S is for Smiling Sunrise - A Book Review

ABCs, ABCs, how many ways can we learn our ABCs?  Learning our ABCs is such a big deal when we are little.  As a parent it can get kind of mundane and boring teaching ABC's, especially when we're raising a lot of children.  I mean...really...how many times CAN we sing the ABC song?  How many picture books can we read with the typical A, apple, and B, ball, and C, cat, and D, dog, and on and on it goes?  WordsBright, a small, independent publisher, has published a book that is anything but the A, apple, and B, ball approach to the ABCs.  In writing S is for Smiling Sunrise Vick Wadhwa (He's on Facebook if you'd like to connect with him.) has most definitely provided parents and children alike with a refreshingly new take on ABCs.



It's quite impressive to me that a children's ABC book can be tied into our homeschool in a variety of ways with a variety of teaching opportunities.  Character and Virtues has been a concentrated area of focus in our homeschool this year.  S is for Smiling Sunrise effectively teaches and reinforces areas of virtue that we have been actively learning and practicing as part of our normal routine.  The vocabulary is excellent.  I love the words that were chosen to represent each letter of the alphabet.  They are anything but ordinary; K, kaleidoscope for example.  Then there's the rest of the book content which is rich in literary stimulation including rhyming words and wholesome messages.  The content is rich enough to even elicit conversation from the nine-year-old, not just the two young ones.  We really enjoy reading it as a family, as a bedtime story, and the kids enjoy looking at it on their own.

Bella, age 4, enjoying the book independently.

S is for Smiling Sunrise also comes with a few wonderful resources.  There is a FREE Teacher's Guide available for download.  I love that the teacher guide provides relevant ideas and activities for K-3 age children.  It's not just for toddlers!  In the Teacher Guide there are four areas of focus for each letter; concepts, questions, vocabulary, and activities.  That's 26 different concepts to explore, 26 different questions to discuss, well over 100 vocabulary words to learn, and more than 26 activities to do together.  All of this from a children's ABC book!  Did I mention that we love this book?  You can even download a free word poster to go along with the book via the website as well as an MP3 of the story put to song.

There is so much potential within the pages of S is for Smiling Sunshine.  It's a wonderful teaching tool for not only learning the alphabet, but fully enriching the learning experience of your child.  It would be a wonderful addition to any homeschool curriculum for young children as well as just enriching the learning process for any child in a variety of learning environments.  We are looking forward to expanding on the book with the provided resources as we go throughout the coming year.  Such a fun way to take learning the ABCs to the next level!

The Best Laid Plans

It's highly likely that most all of my homeschooling buddies know my favorite, one-word answer to the question, "What is your favorite thing about homeschooling?"

Do you know the answer?  It is the one thing for me that outweighs all other general pluses of educating my family on the homestead.  Of course I love that we can freely study our bible and have God be the center of our homeschool.  I love being available to my children 24/7, and them to me.  Yes, even when they drive me batty, and I them, this is still a major bonus. Being able to provide a custom tailored education based on the interests and learning levels of my children is pretty huge as well.

There is one thing, however, that complements these big bonuses found only in home education.  Have you guess it yet?


FLEXIBILITY!


Am I the only one that embraces this humongous gift of living and learning at home?  Did you get sidetracked and forget that you run the show?  Are you caught in the daily grind?  Don't be afraid to step back and follow your instincts.  Never before has this unique attribute of home education been more appreciated and respected by me than right now; this very moment.  As each hour, day, week, month, and year goes by my appreciation of the gift of flexibility grows more and more.  With that appreciation comes my willingness to wield it with wild abandon.

We started this journey out this time around the way I've seemed to do most things since, oh I don't know, birth?!  We dove right into the frigid water of the deep end, willingly, head first.  Is there really any other way to do things?  (I know there is, but they typically elude me.)  It seems my nature is either to plan things to death and forego ever starting, OR dive right in clothes and all.  Somewhere along the line the middle ground disappeared for me.  Presuming it ever did actually exist.

We've been tooling along here at The Zoo Crew quite well with our tutelage at Royal Academy.  In the beginning we started our with a little deschooling, getting to know each other time.  It was well worth it to us on many levels to spend this quality time together, especially for our resident elementary age child coming to us from public school with a lot of emotional luggage in tow.  The toddlers, well, I'm sure you know how they are.  They learn no matter what we are doing, and they are all too happy to tag along on all of our adventures.

After everyone got settled and a little more comfortable with our new lifestyle we settled into a "canned" curriculum which we loved, and it served us well at the time. When we started out with My Father's World I thought it was going to be our thing through the end.  I mean, we really did love it, but alas I am always the rebel.

From there we etched a little closer to my eclectic heart by tossing out the "canned" curriculum and worked on areas of weakness for a while which led us into following our own version of the four-year plan laid out in A Heart of Wisdom.  As we enter back on the track we laid out for this school year, after a much needed extended break over Thanksgiving and Christmas (despite finding two of us --me included-- still sick after THREE MONTHS of illness in our home), I look longingly toward spring.  It's not the renewal of life in the growing things on our land that calls me.  It's not the warmer temperatures and the sudden downpours.  It's not the promise of animals and an abundant harvest.  I love the winter and all it encompasses.

What I look forward to is the completion of this phase in our homeschooling journey.  I look forward to closing this chapter and writing a new one.  Once spring hits, our textbooks will close, this plan will end, and a new chapter will lay blank before us.  I have different plans this time around.  The plans that lie ahead do not include the textbooks of this school year.  They may not include literal textbooks at all, unless they come upon us naturally, but we do not plan to be held captive by chapters and workbook schedules.

I am looking forward to embracing the natural opportunities for learning that exist all around us; our home, our community, our land, our family and friends.  My heart has always been eclectic with an unschooling tendency, and that is exactly where I am being led for the next season.  When I watch my four and five year old (21st and 26th of this month, respectively) learn with wild abandon despite the absence of textbooks, or sometimes in spite of their presence, I am reminded that we are all learners all of the time.  That is, unless the love of learning is snuffed out for us by false timelines and artificial learning environments.  One of our guests over Christmas, a public school student, made a statement that shook me back to my core belief system, "Why are we learning when we're not in school?"

--sigh--

It is my desire to instill a love of learning in my children so deep that there will be no compartmentalizing involved.  Living IS learning!  It is exciting.  Learning is human nature.  It took me years, in some cases over a decade, to reignite my love for certain "subjects".  I literally thought I hated (HATED) history.  Can you believe it?  History?  Boring?  Are you kidding me?  Science was right there too.  You do know just how fascinating science is, right?  I somehow managed to come out of high school with the idea that I just wasn't smart enough for science.  Did I mention that I was a honor roll student, editor of the yearbook, and student of the month?  Yet, somehow I was so diminished in this subject area that I sought outside instructors for my older homeschool graduates.  I just couldn't cut the muster, or so I thought.  Craziness!

The three students being guided into adult life at Royal Academy will hopefully be spared these difficulties to overcome.  My prayer is that they will love learning and not see it separate of living.  I long for them to embrace life and living fully with all the pitfalls and triumphs that living will surely bring.  Mistakes and victories alike will not define them.  They will merely usher them to what is next all the while providing valuable wisdom to carry forward to their next chapter.

Do you have a vision for your home school?  I would love to hear about it!

Cooking with Kids

I love to cook, and I love to cook with kids.  There is a small, in stature and number, audience watching me almost anytime I do anything in the kitchen, especially cook.  My oldest granddaughter was parked on the kitchen counter beside the stove just as soon as she could sit upright.  Everyone thought I was crazy, but she loved it.  She could stir a pot.  They understand so much more than we generally give them credit for, and she never did burn herself.

Harmony at 3 years in her rightful spot on the counter.

Now that she and her sister live with us, and we reentered the homeschooling circle, there is plenty of time spent in the kitchen together.  Recently she learned how to make her own egg over medium just like Papa likes it.  She is very proud!  Her younger sister is a constant presence and has no fear of anything cooking related.  I do have to watch her a little more closely, though.  She is much more bold and is the type of person that cannot just take your word for something, like a hot stove; she has to find out for herself.  So, I cannot say that she's never been burned, but she has survived just fine.

This is where you find Annabella when I'm cooking now.

I love the layout of the kitchen in our new home.  The open counter with the built-in oven allows for me to be on one side of the counter or stove with the kids on the other.  It's like our own little hands on cooking school.  It really works well for including them in all aspects of the process without interfering with my cooking space.

So much can be learned in the kitchen.  A lot happens in cooking.  Math is the most obvious, but there is science, art, history, and creativity as well as character building aspects like self-confidence and hospitality.  Then, there's the opportunity to learn good health, preparedness, and self-sufficiency.  Not to mention meal planning and learning what is and is not a good deal in the grocery store.

Over the next year we will be doing a lot of learning in the kitchen.  There's the whole wheat free adventure we're stepping out on, and we plan to add learning to exist without sugar in our cooking as well.  Then there's the gardening we will be doing which will hopefully produce enough produce for opportunities in drying, freezing, and canning.

Harmony in the kitchen today.

I'm great one on one in the kitchen.  My new goal is to learn how to work with three kids in the kitchen at once since that's my new audience participation number.  I lack experience in that department despite the fact that we are currently raising kids number 8, 9, and 10.  I managed to potty train two at once this time around, so one would think I could figure out how to cook with three at once.

Avery gets in the kitchen now and then as well.