may be I should let her put the detergents too...


I taught her how to fold clothes when she was about 3 or 4 years old. Now she can fold them better than me. While we were folding clothes, she told me when she grew up she wanted to be a laundry maid! Hahahaha!


We started our study with Bible reading. We have been on the book of Proverbs for the past month or so...detoured for awhile with My Passport To India Part II, now we are back to Proverbs. We use a very interesting iPad app called "Proverbs Project" to study Proverbs. Cartoonist Vern Herschberger illustrated every verse in Proverbs and it is such a treat to read them. Today we covered more than a chapter and Den was still bagging for more. These are some examples:



After Bible reading and prayer, we continued our Sonlight Science week 22. We had been on Week 22 for the past 2 weeks because of some of the very interesting internet links - we finally finished one of them yesterday about 4 famous scientists- Marie Carie, Jagadis Bose, Thomas Edison and Galilea (Yes! I can remember their name without checking! ^^).


Another links we have been using featured 66 current scientists, all of them in different fields of study/research! The link has short video for each of them to introduce their work and how they started and why they love science...Den and I LOVE it! We learned so many interesting things - Do you know cockroach can hold it breath for up to 45min?? LST!! That is why you should not try to drown the cockroaches! and Entomologist is the scientist that study cockroaches and other bugs! Most importantly, all these video make us feel like science is the best thing and we all want to be a scientist!


After that, Den did a puzzle using Brain Olympiad Book 1. Today puzzle was a bit more difficult, she got it all correct but took her quite some time to complete.

This is the puzzle she worked on today:

While she was working on the puzzle, I prepared a math game to play with her. Since I noticed she still having problem with the concept of place value,  I looked into Peggy Kaye's Games For Learning and found a few good games to play with her. (Wow! I finally figure out how to put the Amazon Widget in my website! Yes! Now you can just go to the link and see some of the pages inside the books and read comments!)




Today we play with one of the game. I prepared some Sun flower seeds, a few plastic cups, paper and pencil. We decided on a number (Den chose 30), then I took a turn first to scoop up (with a plastic cup) what I estimated (no actual counting is allowed) to be 30 Sunflower seeds. I counted them and put 10 in each plastic cups. I filled 3 cups and had 8 seeds left, so I had 8 more than the expected. I wrote 8 on the paper. Then it was Den's turn. She did the same thing and filled 3 cups with only 4 seeds left. The closest to the actual number win and so she won the first round. We did that again and this time we were equal. 


We are going to play this again and also some other games from the book until she get the idea of place value. I always love the idea of playing and learning at the same time and hopefully these games will help her learn the place value...or else I would have to find some other methods.


After that she practiced her ballet steps before we had lunch. 


Den practiced her piano after lunch. We make a cake for tea after that. 


We started CLP language art workbook 105-8 and Quiz 2 at around 3pm. Den make a few mistakes (some careless) in one section of her Quiz and that cost her 12 points and she lost the chance to get a reward from the reward box. This was the first time since we started the reward box system, she did not get a reward and thus the 'water gate' was burst opened. The workbook is getting harder, I was wondering if I should lower the benchmark....but I think I will wait and observe it more first. (To know more about the reward box, please read my previous blog here).


We had tea after that and she watched Goodtv Chinese Cartoons (Im counting that as part of the study - learning Chinese!). Since it had been a very hot day, she went swimming for an hour after that. Some of her friends came down and swim too and they had a very great time together.


At night, we finished making a small strip of clothes using her loom (she has been very fascinated with loom since we study it in history) and we also decorated it with gem stones. 

I have been thinking how do I actually count the homeschooling hours? Should I include all the piano/ballet practices, house works, cake making, craft, swimming (PE!) in it too? It doesn't seems fair to only count the sit down work, right? Besides, what kind of example are we setting for Den if we tell her only the sit down work are consider learning? 


Should I add in the many hours of reading that she did everyday as part of the schooling hours as well? Hmmmm...something to think about. So take a vote!

23 & 24 Oct 2010

We did it! We managed to make 22 cupcakes yesterday!! This was the first time we make cupcakes and frosting, so we were a bit worry how they would turn out! They turn out quite cute, like Den, pink! ^^ Den ate 2 of them and we sold the rest to family members and church friends and we manage to collect RM281. That is like RM14 (USD4.10) per cupcake!! DH and I promised to match every dollar Den collected, so all together today we have RM562 (USD165.30) for Mission India!

We almost did not ended up in church today to sell the cupcake. My SIL had premature labour contraction last night, she was admitted to the hospital and I spent the night accompanied her since her hubby, my dear brother is currently working oversea. Thank God that every thing is all right and she was discharged this afternoon.

This morning when Den woke up and realized no one was going to church (I was in the hospital, my mom was exhausted, etc), she started to cry. She really really wanted to bring her cakes there to sell. So my mom ended up brought her to church and she sold all of them in like 15 mins. ^^ She was very very happy she manage to collect so much money for the kids in India.

Yesterday when I praised her for putting some of her weekly allowance (on top of tithing) into the collection suitcase for Mission India, she replied, "This is more important than keeping money to buy toys." ^^

Yesterday we managed finished Sonlight week13 Science. We learned about butterfly and flowers and how the insect carry the pollen from one flower to another. We also did copywork, Yamaha homework and practiced piano. We spent better part of the days making cupcakes.

22 Oct 2010

I am still sick. I was getting a lot better (almost totally well) before I came back to MLY. Then after I came back, I got worst. Today I was running with slight fever but still we managed to school.

We are in Sonlight Week 13 and 14 for the last couple of weeks. Week 14 Bible verse is really hard - 

No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (Matthew 6:24)

 So I decided to teach Den the same verse in Chinese using the song "一个人不能事奉两个主”instead. She managed to pick it up after I sang it to her a few time .

A sister from my SG homeschooling group has recently attached a copywork file in her blog which coincide with Sonlight K Bible verse. I was so happy when I received it, because I have been thinking of how to teach Den to spell. In her blog, she wrote about how her kids learn to spell simply by doing copywork.

Den did two of her copyworks this week - the first one is Matthew 6:24 but not the whole verse. I just let her copy "No one can serve two masters". Then today she read a short story(included in her copywork)  and copy "It is unwise to treat friends badly".

This is how the sister arranged her copywork (For Den, we don't do copywork everyday):
•Monday – verse(s) from the Bible

•Tuesday – short story
•Wednesday - famous quotes
•Thursday – part of a poem
•Friday – journal page
 
I really like her idea of when you do copywork, you don't just rip a sentence from somewhere. Instead let your kid read the short story or poem, then copy the sentence. You can read more and download her copywork in her blog Teaching Our Own.
 
We have been studying about Native American, the pioneers, the move from East to West (America) both in History and I heard Good News Today (under Bible & Christian Stories). Today after we finished all the history about this era, we make a tepees, following the instruction given in Living Long Ago (under History).

 
 
We also listen to some of cowboys' songs here.
 
We did not do any new topic in science today, instead we did some of the Internet links on creepy crawlies:
1. Let's Talk about Insect: This one give you a very very lengthy and in depth information about insect. It is suitable for kids but we find too lengthy.
 
2. Brain Pop On Spiders: A very short animation on spiders.
 
I also let Den repeat the short vowels sounds lesson in Starfall (if you have never heard of starfall, you should really check it out. It is a free site to promote reading in phonics) because we had started using CLP's language art 101 recently and the first topic is short vowels sound.  
 
After many many months of thinking and rethinking, I decided to buy some workbooks from CLP (Christian Light Publications). It is much cheaper for me to buy workbooks from the local publications, however I cant find one local publication that have a systematic workbooks that cover from K to Grade 6. So I have been buying from various publications and I find this really inconsistent. So after much thought, I finally decided to go with CLP. CLP workbook come with Teacher Guild which is a great help for me.
 
I bought the LA 101 -110 for Den but I did not buy the Learning To Read series that are supposed to go hand in hand with the LA because I find the Learning To Read series too easy for Den. So far she enjoy doing the workbook and very excited about the quiz! Hahah! She heard so much from her friends about quiz in school that she still does not want to go to school but very looking forward in doing quiz.
 
She did lesson 3 in 101 today and she is going to do lesson 4 tomorrow. After lesson 4, there is a short quiz (like a review). She cant wait for the quiz, begging me to let her do lesson 4 today. I refused since we were running out of time.
 
We also did review on some of the Chinese words she learned and read some Chinese books.
 

For the past few weeks we also have been using a program called My Passport To India. It is a 5 weeks program (every week 2 lessons) by Mission India and Sonlight.  After we signed up (free), we received a "passport" (workbook) and a "suitcase" (donation box).

 

 

In every lesson, we watch a short video, then we see photo and read facts and stories and testimonies about India and about how God has been working in India. It has been an eye opening experience for Den. She knew some people are poor but she had no idea how poor is poor until she saw how the kids live in slum and 7 people live and sleep in a small one room hut. The testimony from one of the girl who is forced to steal to support her family filled her eyes with tears.

 
Den really want to help. She has been putting her weekly allowances into the donation box and asked her grand parents to contribute. She also tried to ask her best friend EE to donate but her explanation was too lengthy and EE ran away before Den could finish explaining! ^^
 
We are going to make some cupcakes tomorrow (1st time making cup cake, so have my fingers crossed!) and will bring them to church on Sunday to sell. We are not going to make much, may be 10 or so. So we don't expect to get much from the sale, however I think it will be a very good experience for Den. I have promised to match every dollar she collected in  the donation box. Besides that, Sonlight also going to match every dollar that kids send, up to the USD $167,00 if we send our donation before 17 Nov 2010.