A New Visitor In the Classroom...

My 5th grader has just learned the phrase "Parachute Expert: My Dear Aunt Sally" in her math class. This sentence is used to teach the order of operations: parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition and subtraction. For some reason, she finds the sentence to be so entertaining and keeps talking about her "Dear Aunt Sally", but changing the first part to different phrases such as: poaching eggs, praising excitedly, paper eater... too funny! Dear Aunt Sally is welcome to stay right now as she is making math class fun! When learning is fun...the day is good!

Peace,
:)De

Another Confession...

I am a side-bar shopper. I love to shop along other homeschooler's side bars for informative links and articles. I am also a major web surfer and click from one link to another, opening pages in new windows so that I can get back to where I was. So if your site meter says I have been on your page for over an hour...don't worry... I am just shopping and clicking myself happy!

:)De

Will Read For Food!

We finally received our Book It Reading Incentive Program from Pizza Hut and the crew is excited. As mentioned before, they are highly motivated by pizza and so goals are being set faster than I can write them down. LOL!

Our literature component this year comes by using the literature list from EdHelper.com. Each student was given the list of suggested readings from their grade level and after returning from our local library on Thursdays, they are given a mixed review literature unit packet which include multiple choice questions, spelling review and essay questions for the book they have chosen.

So if you see some Rotties standing on the side of the road with signs that say "Will Read For Food!" have a heart... throw 'em a book.

Peace,
:)De

My First Day Of School

My first day of school was excellent! When I first picked all my classes, I was excited. My first class is Math. In math I have learned about fractions. The second class is Language Arts. In Language Arts I have learned about Jesus. The third class is Bible. In Bible I have learned about Noah, Jonah, Paul, and Mark. The fourth class is Science. In Science I have learned about animals and cells. My sixth class is History and Geography. I have learned about miles. My seventh hour is State History. In State History I have learned about trading. Eighth hour I do health, typing, Spanish or Pen Pal Writing. I wrote to 3 of my pen pals and already got a letter back from one of them. I love school.

Jordan

Please Keep Your Arms & Legs Inside the Ride!

We have started! What a fun morning so far. We are learning our new schedule and my first grader is becoming quite the task master at making sure we know what class period we are in at any given time. We have a new bell system as the students unanimously voted the old bells out. (The Bells Toll No More!) We are now using the Bell Commander system and it is much more accepted as there are choices for which bells to be heard.

Here are some first day pictures:
My beloved dollar store white board.
Googly eyed and ready to learn! LOL!
Serious scholars.

Peace!

Portfolios and Registration

I live in a state that does not require homeschoolers to register, nor do we have to inform the district of the intent to homeschool, but this year I may. As mentioned, my 1st grader has several special needs that have made him eligible for physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy. Academically, he has always done better in our "school" setting as evidenced by the progress he made here on the days that public school had "no school". I just think that the classroom setting was too overwhelming for him and his speech and comprehension skills made it difficult for him to follow along with instruction in the classroom. He did however do well in PT, OT and speech which I believe had a great deal to do with the 1 to 2 ratio. So while I look forward to having him home with us this year, I don't want him to miss out on helpful special education services. Thus my thoughts on possibly registering with the school district.

Also this year I am keeping student portfolios for the crew. Because our curriculum is on the computer, I have just always kept several back-ups of completed work, attendance and grades on different hard drives. This year I am actually keeping hard-copy records of attendance, curriculum plans and will keep samples of the students writing and other work samples in file folders. Thanks to all of you bloggers who have unknowingly helped me in improving my record keeping.

Peace,
:)De

Almost Ready...

Today we had orientation and it was crazy, busy, fun. The 5th and 10th graders did a very nice job of figuring out their schedules, every one got books and school supplies for their new desk and we took pictures for school i.d's. The new shirts look great with our school logo and I may have to invest in another long-sleeve set for the winter season.

My first grader is so very excited! He was finally able to get his own library card this past month and is becoming a "pro" at finding interesting books.

I hope to spend the next week getting that last bit of relaxation before the daily challenge. I ask for prayer. My first grader has special needs that create learning disabilities, reading, and speech delays and difficulty retaining new information. However, he enjoys schoolwork and is very eager.

One more week and off we go.