Cultivating Childhood

Even though I didn't like science as a kid, I did like math.  It's amazing what good teachers will do for you!  I've been excited about teaching math to my kids, and have been collecting manipulatives as we've gone along. Math is one of the subjects that we try to do every day, but every day looks a little bit different.  We do math games, patterns, living books, and even some worksheets.  Buddy loves them all! Math Games There are so many great math games out there, and we have a lot.  Every Monday, we pick one together.  If it is a little more challenging, we may pull out our RightStart Abacus to help us with our addition and subtraction. Some of the games we like to play are: Hi-Ho Cherry-O Sum Swamp Dominoes (both traditional and other ways ) Games involving dice My Father's World Activity Cards On Tuesdays, we use My Father's World Activity Cards which is part of their core preschool curriculum.  We already had a lot of the...

I hated science in school.  I even told my husband that if we were going to homeschool, he'd have to be responsible for the science part because I disliked it so much.  He, on the other hand, thought I was crazy and was more than happy to take over what he thought was the "fun part" of the schooling process.  You know what?  He was right. (He usually is... grrr...=) ).  I've since discovered that science doesn't need to be all dry facts and memorization.  The boys LOVE science, and we are having so much fun doing it together.  Of course, my husband finds his way to stay involved too which makes my heart happy! Our Pre-K science consists of actually two different parts.  We love doing science experiments, and we also try to follow the Charlotte Mason approach to Nature Study.  Both of these have found their way into our curriculum. Nature Study Let them once get touch with Nature, and a habit is formed which will be a source of delig...

Painting, crafts, ABC's, 123's - that's usually what you think of with preschool.  Although we do a little of that, one of our big focuses is Geography.  Yes, you read that right, Geography. Geography is one of my favorite parts of our preschool time.  We are already a global-minded family since we have a lot of missionaries in our families, and both Phil and I have traveled a lot.  We want our children to have this same global mindset as we did growing up, and to be able to love the entire world.  My mother-in-law gave me a book called Becoming a World Changing Family   where it talks about raising Great Commission Kids, i.e. kids that want to change the world for Christ.   I try to incorporate Geography into our preschool a little every day.  We are very flexible with this, but even being only three weeks into our school year, I'm seeing that Buddy is getting a better grasp of how big the world is and even knowing where different par...

Routine has never been something that our family has been good at.  We like to be spontaneous and with daddy working from home and mommy staying home with the kids, we don't usually have to coordinate who gets the car for the day or even what needs to happen in any given day.  As much as we like this flexibility, it also has it's drawbacks.  Sometimes we decide too last minute what we want to do and stress ourselves out trying to get out of the house to make things on time.  Other times we say we'll do one thing and switch it up, and that can be a disappointment to the kids if they were looking forward to doing something different (and with two kids it seems like one always wants to do the new activity and another wants to do the old!) Yet as the kids get older, we've seen that it is time to find a better routine in our lives.  Buddy especially likes to have a schedule to follow and will remind me if I haven't updated the sign from the day before.  It h...

We've officially started our trek into the land of homeschooling.  Although we feel like learning is always going on in our home, it's quite fun to actually have a means and method to go along with it.  Not that we don't chuck it out the window whenever it is convenient for us!  ;-)  Buddy and Button are very excited that they finally get to touch the school stuff.  We actually started a week earlier than I had planned because I couldn't keep them away any longer! So what are we doing?   Some days it feels like we are doing a lot and then other days nothing at all.  This stage is great because we have no outside factors that need to weigh in on what needs to happen on any given day or anything that needs to be tested or recorded.  Basically, Pre-K can be just plain fun!  If you've read this blog for any length of time, you'll know that I'm in love with the Charlotte Mason method.  We're trying to follow her method as much as possi...