one would think...

...we were studying ancient Greece based on the books I've found lying around the house...
... but we're not. We're actually studying early American history this year. So, why all of the Greek mythology?

Here's why...

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series

Okay... so since we're not studying this in school, why am I posting about this on my homeschooling blog? Well... because homeschooling has allowed Alex to become completely obsessed with Greek mythology.... it has allowed him to follow this "rabbit trail" as far as he wants it to take him. Homeschooling has allowed me to let go a bit and let him read late at night until he can't keep his eyes open any longer (this week he's been reading until around midnight). He loves this book series and loves to read.... how can you not let him run with this enthusiasm?

The stack of books shown above is last week's set of books, he checked out (and has already read) a stack equally as big this week. He knows the stories by heart now and talks about them constantly. I'm also reading the book series and I am just on the book ahead of him. When I finish a book and give it to him to read, he always asks me which myths are referenced so he can read up on them first. I know I couldn't "assign" this stuff to him and expect the same results. Jeff is also reading the series and is on Book 2. Alex LOVES to quiz his dad about what's going on in the book and the myths referenced. It's become a real family affair (oh... I should also mention that Alex and Clara are considering being Perseus and Medusa for Halloween).

Anyway... I just thought I would share our experience with this book series and how it has overtaken our lives :-)

On another note.... I'm sorry about the posting gap again. This time we had illnesses and doctor visits consuming my free time (Alex had another bout of MRSA and now needs to see a specialist next week). We've also had a couple of auditions that we're keeping our fingers crossed about. I did get emails from a couple of you and I'm working on emailing you back by the end of the weekend!

Happy Friday!

growing back into picture books

I can't tell you how excited I am to be back in the picture book section of the library again! I LOVE the picture book section. I thought we had left it behind... Alex was now into chapter books and Clara had her readers.... our read alouds were chapter books now too.... we had no use for picture books.... or so I thought! Then I started reading more and more about the benefits of using "living books" in homeschooling and things started to change.

A few months back I blogged about how I was compiling a reading list for Clara each week and in those lists were several picture books. Well.... that idea snowballed. Not only did Clara read all of the books but so did Alex. So now I no longer make a reading list for Clara. I pick a topic (based on Story of the World, a science interest, season, holiday, upcoming trips... whatever) and collect a stack of picture books from the library on that particular subject.

The kids LOVE this! The main reason I no longer make a reading list for Clara is that she will select a stack of books from our library basket to read in bed each night completely on her own.... Alex does the same. Alex will still read his chapter books at bedtime, but will have a little picture book "appetizer" before diving into his main course :-)

Here's a partial stack of what we checked out this week...
Given that it's spring now... we have quite a few books on flowers and seeds.

Zinnia's Flower Garden

Looks like your typical picture book, right? Well... take a look inside...
There is all kinds of great information inside this colorful little book from the "kiddie" section! Parts of a flower... life cycle of a butterfly.... stages of germination... types of clouds... and so much more all along with the story of a girl and her garden. And to think I thought I had no use for picture books anymore!

Flip, Float, Fly!: Seeds on the Move

A beautifully illustrated book with simple text about the different methods of seed dispersal...

(please forgive the slightly out of focus photo above)

I thought the illustrations in this book were gorgeous....

A Seed Is Sleepy

It includes lots of great information as well.... my problem with it?

A lot of the text is in cursive...
Which poses a problem.... mainly for Clara.

Our next topic in Story of the World is Ancient India. So I visited the folktale section as well and picked up several retellings of Indian folktales...

Seven Blind Mice

I have no requirements in regards to the picture books. They're free to read them or not read them whenever they want. They don't think of them as "school" at all. I also have to try to not think of them as "school" too much or I tend to get upset when they don't choose to read a certain book (if it's a book I feel strongly about, I will commit to reading it during school time). However, they usually work their way through about 80% of what we bring home. They do oral narrations of most books without knowing it. Usually from me saying "oooh... that looks like a cool book... what's it about?". :-)

Another reason I love the picture book section... it's been a great way to get Clara to read more challenging text without forcing longer chapter books on her. She's ready for harder text... but she's not ready for a longer story that will take her several days to read. These books have more difficult words in them, but also have good picture clues and good definition clues in the text since they're written for a younger audience.

Anyway.... sorry about the long rambling post... I'm just had to share my excitement! :-)

quiet time...

Another new experiment in our house... quiet time. It's just a half hour of free (with disclaimers...lol) reading right after lunch. The disclaimer on the "free" is that they have to choose books to read from the stack I provide. The don't have to read every book from the stack I choose but their book has to be from the stack. So far, so good.

Here are a couple of shots from yesterday...

I haven't really worried about Alex's reading because at night he's barreling through the Harry Potter series (which on Book Adventure is listed as around 6/7 grade reading level). He's currently about 400 pages into book four. But, I felt like he needed exposure to other books without taking away his free reading time at night. So, I pulled a bunch of books from our various Sonlight cores and let him pick something to read during quiet time. They're not all big challenging chapter books... just a variety of quality literature for him to choose from. I think in order for this to continue to work, I'm going to need to have a stack of books on hand at all times. The library isn't an option for this (at least for me) because I don't want to have to worry about taking the books back before he's through with them or even before he picks them. I would love book suggestions and/or links to good quality reading lists. I tried to find a few on my own yesterday and didn't fair so well. The ones I found seemed to be more of what you could read versus what is worth reading... if you know what I mean. A friend from our homeschool group has been giving me some suggestions that look fabulous, but I would love to have more suggestions!

The challenge with Clara is keeping enough books around. She's at that level where she needs the "level one" books but she can go through 4 or more in a sitting. I don't want to buy anymore so I guess I'm stuck hauling home bags of books from the library each week :-)

The quiet time is working well for us... lets just hope we can keep with it!

a couple of games...

Yesterday we took some time out of our day to play a couple of "school games".

The first game we played was Great States Jr..
The kids LOVE this game. It is very easy for all of us to play together. When you roll you land on one of three colors and pull a card of matching color. One color is about state names, so for example you may be looking for 3 states that start with N. Another color is state shapes, they show just the shape of the state and you need to find it on the board. And the final color is state pictures (I'm not sure exactly what they call it), each state has a symbol on it referencing something that it is famous for. The card tells the fact and shows the picture, then you have to find the state on the map. The game is great for Clara (age 6) but, even though he enjoys it, Alex is beyond this one. This game is geared toward non-readers and if they are readers, I wouldn't recommend it. Here's my beef with it... they list the answers on the FRONT of each card! Yes, they are in small print and upside down but now that Alex knows that they're there and how to read them, there's no going back. Maybe if you want to play this game with a reader, someone other than the person who's turn it is should draw and read the card (the answer is easily covered with a thumb). The instructions have each person drawing their own card so we've played that way for a while now. Its hard to change the rules now.


The second game we played was Sight Word Bingo. Nothing terribly unique about this game, but the kids enjoy it. Yesterday they added to the challenge by having some of their stuffed animals play too. So between the two of them they were managing about 13 cards. I like that this set has a chart of all of the words. This helps Alex with the concept of alphabetization.