The HerdKeeper

Phonics and Spelling: This year I am going to try All About Reading . I love All About Spelling and I have two more to teach phonics too. I have pieced together various phonics curriculums over the years. This seems to pull together all the phonics programs I love into one program. Grammar: I found and fell in love with Growing with Grammar for the under 8th grade crowd. From what I can tell from the younger grades Grammar takes 15 minutes or so while actually teaching for retention. I fully expect by high school Grammar it will be just a review “thing”. Writing: Another new pick for me this past year was Essentials in Writing . I have always been a hardcore Institute for Excellence in Writing fan for younger years and Format Writing by Jensen for high school. And while I still think they are fabulous, Essentials In Writing takes so much of the work from me. I used it just for the 1st grader but I am going full out Essentials in Writing next year! Math: I s...

Messes seem to paralyze me. You would not guess this from the state of my house. (this is our sock and laundry pile) However, I am also a low key, not a high energy person mostly due to health issues and fatigue. So... I plan. I love to plan actually. I plan meals, I plan organizational ideas, I plan school, I plan to plan. My school year starts out with me reflecting on what I didn't like and did like about the last school year. There are some years I realize that we used a method or curriculum that is diametrically opposed to our homeschool philosophy. This past year is a good example of this reflection. For our family, workbooks aren't necessarily a good tool for us to learn, neither are lapbooks. This year I picked up a workbook for everything. I even had more than one for most subjects. Just the 3 R's took hours, retention was lower than I wanted and the fun Konos stuff tended to be left out in favor for, another workbook. So armed with ...

Since the only thing anyone can pay attention to these days involves electronics I think it is about time to do a focused study on being attentive Konos style. I have some of my books ready. I need to order a few more. Have my ipod and youtube ready to go with music to listen to. And last but not least a few of my favorite websites lined up to help me come up with activities. http://www.squidoo.com/five-senses-hearing-and-sound-waves-lesson-plan

Late spring, early summer we met with another family to show them the Konos ropes. We studied orderliness and how that translates into construction/building. We discussed the different trades needed to build a house and the difficulty and skill it takes to build a house. They were not convinced until they were challenged to build one themselves. We first started off by making the foundation of a building with Popsicle sticks and the walls. While we were waiting for the sticks to dry, we moved on to an outside project of building a compost bin out of scrap lumber. They were armed with pallets and a few other scraps. The finished project was a little shaky but it was a great experience. Leadership qualities popped up and everyone had to learn to "cooperate". Our houses were destroyed by a hurricane named Zack (he's two). I understand they finished their houses and used marshmallows for insulation in between their walls. Impressive. check out the link below for a descrip...

I am teaching a one hour co op class on Ancient History using HOW I (Konos) to high school students and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I have discovered that one hour is just not enough time. In addition to the homework I assign, such as Streams of Civilization and various websites, we have done some really fun things to help the lessons stick. We studied Abraham and his journey and placed him on a time line and plotted his journey. I will say that map work is my weak point. I envisioned beautiful colored maps and frankly it hasn't worked out that way, but we all have the idea. Next we added Issac and Jacob and Esau to our time lines. We ate a traditional red lentil stew. I found this amazing website that gave me history and recipe. http://theshiksa.com/2011/02/23/jacobs-lentil-stew/ You must check out her fabulous website. Finally we studied the tower of Babel and added it to the time line and then we proceeded to build the tower out of sugar cubes. I honestly wasn't sure how w...

We learned about Connecticut today and their whaling industry of the 1800's. My children were thoroughly disgusted by the whole process. I guess they would not make good farmers. Since the family is still recovering from this nasty virus it is a movie day. We are watching the IMAX whale movie and Moby Dick is on the venue for after lunch. We learned that PEZ candy, the "first" hamburger as well as the first lollipop are from Connecticut

Josiah (11) total left brain. This looks identical to the one he was shown. Ben, age 12 (learning delayed) When snapping the picture of his cell. He hollared "wait, I think it blinked" Then of course he laughted hysterically. Ben is definitely right brained. Melaina is 9 and is left brained. While her brain cell was not detailed her explanation sure was. On our journey I have learned so much about my children. One of my favorite things about Konos is observing my children. By nature I like to jump in and take over and I like things done just so. Left brained I guess. But by sitting back and observing and letting my kids do the work they learn so much more and I learn about them. What they think, how they tick, there sense of humor. The three brain cells my kids made were a true reflection of their personalities. They each took their time and were serious about their project. The younger kids (1st, K and preK) did not participate in this. They were busy making ta...

I am not one of those hands on type of people. Konos is a stretch for me. I like to read. I knew going in that my kids would need to see and touch and do to get this human body unit down. I was not looking forward to it. We had a lot of fun discussing who was right brain and who was left brain. It was truly fascinating to me as I noticed that those who are left brained actually tend to hang together and those that are right brain hang together. Is that wild or what? We dug into the nervous system and did all kinds of hands on experiments that helped them nail down the nervous system. It was so great. The kids were playing hide and seek tag on Sunday night in the dark. (We can do that, we homeschool and do not have to catch the school bus at dark o'clock). My son Josiah was so excited to come in and tell me his nervous system is alive and well and that he experienced the autonomic reaction of fight or flight. Another fascinating thing happened, I handed out play dough to ...

The human body is not going as well as the bridges unit. It was easier for me to do the hands on with bridges, it was not touching slimy things. Could use some prayer there that I would just buck up and DO IT. We are self employed so finances are an issue with getting supplies as well. With that being said my kids drew in their bones and if I do so say so myself they did a great job. They are not going to be artists anytime soon but for kids who whined and complained that they couldn't do it. They DID IT. They are tossing around words like "hey, you stepped on my phalanges". We started work on the muscles yesterday and my kids were quite grossed out by the concept we were eating muscle. We have a roast to put in the oven this morning and we are all going to wash our hands and poke at it a little to see the grain. Then we are going to look at pictures I have of muscle cells. Not sure everyone will want to eat the roast beef tonight. We seem to be c...

True to our plans it was a crazy week. Three birthdays and a holiday plus sports in 14 days has left us whirling BUT my kids have learned so much. Our truss bridge was a huge success until the 3 year old decided to stress test it. The sugar cube arch was a huge fail but you know what my kids learned so much from that experiment (so did mom, do not let certain neighbor kids help) . I am still trying to figure out what happened to the remains of our collapsed arch but I am pretty sure 8 children + sugar cubes + icing = missing remains. On our trip on Labor Day we crossed many bridges and everyone was so excited to tell me what kind they were and why the engineers would have chosen that type based on the area. Even my 4 year old was yelling, look mom it is a beam bridge over a road, that is called an overpass. We crossed Francis Scott Key Bridge and a debate ensued over whether it was some sort of suspension bridge or truss bridge. We of course looked at all the part...

We did a quick tour through the Honor unit and it was great. I hope to get back to dig deeper.

Great first day. The best part is watching my older kids all working together instead of all reading separately in their rooms. Today was map work and we pulled out Atlases, encyclopedias, magnifying glasses and believe it or not binoculars to read the small print.

I love a good schedule. I am always searching for the perfect schedule. I have a feeling I will always be searching as there is no such thing as perfect. Or so they tell me. So here is my fall schedule overview Mondays we school from 8:30 – 3:30 or 4, we clean up and I theoretically clean up and start dinner. Annah has guitar practice on Monday nights. Emma and Rebekah tag team babysit if Don has to work late Tuesdays are co-op days. This is the first time we have ever participated in a co-op and my kids are loving it. Don drops off Emma, Rebekah and Donny at 8:30 for a government class and then I come at 9:30 with Annah, Ben and Josiah. My littles are babysit by big sister, till my Aunt and her little one come for an hour or two to play, then my mom comes till I can get there and she does science with Annah and Josiah. Tuesdays, Emma and Rebekah have cheerleading from 4-6, Emma and Rebekah go to a Bible study after cheerleading till about 9:30 and Donny has football from 6-8 ...

The Votes are in and the Emmalacins are in office. We held a mock election on Friday between Annah and Emma. Emma won with a narrow margin of 4 to 3. My kids got to understand a little bit about the checks and balances of government. Because of the size of our family we did it in house. Our inauguration and inaugural ball will be on Wednesday, our final day of the study. It was between my 11 year old and my 16 year old. The 16 year old won hands down but I got to witness the sweetest act of love. My 16 year old voted for her sister. Is that not awesome? My 11 year old is all about order and rules and well you can imagine how well that went over. Anyway, we got a good "drill" on the branches of government and checks and balances because Mom is the legislative and judicial branch and I get to decide if it goes along with our “constitution”. If it does not violate our constitution we will enact that law. It really made that all so much clearer to the kids and it was fun too. One...

I cannot believer that summer is half over. I have spent half of it obsessing over what to do next year for curriculum. While "I" love Tapestry of Grace and have learned so much from it my kids are barely tolerating it and we are just dragging our way through the school day. Don has encouraged me to try something new by doing some old. Once upon a time I loved to homeschool and I loved to teach and my kids loved to learn. Soooo we are returning to KONOS. I know my kids will love this I just need to make sure I can be prepared. So now I am obsessing over what units to teach in KONOS and for how long. We have chosen the Russian study and I am not sure how long to make this study and who to include. Speaking of returning, we have started to use the PEGS chore system again. Mainly it keeps everyone accountable not just in chores but in behavior attitude and communication. It helps me remember to praise and reward for good behavior, attitude or communication. On Sunday Noah came t...