Monday, May 5, 2008
Contribute to Our 2008-2009 School Experience Early!
I mentioned in the Barometer that I was going to post a list of things we will need for next year. I am confident that we will have everything we need, so don't feel like I expect you to send us money or supplies. But if you want to, we would be very thankful!
- wide ruled, single subject notebooks
- pencils
- erasers
- crayons
- paints
- markers
- construction paper
- glue/glue sticks
- folders
- any other craft items
Ink Cartridges available at:
Our curriculum is available at:
We could also do our own shopping with gift cards from Office Max
Summing Up Our First Year
By Tasha Chinnock
This week as I looked through our files from the year, I was really amazed at all we have done and all we have learned. Looking back at the work the kids did in that first week, I couldn’t believe my eyes at how much better their writing, their reading, their coordination and their comprehension has gotten. They started out preschoolers, and they are ready for first grade. But the greatest success I think we achieved this year is that all three kids LOVE school. When I told them that we were done with school for the summer I expected to get cheers of excitement, but instead, all I got were questions. “Will we ever do school again?”, “Why can’t we just have school all summer?”, “Can we start first grade next week?”
Another thing that really surprises me is that I did it! I believed them when they told me that I could, but I didn’t ever think it would be easy, fun, exciting—in short, it’s my favorite thing in my present life. I’m not exaggerating. If I could spend my whole day doing school with the kids and my whole evening preparing for the next day’s class, I would be totally happy. I love telling Dane everything we did when he gets home from work. I love showing off our projects to people who come over. I love telling my girlfriends, who aren’t sure they want to undertake a life of home schooling, about all the interesting things we get to do and make and see and read. I love watching Huyler and Ardara’s mouths work through a word, and being able to almost SEE the wheels turning inside their heads. I love to see the light come on in their eyes when they understand something they have struggled to understand. I love to see their pride in remembering something they learned a week or a month before. I love thinking of a way that “just might work” to help them learn something and having it WORK. But finding out that I am an adequate kindergarten teacher isn’t even the best part.
The most valuable thing that I am gaining from teaching my kids at home is a relationship with them. I feel like I understand them and know them so much better now than I did 8 months ago. I have learned how their minds and hearts process things. I have been astounded by their wisdom and sincerity. At the beginning of the year I was baffled by Huyler’s lack of attention, his difficulty in listening and responding to adults, and his apprehensive approach to learning. Now I see that he needed more structure, attention, and reassurance to succeed. He has gotten that through our school routine, through his Awanas club, and through the one-on-one time I could spend teaching him. He is no longer afraid to try or the possibility that he might fail, because he knows that I am here to help him if he makes a mistake and that he can learn anything if he keeps trying. In spite of all the warnings I got from well-meaning friends that “Boys learn slower than girls do”, he is learning to read faster than Ardara, and his hand-writing is almost as neat as hers when he takes his time and tries. Then there is Ardara. She is so smart, I wondered if she would be bored by the pace we would need to take for Huyler’s best interest, or feel left out because I gave him more attention. But what I found was that Ardara loves to help Huyler learn. She rejoices with him when he gets answers right. Her artistic side just takes over while I help him through an exercise, so pretty much every worksheet she did this year is covered in doodles. In the areas where Huyler catches on more quickly, we often find ourselves waiting for Ardara to finish her intricate coloring of the pictures on the page before she is ready to move on to the next thing. One area where Ardara has improved a lot this year is her ability to accept criticism. At the beginning of the year she would literally get furious with me if she got an answer wrong, drew a letter backwards, or missed a number in counting. She was just devastated to be told she did something wrong. I was able to adjust my approach to correcting her so that it was more encouraging and gentle. But I also just sat down and talked to her about learning being a process where we are expected to make mistakes in order to learn from them. I explained that if I never showed her a mistake, she would keep making it all her life. But because she hated to see a red mark on her page, it would always stick in her mind and keep her from making the same mistake again. My other concern was August—how would I be able to keep an eye on him, to teach him anything, while I was working with Huyler and Ardara? I was delighted to see how much of the kindergarten curriculum interested him. He didn’t care as much for the worksheets, but he loved the experiments, stories, bible lessons and crafts. When we would come to a part that was over his head, he would just quietly go to the book shelf and get a dry-erase book or a puzzle or something else that he enjoyed and sit on the floor by my feet working on it. He was hardly ever a distraction, and what is more, he seemed to pick up a lot of what Huyler and Ardara were learning, so that he now knows the sounds of all the letters and can match capitals and lowercase much of the time.
In summing up, I guess the whole point I am trying to make is that our year was a greater success than I even thought possible. I can’t wait for next year—in fact, I’m not. We have lessons planned out for the whole summer (see pg. 3 “Reading Reflex”). I’m so thankful that I have the privilege of teaching my own children. And I’m so thankful for all the positive support all of you have shown me. Your participation and encouragement have gone a long way and I hope you will continue to enjoy being a part of the Chinnock Education Experience.
This week as I looked through our files from the year, I was really amazed at all we have done and all we have learned. Looking back at the work the kids did in that first week, I couldn’t believe my eyes at how much better their writing, their reading, their coordination and their comprehension has gotten. They started out preschoolers, and they are ready for first grade. But the greatest success I think we achieved this year is that all three kids LOVE school. When I told them that we were done with school for the summer I expected to get cheers of excitement, but instead, all I got were questions. “Will we ever do school again?”, “Why can’t we just have school all summer?”, “Can we start first grade next week?”
Another thing that really surprises me is that I did it! I believed them when they told me that I could, but I didn’t ever think it would be easy, fun, exciting—in short, it’s my favorite thing in my present life. I’m not exaggerating. If I could spend my whole day doing school with the kids and my whole evening preparing for the next day’s class, I would be totally happy. I love telling Dane everything we did when he gets home from work. I love showing off our projects to people who come over. I love telling my girlfriends, who aren’t sure they want to undertake a life of home schooling, about all the interesting things we get to do and make and see and read. I love watching Huyler and Ardara’s mouths work through a word, and being able to almost SEE the wheels turning inside their heads. I love to see the light come on in their eyes when they understand something they have struggled to understand. I love to see their pride in remembering something they learned a week or a month before. I love thinking of a way that “just might work” to help them learn something and having it WORK. But finding out that I am an adequate kindergarten teacher isn’t even the best part.
The most valuable thing that I am gaining from teaching my kids at home is a relationship with them. I feel like I understand them and know them so much better now than I did 8 months ago. I have learned how their minds and hearts process things. I have been astounded by their wisdom and sincerity. At the beginning of the year I was baffled by Huyler’s lack of attention, his difficulty in listening and responding to adults, and his apprehensive approach to learning. Now I see that he needed more structure, attention, and reassurance to succeed. He has gotten that through our school routine, through his Awanas club, and through the one-on-one time I could spend teaching him. He is no longer afraid to try or the possibility that he might fail, because he knows that I am here to help him if he makes a mistake and that he can learn anything if he keeps trying. In spite of all the warnings I got from well-meaning friends that “Boys learn slower than girls do”, he is learning to read faster than Ardara, and his hand-writing is almost as neat as hers when he takes his time and tries. Then there is Ardara. She is so smart, I wondered if she would be bored by the pace we would need to take for Huyler’s best interest, or feel left out because I gave him more attention. But what I found was that Ardara loves to help Huyler learn. She rejoices with him when he gets answers right. Her artistic side just takes over while I help him through an exercise, so pretty much every worksheet she did this year is covered in doodles. In the areas where Huyler catches on more quickly, we often find ourselves waiting for Ardara to finish her intricate coloring of the pictures on the page before she is ready to move on to the next thing. One area where Ardara has improved a lot this year is her ability to accept criticism. At the beginning of the year she would literally get furious with me if she got an answer wrong, drew a letter backwards, or missed a number in counting. She was just devastated to be told she did something wrong. I was able to adjust my approach to correcting her so that it was more encouraging and gentle. But I also just sat down and talked to her about learning being a process where we are expected to make mistakes in order to learn from them. I explained that if I never showed her a mistake, she would keep making it all her life. But because she hated to see a red mark on her page, it would always stick in her mind and keep her from making the same mistake again. My other concern was August—how would I be able to keep an eye on him, to teach him anything, while I was working with Huyler and Ardara? I was delighted to see how much of the kindergarten curriculum interested him. He didn’t care as much for the worksheets, but he loved the experiments, stories, bible lessons and crafts. When we would come to a part that was over his head, he would just quietly go to the book shelf and get a dry-erase book or a puzzle or something else that he enjoyed and sit on the floor by my feet working on it. He was hardly ever a distraction, and what is more, he seemed to pick up a lot of what Huyler and Ardara were learning, so that he now knows the sounds of all the letters and can match capitals and lowercase much of the time.
In summing up, I guess the whole point I am trying to make is that our year was a greater success than I even thought possible. I can’t wait for next year—in fact, I’m not. We have lessons planned out for the whole summer (see pg. 3 “Reading Reflex”). I’m so thankful that I have the privilege of teaching my own children. And I’m so thankful for all the positive support all of you have shown me. Your participation and encouragement have gone a long way and I hope you will continue to enjoy being a part of the Chinnock Education Experience.
The Reading Reflex
I gave the kids a reading placement test, and they did very well. Ardara is at a 97% for 1st grade reading, while Huyler is at 86%. But this book really got me excited about the methods it uses and why they are so successful. So we have already started doing this and plan to do it throughout the summer to give the kids a head start on first grade reading. They may just pass up the first grade level and keep going!
You can read all about this program at Read America's web page.
Y is for Yellow
The final week of the My Father’s World curriculum was a study of color. We learned about primary and secondary colors and the colors of the visible spectrum. I used the acrostic name, “ROY G BIV”, that Mr. Bunch taught me to help them learn the 7 colors of the rainbow. We learned about prisms, and reflection/absorption of light. We learned about tinting and shading. It was a full, fun week. For an outing, we took a camera and drove to the park, taking pictures of different colored items. Then we came home, printed out the pictures and made a rainbow out of all the things we had photographed. 
One day we made a Rainbow Stick, which is much like a Rainstick, but more colorful. We used a paper towel tube, tons of toothpicks, and a handful of lentils. We painted the tube the colors of the visible spectrum, and then we poked the toothpicks through every-which-way and taped shut the ends with beans inside. Then we covered the pointy tips of all the toothpicks with hot glue “raindrops”. For the finishing touch, we glued cotton ball clouds on each end to cover up the tape. When we tilt the stick back and forth, it sounds like rain gently falling.
We also found two books of children’s poetry—one entirely describing colors, and the other describing seasons (including spring and rainbows). Since our Bible lesson was “Thank you God, for this beautiful world” we decided to write poems about things in nature. You can read the kids’ poems on their blogs. Huyler's Blog / Ardara's Blog I was surprised at their chosen subjects. On the last day of school we made a rainbow dessert with every color of Jell-O (in the proper order of course!) and a whipped cream cloud on top! Hooray! 
One day we made a Rainbow Stick, which is much like a Rainstick, but more colorful. We used a paper towel tube, tons of toothpicks, and a handful of lentils. We painted the tube the colors of the visible spectrum, and then we poked the toothpicks through every-which-way and taped shut the ends with beans inside. Then we covered the pointy tips of all the toothpicks with hot glue “raindrops”. For the finishing touch, we glued cotton ball clouds on each end to cover up the tape. When we tilt the stick back and forth, it sounds like rain gently falling. We also found two books of children’s poetry—one entirely describing colors, and the other describing seasons (including spring and rainbows). Since our Bible lesson was “Thank you God, for this beautiful world” we decided to write poems about things in nature. You can read the kids’ poems on their blogs. Huyler's Blog / Ardara's Blog I was surprised at their chosen subjects. On the last day of school we made a rainbow dessert with every color of Jell-O (in the proper order of course!) and a whipped cream cloud on top! Hooray! Q is for Quail
Quail week was actually more of a bird week. But we did learn about quail specifically, too. Our Bible lesson was from Numbers 11 when the people of Israel grumbled and God sent so much quail to them that they ate their fill and then got very sick. Some of them even died. The sad part was, they weren’t starving, they had the food that God was providing for them. They just weren’t content and thankful. So, this was an important lesson for our kids to learn, especially right now when we are trusting the Lord daily for our needs. And they really have been showing contentment and thankfulness for every blessing. During this week we got to take a field trip to Lynx Lake to have a bird watching and feather collecting hike.
We saw loons and ducks and some little songbirds. We listened carefully to the songs they sang, drew pictures of everything we saw, and walked very quietly down the path. We had hoped to see the eagle that lives around there, but he wasn’t around. Ardara was a real scout and found the first feather AND a bird nest. Huyler led us off the main trail, closer to the water and found a nesting spot for ducks with TONS of feathers. We really hit the jackpot! We also played a game where you roll a ball to someone in the circle and they have to think of a type of bird before rolling it to someone else. We learned about the Dodo bird—pretty interesting stuff—and we made waterproof “feathers” by rubbing paper feathers with olive oil and then watching water bead off instead of soaking in. 
V is for Vegetable
For our week on vegetables we started off learning what a vegetable is. A vegetable can be any part of a plant that is edible—the root, the stem, the leaves, the seeds or the flowers. Some vegetables are fruits! We made a diagram of three different kinds of vegetables which showed all the different parts of the plants. It included carrots, celery and tomatoes. We used lentils to make our own sprouts. We couldn’t believe how fast they grew! And they tasted great on sandwiches, in salads and even in our cold soup! They were crunchy with a nutty flavor. We also had a couple of avocado pits that we tried to sprout. No luck. I have to say, we have tried this several times over the years and I have never been able to get one to sprout. I looked up instructions on line and it still didn’t work. What am I doing wrong? Another fun activity we tried was dying with vegetables, using directions sent to us at Easter time by Grammy Sally. We used red cabbage, beets, turmeric, black tea, blackberries and spinach to die squares of white fabric. We sewed them together into a quilt. Some of the vegetables worked better than others. It was a lot of fun! We checked out a kids’ vegetarian cookbook, chose some yummy sounding recipes out of it, and went to the grocery store armed with a shopping list. The kids found each item, identified its price, weighed it, and helped me calculate the price! Then we went home and made a delicious vegetarian dinner of avocado soup (with lentil sprouts), Greek tomato and feta salad, spanakopita and baklava. It was so delicious. Daddy was very impressed. And we all learned a very important lesson—God gives us everything we need. He gives us plants for food, and he gives the plants all the water, sunlight and nutrients they need to grow. He even invented pollination and other amazing ways that plants continue to reproduce!
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