Homeschooling, Year 2: Done!
We made it through our second year of homeschooling! We are officially done with this year (not this grade). Sorry for the lack of posting, but we’ve been making the most of our Winter Break, which is also our official break between school years.
I gotta tell ya, I am so glad for this year to be done. I love homeschooling, don’t get me wrong, but it’s definitely been more of a struggle over the past few months than it has been before. Part of that is me; I have been on antidepressants for a couple of years and have been needing to change my medication for a while now. I’ve done that and have added an anti-anxiety medication, which I wouldn’t have thought I’d needed, but have found is definitely helping. In any case, I do expect that with proper management of my own health, my stress level will decrease, which can only help things.
In other news, we’ve been quite the crafty-kins around here. I made some of the cutest little hand warmers for all of us from felt and rice. I used flower-shaped cookie cutters, but any shape will work. You can heat them up in the microwave, then slip them inside your pockets or even shoes to warm up freezing fingers or toes. It’s not nearly cold enough for that around here (we’ve only come close to freezing temperatures once so far), but I am sure they’ll come in handy in January & February when the Texas weather finally catches on that winter months are supposed to be cold.
December is a busy month for us; we celebrated LBB’s 10th and Loverly Husband’s 35th birthdays this month in addition to Yule and Christmas, both of which were amazing. LBB got to hang with his friends for his birthday and do some lazer-tagging, and the kids both got air-soft guns for Christmas in addition to a handful of video games and Kinect for XBox. I’ve been playing with my new Nook and Loverly Husband’s been on vacation this week and immersing himself in the world of Skyrim.
Though it may seem like it, I haven’t been neglecting school stuff. I updated the banner here at This Adventure Life for the new school year and spent a few hours last week updating my lesson planner pages and getting them ready to print and bind. I added the workbox plan sheet into my normal lesson planner since we’ve been sticking to that.
We’re also going to give the boys’ STARS planners another go this year; hopefully with better success. I think with the workboxes (which we will continue for this coming year), the planners will work a bit better. We’re continuing the goal of helping them become more self-sufficient with their school work; hopefully between workboxes and their planners they’ll have the tools they need to really take on more responsibility. We won’t be starting our new school year until the second week in January, but I’ll try have all of the new pages in an upcoming ‘lesson planning’ post sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Hope you’re all enjoying your break (if you took one), and felicitations for the New Year!
Warmly,
~h
32 Down, 8 To Go
We are a mere 8 weeks away from finishing our second year of homeschooling. I was sitting here, trying to think of something clever to title this post when I realized that – I can not believe how fast this year has gone by! 32 weeks just ptttph! Gone. Unbelievable. We were so ready for our week off last week; it seemed like all we’d been doing forever was school, school, school. Now that I realize how close to the end of the year, my inner Uber-Teacher is panicking just a wee bit!
I know, I know… deep breaths… meditation – these things are my friends.
Now that we’re done with this week’s outings, we will be hitting the books pretty hard starting tomorrow. Not in response to realizing that we’re almost done with this year – this was the plan before I got off on that tangent. Since we started workboxes, the boys have accomplished a lot of work – more than we would have otherwise, I think. I’m happy with their progress, but … break’s over!
We started this next four-week session off with a bang; the Houston Children’s Museum had their homeschool day on Monday. We’ve only ever been once before, and the boys were really little. It’s undergone extensive renovations since we’ve been! I’ve read about them, and heard other people’s tales, and now we have finally gotten to inspect the edutainment goodness for ourselves!
This is PeaGreen back in 2005. He really liked the Mexican Village section. It was one of the first areas that you saw in the old layout. Apparently, it’s still one of his favorites, because he spent quite a bit of time in the newer village area, too. They’ve updated and enlarged it with a school, a cobbler’s shop, a huge fountain, a little mini-bus taxi and a touring bus. It was one of the last things we saw downstairs - the layout is very twisty-turny, which is fun, but makes it so that it’s easy to miss things if you’re not paying attention.
LBB was all about the science this time. They have a mini-lab set up in one section, complete with lab coats and eye protection for the kids with several stations set up for them to ‘work’ at. East station had a concept and lesson with an experiment to do that illustrated the concept - very fun! He very much enjoyed playing the role of ‘mad scientist’ and disappeared a couple of times. I found him both times back in his ‘secret lab’.
That was kind of interesting to me; I would have expected them to be interested in the opposite thing;
PeaGreen is all about the lab and creating things, and LBB is usually more interested in simulated life… they’re full of surprises!
We briefly visited the Kidtropolis city; it’s a kid-sized ‘real world’ where they can visit businesses and service industries and ‘work’ (do assignments for a paycheck, which they can then cash at the bank and go shopping in other areas. It looked really neat, but it was very crowded, so we browsed with the intent of coming back some other time to really sink into that experience.
As much as they enjoyed inside, the hit of the day was, by far, the Flow Works outside – a huge system of water tanks with every possible water ‘thing’ you can imagine or want to play with – rivers that flood, canal locks, several types of dams, plumbing and running pipes, water cannons, boat races, water wheels… they spent most of the afternoon building and playing and learning – I really couldn’t have asked for a better day.
We did miss our friends; it was supposed to be a group trip, but only a couple of other families in our homeschool group were able to make it. It was really nice just to spend the day with ‘only’ my kids. We’re always in groups – which are always fun – but it’s nice to be able to really let the kids follow their own time-table and sink into a game or idea or activity instead of being moved along at touring speed through a museum.
A few more pictures from the museum:
Always with the non-stop, action packed adventure that is our life; today was our homeschool group’s field trip (we go every Tuesday). This week is Fire Safety Week, so we had a tour of our local fire museum and talked about fire prevention.
The fire museum here has a great education department. Since the museum is in what was a working fire station, there are bunks upstairs and fire poles that come down to the main floor – the kids always learn something when we’re there. They have a mini-house set up so the kids can practice calling 911 and fire drills and climbing out of windows; it’s pretty extensive, and really kid-friendly.
We would have park pictures from this afternoon, but LBB banged his head on the car getting in after the museum tour, so we decided to come home instead – which worked out well, because it was beautiful outside and I got to do some fall crafting while the kids whiled the afternoon away doing boy-things. I made lavender/orange peel incense pellets (with the honey method), cedar/pine/rosemary/magnolia smudge sticks and finally finished a broom-making craft with driftwood I found on the beach a few weeks ago. The magnolia/pine smudge sticks smell exactly life fall. They’re easy to make and everything is already dried – pine needles and magnolia leaves are ALL over our yard – just wrap and burn! Here are the other smudge sticks hanging to dry:
Tomorrow and the rest of the week, we’ll be putting our noses back to the grindstone. I’ve updated our workbox system and am still figuring out how the chore chart will be worked in, but expect pictures and details soon.
Warmly,
~h
Confessions About Art and Science
After the upset of last week’s family drama, we’ve managed to get back to a remnant of our normal glorious schedule this week. I know I’ve griped about this before, but why, oh, why must there always be those couple of days of sheer hell to re-establish our normal schedule? We can manage a weekend just fine, and we can usually go back with only a minimum of hassle after a true ‘break’, but when there is an unscheduled interruption, it just throws everything off kilter. As ever, the first day is ok, but the second day… grrrr. ‘It must be Tuesday’ has as much meaning for us as a family as it does for Buffy fans.
Now that we’re back in school, there’s a part of me that really wants us to be where we would be lesson-wise if we hadn’t taken off. In school-school, I’d have said ‘screw you and your make-up work’ and let the kids fall back into place – I’m sure they’d have adapted and glossed over whatever was missed and would probably be none the worse off for it.
However, as a homeschooling family, there is no ‘gloss over’. Ever. We focus on mastery, so when we take off, especially unscheduled breaks, the planner adapts and we pick up where we left off. But the OCD record-keeper in my brain keeps pointing to the planner and screaming, ‘LOOK!! We should be starting lesson 4 this week – not in the beginning of through lesson 3!!!” and having a panic attack. I keep trying to shut her up with coffee, but she’s a persistent little brat. I blame it on not being allowed to have a Trapper Keeper when I was younger.
In amongst all of this internal turmoil comes the dilemma of how to fit in the essential electives. I call them ‘essential electives’ because even though they’re elective (as in ‘not core’), I still think they’re very important… though not as important as the core lessons. But still very important! That said, it’s been a while since we’ve really had time for art work. I confess, I hardly ever don’t always make time for art. It seems superfluous much of the time, and as much as I know, intellectually, that spending time on art work and art lessons is time well spent in rounding our my kids’ education, it seems less important a lot of the time when we’re struggling with mastering basic math concepts or grammar. I can’t possibly be the only homeschooling mom who feels this way, nor, I am sure, am I the only homeschooling mom who constantly finds herself resolving to block out time to spend on art this week. Okay, THIS week. No really, THIS week for sure!
Well, I can now style myself better than you because, though it took everything in me to let the other stuff go for a bit so we could focus on ART, by golly, we did it. As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been art journaling lately, and with all of my art stuff sitting out just begging to be used, I decided to make good use it and of some older books by showing the boys how to make altered book art journals using paint and collage. And it was ever so much fun! We may not have gotten around to finishing the day’s core lessons, but since we’re 4 weeks into school and have done essentially nothing that was pure art, I’d say it was an excellent use of our time.
The boys take piano lessons almost every day with my grandmother (who lives next door), so it’s not as though their lives are devoid of The Arts. We also cover some art history (or at least the evolution of art) in our history lessons and some in our literature lessons, so they’re getting the instructional/academic part to some degree – but the actual hands-on, putting pencil or paint to paper gets lost in the shuffle of ‘real’ school work, I am sad to say. It is my newfound resolve to make time for more creative goodness with my kids over the next few weeks. I’d love to say ‘maybe a little every day’, but that might be a little unrealistic. As much as I enjoy artsy-craftsy stuff, the kids aren’t always interested. So, note to self: Balance, woman! Achieve it!
Science projects also tend to get shuffled to the back burner. Part of it is the time it takes to set up and clean up, but that’s mostly just an excuse and I know it. I have had a book called Jr. Boom Academy for years and we’ve done some of them; most are little projects that are quick and easy and can be done with little to no prep (which I like). We’re not coordinating all of our science projects to our science lessons necessarily, though I am sure at some point they will overlap; ‘getting’ to do these fun little mini-experiments is more a fun reward for a day well-managed, time-wise.
Today, after the majority of our core lessons were complete, we made pseudo-putty from white glue, food coloring and borax. The book called for things like pipettes and measuring; we winged it and it turned out fine. I guess I am going to have to invest in a couple of junior science/chemistry kits if we’re going to persist in this homeschooling business. If you have one that you love, please recommend in the comments. I’ve been looking and haven’t found one that looks ‘right’.
Our homeschool group is planning a trip to the Texas Regional Homeschool Science Fair in Houston in April, not to compete, but to get the kids excited about the process, then our group is hosting our own ‘show and tell’ science fair in June. I’m really looking forward to exploring more kid-friendly projects and working with the boys on the method so that they’ll be prepared for June, and for next year’s Science Fair.
So now that I’ve fessed up about my weaknesses publicly, hopefully that will help keep me accountable. Ask me about this post in a few weeks, lol.
Warmly,
~h
Lapbooks and Other Updates
It’s been a long weekend, I tell ya. I cannot believe that we’re already in the third week of January. Where does the time go? We’ve been home quite a bit lately since it’s so blasted cold outside (the pic is from Park Day last week with our homeschool group. We were FREEZING and ended up at my house instead) and hitting the books hard. We’re averaging a little more than 5 hours per day, which is a LOT of school time for us. We’ll slack off when spring and summer hits, so I think it’ll even out as we hit better weather. We’ve started our history timeline (a scroll version) and have gotten a lot of use from our History Passports – the kids think that is so much fun!
We’ve made several lapbooks over the past couple of months that (shame on me) I’ve been neglectful about adding to our lapbooks list. In a burst of productivity today, I’ve updated my Lapbooks Page and added several of our newer books to the list, including our Martin Luther King, Jr. Lapbook that we did in coordination with today’s holiday.
Most of the newer additions are mini-lapbooks (meaning only one file folder), and after making them I have to say that I am starting to think that less may be more. Some of our books are multi-flap monstrosities that require an instruction manual to get folded back into submission. Not that I don’t love the big, involved ones, but these mini ones are small and clean and easy to get in and out of. They’re ‘faster’ to go though, and I think that appeals to my bouncy boys. I also like that the boys have been able to do more of the smaller books themselves. I admit it; I’m a cut-and-paste junkie, so usually I assemble and the boys add info to the mini-books, then we paste it all together. But they actually made the 10 Things ones on their own and they both turned out really well.
Some of our newer additions are:
- Robots Lapbook
- 10 Things I Learned in 2010 Lapbook
- Martin Luther King, Jr. Lapbook
- The Bossy R Lapbook
I posted a bit about our holiday lessons for MLK Jr. Day on the lapbook page, so go check that out if you have a minute.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been quite busy – I mentioned it before, but a woman in our playgroup thought her kids had chicken pox so I brought the boys over for exposure. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have jumped the gun. I was so excited to have a case of CP locally that I didn’t stop to ask many questions. I’ve been irritated with myself for not confirming that her kids did indeed have chicken pox. Another playgroup mom who also exposed her kids took them in to see their pedi and they were diagnosed with hand, foot and mouth disease. Whether or not the first mom’s kids had it or not is unclear since she didn’t request blood work for an accurate diagnosis and confirmation. Had it been me offering up a disease for exposure, I’d have made darn sure that was for sure what it was before advertising it, but that’s just me. I think it’s also possible that the first mom’s doctor mentioned CP in a list of other things, or that she misunderstood, or that the doctor was just guessing (which would prompt me to find another doc as mis-diagnosis could lead to problems down the line) … in any case, the fault lies squarely with yours truly for not asking more questions. Hindsight is 20/20, and as much as I’d prefer my kids actually have chicken pox, next time, I’ll do more detective work before exposing my bratty kids to someone else’s germy ones. My kids haven’t been sick though, with either HFM symptoms (which would have surfaced at 3ish days post exposure and usually only is symptomatic in younger kids – mine are too old to get it, I think) or CP (which would be about now).
We had a bit of a shock this weekend; my Loverly Husband’s father passed away in his sleep sometime Friday night. He was an alcoholic, and has been off-and-on ill with complications resulting from alcoholism for the past 5 or so years, so it wasn’t a surprise, exactly, but he’d been doing better over the past few months and his death was sudden and unexpected. He and I had our differences, and I have a lot of anger towards him regarding his actions and words over the past few years, but I also recognize that he was sick and broken. I’m incredibly sad for my husband and his family that my father-in-law’s death has so many mixed emotions. I can say one thing, as much as we were at odds, he did love my kids and never treated them badly. He gets a gold star for that. Seeing my husband grieve makes me glad that our kids have each other. He’s an only child and I can’t imagine how that must feel – to lose your parent and not have anyone ‘else’.
In other news, circumcision has been a buzz word in my social circle lately. One of our playgroup moms started an ‘intactivist’ group for locals to discuss genital integrity, but so far it’s more of a choir group – all the moms are already educated on the issue and in agreement that it’s a bad thing worth fighting to abolish. That has its own joys, but I really would love to have a local place to send moms for information on the topic.
It’s always interesting to me to be on this side of the ‘mothering crusades’. I did my time as a staunch lactivist (Militant Breastfeeding Cult – huzzah!) and baby-wearing, co-sleeping, non-vaxer, and I stand by those decisions. They were best for our family and I think that they are the best approach to child-rearing, period. To this day, I haven’t seen any credible research that makes me think that those practices are anything but optimal for child-development. That’s not to say that everyone can do them, or that I am tooting my own horn in saying that I did – more that we all do the best we can with the information we have at the time. Now that my kids are older, I have other issues that I soapbox about – no less passionately – but it’s somewhat odd to me to see people stressing out over things that I am totally comfortable with now.
Back to the circ thing – my boys are both circumcised. It’s a decision that I didn’t know to question when LBB was born, and I really had only just started looking into it when PeaGreen was born. Knowing even half of what I know now, there’s no way I’d make that mistake again. As a mom, it sucks to be wrong. It makes me physically ill to dwell on the thought that I made a decision that has been harmful to my child. But that doesn’t mean that I get to bury my head in the sand and pretend that the decision is right because it’s the one I made. My job as a mother is to do the best I can do for my kids, even if it means admitting that something I did that I thought was good was, in fact, bad. I have seen several moms lately say that they’d make a different decision if they had it to do over again, and I think that hearing a mom say, ‘Yes, I did that and I wish I hadn’t. Here’s the information that helped me change my thinking.’ without being negative or judgmental is SUCH a powerful thing. It goes back to ‘sharing information’ rather than ‘giving advice’. No one wants advice, because advice implies that what you’re doing is wrong. But sharing information… sharing information is vital to supporting mothers, and I think I’ll always want to be part of that community no matter how old my kids get.
Leaving you with this quote from Dr. King:
”In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.”
Now I am off to put homemade yogurt on to set, and get ready for tomorrow’s field trip to the Forbidden Gardens. Wishing you a peaceful evening and a lovely night’s sleep,
Warmly,
~h
Year 2, Day 1 is Complete
Instead of editing the last post to contain an update of today’s events, I decided to go ahead and post again. We started off the day a little later and a little slower than I’d planned, but overall, we had a very promising and gentle first day back. I ended up waking the boys up at about 9, and we made apple scones for breakfast. After we ate, we brought our coffee into the school room to check out their new stuff.
I stacked almost everything that they would be using this year on their desks last night (barring a few as-yet un-purchased books… budgeting constraints, you know). We went through all the books and talked about how they’ll be used, what our schedule will be like for this year and what our expectations are for this year – mine and theirs. They asked questions and had the chance to really flip through and examine the lessons and materials. I like that they were interested in what they’ll be doing. Of course, they can do this any time (the books live on their desks in the red baskets), but I enjoyed going through them with the boys and planting seeds of interest, and seeing them find things that they’re excited about getting to.
We also talked about goals and things we’d like to accomplish this year, and the boys wrote them down in their planners along with a positive affirmation for the day and a look at their STARS planners and how they’ll be used this year. By the time we were done, it was lunchtime, so they ate, then had time to look through all of my books that we’ll be using this year as well as the rest of their workbooks and other materials, and ask more questions. After that, they took off for some outside time, building a medieval hut/trading post out of the remnants of a big wooden puppet show theater that we had when they were itty bitty.
Then they came inside for storytime (we’re reading D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths for fun and Norse Myths for history) and science, then we went off to a chicken pox party. Super-suspicious LBB was less than enthused about having a sucker that a poxed 4 year old had previously sucked on, but did eventually cooperate and a lengthy discussion about Mom’s motives and why having chicken pox is infinitely preferable to vaccinating against them ensued in the car on the way to the library.
After checking out several of the books we’ll be using this week, we came back home, worked on some science vocabulary, had dinner and sent the children off to bed with an early morning of schoolwork followed by a late-morning field trip planned for tomorrow. Speaking of bed, I’m headed there myself. Hope your first day back was lovely and filled with potential!
Warmly,
~h
Lesson Planning 2011 Part 3: The Extras
I know that from the previous posts about our 2011 school year, it looks like there isn’t much room left in the day for anything else. Let me rest your mind a bit by saying that I often over-prepare to some degree because I know that some of the things planned will end up getting scrapped in favor of something that works better. I blog as much for my own reference as to share; in several instances, I’ve planned on using two full courses of study but of course we’ll only need one. We may use bits from each or focus mainly on one or the other, but we will not complete both as full courses (unless we need to go back and remediate). Our daily schedule, while full, is flexible as is my general attitude. As we get more settled into homeschooling, I think it’s natural to step it up more.
Our extracurriculars for this year will be: Foreign Language, Physical Education, Health, Music/Arts/Drama, Triangle Homeschoolers Adventure Club, Community Service, Robotics, CurrClick’s Lego Club, Home Economics, TX Nature Challenge, Houston Wilderness Program, 4H, Science Fair, Summer Reading Club and whatever other interest the kids have that they’re motivated to look more deeply into. Some of this will be continuous and other things will be seasonal.
Many of these ECs will be in conjunction with a core lesson; TX Nature Challenge, JASET and the Lego clubs, for example, are science lessons. The TXNC may also count under ‘geography’ and ‘physical education’, depending on the activity and location as well.
Foreign Language
We started Latin a few months ago and we’ll continue with it this year. I found a great literature-based YouTube Series called Learning Latin with Virgil. It’s based on Virgil’s ‘The Aeneid’ and it’s been really fun and easy to learn. I don’t speak Latin, I was wondering how to work the pronunciation; this video series eliminates that worry. Since we’re doing this video series, I wanted flashcards for the boys to review in other places (so we’re not continually tied to the computer for Latin review) so I made flashcards for Lessons 1 – 4, and for Lessons 3 – 4. I’ll have more later on. I’m cutting them, pasting onto index cards and laminating them. I also found The Declension Song (lyrics), which we’re learning. I’m hoping that will give us a leg up when we start with more in-depth Latin lessons. I also found vocabulary flash cards at Flashcard Exchange. Eventually, we’ll move in to Ecce Romani (exercises and Teacher’s Lounge are good resources). The video series is quite long though, so it will be a while before we’re ready for ER.
Physical Education & Health
Getting exercise isn’t a problem for my kids. Having a PE curriculum is. Do we ‘need’ one? maybe not, but we’re going to put a little more structure into our PE plans this year. Our homeschool group will have a planned ‘PE class’ starting in January, but that’s only once per month. We’re going to use PE Challenge.org‘s website some, and PE Central for more game-oriented ideas. My friends and I are back on the weight-loss wagon starting now, so having to ‘teach’ PE to the kids is as much for myself as it is for them.
We’re also starting a comprehensive sex ed course this year. I found the FLASH Curriculum that is put out by the Seattle and King County Health Department. From what I’ve looked at, it seems to be exactly what I was looking for. It’s geared to 4-6th grade, and doesn’t skimp on sexual health topics. Naturally, I’ll supplement with other materials or discussions on topics that I find appropriate, but as a spine with good pacing, FLASH looks like it will work well for us. I’ve also added the Kids Health.org link to the kid’s computers so that they can look around and have questions answered. The Young Men’s Health and Young Girl’s Health are a bit ‘older’, but I like those, too. The videos, As Boys Grow and That’s a Family were also recommended.
Music, Art & Drama
The Core Knowledge books have a section on Music, presumably for all of their books. We’ll cover what is there as well as music study with Share the Music (grade 4). I also found a really fun set of mini-books on impressionist artists that we may take a week at a time and do a lapbook over the course of a few months.
The boys began formal piano lessons a few months ago with my grandmother who lives next door. She used to play in church when I was little and has really enjoyed teaching the boys. They spend about half an hour, 3 times a week with her in lessons and practice for 15-20 minutes the other 2 days. When we get a decent keyboard, then they’ll practice everyday.
I am also getting the Artistic Pursuits ( book 3) curriculum. It seems to be very highly recommended, and since I like art but know basically nothing about it, I think this will help me out a lot. We’ll also use bits from Masterpiece Art Instruction; their article, Art & ADHD was of particular interest to me, and countless crafts and art projects that tie into an academic lesson will be used, plus holiday and just for fun stuff from That Artist Woman’s Blog. I’d also like to add more theater into our lives; I found some Drama Links from A-Z Home’s Cool Homeschooling that we might be able to incorporate. Our homeschool group is talking about hosting a play in the spring, so we’ll see about that.
One of the things I am most excited about for this coming year is getting the kids more involved in community volunteering projects. We’ve found several organizations that are (HEARTS.org, 4H’s ‘Community Service Projects You Can Do!’, LU’s Cardinals C.A.R.E. Resource List) targeted towards children and homeschooling families; one of our homeschool group’s moms has volunteered to take the lead in planning on organizing events for this year.
TX Nature Challenge is a program coordinated by the TX AgriLife Extension office and the TX Forest Service. They’ve started posting ‘missions’ each year that encourage families to ‘view native wildlife, dip your feet in creeks, rivers, and draw and write about your observations while learning more about nature and science in your neighborhood!’ We participated last year and the missions for 2010 in our area are still up. Though the competition portion is over, we’ll continue working on them in our own time. The Houston Wilderness Program ties in, but is not connected with the TXNC; we’ve been able to do many of the HWP’s activities on the same day/trip as TXNC’s missions.
4-H offers plenty of learning opportunities; everything from lessons in government and parliamentary procedure to agricultural engineering, animal husbandry, archery and photography. I’m quite sure that we’ll find plenty to do with 4H this year, as well as our usual barrage of homeschool group field trips (we have a trip to Austin planned for the summer, camping) & Co-op. We also have other clubs through our group, like the Adventure Club, which is similar to scouting, and we’ll also be involved with the FIRST Jr. Lego League (ages 6-9) & Lego League (ages 9-14) and CurrClick’s Lego Club.
Texas Regional Science Fair – the boys won’t be competing this year, but LBB will be next year. I found several really neat idea books, so between them and the boy’s natural curiosity, I’m sure they’ll find something that appeals. Our homeschool group is planning a group-wide, informal science fair for June. I think the boys will be excited about it.
Changes to the Curriculum for 2011: I know, we haven’t even started and are already tweaking… such is my life! I have omitted Spectrum Science as a possible resource for us this year. I had the chance to really look at it, and basically, it’s a reading/worksheet assignment that will simply not work for my boys. They need more hands-on, and less lecture. I am going to use the E=MC2 Life Science book (it’s a free downloadable version) and if that goes well, I’ll purchase the next set.
For history, I am going to end up using Story of the World. I found the first 3 volumes at Barnes & Noble and got to look over them. I think that the ‘story’ format will work well for us. We’re using Mosaic to start; if that works well then we won’t use the SotW Activity Guide books. If it doesn’t, then I’ll look into them.
And so, with that, our curriculum for next year is complete. I hope that you’ve found something here that you can use; if you find something that you think I might like, please feel free to link in comments below!
Warmly,
~h
Organized Mom is Disorganized This Week
… and by ‘week’, I naturally mean ‘month’. {sigh} I am playing catch-up in a major way… we’re 2 weeks into M6 and I just now printed out my reports for M5. (If you’re just tuning in, I use Homeschool Tracker’s Basic for record-keeping. We break for a week after every 6, and I print report cards because I am an obsessive-compulsive type who likes paper (as well as digital) reports to refer to when the need arises – and it does, often. More on that in a bit. If that’s not your bag, that’s cool – but you don’t get to make nasty comments… unless they’re funny. Funny, I can forgive {wink})
I’ve spent the last 2 or 3 weeks working with SFK and PB&JMom getting our homeschool group’s co-op planned and the calendar set for the next few months (and then coming home and updating the calendar and website). I thoroughly enjoyed myself throughout all stages of this event, but in working all of that, I have neglected my own planning. I have our 6 week arc down, but I do not have daily lessons planned for the entire mod as of yet. My poor lesson planner is nearly blank past this weekend, so I will be sitting down and filling the rest of that out over the weekend, I am sure. After all, how can we learn when we don’t yet know what we’re going to learn about?!
Something I have been meaning to address is, “How do you do everything that you do?”
This is a question I get asked often – or variations of. In the past month, I’ve been called everything from a ‘straight-up overachiever’ to an ‘android’… all in good fun, of course, but the question stuck with me. I’m sure it’s a compliment with a great deal of snark mixed in, but I get asked that often enough to want to answer it. I’m just never sure what to say that answers it without sounding like I’m either defending myself or bragging. So here goes…
First of all, I’d like to say that what I do is in no way a comment on what you do (or do not) do. My friends know this already, but I wanted to clear that up before I went any further. I’m hardly perfect and gleefully submit to pointings-out of my faults, but as Patchfire says in SmrtLernins’ Secular Homeschool Archetypes: The Organized Mom,
Organized Mom doesn’t know how not to be organized…
Truer words, my dear… truer words. I love Smrt Mama’s homeschooling archetypes post. I can easily identify myself. I could front and say that’s not me, but we all know it is, lol.
I don’t think it’s so much about the ‘how’ as it is the ‘why’. As I said, I’m an obsessive compulsive type who likes information in duplicate and in multiple formats (in case of a fire… or hurricane… or alien invasion…y’know. Whatever). I do not like surprises; the rare exception to that is if you can manage to keep me from detecting even a hint of it. Such a feat has only been accomplished once, and all credit to BFF, because she completely rocked that! As you would expect, I am not a spontaneous person. My calendar has actually had time blocked of for ‘something spontaneous’ in the past, I kid you not. This mindset extends to basically every aspect of my life.
That’s not to say that I am not flexible. I am more than willing to change plans most of the time, but I need my hours blocked off so that I know what my options are. That way, I can pick and choose what I really want to do and rarely miss out on something cool. This is the part that applies to homeschooling and why I am the way I am. I don’t want my kids to miss out on a unique learning opportunity. Why spend a week reading about the Civil War when we can go to a Civil War Re-enactment and live it? That’s so much more interesting and makes history tangible. I dig that.
I also know what I want available in our area. Though our individual group is rather small, the homeschooling community in our tri-county area is extensive. With 7 co-ops that I know of (just learned about another one yesterday!), not counting mine, that’s a LOT of homeschoolers. But none of the groups are working together as a team to pull resources that we could all benefit from. Each group individually might host a science fair or an art show – but what if we had enough participants from all the groups for a ‘real’ show or competitive fair? I just see potential know that I want that opportunity for my kids. Surely there must be other homeschooling moms who see this kind of void, and I can’t help thinking that if we all work together, we can fill it with something totally awesome.
I also know what it is that I want for my kids, and to an extent, what I want out of it as well. I enjoy homeschooling. I love researching and finding cool things to dry and make and do. I like messy projects and days where we chuck the lesson plan and snuggle on the couch with hot chocolate and literature (or I will when winter gets here, lol). I love teaching my kids – watching them finally ‘get’ something is absolutely amazing. I love that I get to spend time with my kids – hours per day that would be lost if they were in school-school – every aspect of it, though challenging at times, is right up my alley. Combine that with my personal philosophy about child rearing, which can basically be summed up with, “When you know better, do better”. I want the best for my kids, and I do my best for them. I’m by no means perfect, but I try awfully hard.
I think there’s also a good dose of learning from my elders mixed in with my outlook, too. When my babes were little, I held them all the time. No really. ALL the time, either in-arms or worn on me in the sling. This came about, in part, because I kept hearing my grandmother and her friends talk about how much they wished they had not listened to the ones who told them to put their babies down to sleep or on the floor for ‘tummy time’… about how fleeting the baby days are. I didn’t want to miss out on any of that, so I held them. When I was in school, my mother worked a lot and talked often about how much she’d only ever wanted to be a stay at home mom. Since I am a stay at home mom, I try to enjoy it to the fullest and not take it for granted. These kids grow faster every day and since I can’t slow ‘em down, I’m savoring every single step.
So, back to the organizational stuff, if you’re still wondering why I keep and print records, and perhaps more interestingly, wondering what it is that I do with them, you’re in luck. I print them to file so that I have a back-up if my computers and/or hard/flash drives bite the dust. I use them to balance myself when I’m planning our lessons. I print the Overview and can see how many hours were devoted to which subjects. We’re almost always math and science heavy. Our Reading and LangArts/Grammar are moderate and history is actually pretty light most of the time. That makes sense to me – I know where that comes from. Math is my weakest subject, so I overcompensate to make sure I’m not short-changing my kids on math skillz. Maybe too much. I think science and technology are vital to my kids’ futures and careers, and so they play prominently in our curriculum. I’m much more comfortable with the ‘Reading’ stuff. That’s my strong suit, and so I feel pretty confident in those areas with what we’re doing so I don’t focus as much on those. They are also my boys’ weakest subjects, so I can see that maybe we need to spend more time in those areas.
In a 6-week long mod (usually 24 days of instruction), we range from 67 to 82 hours of ‘classroom’ time. That includes the lessons and field trips that are in my lesson planner and sometimes I also count schoolish things that are done on non-school days (like a field trip taken with our homeschool group on our off week). There are also a zillion ‘other’ things that could be added, but I try to keep what I record just to actual ‘lessons’, if that makes sense. Being able to quantify our time like that lets me sleep at night instead of worrying if we’re spending enough time in school or on schoolwork.
Grades are a little trickier. They have excellent grades – but we don’t just ‘gloss over’ anything that they need to know. If we’re learning a math skill, then we stay on that skill until it is mastered. They may be ‘behind’ what other kids their age are doing, but I feel that mastering a skill now is far better than squeaking by with a ‘passing grade’ now and finding that your foundation is weak later on. And they’re not behind (in case you were wondering).
So anyway… this all sounded a lot better in my head, lol. I’ll stop here, though I welcome questions if you want to know something specific. I hope that this casts a little bit of illumination into the transparent depths of my psyche for you {wink}.
Warmly,
~h
Year Round Homeschooling
When my brother was in elementary school, our local ISD did a trial program with a year-round schedule for one year. The kids loved it but the program was a flop, mainly because of childcare issues; parents found it difficult to find childcare for a week once every 6 or so weeks. The idea, though, seemed brilliant to me and when my boys were old enough to start ‘pre-home-school’, we planned a similar schedule.
Now that we’re homeschooling in truth, it really never even occurred to me to continue with the traditional school schedule we had become accustomed to. Since we were no longer bound by the school’s way of doing things, and schooling all year-long seemed much more logical to me, we switched. We have school throughout the calendar year and take smaller, more frequent breaks between learning periods and it’s working very well for us.
Now, admittedly, I planned our schedule with absolutely no input from ‘experts’ and did zero research on the subject. It merely seemed logical to me based on my experience in public school – spending 3 months in the summer vegging out with no academic concerns and then spending weeks on reviews at the beginning of the school year catching up and re-learning what I’d lost. It seemed that not having that huge long break would eliminate that whole scenario.
Depending on the individual schedule, you might also have more academic days than a traditional school schedule. We don’t, because we only have school Monday through Thursday, which gives us lovely 3-day weekends to enjoy, which works better for us. As long as we have a comparable number of ‘in class’ days, I figure that’s plenty (though we do log school time in our ‘off’ weeks, we just don’t do formal, sit-down work).
Imagine my surprise when I found this article at Summer Matters that wants to Stop Year Round School. Some of the points that the Summer Matters site talks about are family time (though many families have two or are single-parent working and the summer doesn’t change that since the kids are still in the care of others during the day), childhood growth and development (which is currently ousted in favor of having children study more to boost standardized test scores) and the economy of seasonal communities (which really only matters if you’re among the top income brackets – we poor folks don’t really contribute much to the seasonal economy since we’re too busy worrying about budgeting this week’s grocery bill to plan a vacation to a touristy hot spot).
Having said that, there are some points that I agree with. For public schools. Homeschooling is quite different. One of the first points on their list of bad is that year round schedules offer too little, too late in the form of intercessions for students who are falling behind. If you’re talking about an over-burdened public school system where teachers are paid very little to do a monumental job, then yes. I agree. But for homeschooling students, intercessions aren’t needed simply because a parent/teacher is going over each concept and working with his or her student until he or she grasps the concept. There’s no push to keep ‘on schedule’ or worrying about keeping up with the faster learners. Their solution is to have the child attend Saturday classes.
I assert that if the school system can’t get the necessary lessons accomplished and fully educate my child in the 8+ hours per day that they have my child in their care, then an extra few hours on Saturday likewise isn’t going to help – not to mention the fact that by forcing my child into school on a Saturday, that will significantly interfere with our family togetherness time. How does that impact students and families long-term?
When you’re homeschooling year round, the learning never stops. Even if you start out planning to homeschool with more of a traditional schedule, you tend to find that homeschooling eventually starts to become ‘how you live‘ rather than ‘something you do‘. There is a learning opportunity in nearly everything that you do with your children. Most homeschooling parents are extremely conscious of the enormity of the responsibility that is on their shoulders and they take it quite seriously. They actively seek educational application in the mundane activities of everyday life.
The bottom line for this kind of debate is that comparing year round public (and other institutionalized) schooling with year round homeschooling is like comparing apples to oranges. They’re really two separate organisms with enough differing characteristics to make comparing them very difficult. I’m quite comfortable with our year round schedule and I know that this method works for other homeschooling families as well.
I’ve been looking for other year-round homeschoolers and have found a few. I’d love to have a group of homeschooling families who use a year round schedule to show the diversity and ‘how-to’ aspect of year round homeschooling. To that end, I’m creating the ‘Never Stop Learning’ blog ring for homeschooling bloggers who follow a year-round calendar. If you’d like to join in, please comment below and snag a button for your blog. You can link back to this post if you like.
Warmly,
~h
Report Cards!
Today marks the end of our first learning module in homeschooling – and, thanks to Homeschool Tracker’s lovely (and FREE) program, I have report cards to prove it! Yay!! I have found that for lessons that don’t have a point value assigned or easily visualized, a “scale of 1-10″ works well, and I enter all tests 2 times so they count more (I didn’t know that was a thing to do until I read about it; apparently, it’s called “weighting” the grades…handy!).
I don’t remember if I’ve covered this before so if I have, please forgive the lapse in memory. If I haven’t, here’s a breakdown of our schedule. We begin our school year in January, so even though we’re technically in the middle of the 2009-2010 school year according to traditional academic calendarl, my kids aren’t really starting in the middle of the year according to our calendar. We’re using Ambleside Online’s curriculum (link in sidebar) and staging, so we’re officially in Year 1 with them as well.
January 3 (the first Monday), 2010 began the first learning module (“mod”) in our year. I mark off 6 weeks (that’s M1), then we take a one week break. We do another six weeks of school (that’s M2), and then a one week break, and so on for the whole calendar year. That gives us seven 6-week learning modules (instead of only 6 like “regular” school) and we stop at the end of November/beginning of December, depending on the calendar. Then we take the month of December off (except for maybe the first few days or so if the calendar is wonky that year), and begin the next school year in January. I haven’t done the math to figure up exactly how that compares to a traditional academic calendar – we end up with 168 school days per year; I seem to remember our former school’s calendar had something like 77 school days in a year (but that could be off).
Our school week is Monday through Thursday, and we test on Thursdays in Math and Spelling, and we do a mid-mod review at week 3 in Science, Social Studies/History/Geography (combined) and another review at the end of the mod. We go to the Library on Wednesdays and we also meet with our playgroup (weather permitting). Since we have a short school week, we try to schedule field trips for Fridays or in the afternoons so they don’t interfere with “class time”.
I guess you’d say what we’re doing at this point in time is “school at home”, though admittedly with much more flexibility than “real school” (that’s not to say that we will always “do” school this way, but it’s working for us right now, and so we continue). A lot of what we’re doing is oral, or comes from literature instead of text books, so it doesn’t feel like school-in-a-classroom, even though we have a mini-classroom here. I was reading about how some families started out with a dedicated homeschooling room/space and eventually abolished it because “school is life”… while I respect the sentiment, I know that I need to have “school” contained in one area and not taking up half my kitchen, and I definitely don’t want it cluttering up the living room! It makes me a much happier mama to be able to close the door to the school room and have my house company-ready (not that we ever have company, hermit that I am lately). That doesn’t mean that learning stops when the door closes – most of the kids’ craft supplies, and mine, too eventually has migrated or will migrate into there, so we’re constantly using the space for something, and as soon as I get a rug, I’m sure even more fun will be had, strewn across the floor. Today, even though our tushies were cold, we made Valentine’s cards whilst lounging on the school-room floor. It was nice!
So, like I said, today marks the end of our first mod in homeschooling. Even though this mod is short by 2 weeks due to the boys still being in public (well, charter) school for the first 2 weeks of the year, I want to stick with our calendar so I am marking M1 officially
SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED!
{bows to wild applause and whistles of congratulations}
Thank you, thank you… it’s been a journey, but one we were more than happy to undertake. {/smarmy speech}
I just can’t get over how impressive it all looks on paper! Well, impressive to me, at least. In 4 weeks, we’ve had 16 school days, and spent 67+ hours (it varies a bit by kiddo on the minutes) in official lessons. That doesn’t include the extra learning that happens just because we’re an inquisitive family… and just think – that’s 67 hours of almost PURE learning/instruction time – not 5 minutes of learning and 20 minutes of trying to get in a quiet, straight line so we can go to the next classroom/lesson. With only 2 kiddos, my time is pretty evenly divided between them, so that’s nearly 34 hours of one-on-one instruction time that each of my boys has had over the last month. If they were in school-school, taking out 30 minutes for lunch and 15 for recess, that’s 6.5 hours of instruction time per day (and that’s not counting the 5 minute between-class bells – so it’s actually going to be even less time than that). Anyway – with 6.5 hours in her day, a teacher with 25 students (the ratio at my kids’ former school) can give each child, at most, 26 minutes of her time per day. Over a week, that would be a whopping 1.3 hours per week; 7.8 hours per 6 weeks; 46.8 hours per school year. And that doesn’t include making lesson plans, keeping the “class” on-task, lining up, handling discipline issues, sick kids and emergencies, fire drills and other interruptions that plague the classroom teacher daily. Gee, based on that math, I could stop RIGHT NOW and my kids will have gotten almost as much time with their teacher as they would in school-school….
Seeing everything laid out like that is really reinforcing the idea that we made a good choice here. So… any friends out there who wanna make plans for next week since we’re out of school? 
Warmly,
~h
Workboxes, Week 1
I haven’t decided exactly how I feel about them yet. I’m thinking that we’ll give it another week and see how it goes. I am almost sure that the actual ‘box’ part is just adding an extra/unnecessary step; I’ve seen several versions of workboxing mods that use a single box or bin with manilla mailing envelopes to hold the work, and others that use hanging files, covered cereal boxes, and lots of other methods. Since we’re so limited on space, I am wondering if something like that might be better.
I am also going to have to figure out something else to do with the ‘done’ cards or tags… the process we have now feels like a bunch of extra steps that might be eliminated. I saw several people using velcro dots on the fronts of boxes (or on a sheet of paper inside the front of the box) to hold all the tags; I’m thinking that I might want to try that instead. I do like the chore cards though, so I may play around with that and see if I can come up with a better way to manage them. We have a chore chart in the hallway that I made months ago; we may go back to that style for a while.
Overall, I’m not sold on the system for us, but there are some things I like about it, so I’m not ready to scrap it just yet. I thought I’d do a pros and cons list this week and then re-evaluate next week. In the interests of disclosure, I will say that I have not read Sue Patrick’s book (creator of the workbox system), or attended any kind of lecture or class on them. I’ve just been reading about them since last year and checking out all the different mods and tweaks that I’ve seen in blogs and put my system together from what I’ve read. That may very well do Ms. Patrick a huge disservice, so please take my two cents on the matter with a spoonful of salt. {wink} I like the idea of the workboxes system. Ideally, it seems like allowing the kids to be completely responsible for their work makes me happy. I just don’t know how that will work out practically speaking with my kids.
Pros:
August 25, 2011 | Categories: Daily Review, Homeschooling Resources, Homeschooling Tips and Tricks, Lessons Learned, NVC, Product Review | Tags: commentary, homeschooling, homeschooling challenges, lesson planning, NVC, record keeping, schedule, SuperMom Complex, time spent in school, workboxes | 4 Comments »