Jul. 10, 2008 - Postscript of our School Year 2007-2008

Well, in between trips to the zoo and the park and the forest preserve and the beach and friends' houses and the blueberry patch, and hanging out with our exchange student from Spain, etc.... we have managed to fit a little school in here and there! LOL.  We have been thorougly enjoying our summer, but last week we also wrapped up our previous school year, and this week we are beginning our current year. :)  I'm not much into labeling grade levels, but I guess you could say that Joshua finished kindergarten now and started first grade, which is good timing as far as a break-off,  because his birthday is Saturday.  So, new age, new grade!  As for Dominique, she just passed from Preschool 1 to Preschool 2, I guess, but they were both excited to decorate new covers for their NEW school year notebooks/ binders, and have some new things to start. :)

So, anyway, as a wrap-up, I journaled a little postscript about what we accomplished last year, compared to what we had planned to accomplish.  It was fun, so I thought I'd post it.  Pretty soon, I will post our goals for this coming year too. :)

POSTSCRIPT: What we accomplished during the school year of 2007-2008

Dominique: -Learned all her letters and beginning phonics sounds very well!

(preschool)       -Completed Heart And Hands

-Read lots of books with Mommy, participated in our Five In a Row studies and our nature studies, memorized several Bible verses, and did many arts and crafts projects

Kindergarten:

(Joshua)      -Bible: Read all the way through the Children’s Bible in Portuguese. Memorized several Bible verses. Added timeline figures of prominent Bible characters. Completed unit study on the Ten Commandments. Learned the books of the OT well; still working on New Testament.  Included Bible in many of our other studies.

-Phonics: Noah Websters Reading Handbook and various worksheets

- Reading: Pictorial Primer, Rod and Staff Readers 1-3, and *many* read-alouds with mommy, as well as independent reading.

-Math: Singapore Earlybird 1B and Primary Math 1A with many supplemental activities. Also learned about money (outside of text).

-Writing: Worked on copywork notebook and also did other writing activities in lapbooks and other activities

-Portuguese: did some copywork in Portuguese, and towards the end of the year began learning Portuguese phonics.

-Five in a Row –completed the literature-based unit studies of Volume 1.

-Nature Studies: three months each of: birds, mammals, reptiles. Worked on a scrapbook-style nature notebook to record our findings.

Composer Studies: read biographies and listened to music of: Mozart, Handel, Beethoven. Also notebooked and added timeline pictures.

-Artist Studies: found out a little bit about and did picture studies of Leonardo DaVinci and Rembrandt.  Added timeline pictures as well.

-Japanese:  We did this very sporadically and only got to learn about eleven letters and not as much vocabulary as we started out learning at the beginning of the year… Maybe we’ll do better next school year!

-Geography: I think we were pretty effective at including this in almost all of our other studies and had a lot of fun doing it! We got geography with FIAR studies, art and composer studies, Bible, nature studies, and with other misc. things that came up in everyday life. J

Overall Evaluation:  Joshua became a very proficient reader! This was exciting for both of us!  Math did not come as quickly as reading, but we have seen great improvements. I think, if nothing else, I learned how to be a better math teacher! I think Joshua has a much firmer grasp on mathematical concepts now, even though his facts are not all perfectly memorized. We are still working on that, but doing more with manipulatives than at the beginning of the year, and hopefully the rote memorizing will come more easily this way.

Best of all, we had a LOT of fun!  Dominique was able to be involved in most of what we did, and the togetherness was precious. We had “feast weeks” and “famine weeks”, as far as academics go, but looking back, there is very little I would do differently if I had it to do over.  We learned a lot, while keeping the stress low and keeping the focus on enjoying the journey. Makes me even more excited to start this coming year!!!

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Jul. 19, 2008 - What fun!

Posted by momofsix

Your children must have the most wonderful memories with all those studies. Did you know about homeschooltracker. com and edutracker.com? They keep your studies organized for eventual graduate diplomas to transition into college, if that is a desire. They are also great for keeping everything organized. I haven't figured out which one I want to buy, yet. The homeschool tracker is great for multiage lesson plans while edutracker is great for combining the field trips and subjects at the end of the year for summaries. I also like the idea of downloading to my palm and then syncing up to add field trip info. Do you have a palm? I keep all my recipies and such on mine for easy shopping. I have been thinking of doing a drawing or something on my blog for my palm (I now have a palm phone). I hope I didn't overwhelm you with too much info. God bless you.

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Jul. 28, 2008 - Thanks

Posted by momofsix

I would really appreciate the links. It will be fun to follow along with you. My computer is in the shop. I can't get the library computer to let me email you, nor is my email turned on. Can you send it via homeschool message? I am counting down the days to get my computer back.

Edited by momofsix on Jul. 28, 2008 at 11:33 AM

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