I’ll try to
stay on track here. This is about my one
room schoolhouse not teaching styles, learning styles, the teachable child, or
Sonlight curriculum. Stay on track, Rachel.
Stay on track.
I like to think of my teaching job like a
delivery service. I’m the UPS guy and I
am here to deliver this awesome box of information to my awesome students. There are three things that I want them to
get out of my awesome box:
I want them
to RETAIN the information.
I want them
to ENJOY the information.
I want them
to COPREHEND the information.
Of course
they are not going to RETAIN everything, nor are they going to COMPRENHEND
everything, and they certainly aren’t going to ENJOY every single second of it
but we’re going for mostly. For laziness
sake we’ll call this goal our REC.
If you don’t REC then it will be a WRECK. I kill myself.
You best REC
yourself before you WRECK yourself. Anyway…
Keeping REC in
mind, how am I going to deliver this information to my children? I have chosen to do that in a one room school
house fashion which makes me as cool as Laura Ingalls Wilder which is really
the point, am I right? Instead of
delivering the information in four separate boxes, we all get one box and we
open it together and the awesome explodes in our faces at the same time.
I have a
daughter who is 9 and my sons are 8, 6, and 4.
My four-year-old isn’t quite there yet but he hangs out with us most of
the time. He plays toys quietly on the
floor, he watches the kids do their math, he listens to the read-aloud or I
tell him to go play in his room because he is being obnoxious.
Math: My
older three do the same math grade. My
older two have always been in the same grade.
They are 13 months a part so they started the same year because their
teacher is a genius. My third child just
catches on to concepts very quickly thus they
are all doing 4th
grade math with Teaching Textbooks. This
is a computer based program that includes the lecture. They all take turns doing their lesson on our
desktop. This takes them between 10-20min.
Spelling:
When it isn’t their turn on the computer, they are writing out their spelling
words. This takes care of writing
practice and spelling. We use Sequential
Spelling. This multi tasks as writing
practice as well. The older two have to
write their spelling words in cursive. During
snack time I quiz them on their spelling list.
I go around the table and ask them to spell a word and when it’s Ben’s
turn I ask him his phonics sounds. I
haven’t figured out if they are really retaining their spelling yet. This is something I’m still working out. I have yet to see REC from this program translate
into REC in their compositions. I might
switch back to Explode the Code. I’m
open to your opinion. This takes them
between 15-20min.
Grammar:
Honestly, this is an area that I have yet to really find something where I see
REC happening. I’m not a big fan of the
Sonlight LA work pages so I’ve never really done them. A friend, who is a high school English
teacher, recommended a book to me called The Grammar Bible. I just go it in the mail and started reading
it to my kids like it’s just another one of our read-alouds. They love it and I see a lot of REC
happening. I also made a grammar game
for them, kind of like a movable adlib game, which they pull out every now and
again. I see them getting the structure of
grammar but it hasn’t all come together in their heads yet. I read the book to them while they eat lunch
for maybe about 10min. I know I can do
better in this area. There’s always room
to improve.
Writing
Composition: We started Institute of Excellence in Writing about a month
ago. It’s a DVD set of a very humorous
and talented homeschool dad who just gets how to teach kids to understand and
love writing. I am so impressed with his
concepts. My kids think he’s funny and
that’s a big deal since he’s competing with how funny their main teacher
is. The three older ones watch the
lectures and I do their writing with them.
My 6-year-old dictates while I write for him. This takes about 45min and we do this about
twice a week.
Reading: My preschooler and I are making our way
through “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Lessons.” We make time for it maybe 2-3 times a
week. The other three are reading on by
themselves. They read a chapter a day
out of their Sonlight readers. Sometimes
they read in the afternoon and sometimes it’s their bed time reading. We all know that the Sonlight book list is
the bomb. I just love all the amazing
stories they get to experience. They each
read for about 30min a day.
Science: I’m
taking a break from Science right now so I can be more hands on with it during
the summer. Sonlight gives you a
plethora of Science material that is very hard for me to make time for. My kids get a lot of hands on stuff at our
homeschool co-op and they do a lot of digging in the dirt so we’re covered
right?
History and
Read-Alouds: Sonlight…I love thee. You
are the Spring breeze to my cold Wintery foggy day. Sonlight integrates their read-alouds with their
history cycle. Right now we are in early
American history, my favorite! I read to
all four of my kids at any of these times…while they eat craft, play quietly on
the floor, and right before bed time. I
rarely have them sit and do nothing while I read unless it’s more of a picture
book. We talk about life and read and
talk and snuggle and read and my kids are my BEST FRIENDS. I just love how our books have made us close
and made the world open and made learning a complete REC.
Bible: We
have devotionals together every morning.
We’ve done devotionals a million different ways over the years. A lot of the time, I write a little
devotional for their bed time reading.
Those are the ones I Instagram that always include my left thumb. In the morning, we follow the stories in my
four-year-olds Bible. We read the Bible
story in the storybook and then the older three take turns reading the verses
straight out of their Bibles. We each
have prayer cards that we write out every couple of months that include a thank
you, a prayer for someone else, and a prayer for ourselves. After we read and pray, the kids draw a
picture of the Bible story and the older two journal a sentence or two. I want to start including something daily
that has to do with missions. I need
your missionary ideas. Devotionals take about
30min.
Classical
Conversations IPad app: I love this
program. What a wealth of well-thought
out structured information. I see tons
of REC coming out of this program. We
listen to the memory work while we fold our giant mountain of laundry. The memory work is a perfect background of
information that combines all the subjects they are learning. They are skip counting for math, memorizing
science facts, History sentences (my six-year-old was playing Legos the other
day and perfectly quoted the 7 wonders of the ancient world in a conversation
between two Lego guys), and memorizing grammar structure. We take out each item of information from our
box and then CC builds every item together into one awesome tower. Dude, that’s a lot of REC.
Throughout
all of this, the kids get their chores done and go outside and wiggle for a bit
and eat. They are always eating. Always.
I don’t have us all sit down at the table and not move until everything
is done. Even I’m to hyper for
that! Most of their school takes place
on the couch and sometimes I send a kid to finish on their bed because they get
distracted by siblings and dust specks floating through the air. This is what works for us because I’m Rachel
Cook and that’s how I roll. They get a lot of extra curricular fun time our our Friday homeschool co-op.
You can look
up homeschool teaching styles and get an idea of what you might be. I’m Charlotte Mason/Classical. This makes me cool but not cooler than you.
We are
together most of the day, laughing at the same stories, giving pointers on the same
math lesson, writing the same composition story. It’s my one room school house. It’s my pride and joy. Life is good.
It’s not perfect but it’s good.
You guys
stay cool. God has big plans for your
day and it’s doesn’t include freak outs.
Go hug a kid.
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