December Books

In this country people have a holiday called Thanksgiving. Supposedly people express gratitude for all they have. Apparently, what they have is not sufficient because people in this country (and all other affluent countries of the world) jump on the bandwagon to want more.  This leads us to Christmas.

Now, excuse me, but our children, mine included, are clueless about the people who are out there out of luck-some by choice, and some by pure luck. Children want, want, want. They are very selfish and self-centered, everything is about them, and them alone. Yes, my kids fall in this bucket.
To bring some reality into my kids' life, I did two things this holiday season. I drove them through lower Wacker in the beautiful city of Chicago, to see first-hand, how homeless people live-flat out on the ground.


A mother and a daughter, a father and a son are homeless. You learn two very contradictory things about their lives-you want to hide, but you also want to be noticed in order to find a job. How unfair this world is, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with young kids understanding that in order to appreciate what they have-a home is not to be taken for granted, a home is a safe sanctuary. And while you are bored with it all, it is better than the unsafe alternative.

Then I assembled a fine collection of books to tackle the topic of having vs needing, and what is it that we truly need. I don't think that I succeeded very much with the books, but some points were well understood and most of the wantings stopped. However, the drive down Wacker had a tremendous impact. And yes, I told my kids, that one sure way not to get there is to learn, to learn to learn, to learn to love to learn.

However, this by itself is not sufficient. You need to be wise and not take unnecessary risks as the mother in 'Shelter in our car' did. You should have a strong supporting system and steer away from depression which is clearly experienced by the father in 'Fly away, home'. It is good to be hopeful, but it is better to be prepared, and to listen to the wisdom of the folks who have walked the walk before you which we see in 'A handful of Seeds'. You should also not be selfish, be good to others and you will both feel good and you will be well, something illustrated in 'Those shoes'.

Then we talked about the indigenous people of north america. We started with 'The Horse return to America', 'North American Indians' and the series by Bonnie Shamie Native Dwellings. I highly recommend them all. We are also going to continue reading about the indigenous people in North America and the societies in South America that the conquistadors/settlers discovered.

 We also finished 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'. It was a good read-aloud. I am glad we are done with it, though. I had to skip a lot of 'god'-related nuances that I did not feel like dealing with even though post-reading, on an un-related occasion, I did. I basically told my kids that some people still believe in myths and legends, similar to the myth about 'The girl who liked horses'. For one of these myths/legends people invented a holiday, and this is Christmas. According to this legend, a child who is very important to people had been born many, many years ago and people celebrate his birth. There is nothing wrong with this celebration. We should, however, never forget that all people who have been born are special, and all have talents and contributions, so we should celebrate each and every one and not single one as the most special. I think in this speech, I summarized my very own view of Christianity as nothing but a fine fiction. The typical critics would say: 'But history has been captured in the Bible..', to which I will say:'Yes, history is also captured in Les Miserables'.

This is what has kept are busy during December. On to one more week of December and all of a new Year!

Curriculum for 2014/2015: Pre-School and First Grade

Below is the curriculum we will follow during the 2014/2015 school year. Our curriculum will include a lot of reading, a lot of hand-on experiences and live events. I will continue to keep a monthly list of the books we have read aloud and the events we have attended and of otherwise the interesting things we have been exposed to.

Sunlight Boy

Sunlight boy will be one more year in Pre-K here at our local public school. The goal for him at school is to continue to improve his English. As was the case with his sister, we will keep the educational component of life simple and plain fun.

Math: During the summer of 2014, we will finish Singapore Math-level 1 books. During the 2014/2015 school year we will study the Singapore Math 2A & 2B books; most likely we will begin these sequence in October. Update 10/8/2014: we started 2A this week., I couldn't believe that the boy whom the local public school considers behind in everything imaginable and who didn't know the numbers just a year ago has finished first grade level math! He is not even 5 yet! 


English:  I rely on the program at the public school to help him learn English, grow his vocabulary and understanding. On my end, starting in January 2015, I will begin to work on letter/letter-combo--sound correspondence. We will start with what is the first/last letter of <> word. Starting in May 2015, I plan on introducing the first Bob books; this may happen earlier if the previous step is solidified earlier than I envision.

Bulgarian: I will continue to practice reading words with him until the start of the school year. We will move to sentences starting in September 2014. We will aim to be comfortable reading 20 words/evening by the end of 2014 and will continue reading at that rate for 2015. Update 10/8/2014: the little man can blend the sounds now, and he can make a guess as to which word he is reading. We are still on the level of reading isolated words but soon will move to little poems. Update 12/1/2014: still reading separate words, typically aim for 8-10 per evening.

Portuguese: I will continue reading one story per evening along with Q&A. I will continue to pair our stories with movies from YouTube. More details will be provided in Ballet girl's section below.Update 10/8/2014: What is fascinating to me is that the little man is willingly repeating. His sister started willingly responding last year, but I think the internal competition is helping. I am also going to include a session on Portuguese during our one-ones during the week. Both kids seam to need it, but we will continue with the current read-aloud together scheme and Q&A sessions.

Music: During the fall of 2014, I will try to reserve one day of the week to review proper technique and position and the piano, along with some familiarity with the keyboard. On another day of the week I intend to introduce him to simple, short melodies and slowly build his repertoire and confidence at the piano. I will wait for two signs before signing him up for formal classes: 1) better hand coordination and 2) persistent interest. I suspect that while with Ballet girl both requirements were met at age 4.5, I delayed her lessons until after her 5th birthday, once she showed real interest during our vacation in New Jersey. So, I will wait until the right moment.
Update 10/8/2014: the interest is there, the coordination is lagging, but a few times I caught him at the piano fooling around, which is a superb sign. He continues to sing and accurately. I will need to organize the CDs this weekend because the colder days/inside days are upon us! Update 12/1/2014: the little man sings a lot of songs and eagerly demonstrates. He sang a turkey song, a turkey dinner song and jingle bells for the family multiple times this week, completely spontaneously, unprovoked, un-requested, but very welcome:)!

I will also organize our CDs collection so that he has a larger selection to pick from.
I will also consider signing him once again for dance class.


Sports; In the summer of 2014 both kids are enrolled in swimming lessons. In the fall of 2014 both kids will play soccer. Sunlight boy is signed up for a 6 weeks Mixed Martial Arts class staring in August. This is a trial and depending on the outcome we may or may not make further plans along these lines. Update 10/8/2014: we are in the last week of soccer. Soccer has proven fabulous for our household. The kids have played soccer all summer and fall. They play regularly in this one little green area at the recreation playground. I am thrilled because I love that game.

Ballet Girl

Ballet girl will begin first grade in our local public school. She will attend the classes: language arts, social studies, music, art and physical education. Science and Math we will study at home.

Math: During the summer of 2014, we will finish the outstanding topics in Singapore Math 4A&4B. During 2014/2015 school year we will cover the materials in Singapore Math 5A&5B and we will work through the problems in Singapore Math-Challenging problems for 2nd grade. We will start this sequence in October.  Update 10/8/2014: We continue math as usual; we are so far ahead and the scheme we use works so well that I realized there is no need to make changes. We continue with the informal-lesson, some practice and call it a day sequence. There is no rush, we just started tackling geometry and ballet girl finds it fascinating. I do too. Geometry has always been my favorite subject and I took a lot of care to prepare so that I can share my love for it with her. It has worked.  I do use the books, but the sequence and the method is completely my own. Most of the fifth year is review so we will spend time learning the multiplication table, learning division, and learning to be better at multiplication. Geometry is just the cherry to keep us fascinated. Update 12/1/2014: we will add Beast Academy 3A to our curriculum, once per week, starting in January 2015

Science: During the 2014/2015 school year we will follow the topics listed in Singapore Sciences series 1 and 2. We will heavily supplement with library books and home experiments, nature walks and observations. We will also cover the corresponding topics from Marcha Crianca Ciencias in Portuguese.Update 10/8/2014: We are following the topics mentioned above and are combining science topics with geography lessons. So far we have talked about classification of things into groups, what nature is, what shadow is and how people figured that the earth is roundish. All topics are accompanied with hands-on exploration.

English: This I more or less will leave to the school with the following exceptions. 1) I insist on pretty handwriting. To this end we will do copy work from familiar books and later on we will do simple dictations. We technically do dictations but I rely on the magnetic letters which accompany the All About Spelling series.  2) I insist on regular Read-aloud-we leave 2 days of the week to completely relax. Update 12/1/2014: we just finished AAS-Level 1. Great program! Our schedule tends to be as follows: New Concept (Sunday), Reinforcement(Monday), School Words review (Wednesday); Copy (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday), Dictation (Sunday, Monday, Wednesday)

Bulgarian: We will begin reading the first grade reading book during summer 2014. We will move towards the second grade reading book in the 2014/2015 school year. Informally, I will talk about Bulgarian grammar and the rules of the written language. Update 10/8/2014: Ballet girl reads slowlier in Bulgarian so we started in September with some simple same-root, conjugation-of-verbs quick reads to get her confidence up; then this month I moved her to 'gatanki' and we will finish the month of October this way. Next month we will start with short poems and stories from various books and bukvars. We will incorporate copy work starting in November and starting in January we will incorporate short dictations. This should parallel the English curriculum. Update 12/1/2014: the reading book on the left is done; the plan is to read the stories in another first grade reading book before moving to the second grade reading book. Great progress!

Portuguese: This year we will concentrate on building conversational Portuguese. During the summer 2014, we will read short stories, we will review basic vocabulary contained in Timi, Timi 1 and Salpicos 1. During the 2014/2015 school year we will study Marcha Crianca Lingua Portuguese Ano 1. I will not teach reading. I will use the book to teach vocabulary and comprehension. We will aim towards reading three longer books this year. Update October 10/8/2014: We have tackled mostly seasonal topics-fall, school, nature, witches. It's going well-the kids are starting to speak and volunteer their own sentences. Update 12/1/2014: we are reading aloud the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Tonight the kids saw the BBC movie in portuguese and were all thrilled.

Music: This year we will continue with the music lessons (regular 30-min class, 60-min piano enrichment class once a month and 60-min piano club class once a month) . We will aim for 20 minutes of practice per day. Dance will once again be part of our lives-Ballet girl requested to participate in Jazz and Hip-Hop classes. Update 12/1/2014: Ballet girl quit dance this year.

We plan on attending outdoor concerts in the summer of 2014, and other local concerts during the school year.

Sports: During the summer of 2014, Ballet girl will be in swim class. During the fall of 2014, she will play soccer; she will be the oldest but this is the best I can do with her other activities. Both kids will be enrolled in a Mixed Martial Arts class for 6 weeks in August-September to avoid hassle with all other school-time activities. This is a trial and depending on the outcome I will make further plans if necessary. Update October 10/8/2014: The young lady has requested a pony for her birthday. Well, this is not happening, but at least she will enjoy horseback riding lessons in the fall:)

Homeschool Goals and Tools: 2013-2014

Math for Sunlight boy. He  just finished the Kindergarten-level books in the series.
Sunlight boy is 4. He cannot write. I do the writing. He sees me writing. One day he will want to write as well, just like his sister metamorphosed into an eager writer/scribbler.

We do 6 problems per evening, which is at most 10 minutes. The directions are very brief. We do all counting, pointing, emphasizing together. When he has grasped a concept, there is more of him than me. I fade away.

We did not cover all topics in the Kindergarten books. We skipped counting by 2s and 5s, and the months and seasons of the year.

Math for Ballerina girl. Ballerina girl finished the third grade books in the summer. We are in book 4A working on fractions, addition and subtraction. Book 4B will carry us through the end of the summer. We have already covered most of the topics in book 4B.

I have studied mathematics and I love the subject. I also love teaching it. I do not teach rote. I teach understanding. Once Ballerina girl understood place value, we were golden for everything else, which is nothing more than notation for fancy counting.

We do 6 problems per evening. Given that she is not a reader, I give her all the directions she needs, but she can write out the solution to the problems herself.

Both children bring out math throughout the day.

Bulgarian for Ms. Ballerina. She reads/reviews one page per day. She reads poems consisting of 20 words during the weekend.

I aim for 3-4 days of Bulgarian reading.

For Sunlight boy, there is no teaching source. I use a whiteboard and a marker. We review the letters by sounding out words, letter-by-letter. When I taught my son to read, I taught him letter-word-sound association. We practiced with: what letter does word 'X' begin with, and I will give him options. Once the major letters were set, we moved on to our current reading phase. Sunlight boy sounds out 5-8 words per evening, which amounts to roughly 5-10 minutes. My approach with Ballet girl was quite different. I introduced the letters fairly fast, once she exhibited interest, which was around 3.5 years old. She knew the letters before her fourth birthday, she also easily sounded out words. Since then, we have worked on maintaining the skill. During last summer, we read Bulgarian only 2 times per week, if that!

 Ballerina girl plays the piano. She started in January 2013. Prior to that during the summer 2012, I have worked with her during the Sundays, for half an hour at most. Her interest showed while we were visiting my brother on the east coast. She saw her cousins and her uncle playing and she asked to learn. I taught her one Christmas song, which she learned really fast. Then I called a local school and set her up with lessons. Her piano teacher is very nice. Initially, I was doing most of the teaching and we used the piano class to showcase what we have learned. Now, the teacher is teaching and I am supplementing at home. I have learned a lot as well. I have learned to overcome my fear of not knowing. I don't say I don't or I can't. Ballerina girl sees me and she is motivated. Every once in a while we compete for the right to the piano:)

The Bob Books. My brother gave them to me because they were too babish for his son. They were perfect for my daughter.

I did not know how to approach English. As you know, English is a language in which you can invent phonetic rules but then have to make hundreds of excuses, and the rules and the excuses are longer and more complicated than the art of reading. So, I was lost. How to teach English. First, I have to backtrack a little and say that the thought of teaching English reading did not occur to me until Ballet girl had learned English well. Second, the Bob Books came into our lives. I tried them in the summer of 2012 but that was too early and I put them back. I introduced them again during the summer of 2013 after the second year of pre-K, and it was the right time. We started with 1 book per week. Thus we moved until January 2014 when the school sent a reading log sheet. So we started reading 1 book/15 min per day. Bob Books 1 and 2 were finished in the summer of 2013. Bob Books 3 we finished in December 2013. We just finished Bob Books 4 and we will move to Bob Books 5.

Bob Books are great but not interesting enough. Once the art of reading clicks, one might as well introduce more interesting text, but not more complicated. This is where the Piggie and Elephant books came into play. Ballerina girl picked one at school and she gobbled it up instantly with ease. She read them all.

She read The Foot Book, The Nose Book, The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, and some Greenlight Readers Level 2 which recommended by the school.

We have a lot of picture books at home and Ballerina girl is familiar with them. I gave one a try recently. 'If you give a mouse a cookie'. What a hit! She also read 'If you take a mouse to the movies'. Another hit! This is where we stand. Reading picture books, re-reading familiar once, moving forward and taking it easy. Ballerina girl is proud of her skill.

Children Books in Portuguese Online this is how we learn Portuguese at home. I am not a fluent speaker and it has been extremely difficult for me to find my path. I make use of movies and children shows which I find online (anything with Mickey, all Disney films, Galinha Pintadinha and similar ones), and photocopied and shared books online, either through blogs or pinterest. I read one book per evening, often I re-read it, and sometimes I ask questions. We also sing a lot of familiar songs such as a version of Old MacDonald which helped us learn savannah as well as farm animals and other more exotic animals. Some easy o translate picture books I have at home are also great; with the 10 little lady bigs we learned to count to 10. Easy readers are fabulous to translate-they are easy and the plots are simple. This requires work but is worth it.

We love the Colecao Rato e Gato books. Now that Ballerina girl can read Bulgarian and English, she is making attempts to decipher the Portuguese in familiar books. It's exciting to watch and I wish I could get my hands on all of these wonderful books.


We have homework on most days. For Ballet girl, I try to limit everything to 30 minutes but we have gone to 45 a few times. With Sunlight boy, the whole homework ritual is 15-20 minutes at the worst.
In the past, we have skipped homework for the following reasons:
1) we stayed out late (as in the summer when we are either in the park or at the pool)
2) we are tired/sick
3) we have had other activities (ballet, piano, recital, attended event)
4) were busy with something interesting
5) have had school for a while and need a break to refuel.
Right now we are taking a break off school. The children were struck by a stomach bug and we have had school for a while, and grandma is going out of town for 10 days.

We very rarely skip read-alouds before going to bed at night. I have to be extremely tired or the kids have to be really sick/tired. Books are demanded and expected.

The goal for this year is to collaboratively pick one project, explore it and develop it with some hands-on activities. My thoughts have been around building racing boats while reading Stuart Little; or making model planes, rockets, kites and flying them while learning about the history and principles of flight, especially with the 45 year anniversary of the first man on the moon coming up. These are not set in stone but ideas which can be substituted with whatever else the children prefer to dive into. The year is so young!

Happy learning:)

February Books

In January we read The Adventures of Pinnocchio by Carlo Colodi, all 256 pages. 

Before moving to a new chapter, we reviewed what has happened thus far in the story. We would comment on who is good, who is bad, what would be an alternative, more desirable behavior. Then we will dive into the new chapter. 

For Sunlight boy this was the first big read-aloud. He was thrilled and enchanted by the unlikely adventures which are simply so fascinating. He kept on talking about Pinnocchio and anticipating the evening readings.

The book is lovely and offers plenty of ideas to explore. We read about Whales; we made paper boats and paper ships; and we made a Pinnocchio doll from craft sticks and colored paper.

We also watched the Disney movie in Portuguese. Thank you, YouTube!

In February we read A Mouse Called Wolf. Ballerina girl and I read this book during the summer. 

One evening, as we were approaching the end of The Adventures of Pinnocchio we brainstormed which book to read next. One option was 'School Days According to Humphrey' by Betty Birney. This was the book, the school which my children attend read together this month. (last year the selection was 'The Mouse and the Motorcycle' ). However, when I pre-read the story, I did not like it. I told Ballerina girl: 'You can read it when you are older. I simply did not like it enough and I don't think I will do a good job reading it aloud.' This was accepted well and we continued brainstorming. Since by the cover it was clear that the story is about a mouse, Ballerina girl recalled The Mouse and the Motorcycle. I agreed that this is a fantastic option, and I will go in the basement bookshelves to find it.  Before I went anywhere, Ballerina girl thought of this lovely little book. She remembered it and she liked it. She was also thrilled that it is about a mouse and a lady who plays the piano, because Ms. Ballerina plays the piano too. 

'A Mouse called Wolf' is a very simple book. Simple and yet very touching. There is a lot to remark and to notice-the loneliness of the lady, the gift of music which fills her days (something I relate to deeply), the friendships music creates, the friendship with the least likely characters, acceptance, values, abilities and hidden talents, hard work and persistence. In our daily piano practice Wolf comes up a lot (we do not offer chocolates though).

Ballerina girl liked Flat Stanley. We discussed at length the pros and cons of being flat. It's a fantastic book to get a child to think about 'what if' and 'if I were'. Let them imagine. What would they find in a manhole? Where else would they want to go unnoticed? Sunlight boy did not like this book. He was burned by the back-to-back lengthier read-alouds.







Ballet books loved by both children:

Three read-aloud tips:
1. Pre-read the book. Make sure you like it. If you don't, it will show.
2. Read slowly and discuss plenty. Guide the discussions so they don't roam the world.
3. Space the read-alouds. There is not rush. There is no gold medal. Reading and listening should be enjoyable, not a duty.

Happy Reading:)

Update 2/28/2014:

The books I have been listing are not an exhaustive list of all we read. Every evening I read one book that I pick (recently, these have been the chapter books I have listed), one book that Sunlight boy picks and one book that Ballerina girl picks. We read Lego books, we read princess books, we read fairy tales, I make sure we read Bulgarian poems too.