Homeschooling - Part Two

It's hard to believe that C will be starting Kindergarten in 3 1/2 weeks! While we have decided to send her to public school, I will be homeschooling E for preschool this year.  Since she's a year younger than C was for our Letter of the Week curriculum, we'll be doing something new.  For the majority of our lessons, I'll be using a book called "Before Five in a Row" (BFIAR).

BFIAR is a set of lesson plans based on numerous children's books.  The idea is that you read the same storybook each day for five days in a row. Then you pick a lesson/activity to do with your child each day.  The lessons range from art, science, math, language arts, etc. I hope to get most of the books from our library, so that means that my cost for the curriculum will be the cost of the BFIAR book itself (~$35).  I am looking forward to having a lot less work this year by using an existing curriculum! :)  We will supplement with  occasional flash cards for letters/numbers and some worksheets, but those will be to a minimum.

Here are my preschool goals for E:

•  Be able to write her name
•  Recite our address
•  Recite our phone number
•  Know upper and lower case letters
•  Know letter sounds
•  Know numbers 0 - 20
•  Do at least 3 days of BFIAR a week

Highest of all

Here's a two page spread I made, copied from a layout in Memory Makers magazine, April 2006.

More on the Digital Revolution

So I've gotten a lot of comments on "my new obsession."  (Although most were via email and not blogger comments... what's up with that?)

Here's a few more details. 

I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 which I received for Christmas last year (thank you, Marcia!). It is about $80, I believe. There are other programs out there that you can use, which range from free (the GIMP) to moderate (Creative Memories) to professional/top-of-the-line/expensive (Photoshop CS).

Why Photoshop Elements (PSE)?

Doug has tried and tried to get me to like the GIMP, and I did attempt to use it last year, but it just didn't work for me.  While Photoshop is not exactly intuitive, the GIMP was worse.  Plus, almost all the free tutorials online are for Photoshop users.  While I haven't tried Creative Memories' software, my impression was that it is more for ready-made/drag-n-drop type of scrapping, and I wanted to do more "from scratch."   And Photoshop CS is just way too expensive for what I am doing.

There are some things that I wish Photoshop Elements could do, which it doesn't, but for the most part it has been great.

Where to start?
I started by doing a free online tutorial.  You can Google "beginner digital scrapbooking tutorials" or search on YouTube for tutorials as well.  You can download templates (pre-made pages) and just add your photos to them, if you like.

Another thing I did was to take some of my existing traditional pages and then see if I could reproduce them digitally. For each new "thing" I needed to do, I searched online for a tutorial or free element. It really helped me learn a lot!


What's so great about digital elements:
One great thing about digital scrapping, is that the papers/embellishments/borders are all reusable. For example, if you buy a digital paper pack, you can reuse it as much as you want.  It is very simple to change the colors, as well, so that instead of searching for the perfect shade of blue, you can create it yourself!

While you can buy digital scrapbooking elements (just like traditional scrapbooking), you can also find a lot of stuff for free.

Here are a few sites I've found useful so far:
* Pixels & Ice Cream
* Free Digital Scrapbooking.com
* The Digital Scrapbooking Free Site

Making my own elements:
What has really attracted me to digital scrapbooking, is the ability for me to make my own elements. If I see a layout I like somewhere (magazine/online) or want a certain embellishment, I can use PSE to make it myself! I've made photo anchors, frames, flowers, papers - whatever you can think of.  Here are some examples:

 

What about printing your pages?

Yeah, that's the part I haven't got to yet. :)  I need to research my options a bit.  But, I know that it is possible to get 12x12 prints of your pages, so that you can add them to your own albums. Or, you can have a photobook printed with your digital pages as well.  

A lot of folks do "hybrid" scrapbooking, as well.  Hybrid scrapbooking is basically using Photoshop to edit/enhance your photos, printing them out and using them on your traditional paper page.

Hope this answers some questions!