Charter School

After a fun and busy Labor day weekend, Hunter started classes at the Big Sur Charter School. I had a lot of fun making this day as special as possible for Hunter. I have very fond memories of my first days of school growing up. Shopping with mom for new supplies, new outfit, new backpack, and dad going in late to work so he had time to make us waffles :o)
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Fortunately, Justin had the day off as part of the long weekend, so we started the day off together with blueberry muffins and some sausage

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The annual front door picture

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Is he a handsome kindergartner or what??

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Cubby!

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Hunter, with his first ever homework assignment - and 'all about me' poster that he had to present to the class!

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After we dropped Hunter off, Morgan, Justin, and I headed to the Paris bakery for breakfast part 2, and coffee

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Four hours later, it was time to pick Hunter up. He was super excited, and said he had a great time. To celebrate, we went out to Baskin Robbins for a treat

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We are two weeks into this charter school thing, and I'm still trying to decide what I think. Hunter really enjoys it, has made some friends, and seems to be benefiting from the time he spends there, so we'll stick it out for now. Tomorrow we are taking a field trip to a local apple orchard, so that should be fun!

Branching Out

Recently I met some fellow military homeschoolers in the area at a park day. It was there that I learned about a new charter school called Big Sur Charter school. They have been operation successfully down in Big Sur for many years, and this year, they are opening a 'branch' in Monterey.

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After attending an informational meeting, and discussing Hunter's specific educational needs, Justin and I decided to go ahead and enroll.

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This is a state-funded charter school that exists only as a supplement to homeschoolers. Hunter will be attending three hours of class every Tuesday and Thursday starting the first week in September. These classes will be with five other Kindergartners and possibly a few first graders. They will be led by a teacher who will provide opportunities in music, art, and science. In addition to the classes twice per week, there will be field trips at least once per month. The best part of this set-up is that we, the parents, are in charge of content. The parents decide what classes the teacher will teach, and what field trips we want to take. In other words, the way it should be :o)

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I am so excited to be a part of this charter school! It is going to be a perfect fit for us, as Hunter will be able to enjoy all of the 'fun' things about Kindergarten (art, music, recess, field trips, etc...), while at the same time, cruising at his own lightening-fast pace in math and reading at home.

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We will also be starting a new curriculum at home, called Five in a Row. As I have mentioned before, Hunter is well beyond the phonics stage of reading (he was reading Stuart Little to me the other day!). On the flip side, Hunter is still only four years old, so it is difficult to find reading material with age appropriate content. Through Five in a Row, we will be reading classic stories, but delving much, much, deeper, and focusing on content and comprehension, rather than mechanics. Stay tuned, as I'll be sharing our experiences with this new curriculum!

Kindergarten!

I'm linking up to the 'Not Back to School Blog Hop' over at 'At the Heart of the Matter Online' -

Well, it's time to breath some life back into this blog! We started Kindergarten a few weeks ago (started early due to the big move coming up in November when we'll have to take a little time off)

The curriculum run-down for this year - after researching curriculum for about a year, I finally pieced Hunter's kindergarten work together. So here is the lineup as it stands now:

Handwriting - A Reason for Handwriting, Level A. This is really great so far - each week Hunter learns a new Bible verse, and then practices printing a few words from that verse each day. On Fridays, he copies the entire verse and puts it in the mail to Grandma :o)

Math - Math-U-See. We are using the Primer level, but skipped ahead a bit and started with lesson 9. So far this has been really great! This week we are on lesson 12, and Hunter is learning to add without counting! It comes with a set of really great manipulatives, and Hunter even enjoys the dvd lessons. Math-U-See uses a mastery approach to math, meaning that we take as much or as little time needed on each concept before moving on. I think this is going to give Hunter a very strong foundation in math (something I do not have!)

Spelling - A Reason for Spelling, Level A. Since Hunter is reading fluently now, we are doing this formal spelling program. Each week, Hunter gets a new list of ten words. For each day of the week there are varied activities incorporating different styles of learning - for example, one day he might use alphabet stamps and stamp out the spelling words, and another day he might do a word search or word scramble puzzle containing the spelling words. Last week we did spelling in the car - I would call out one of his words, and he would try to find each letter on a different road sign. I like this program so far, but four weeks in a row now, he has aced the pretest... so I'm not sure how long this will be interesting for him!

Reading - Explode the Code, Online version. We are still working out the kinks of this program. With Hunter reading independently, we have yet to get him into the right level. This is an online program, that auto-adjusts based on the child's performance - so far things are still way too easy (the program has him working on consonant blends). Right now I have him working through the levels until we find the right spot.

These are the subjects we do daily - in a few weeks I will start alternating science and social studies once per week. As for extra curricular, Hunter has swimming lessons a few times per week, and then soccer starts in September! We are looking into a few different co op/charter options that will provide different art and music opportunities, though we haven't decided on one yet.

I can tell Hunter is going to keep me on my toes, as he has a way of taking my plans and flying past them! It will be a race to keep up with him, but what a great ride it will be!

Hunter - The Reading Machine

Since this year has really been about trial and error, I didn't plan much beyond writing letters and numerals. Hunter took off faster than I imagined, and before Christmas, he finished everything I had planned for the year! So for now, while I pour over kindergarten/first grade curriculum for the fall, we are really putting most of our time into hanging out and reading together, in addition to working on traditional kindergarten skills (cutting, gluing, organizing big bigger biggest, and first, second third, etc.) Hunter's reading skills have really exploded in these last few months, and he is reading everything in sight (this makes trips in the car very fun. Here is a video of Hunter reading one of his Now I'm Reading beginning readers this morning - when I took this video, it was the very first time Hunter had attempted this book.

Spelling 4-Letter Words

It has been too long since my last blog post! We have been keeping up with 'school at home' as Hunter calls it, but during the month of October, we scaled down the big projects. So for now, Hunter is still working on printing - he did 'T t', 'U u', 'V v', and 'W w' this week, with 'X x', 'Y y', and 'Z z' coming next week.

Hunter is also working on spelling. We have been working with this magnet set from Lakeshore at the beginning of the year -

Hunter was doing so well using the magnet letters, I decided to increase the challenge...

That's all for now!

An American Flag

"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom."

~ John Adams

Last week, Hunter had his first American history lesson. We talked about the colonists and why they wanted their own country. We started talking about freedom, and what that means. Hunter has been familiar with the American flag for a long time, but we went a little deeper this time and talked about the symbolism, Betsy Ross, and George Washington's request. For an art/social studies project, Hunter constructed his own flag that now hangs in his playroom.

We started off with a piece of white foam board. I drew out the lines, and then taped them off with painters tape.








Hunter's first step was to paint the exposed stripes red.






He then painted the small square blue.








We let it dry for a little while, and then removed the painters tape - this step was really fun for Hunter, as he really enjoyed seeing his flag come to life!









The next day, Hunter applied thirteen stars (cut from craft foam) to the blue square. (I decided that Hunter can make a modern flag when he is old enough to cut out 50 stars :o)

Here is a video of Hunter talking about his project:

Five Green and Speckled Frogs

This week Hunter learned all about the life cycle of frogs. He was fascinated and soaked up quite a lot of information! For a fun froggy themed project we made an interactive display to use during the "Five Green and Speckled Frogs" song....

Hunter started out by painting his hand green and making five hand prints:

I rigged a drying rack and let the sun do the work while we did some other tasks:

Hunter is all the way up to "L,l" in his printing. Here he is saying each letter and getting ready to place his completed "L" strip in the pocket chart. As he was doing this he said "hey mom, take my picture":

Hunter also spent some time reviewing the printing of the numbers 1-5 (take a close look at the printing!!):

After the hand prints had dried, I cut them out (I also cut the thumbs off, leaving four froggy legs) and Hunter drew smiles and speckles on each one: (oh, and Hunter chose to give this frog glasses as well :o)





Next came google eyes and popsicle sticks glued to the back:

After the glue had dried, it was finally time to place the five speckled frogs at home on their speckled log:





Ready to sing!

"Five green and speckled frogs, sat on a speckled log,

eating the most delicious bugs; YUM! YUM!
One jumped into the pool, where it was nice and cool,

now there are four green speckled frogs" etc...