Rough couple of days.....

Granted we aren't feeling 100% yet but the "get back into the school - groove thing" was NOT working too well the past two days. It really bugged me because I was introducing some new things to give The Red Ranger more control over how he learns so that mom isn't (Ahem) "so bossy"......figured he will get more of a chance to control his own destiny with these ideas but we were butting heads enough that we both needed a couple of 5 minute time-outs in our corners. How do I handle those moments? Simple, I set the microwave timer to 5 minutes and we both don't talk to each other until we hear it go off. Then, we meet back at the table and pick up where we were before we had to re-group. I'm not exactly sure what he does during those 5 minutes (but its a NO tv, game, etc. time) but me.....I hide my face in both hands and do what Drew Barrymore does in the movie Ever After - 'just breathe'............great movie by the way, a version of Cinderella and never talked about enough.
Remember what I said before.....less stress this year!!!

Back to The Red Ranger controlling his own destiny.....
We've had this in place from last year and it was a nice chance of getting an "out" of a particular lesson/worksheet he really just couldn't bear to do. In our folder system which looks like this:

 THE BUMP FOLDER:
We have what we call a "bump" folder, it goes in the very top pocket when in use (Its actually a Transformers folder!). The idea of the "bump" is simply we come to let's say a math worksheet that he can't bear to do, he is allowed to "bump" one thing per day into the "bump" folder to be done the next school day. The catch is that it must be done before any of the other folders on the next school day we have. He also is allowed to swap the lesson in the folder if during the day he finds something else he wants to do even less than that 'math worksheet' used above, he can take out the math worksheet add the other item to the "bump" folder and the math worksheet then must be done.
Only one thing a day can be bumped.

The new thing I just introduced him too was this -
THE TWISTER SCRAMBLER:
The only reason we are calling it this is because we are using the spinner from our Twister Scram game for the colors...lol.
This is how it works. For each day that The Red Ranger has a 'good day' he gets a ticket/token to be used in the future. At the moment we are only using it for math, spelling and vocabulary but may expand it if it works out really well. If we happen to be doing a math or spelling lesson that he thinks is "boring" he may use one of his tickets to spin The Twister Scrambler, depending on the color the spinner lands on he plays a math or spelling game instead of the normal lesson in his folder that day.
We broke it down this way:
MATH: Yellow = toss across math, Green = file folder games, Blue = bag math or pizza fraction bingo, Red = dominoes or card games.
SPELLING: Yellow = match game, Green = sandwich game, Blue = scrabble slam card game, Red = letter spell.
Math -
Dominoes and card games are really simple for using for math lessons. Draw so many cards (depending on your child's age) add/subtract/multiply/mix them as is or use each separate card as a digit in a larger problem. He then writes the problems out on his dry erase board and does them.
File folder games are either ones we've made or have picked up along the way and he can choose any of them in the subject to play. Two come to mind right away, "Place Value Picnic" and " Take it to the Bank" both $ store buys.
Bag math is using the bags of manipulatives that have been premade and using those bags for the math problems.
Toss Across Math - I took his Toss Across game and re-purposed it for math by using those clear photo corners from my scrapbook desk and index cards. On the index cards I write numbers that get get placed over the "X" and "O"'s of the game (they can be removed if we go back to playing the Toss Across game), I also place a math symbol at the top so that he knows what problems he's doing or we agree to do 5 of this or that.
Spelling - 
Match game is simply a memory game for his 10 spelling words each week, we use Scrabble Slam for spelling his words and also for changing them from one to the other, letter spell is using our regular Scrabble set and any other letters in the house for spelling the weekly words. The sandwich game is using cards that look like bread, meats, lettuce, tomato, cheese, etc. to spell out his words.
For Vocabulary its mainly the match game until I can think of something else. I'm trying to think of a way to use our new Syllable Rally game for vocab., I'll most likely have to make up my own cards each month for it.
We'll be adding more to the rotation as we come across games or make up new ones ourselves. Here are some pictures of some of the games we use.

Now for some pictures of our Morning Meeting boards -

 The stand up pocket easels hold spelling word index cards, numbers/days of the week/special dates for the calendar, consonant/vowel tags and letters index cards.

 For Geography he identifies and colors the US state on a blank map sheet, which will also be updated later with capital cities, birds, flowers, flags, etc. for each state. For the world we are doing continents and oceans, which will then be expanded on with countries within, rivers, etc.

In these two pictures you can just barely make out a green sheet that is a monthly calendar that we record daily weather and temps on for graphing at the end of the month. We also have the cloud identifier and season spinner.
I tell you kids clothes hangers and clothespins really come in handy!

We had today off because Daddy was off from work but back at it tomorrow....help.....and its supposed to snow a bit. If you have any questions about anything on the boards feel free to ask away, hopefully when we play the games above I can take some pictures and expand on how they are played.



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Our new system - Starting 2nd Grade work...

 

We our beginning our second full year now of homeschooling. I can't believe we are starting second grade work but here we go..........!

Originally we pulled our son out of kindergarten in the public school system back in Feb. 09. This year begins a whole new system of learning with The Red Ranger doing more for himself.

We started by using the Sue Patrick Workbox System that I had read about on a fellow homeschoolers blog - Confessions of a Homeschooler. I found the way it was described on Confessions of a Homeschooler very easy to adapt for our usage.
First, its not a curriculum, its an organizational system to make things easier for you and your children. It will (and this is BIG) stop, it has for us at least, the "how long are we doing lessons today?", "when will we be done?", "how much more do we have to do?"
We had to adapt it for us because we just don't have a seperate room or space for the storage carts. Our classroom is all around us, living room, dining room, even part of the kitchen, not to mention lessons all over the house. So we are using a hanging file folder system/pocket chart that I recently got from the website Really Good Stuff.

All we do is use labels to direct our son to centers, his easel for art, his computer lessons and so on for things that can't fit into the pockets. Then as The Red Ranger finishes each folder he places the folder and work into a box placed under the chart and continues to the next folder. We have two built in 10 minute breaks and a half-hour lunch and there's also the new fitness program we just started which is helping with the fidgets of having to sit and learn after playing. I'm finding that it really focuses him on his learning and its fun as well.
I'll add pictures of just how we are set up soon and also the books we are using for our 2nd grade work as well as the fitness program we are using later.
There is one thing that I've learned going from 1st grade work into 2nd, we didn't have enough of a variety with the 1st grade work. I was only using one curriculum book with supplemental materials and I've now found that there is a gap. I'm thinking it might be because I switched the brand on the curriculum and we didn't have a broad base to start with the one book. Instead of only one comprehensive curriculum book we are now using three with many, many supplemental books to switch things up each day for fun.

For now these are our main books:
COMPREHENSIVE CURRICULUM: 2nd Grade

• Learn at Home Series from Carson Dellosa - it gives you an entire year's worth of lesson plans to help you start off with done week by week. Its a great starting point.
• Flash Kids Series - Complete Curriculum from B&N.
• And the Big Second Grade Workbook from School Zone.

Supplemental Books:

• Learning with Literature series, two books one each for a Math twist and Science Twist. For grades K-2. (Carson Dellosa)

• Several Homework Booklets from Carson Dellosa on phonics, grammar, reading comprehension.

• Supplemental Workbooks and flashcards for math, science, history, geography, space. Most of these have come from the $1 bins at Target and the Dollar Store. They are perfect for independent work, busy or I'm finished already work, or as compliments to other lessons. 

Another tool that I'm adapting for us is the Hot Dots system. They actually have extra dots for making your own flashcards, tests, etc. and if you have a child like mine that likes to check his own answers, they get immediate feedback on whether they are correct or not from the Hot Dots pen. I also purchased Learn Arounds from Really Good Stuff for the same reasons but with a different approach.
We also have a science program, HOP reading and I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff but its a start for this blog. I'll post how our day works along with a more detailed description of our lessons and system at a later date.

Summer Reading List:
The page looks so blank so here's our summer reading list (even though yes we have school during the summer). We are more than halfway through!