Piano that fits (perfectly!) in our homeschool

And just maybe, this could be the way to fit piano into your homeschool days too?

A few years ago we bought an electric piano with a cash gift from my dad.  He wanted us to have something in our home to remember him by and what could be better than music?  I remember marveling for many weeks that two just-plain music lover parents (definitely not pianists ourselves!)  could have this privilege in our home and could give it to our children.

Isaiah and Marian both started with lessons from a nice lady, but when we moved from that city, there was no finding a new teacher... at least not an affordable one!  Our kids have studied with Piano Marvel for over two years now and I'm amazed at the progress they've made:  just my kids, our electric piano, and our last-leg laptop that runs Piano Marvel for them....

To be sure, one kiddo has taken to Piano Marvel better than the other.  Personalities and strengths and interests differ.... but both of our big kids are plugging away at daily practice on lessons and songs they get to choose that they are guided to learn by Piano Marvel videos and note by note help.  (And can I just say, I love the songs that Piano Marvel makes available for my kids!)

Piano Marvel connects your piano or electric piano to a computer (see their site for details) and the program draws kids in with a bit of game-like appeal....  every note they play is scored.  Their sight-reading skills are challenged and precise progress is marked.  They can earn trophies and...

My kids... your kids!... can make music on the piano.  

It still completely amazes me that my kids are simply using this software program daily and they are developing real skill as budding musicians.  I'd post a video for you to hear it yourself but so far our star player is being super shy with his talent.  At this point, I'm ok with that.....  But I will admit I hope he'll let me share his music with you soon.

So friends,  you can check out the beauty right here:  and please remember to enter my promo code for a discounted rate for you and some distributor income for me.  Thank you!!!   

Referral/ Distributor Code:    Jill

K Family Homeschool Overview

I'm the kind that gets motivated and hopefully stays motivated by keeping the big picture in mind.  For homeschool, it's crucial for me to see where all this is heading...  And I haven't kept this blog updated well for a few years.  So a recap is in order.

Here's the big picture plan of what we're aiming for homeschool for K - 8 for our crew.

For us, Bible is tops and first.  But I usually think of it in family devotions which Matt leads before he leaves for the day or sometimes in the evenings.  The kids and I review memory verses but we don't cover too much else directly in homeschool time.

I'm a Charlotte Mason heart.  But I'll end up on the same page as Classical Education folks by middle school and for high school I think.  

Preschool

We've been grateful to be able to have our kids in local preschools primarily for Chinese learning, social contacts, and learning to enjoy local food.  We've always done half days for the kids in school for this age.  Afternoons, after nap or rest time, I did phonics lessons.  Since beginning math was also covered in preschool I didn't do any other lessons- just phonics.  We used star fall, progressive phonics free readers online, 100 Easy Lessons to Teach your Child to Read (Which is supposedly good for most kids, but hasn't been fun for any of ours or for me to lead them through!).  I love the free All About Spelling app of phoneme sounds.  

Kinder - Third Grade

<3 Things:  Reading, Writing, Arithmetic>  Extras:  PE, Chinese, Typing, Music

English:

~ Explode the Code workbooks 1- 6, fantastic for being independently doable work for young ones.

~ Cursive worksheets from Kidzone and then cursive copywork from Spelling Wisdom- Simply Charlotte Mason's book (for spelling, vocabulary, punctuation, and discussion of ideas.)  There was some fancy group that several friends mentioned to me years ago (it was pretty fancy priced so I didn't end up following that group) but they taught that it's very beneficial for kids to learn cursive early... by second grade.  So that's what we do....  print for all of K and 1st grade and cursive beginning in 2nd.  

~ I found the Scott Foresman downloadable workbooks that cover  basic grammarly writing lessons really well for these years.  We keep a little 50/50 mix of Copywork and Workbook stuff for these years... top it off with lots of read aloud together and call it good. (I tried to do Writing with Ease for these grades but it felt pointless to the kids b/c of my lack of valuable feedback... just Not a fit for our family.)
~ We try to do lots of read aloud... usually I read aloud after lunch and often Matt reads aloud at bedtime.  I try to expose this age to extra Science reading (Christian Liberty Nature Readers or any books we have...) and the kindle book:  Simply Charlotte Mason's Elementary Geography which covers super basic earth science, seasons, oceans continents....  Sometimes we look over our CC Timeline History Cards as well, and the kids look at our CC app for history memory points (and I love to see how that info comes up in their questions and discussions with us at other times.)  I love this.... The Best Part of homeschool in these years.  Read science, history, biographies, stories, poems....  Read lots and have the kids retell and respond in their own words. 

Math:  our kids are doing well to learn math from Chinese textbooks and tutors that come to our home to teach them.  One on one with tutors has made them all able to be ahead of schedule in the Chinese textbooks, which puts them a fair ways ahead of the American levels.  Chinese textbooks are cheap and excellently thoughtful.  I love them learning arithmetic in Chinese!

~Chinese textbooks that I love   taught by a local tutor.  (Written by a Chinese group to educate the children of Chinese parents who are growing up speaking English and not reading or writing Chinese....  so perfect also for our kids!)

A Must Keep Bookmark:  AmblesideOnline.com   Check often for the books they recommend nice links and a great free curriculum guide for homeschool

Fourth Grade - Fifth Grade

<Four Core and Four More>

Core:  English, History, Science, Math

More:  Chinese (and local minority language), Piano, Typing, Crossfit/Pilates, Baseball for boys and Art for girls.

English:  

~ Analytical Grammar Workbooks (Jr. An Gram and An Gram Mechanics) and Cursive Copywork
~ I might still pull in some of the Scott Foresman workbooks and occasionally use undone lessons in our Writing With Ease.  (I tried using WWE as a core of our LA lessons and it didn't work for us mainly because I felt like I wasn't able to give any valuable feedback to our kids on their work there.  But by this age, using a few of the WWE lessons is a good way for us to expose kids to more reading and responses- summaries and reflections- and some great literature selections.  It's also nice to stretch out the curriculum so that one book is useful for three kids!  It works for us!)  

~ Soverbose.com  for writing courses beginning late in 4th and 5th grade. (Summary, Essays, Literature Response, Research Basics...)

Math: 

~ Finish Chinese teaching at the end of fourth grade textbooks (this is approximately the end of basic arithmetic and the beginning of percents and decimals and fractions and higher vocabulary based math so it seems a good time to transition to English math.)  

~ The transition proved to be hard.  I tried Life of Fred but didn't stay with it (too little practice and the zany story-based lessons felt like wasteful distractions to my kids who just want to finish their math every day.)  I think the end of 4th grade in Chinese textbooks flows smoothly into 6th grade math at Thinkwell.  My kids have worked on Thinkwell for more than a semester now and I think we'll stick with it for as long as we can.... (the site is not attractive but the videos and learning experience for our kids and the price, when you purchase it through homeschoolbuyersco-op.org are great!....  that link is gives me credit on that site:)  Thank you!)

Science:

~ Kids read, take notes, narrate and make presentations at our 6-8weeks "Learning Sharing Times"

4th grade- Apologia Human Anatomy, 5th grade- Apologia Chemistry & Physics 

History:

~ Kids read and take notes and narrate and make presentations on Mystery of History or Story of the World...  

~  watch some CNN10 or news overviews, read a Gospel Coalition post on culture at least once every few weeks and discuss current events

~ exposure for geography learning too (climates, countries and capitals, oceans, biomes, environmental issues)

Electives:

~ Typing.com

~ Pianomarvel.com  (Please be sure to enter our referral code :   Jill  : to receive a discount off monthly subscription and we'll get a little bonus too!  Thanks friends!)

~Chinese textbooks.  So grateful for these books and local tutors to make this work!

Sixth - Eighth Grade

<Four Core and Four More>

English:

~ 6: Isaiah has been invited to join with another family near us that has boys around his age for Language Arts and History.  For Marian I plan to continue using Progeny Press Literature study guides, aiming to read and study through about one book per 9 weeks.  (Plus she reads much much more on her own every week!)  Word Build Online for vocabulary.  Soverbose courses for excellent writing help:  Essays, Research, Lit Response, and Professional Writing.   (This has met such a need for us!  Writing instruction, correction, feedback, all doable priced!)  Grammar- possibly daily grammar.com (for free) beginning at lessons under Parts of Sentence (lesson 91).

~ 7: Continue with SoVerbose for writing and unit guides for literature.  Possibly continue with Word Build online for vocabulary and dailygrammar.com.
~ 8: possibly we'll move to something else for this level?  Wilson Hill Academy??? 

History:

~ We're loving Mystery of History for keeping history lessons super interesting and doable.  For seventh grade I may take a break from history and go through North Star Geography from the makers of Mystery of History that make a good, interesting, discussable, doable curriculum.  We're big fans of Bright Ideas Press and looking forward to this one....

Science:

~ Apologia:  General Science in 6th grade, Physical Science in 7th grade, 8th grade????

Math:

~Thinkwell.  Our goal is Prealgebra in 6th grade (this is Thinkwell's "8th grade math").  Algebra 1 in 7th grade.  8th grade....  Geometry possibly?

Electives:  same as above.  Kids need to focus on sharpening their Chinese reading and writing and expanding Chinese vocabulary so they can pass the AP Chinese test in high school.  

Friends!  I was just introduced to the best way to save money on homeschool stuff.  Homeschool Buyer's Co-op.  It's free to join and it simply gives you access to buy curriculum and online subscriptions and homeschool helps of every kind for incredible sale prices.  I just bought Thinkwell for about 45% off.  And I'm waiting for WordBuild to go on sale to get that for hopefully save 30-60% as well!  Here's my link...  I'd love to earn a little bit if you go over to the Co-op page from my link! Thanks!!

They really graduated...

When I just checked in at our little homeschool blog here, to see about getting in a new post, I thought it was just about 5 months ago that I last posted.  Wrong.  That's one year + five months.  And I didn't even know it.... yikes.

But my kids really did graduate.  Isaiah finished 4th grade summer 2016 and Marian finished 3rd.  In math, they have completed Chinese textbooks to (M) beginning 5th grade level and (I) beginning 6th grade level.  Super stars....  Now to work on English!!!

John's graduation pic from Chinese preschool (which, along with English phonics work at home with me, we counted as his first grade year) is on our family blog in July 2016 I think.  He's adorable and he's doing great... not an eager reader, but I think he's doing fine, especially when I weigh in that he is confidently bilingual.  I'm ok if he's not (yet :) ) the top of his class... oh but wait- he's the only one in his class at home, so he already is!  I love this sweet John Boy.  And Vivi is usually happy to take a stab at any simple word and doesn't feel the least bit intimidated by an early reader book.  I love that optimism and happy heart in her!

This fall we are in the states for our first ever semester of school here.  Matt is taking a huge and heavy and wondrously rich load of classes at RTS and the kids are at Libertas Academy, a hybrid school where they get 4 classes (writing, history, science, and speech and logic- for M and J/ Debate and logic for Isaiah) on Mondays every week, and then 4 days of assignments to work on at home.
Isaiah is in 5th grade, Marian in 4th, John in 2nd, and Vivi in Kinder.

The big three are using IEW for writing and I think its great for this semester but I don't think we will continue with it on our own back in China.  We will be continuing with Analytical Grammar and Beyond the Book Report  / Writing with Skill.  (Probably do WWSkill in 5th-6th grades and AG/BBR in 7th and 8th).

I love the Debate stuff Isaiah is learning from (The Argument Builder) ... and the Apologia textbooks the big two are enjoying. For history, I think we will carry on with Mystery of History, volume 4 when we head back...  I'm also looking forward to starting up with an online Humanities course for Isaiah in 7th grade.  We'll probably end up going with Logos School or Wilson Hill for this.   I love the integrated way they weave history/geography/literature/philosophy and intertwine and root it all on a solid Biblical foundation.  

The big two are doing Life of Fred for Math which suits us well...  I'm not yet super confident that the kids are really learning from it, but I need to be working more closely with them (like "Crossing the Bridges"  the review check points in Isaiah's Fractions book.  I love the set up of these books!

And for Chinese.... I found as free downloads online the BEST curriculum for our kids to learn Chinese.  I am So Grateful for this b/c we've had a hard time finding teachers in China that would be willing to flex with us and not have an exact textbook.... because no textbooks fit our kids!  They are not on grade level with Chinese kids in reading and writing and they are not foreigner English speakers trying to learn a foreign language.  This series of 12 textbooks from beginner to advanced was written for English speaking kids of Chinese parents who live overseas.  It's wonderful!

Hopefully I'll get to a more detailed updated plan for our homeschool path....  My hopes and aims for where we're heading for middle school and, with the benefit of some hindsight now, the way I want to take John and Vivi through elementary homeschool years.  I've been working on this grand plan for a while....  post coming soon!

reviewing

I wrote up a list months ago and have glanced it over most weeks since then, hoping for a time to reflect on these priorities and record these aims for our schooling.  Here’s what I need to keep reminding myself of… ways in which I want to aim my kids' schooling and home life towards excellence in more ways than just academics (though certainly including that!).

We get to focus our learning and growing together on 
A. Life:  character and relationships... This summer we are going to pay special attention to another round of Manners Class.  Especially greeting people kindly, eye contact and answering when you are spoken to, friendships, gift giving and table etiquette.  
B.  Home-ing:  cooking, cleaning, hospitality, repairs and maintenance skills with daddy, and gardening
C.  Schooling:  detailed below.  

1.  Bible.  I've written before how I wanted Matt to get to lead our Bible time, so we didn't do Bible as a subject during our homeschool time (when daddy was at work.)  But we've changed that up.  Matt leads our family devotions, but the Bible also leads our learning and is first among our subjects.  For now, this means we work on scripture memory together in homeschool time and as we always have, that we seek in all our subjects to apply a Biblical worldview and study each subject as "from him and to him and through him."

2.  Language Arts.  yea!  I'm learning to keep this simple!  Thank you Charlotte Mason!  We go heavy in our lessons on reading excellent literature aloud and copying excellent pieces as example texts to learn new vocabulary, spelling, punctuation and beauty.  Lesson planning is easy for this now!  We have a Sylvan workbook the kids enjoy doing a few pages from each week (it's colorful and cool) and the kids are getting there basic pieces of grammar... Parts of speech, types of questions, selling rules.  Besides that, we copy our Bible verse, sometimes a poem, and/ or sometimes a snip from Simply Charlotte Mason's SPELLING WISDOM  It makes perfect sense to me to follow the age old idea of apprenticeing our kids to learn English from the masters...  like the jade sculptor who had his apprentice hold and handle a chunk of jade for dozens of hours before he let him even begin polishing it- that way he could tell a fake piece from the real stuff and he knew quality based on simply observing.  Why not the same for English? Just one of the perfectly convincing reasons I use to excuse our crew from having to study terrible grammatical jumble at this age but aim to spend much more of our LA time knowing and appreciating excellent writing, excellent pieces.  

3.  History.  We've continued using Veritas Press' self-paced online hisotry course because it's chronological and covering the right time so that we can pick up with Tapestry of Grace in the future.  I really love Tapestry of Grace, the attitude they present of respecting other cultures and learning from them and speaking the truth of the Gospel into other contexts.  This is what I feel is missing from the lessons they're doing now.  But these lessons have hit the spot for me, giving me a bit more availability to attend to other things, even though, sadly, they're presented with a sometimes more arrogant tone.   So far in our kids history lessons, we've spent most of our time in the ancient world but also some time on American History.  

4.  Science-  We've kept this super simple so far.  Basically all that we've done this year is memory work (from Classical Conversations app) and some read alouds from the Christian Liberty Nature Reader or from Apologia textbook.  We're looking forward to a more intentional class arrangement for science next year- usuing Apologia textbook and notebooks for the kids.

5.  Math-  this is the crazy exciting thing for me right now.  Our kids are bright and blazing in math!  They have both finished their grade level textbooks in Chinese mathbooks a little bit early and are beginning to move ahead into next year's level.  Also, they have completed three mental math practice books each this year.  And their sweet fantastic teacher has incorporated lessons from the Olympic Math textbooks.  Check their graduation post below to see how awesome their math work has been!

6.  Chinese-  daily practice in Chinese reading and writing and vocabulary development (which means, more reading aloud.)  Both Isaiah and Marian feel confident to write characters, the order of the strokes, the names of the strokes, the names of common radicals.   They can read and write at probably an advanced first grade level and we are content with that, and content knowing that they are continuing to progress with Hanzi from there.  

7.  3rd Language-  our kids also have "minority language game time" 3-4 days a week (when their teacher, who is also a grad student, can come).  They don't have any tests or homework for this time but they're learning to follow directions, listen to stories and sing songs and answer questions.  We are thrilled with this.  All along, we've wanted our kids to be academic in English and Chinese and conversational in the local language.  

8.  Piano-  They're making progress, but slowly.  And sometimes I'm not content with how slow or how low the level is (especially for Marian right now).  But we are grateful to have a doable plan for their learning (Piano Marvel) and grateful that they both seem to enjoy it just enough (and are encourageable when they do get disinterested) to keep at it.  

9.  Memory-  We use the Classical Conversations app and Fighter Verse ipad app to memorize scripture and science, history, math facts.  The fighter verse app also has quizzes that have been helpful for our kids to find letters on a keyboard.... super basic typing exposure.  

10.  Physical Education/ Creation Exploration-  Matt's company is a super help for this.  The kids play baseball at least once a week with dad and friends.  I also want to aim them to be more observant and appreciative of nature-  clouds, weather, plants, flowers, bugs, animals.... We are so grateful to have a large patio where they are each tending the little budding plants from the seeds they each picked out.

EXTRAS-  the kids are getting to particpate in an art class in Chinese and I want to not loose sight of incorporating art and music appreciation for them too.  Those things are highly valued for me, but in the real world of time constraints and play that is still needed for our kids (at least an hour or so a day!) we can't add any more regular lessons since our kids spend a fair bit of time in Chinese lessons and home work and U language class too.  

Now for the more Mom-ish stuff, the priorities I get to hold to as Mom more than Teacher…  I can’t make all this happen and I know that full well.  But I also don’t want to loose track of the goals altogether just because I can’t focus on them entirely right at this season.  

Spiritual Focus:  Model devotions- daily reading and discussion at the breakfast table.  Train them in personal devotions.  Model repentance and humility, seeking reconciliation and peace and speaking truthfully and calmly.  

Relational - Character Focus:  1:1 time with each kid weekly (goal!), praise and positive encouragement, Firm and Loving Parental Authority.  Whisper correction to them privately- no yelling.  Good sportsmanship attitude and actions.  Confidence to speak kindness and lead others in goodness.   Train them in endurance, perserverance through hardship. (This is the goal, however I must note that the reality is that our kids, boys especially, are quite naturally wimpier rather than brave.... Oh God make us steadfast!)

Mental Focus:  Guide the kids for Time Awareness-  punctuality/ preparing ahead.

Physical Focus:   Harvest heavy diets (fruits and veggies).  Multi vitamins.  Koombucha- a shot a day for the brave ones who can get it down :).  More bone broth, using whole chicken instead of just the breast.  Balance exercise and juggling type skills practice.  Cardio.  Stretch and limber.   

2nd and 3rd Grade Graduation!

We had a joyful celebration last night in our home...  celebrating our big kids finishing a great school year with their Chinese teachers.  We'll have a Creative Arts Concert sometime this summer that will be with some English speaking kiddo friends.  But this time was special for the kids to celebrate their Chinese learning and to honor and thank their tremendous teachers.  They've done so well this year!  The Lord has sure blessed us with these fantastic young ladies as a Chinese and a Math & U teacher.

I just have to rave a little.  Our big guy is in 3rd grade and his teacher has been supplementing a standard 3rd grade level math book with the Chinese Olympic Math textbook.  Each kiddo also filled out three mental math practice drill books in this past semester.  They've been working hard, and it's been paying off.  Olympic math is a high level, logic heavy math book that kids all over the country feel enormous pressure to attain to.  Their sweet teacher Eldonna put the Olympic math problems at the bottom.  Isaiah conquered this whole poster of problems and the two biggies at the bottom in seven minutes!  (Ok, there were a few errors, but on the whole, he knows how to go after these problems and he did super well :)  The bottom problem... it breaks down into 4x25x4 (which he can do in his head) and then times 64....  sweet smarty boy!

Marian's Olympic math problem was like this:  You see 10 heads in a field and you count a total of 26 feet.  How many of the heads are chickens (2 feet) and how many are rabbits (4 feet)?    She nailed it:  3 rabbits and 7 chickens... and I still don't understand the straightest way to figuring that out!

We love this teacher!  

Our homeschool motto hasn't yet changed...  I do hope it will graduate with these kids from high school and into life beyond!  "Hard Work and High Spirits for His Glory"

The kids both read a selection from their Chinese textbook and recited a few verses from Psalm 103 (v. 11-13).  We had memorized the whole Psalm in English but only shared these few verses with the friends at our graduation gathering.  

This sweet Chinese teacher has only been with us for the past two months and I hope she'll stay with us for years to come.   We love her so much!  She's getting married early June and our girls will get to be flower girls for her... which they are over the moon happy about.  

We won't have any English "show" for this year... but the kids will participate in a Creative Arts Concert with other english speaking friends sometime this summer.  It has been a neat thing to hear them brining pieces together from their history class, the literature we read aloud in the afternoons and Bible...  so sweet to see them growing and learning and loving to read and loving the Lord.  Now... if we could just see more of loving each other!  

Oh we have a painful bickering crew on our hands... but we love them still!  If you pray for any one thing for our family, I would ask for the Lord's help for our kids to learn to wait and speak kindly with each other and generally, to lighten up and laugh and show love to one another.  We struggle so sadly much in this area!

2nd & 3rd grade launch!

UPDATED from the first post....  plans have changed a bit this week and I'm even more grateful for what the Lord has brought together for our kiddos now....

I'm excited for our big two this year....  It's going to be a great year.

And it's going to be just about as different as can be from what I've dreamed about....  since last fall, I had in my mind that we would be homeschooling our kids together with another dear family nearby.  I thought we'd rent a small apartment to be the little schoolhouse for these 7 students every day and they would have an English teacher come to teach them and a Chinese teacher to divide up the big and little kids so that everyone gets both languages.

But then those friends went back to Canada to give birth and we decided not to rent a schoolhouse (alone? of course not!) and we never found a teacher willing to come and bless our kiddos as their teacher.  (Only the Lord knows how I'll be able to continue in language study myself now that I'm the homeschool teacher... but we just might be able to swing it still, by the Lord's grace!  I hope so!)  And...  the *wonderful* apartment home the Lord blessed us with is just cooler than we imagined getting to live in.

Now... shockingly...  we have a four bedroom home (Matt and I are in the new, little bedroom and the large bedroom upstairs is a fully devoted schoolroom.)  OK- this is all so far a rewrite of the post below that's all about our school room- sorry.   I am so grateful though.  It's working super well!

For the morning, John and Vivi are going to preschool now!  The local preschool in our complex decided to accommodate us crazy foreigners and allow our kids to attend for only half days.

Isaiah and Marian meet with their Chinese language teacher for nearly 2 hours, 4 days a week.  Then for five days, they will do 3 English subjects a day and memory (which is only 15 minutes, so it doesn't count as one of their "subjects"- those are all about 20-30 min.)  In the afternoon (again, 4 days, not on Wednesdays) they also meet with a Chinese math teacher for 1.25 hours of class.

Here's their weekly assignment sheet that they will get every Monday and cross off as they finish lessons.  Fridays, they need to turn these sheets back into me, with their parts on the right filled out.   Hopefully, it will be a sweet record to keep.

For their English lessons, we'll try to run our lesson time on "pomodoros":  25 or 30 minutes on task and then a 5 minute break but I'm not bothering to introduce the term pomodoros...  we just call them subjects or classes....

Bible:
It's not on the kids' weekly assignment sheets because Bible as a subject is covered more in family devotions than in our homeschool time.  I also have a weekly sheet that's equally unprofessional as the kids' sheets- it's my own weekly homeschool planning sheet.  On that page, I have these categories for our Bible learning:  Reading in the Word (discussion), Memory Verse (this one thing is from their memory time in school), Song, Catechism Question, Prayer.  We try to do morning devotions together every morning before breakfast.  This is usually a quick time of reading and prayer.  Then, 2-3 nights per week we try to do extended family devos with songs and longer discussion.  I'm glad Bible is more a Family Devo's thing than a Homeschool subject b/c that way Matt gets to lead and be involved more (although he's great about discussing history and checking on other subjects with the kids too.  #Ilovemyman.)  

Language Arts:  (they'll probably get 3-6 lessons of LA a week in the following categories)
Reading-  what the kids read independently (or Marian still reads to me)
Grammar- a workbook, complete a few lessons
Spelling-  just covering the Fry Words, spelling test
Copywork- a poem, a hymn or a verse each week
Writing- a letter (to family or friends or guests in our home), a journal entry, or a story

History:  
I love Tapestry of Grace.  I just love it- the organization of it, the excellence of academics, the Charlotte Mason with a bit of Classical tinge,  the humility and rootedness of the theology undergirding all of it.   But we're not using it b/c it's a bit more labor intensive than I can afford this year since I'm still hoping to get in some serious language study myself.  So...  these two are doing Veritas Press's Self-paced history course for the ancient world.   We're still using Tapestry's suggested read alouds along with the VP course since they're both chronologically anchored but I don't have to plan the history lessons at all.   This is my best shot at language study time!!

Science:
We'll look a bit more at the 106 Days of Creation Studies, from Simply Charlotte Mason.  This simple plan relies heavily on Christian Liberty Nature Readers.  We also have several Usborne books about Water, Outside, Weather and Apologia about Zoology and I just got two free apps on bird identification (National Geo.)  and plant identification (Leafsnap)....  my plan for science is pretty wide open at this point.  We might get to a more developed plan at some point or we might just leave it fairly open, fill it with as many living books and explorations as we possibly can squeeze in.

Memory:  
Every week, we're trying to tuck in a new Fighter Verse (we love the app for iPad, which includes a song for each verse!) and I'd love to be able to get them in Chinese and English but I don't know if that's going to work?  We'll see...  For our family time, we're also trying to memorize the New City Catechism.

The other main part of "memory time" is what our kids are memorizing from the Classical Conversations (CC) app.  The idea of classical education, the trivium, and even catechism learning is that since kids are so good at memorizing things in their early years, we ought to take advantage of this natural ability, this stage of development, by giving them lots of good things to memorize that they can digest and use and understand all the inter workings of later, as they grow.  "It's like laying logs in the fireplace of their minds.  Later it will take flame." (That's how the New City Catechism explains teaching young kids.)   So, we use the CC app to memorize Geography, History, Math and Science.  For the Timeline they are learning a parallel version- a similar song- from their VP history course.  And for English grammar, I just can't put my kids through learning English like that.  I love English too much.  And I love my kids waaay too much.  Charlotte Mason's approach to learning the art of language is just more winningly beautiful to me.

For us, Latin doesn't make the cut.  We will be working on English, Chinese, and the minority language around us.  Once we're swinging well in all those, I'm eager to study Greek with our kiddos, or possibly Hebrew.  That would be sweet to track with the translators who are currently working to translate the Good Book from Hebrew into our neighbors' language!

One other tiny bit to mention:  I know there are better-researched educators out there than I am, but I am not comfortable with some of what I see in the Classical Education world of what seems like stockpiling so darn much in our kids' minds that it is - in my opinion- too disproportionate- with what they actually know, comprehend, what they thoroughly understand at their ages.  I want my kids to "get" that the point of education is understanding, not regurgitating.  Also, Sonya Shafer has a great post over at simplycharlottemason.com about the pledge of allegiance which reminds me of why I value living stories and narration (I know, I'm a CM junkie :)  ) and not only, or not toooo much mere memorization.

How well do you know The Pledge of Allegiance? I’m pretty sure most of us can recite it.... But how well do you knowThe Pledge of Allegiance? Try putting it in your own words.

No, don’t just keep reading here. Stop and try to put The Pledge in your own words. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Did you do it? Now, here’s the $10,000 question: Which of those exercises displayed true knowledge?

Piano:
We're using PianoMarvel and so far we're very grateful.  The kids feel motivated to keep advancing through these video and even Vivi has been able to sit up to a few little lessons!  I'm wanting them to practice at least half hour a day.  I can see that this lacks a little from meeting with a teacher but we are thrilled with the amount and the way that the kids learning is fitting into our lives and budgets with this teaching method.  So grateful!  (And if you want to go get your free trial or subscribe to piano marvel too, then you could use the Piano Marvel link right here or this one to see about taking them up on a free trial and we will benefit from your subscription too!  Yea for all of us!!)

Specials:
Once a week I want to leave open time to cover some special stuff....  Honor class (to discuss character, virtue, manners), Art or Music Appreciation, Handicrafts (Isaiah's loving wood carving and Marian is learning some sewing).  Today we wrote letters to our Compassion kids.  And then there's always baking together or iPad play time as pure reward for awesome diligence for the week of studies.   (They get 15 minutes-  I'm stingy screen time  for our kids, there's just too much LIFE to be lived!  But for our kids, 15 min is normal and they hardly think to ask for more and I'm super happy that's our pattern.)

Chinese, Math, minority language:  (I put them together b/c they're both taught by Chinese teachers.)  Chinese in the morning (4 days, no Wed) and math is the same in the afternoons )no Wed. Our kids are both math minds, doing very well in local textbooks, even the tough level stuff.  We're so thrilled for both of them and so glad that they can advance at their own comprehension speed since their class is just them and a teacher.... they don't need to go anyone else's speed.
For minority language class, the kids have game time 2 afternoons a week and I'm hoping to arrange a language exchange for them with local kiddos 2 more afternoons....  the more play the better.  I'm so glad for how quickly they are learning this local language already!
I didn't even put the minority language on the sheet for the kiddos because the goal at this point for them is simply conversation.  They'll have no assignments but just exposure and opportunity to practice and play in this beautiful new language!  I'm amazed and crazy joyful happy for how motivated and how much progress they've already made in their third language!  Thank you Lord for this!

My Read Aloud:
Following Tapestry of Grace's suggestions mostly to fill out factual history with fiction alongside it... And we'll throw in a few books for fun too...(the goofy Mrs. Piggle Wiggle right now!  Thanks to BookEnds!!!)

On Fridays I'll do a memory check with them and we'll plan if there's something worthy of making a presentation to the family... a memorized poem or summary of history or sharing a science discovery.
I'm also excited to hear from the kids on the right side of their weekly assignment sheets:  J.O.Y. goals are Jesus, Others, Yourself...  How can we show love, make beauty, serve for eternal gladness?

We're running school 4-5 days a week.  Saturdays are just no fun for us to go to the park or run errands and we're planning  (hoping!) to be busy as a family with the sports company once that's running so we're taking one day off every other week.  Homeschoolers can do that!  Yipee Hooray!

Tucking Marian into bed this evening, day #2, she thanked me for teaching her.  I smiled at her and she nodded, "I'm so excited for homeschool this year."

Me too, babe.  Me too!

Kindergarten for John & Pre-K for Vivi!

How amazing that this pair is up and off to school already!  Well...  off to school as in...  they're beginning.  They're at home for school and that's a joy for me!

***  So much for that week and half! Plans have changed and now John and Vivi are in morning preschool (for John, his kindergarten year) in our complex preschool.  ***

3 hours of Chinese in the mornings.... then a reading lesson with mom, for John.  We're well into 100 Easy Lessons to Teach Your Child to Read (which worked like a charm for Isaiah and not so super great for Marian... but it looks like it's hitting near target for this guy).    For reading lesson time, Vivi's free to play!   I will go over a Kids' Foundation Verse (from the Fighter Verse app.) with them both in English and Chinese (I'm meeting with a tutor for help on our weekly verses- in all three languages!)

Two afternoons a week, the little two will get to join the biggies and one other friend who will have a minority language class with us.... That will basically just be game play time in this next new language.    I hope it will be a cheery fun time for all!

And that's it.  That's our plan for Kindergarten and Pre K for our sweet little two!  I'm so grateful for a way to keep them engaged in books and life-learning hopefully, growing bilingually, and just covering the basics and keeping it simple.  The Word and reading lessons and not too much else but a bunch a fun.....  that sounds like a good kindergarten year to me!  May it be Lord.... by your grace, for your glory!

a new school room!

Isaiah's starting Third Grade and Marian begins Second Grade in just over a week!  We had hoped to start earlier but 我们束腰装修房子。  (It just sounds better in Chinese. We're doing some work at our house to make room for a new school room!)

So, we moved to this town thinking that we would educate our kiddos alongside another family whose kids are perfectly matched age-wise with our learners.  We thought there'd be a tiny school, we'd rent a small apartment for our 7 students (Arrow Academy, gotta jump on a chance to use Arrow... for something :).  But those guys wisely headed back to their home country for mama to give birth to their fifth little one.  So we're at it alone now.

We sure don't need to rent a separate space to school our four, but with not an overly spacious 3 bedroom apartment and the reality of no libraries, no kids museums, no place else to go for class time, we wanted to try to rig some way to have a designated learning place for our kiddos.  Our little two will meet with a Chinese teacher while I try to teach the big two their English subjects and we just wanted PLACE for all of this....  Plus, Matt's little start-up company got registered in our home (this is a huge grace from the Lord, that this was approved!!).  We thought we'd be paying for rent for two other little places..... but now, no extra rent at all!

With all this, we decided to finish off one patio off our upstairs.  It came ready to be finished- had three walls and most all our neighbors have finished off that patio as a room already.  We got the basic model home (which we were thrilled for, to get to design things to suit us best) and with the money we're saving from not needing to rent and from going with the trash-truck movers (not really, but they were so bad to our stuff... good thing they were so cheap!) we are finishing off that needless patio to turn it into a little cave-like room for Matt and I (it's not too spacious and the ceiling is quite low- but it works!!).  That means the first glorious room upstairs will be the new school room.

Friends, I still feel shocked to enjoy this room so much, and that this beautiful place is in our very own home!  I've never been in a room that I think would make a nicer school room for our kids than this....

Our apt. was a 3bed- 2 bath.  Now the upstairs room will feel more like a second living area.  A wide open, spacious, gracious, lofted-cieling (incredible, eh!?   Here in China? Yes, amazing isn't it!?) family room/school room.  Our new little bedroom is off that back hallway- near the door to the bathroom.

The big room is so much better as a school room than as our room.  As it is now (we're just half way through building the new room) I rarely go in our room all day long.  But it is such a light, bright, beautiful room, it's a pity to not have an excuse or an opportunity just to be there.  But as the school room.... we'll be there lots :)

The whole deal is a gift- that we're able to build it, the kids all enjoying the process of watching the workers, the cute little bed shelf we'll have over in our new room, and the fantastic new space for our family.... space I'm also super eager to fill with cute neighborhood kids playing and learning together...

We are so grateful for this gift from the Lord!!

Here's a pictorial view of our process...

the patio- with three walls.  The door was maybe 5.5 feet tall...

in the building just beyond you can see our neighbors have already built in their patio-rooms

our nice construction guy (who worked alone with his wife for almost the entire 2.5 week project) jackhammered up just the right amount of cement floor to lay down the floor heating (water tubes) and then recover with cement to make it nearly match the floor one step down from the original two steps that led out to the original patio.  If I could only explain how chabuduo (literally, "about", it means Not exact, Not precise) jobs are here usually, you'd know that it was a treat to see the floor completed so well!  

see the floor all one level from the first step?  :) 

Our kind worker friend, Mr. Yang, is about 5.4 I'd guess.  And the ceiling looks a bit goofy or angle but it's only the sides that have low, low angles to them, the rest of the roof is flat and just high enough for me to nearly flat palm it.  It's cozy and sweet....  and here's my favorite part....

the window sill - bedside table.   Pintrest said that small bedrooms need built-ins and that's handy b/c this one built-in was ready to go from the railing that was there earlier.  

Look at these amazing cleaner helpers!  

And I guess I have to have two favorite parts...  I love the floor!  Who knew that cheap fake wood could look so nice!?  I am one grateful mama!

UPDATE:  This room is such a sweet provision for our family!  We could live just fine in a 3 bedroom place... but with Matt's company running in our home, and our 4 kids homeschooling (and our super desire to get to do co-ops with homeschooling friends here), it is a fantastic gift to have a place for everyone!  Today, the second day of school, Matt was sick in bed all day with sinus trouble. I am so happy we could close him in a private place and give him some rest while all the madness continued just outside his door!  The little kids with their Chinese teacher upstairs and the big kids for English lessons with me and piano and history lessons all running on computer downstairs...  It worked!  I'm so happy-grateful-humbled-amazed....  such a gift- this space!!!

Maybe I'll get around to posting pics of our new bedroom all moved in and of the new school room.... but honestly, pretty pics of our home are sometimes hard to come by.  Guess I'll just have to eat my pride and post some regular life pics.  I'll try!  I'm sure eager to share what a joy and a blessing this home is to our family, sports company, homeschool kids and homeschool community!  

that second semester...

...or third trimester.... or whatever.

It was a mess.   Chinese New Year vacation and a passport-run (+vacation) for our family to Hong Kong.  Then we learned the kids' brilliant Chinese teacher didn't yet feel ready to return to teaching from maternity leave (her baby was 3 months.  I totally get this!  But we didn't expect it and we were unprepared.)  By the Lord's grace, we had a sweet teacher step in for about 6 weeks of Chinese and Math with our big two (John and Vivi were finishing well at their local Chinese Christian preschool.) And by the end of March we were mad with moving.... our hose in total disarray, good-byes every day with dear friends.  All of April was driving across China, hoteling while we house-hunted, and then more moving/dodging repairs/cleaning/unpacking.

So by the beginning of May I think we did a bit of homeschooling again...  But right now, honestly, I can't think of what it was!  Language arts in their Scott Foresman workbooks, copy work on Bible verses, math worksheets printed off the web (their normal math is to go through a Chinese textbook so I just kept running with the next lessons in a format I could explain to them!).  We barely touched science, except for reading aloud nature stories (easy science exposure from the Christian Liberty Nature Readers.)

I know that I skipped doing any more history.  We started the year doing ancient history with Tapestry of Grace and I LOVE ToG.  But for a dozen other reasons (Grandma and Grandpa's visit at Thanksgiving time would be a great time to study America and then we learned we would be moving to join up for school with a cool Canadian family, so this was our chance to grab for America lessons!), we switched to a unit of American history.  The Best Read Aloud for American history that we enjoyed-  40 Acres and A Mule.  5 star.  For the third trimester of Isaiah's 2nd grade year and Marian's 1st grade year...  yea, no history at all.   I think they're still breathing though...

We memorized Ephesians 6:10-18, the Armor of God.  And we really need to revisit Kevin Hartnett's unbeatable poem Honored be Thy Wondrous Word to keep those two passages parallel in our hearts and minds.  Lord may your Word be sharp in our souls, bearing fruit for your glory in and out of our lives!

Our kids have been busy bees this summer (since those last few months were so scattery) and they've both finished and gone beyond their math textbooks for grade level and they've been working on more Hanzi and pinyin still for Chinese.  It's super cool to see how excited and motivated our kids are to study the other language around us here.  Their pumped and ready to aim for being trilingual kiddos.  Isaiah's set his goal for Christmas, to be able to converse freely with all his local friends :)

This write-up doesn't encourage me so much...  so maybe I'll just end it quick.  I'm really looking forward to our next semester though!  It is not going to be at all what we imagined... but it's going to be good.  I trust the Lord for that...

Unit One Celebration

Oi!  I had high hopes of a beautiful post here with pictures and details of the yummy brunch we had a few weekends ago to celebrate Isaiah and Marian's first unit of 2nd and 1st grade homeschool this year.  That dream post isn't happening....  

Just for my own record-keeping, here's a quick list of what they learned... some of which showed up at the "museum" on the dining room table or in a sweet performance for Grandma and Grandpa and two "uncles" that our kids also love.  

Psalm 135- Isaiah and Marian recite it beautifully together.  A perfect passage to memorize to remember the Lord's sovereignty over Egypt, all the idols of human hands...

My Shadow- recited by Marian, Ships Sail on the Ocean- recited by Isaiah

Landform map- we made it out of salt dough in August I think.... it's pretty crumbly now!

Science art book-  we studied creation, land (continents) and water (oceans and irrigation and canals), our bodies- major organs, five senses, and we began studying the animal world with insects....
Tirzah book report.  My Help, song from Michael Card.... like the song of hope that Tirzah ends the book with.

Seder Dinner poster, 10 commandments and Ark of the Covenant

Ziggurat and pyramid clay models

Sumerian Cylinder Seal (out of a toilet paper roll)

Ancient peoples of the world book- pages for Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Egyptians, Sumerians, Harrapan, Ancient Chinese, Ancient Americans (3 groups- Mound Builder, Inuits, and Maya)

History timeline, Veritas Press and Classical Conversation cards, creation through ancient Americas, except Greece which we will do in our third trimester

I read several books aloud to them (including their main book report book, Tirzah- a spectacular book!-  but now I don't even remember all of them....   Brave Keepers, Little Pear, Caddie Woodlawn, Five Children and It, A Door in the Wall, and I think there were more...  (The kids fell in love earlier this year with Dahl's James and the Giant Peach and especially Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).  Matt also reads to the kids in the evening...  finished all the Chronicles of Narnia earlier this fall and now they're into the second book in Andrew Peterson's The Wingfeather Saga.  

Isaiah and Marian each also read to me every (or near every) day...  Isaiah:  Boxcar Children 1-2, Bears on Hemlock Mountain, Eat my Dust:  Henry Ford's First Race, and several more...
Marian:  Progressive Phonics #8-11 plus several short readers at home.  (I do love Progressive Phonics for the short, focused, humorous lessons.... and it's free!  5 stars!)

They didn't report on or share their math b/c their textbooks are all in Chinese and I can't help them present it very well!  But I love the Chinese materials they've been studying.  Both our kids run with math lessons quite quickly and easily.... such a grace.  They both love doing "number games" as we call them, problems in their heads.   I'm writing this a few weeks into our second unit, when we are using Math Mammoth in English, and they are both flying fast through the lessons one year ahead of their grade level.  

May the Lord be praised in their continued growth, their character development and their love for learning..... all by His help and for His glory.

Mid-Year Adjustment

Our favorite Chinese teacher, who comes and teaches our kids Chinese and Math 4 days a week, has just left on maternity leave.  We look forward to news of her baby and to having her back in Feb/ March!  For now, I'm excited for this natural breaking point to adjust our homeschool plan too.  (Man!  I find myself adjusting my plans pretty often.....  I am hoping that I can settle on a thicker pattern for us, that leaves less wiggle room, soon!)

So we took a stab at Tapestry of Grace and I love it.  I love the information, the heart, the resources they suggest for me to gather.   I look forward to using it with all of our kids when we've got upper grammar and lower grammar students together.

But for now, while our oldest two are in 2nd and 1st grade, I'm adjusting a bit again!  So far for ToG I had skipped about 85-90% of the info they present and I just don't need to have that much stuff before me yet! Mostly I'm just finding ways to simply what I've already been doing for my sake....  I think you will tell from our Unit 1 Celebration post (coming soon) that the kids have loved their first trimester (we did ToG Year one + the first three weeks of Unit 2 and called it our first trimester.)


For Bible:  The BEST help here: the Fighter Verse app on ipad.  We may work on Luke 2 for the Christmas season and we can enter it there and the kids can do typing games to remember the verses....

History/Geography, for our "Maternity Trimester" we will be going through Simply Charlotte Masons' Stories of America and reading some great read alouds and making a timeline of American history as well as studying some geography of North America.  I imagine that in the last trimester we will go back to the ancient world, using Story of the World... and all the supplemental reads I already bought from the Tapestry recommended list.  We try to tie lots of Reading Aloud usually to our history topic....  but occasionally our read aloud is pure fiction.  Regardless, I aim for at least 2 hours a day of reading aloud/ reading together.

For Language Arts, again:  keep it simple.   Copywork from Emma Serl's Primary Language Lessons and from Guesthollow.com and walkingbytheway.com and R L Stevenson's poems and the Bible, of course!  Here's the golden (free and fantastic!) find....  Scott Foresman's Language Arts workbooks for our grammar slot.  (just replace the number in the link at the top with your grade K- 6).  I love how these workbooks very clearly aim to help kids write well.  Yes, please!  We will also do one day a week of writing a letter, and one day of a journal prompt.

For Math:  Math Mammoth....  so good for us, downloadable and excellent and inexpensive.  May supplement with Khan Academy if I find he's got lower level stuff?

For Science:  We've been having a good time doing our own overview of our world....  I wrote up a list of topics (Our Creator God, Creation, Land and Water, then... our Bodies- overview of organs and systems... next we're onto the classifications of living animals and then solar system).  The internet worksheets and a few readers we've been graciously given are abundant enough.... but I also just purchased 106 Days of Creation Studies from Simply Charlotte Mason as another help.

~Honor~  All of us need a time for this!  Time to focus and discuss Honor, Character, Manners, Habits...  How loving Christ transforms our lives....  Having time for this with my kids is one of the greatest reasons I want to homeschool.

Extra!  I'm scheduling it in this time....  Friday mornings before lunch might be knitting, potholder weaving, baking, hopefully wood whittling, or even just ipad app time.... we have some great apps but we often go a week or so without playing at all!  Once a week is completely appropriate... especially considering how excellent, helpful these are!

Our kids will hopefully get Chinese story time with some neighbors at least once or twice a week while their teacher is gone.   And they attend a local art class Thurs pm which is a major highlight of their weeks.  Tuesday afternoons is also "sports class" with several friends.... and Daddy is a helper.  Super Stud Dad!  They also have a fantastic teacher for piano who comes to our home once a week (and practice daily too).   May all of their learning and all of our lives together be sweet and full for your purposes and your glory, God!

First Grade: Boiled Down and Thickened

"Ufda".....  as the North Dakotans in my life really do say.  And "Good night!"for you southern friends.    Homeschooling is tough.

We're finally nearing the end of first grade (first year at homeschool for both Isaiah and me) and I feel like I'm just now catching a vision of what I want first grade to be about for our next three learners.... I had a very shaky start for this first run at homeschool.  I know now that I don't need to blow money on fanciful curriculum and I really don't want to sweat over comparing me, my kids, or the methods and resources I've chosen to anyone else any more....  It has been so sweet to have such a great boy to learn with for this scary, fantastic, wonderful first year!!    (Yea... I really wish someone would have told me I did not need to buy any curriculum package for first grade or kindergarden!)

Because our boys are very close in age with their sisters just below them and because our family is majoring on building bilingual kids from these early years it seems to work well for us to have a ease-into kind of approach with first grade (perhaps especially for the boys).  The girls may get this plan of first grade squished and distilled even further in the summer before they start since they will be doing more of the second grade material we'll use with the big boys.  I'm so looking forward to Tapestry of Grace, solid classical Christian curriculum guide, and their structure which aims to make learning shareable between all ages in the family.  Our girls will do a bit different than the boys, but more of second grade stuff than I will give our boys when they're in first grade.  I'm imaging (hoping hard!) this will just work better for our crew...

1) Lots of reading.  Review the Dolch lists and the top 300 Fry words from k12reader.com.  Veritas Press primers and every primer we can get our hands on.  I read aloud too...  stories and biographies as a way of introducing history.   We've read The Tanglewood Secret (5 star), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sword in the Tree, Kingdom Tales (most excellent!), and Mr. Popper's Penguins, plus a few more less noteworthy ones...

    Language Arts.  Skip the spelling lists and heavy on complete sentences for every answer.  Learn spelling by way of reading and writing- complete sentences and narratives as much as possible.  Again, k12reader has some great Cloze worksheets and reading comprehension worksheets that even introduce other great subjects (some of the second grade ones introduce timelines, natural resources, rural vs. urban...).  Copywork and dictation:  love the Charlotte Mason idea of primarily leaning on correct and beautiful English rather than teaching particular grammar rules and wrongs.  Memorize or at least know well, at least 4 poems from this great list.

    Cover these essential topics:  Capitalization, Ending punctuation, Nouns (common and proper), Adjectives (more worksheets at k12reader), Verbs, plural and singular,  An vs. A, and plural -s vs. possesive -'s.  Title abbreviations Mr. Mrs. Ms. Dr.  Initials.

2) Learning about the world.  The months and days of the week.  The seasons and which months are in them.  Continents and Oceans.  Brief overview of major countries and cultures.  Explore topics of interest-  volcanos, jungles, snakes, solar system, theater...

3) Bible.  We're very simple for this in homeschool because Matt leads the bulk of our Bible learning in our family devotions time several evenings a week (and I read a kiddo devotion at breakfast.)  Besides that, we memorize Fighter Verses with the FV app which gives us a song to listen to for every verse, and a "typing game" as the kids call it (a quiz, actually).  (And I'll be honest, we've skipped a few verses b/c the songs weren't something I could listen to 20x a day.)  We also aim to make lunch time a prayer time for the world.... pray through Operation World, Operation China, our Compassion kids or orgs or churches or friends that we love...  great learning here!  How sweet too, to pray for current events around the world-  tornados, elections, diseases, abortion...

   I'm going to try to make a bit of a workbook for first grade for when I'm working with another learner and one child needs independent work.  Some of the sites I'm printing worksheets from are here... (all are free to print):

www.k12reader.com  I am really grateful for this site!  Such helpful resources and all well organized and useable.

http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2012/12/first-grade-sight-word-sentences.html  lots of great links at the bottom of the post

http://shared.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/phonics/1sightwordsentences.pdf  excellent for sight words!

http://www.turtlediary.com/grade-1-worksheets.html  I like the homophones pages as a fun way to introduce new vocab

http://www.worksheetuniverse.com/firstgradeworksheets.html  several basic ones...me/ I, plural/singular, nouns/ verbs...

www.worksheet.fun.com   just a few useable ones here

fantastic page of free copywork and writing links
http://homeschoolfreestuff.wordpress.com/english/writinghandwritingcopywork/

Wow--- I found this site from the last link (fantastic CS Lewis copy work) and she's got a beautiful creative writing course here too...  all free.  I love her. http://www.walkingbytheway.com/blog/creative-writing-week-1/

Aug 2013 update:  This is a biggie....  Marian has quite nearly turned the corner in her reading with these free online primers....  there's the fun appeal to them in they cute rhymes and looking for differences between pictures.  A few of the short stories we've skipped for undesireableness but most all of them have been just what we needed!  www.progressivephonics.com

4) I've got it sweet for Math b/c Isaiah's Chinese teacher who comes to our home 5 mornings a week teaches him Math using local workbooks (which costs 8Y = one dollar!) and I think it's excellent.....  exercises that make him think!  We also have and use as a backbone, Math Mammoth, which is very fine.  And Isaiah's sweet teacher, Chen Laoshi,  also reads aloud good literature and teaches him Hanzi (Chinese writing) and the Bible verse we memorize in English, in Chinese too.

That's it.

Nothing to sweat over but plenty to take joy in!  Oh Lord make our learning journey sweet for your glory!