I have taken several pictures this month in order to blog and I have not sat down to work on them. This weekend I intend to catch up. We officially completed 12 weeks of school today. We are on track in all but one of our read alouds and I plan to read some extra in order to not get behind on our next term. The girls are either right on track with their subjects or a little ahead. It feels good to finish the first 1/3 of the year and not be behind.
We have had our good days and bad days but over all I think we are getting back into the groove of homeschooling. Sarah was in a private school for 2 years so there are a few habits that we are having to undo. The attitude of just doing enough to get by and finishing as quickly as you can are our two main hurdles to cross.
Keep watching I have several post coming. In addition to my post I am going to be posting some pictures that Rebekah posted on her Facebook about her Bible study of Revelation.
Well we finished the week and the girls completed almost all the work that I had scheduled. So thing are looking up and they are doing better. We received our books for Science Notebooking and Geography (for everyone) and Texas History (for Rebekah) this week so we were able to add these into the schedule at the end of the week.
Sarah was able to complete the work for the week early because she was. invited to two birthday party sleep overs. Because school has no started for her friends it does not interfere with there school. She left yesterday to go to the parties across town.
Since Sarah was gone Rebekah and I had a easy day. My goal on Friday is to have a light day any way. Rachel and Joshua both have half days on Friday so I don't want to homeschool in the afternoon other than our nature study.
I am just happy to still be on track and a little ahead is some areas since we did a few days of school work in June. I know that the frustrating days will come but I want to keep them to a minimum.
Today has been one of those frustrating days. Nothing seemed to go as I had planned.
The day started off good as Joel and I walked Joshua to his first day of school. But when I got home it continued to go down hill. We were home by 8:00am but no one was ready for school. It has hard to get the two girls up. They didn't seem to want to do anything. I wanted to pull my hair out. I had to leave at 11:15 to go with Joel to get Joshua and when I came home not much had been done (if anything) on the workboxes. It was like pulling teeth all day to get things done. I had thought that with Joshua gone all morning it would be easier to get our work done. But no. And did I had at 6:00 we still had workboxes that were not completed.
I sat down and wrote out a list of Family Rules that I am going to inforce so that tomorrow might be a better day.
1.Get up each morning in time to do chores and get started with school by 8:00
2.Do your chores on the list before school time.
3.Be on the couch with a smile and anything that you want to work on during read alouds by 8:00
4.We will begin each day with read-alouds and then you are responsible to complete your work boxes.
5.In order to get my help, present a “work with Mom” card to me and then I will either begin helping or I will give youa “wait” card.
6.If you are too noisy I will give you a “quiet” card. If I have to give you more than 2 quiet cards a day you will give up your free computer time for that day.
7.I will be available until 4:30 to help with work boxes after that you must work alone.
8.During school time is not the time for conversation. You need to be quite and do your work.
9..After doing work with Mommy return to the table. All work must be done at the table.
10.Be in bed by 9:30 each night. So you will be ready to get up when called in the mornings.
I have really found it to be difficult for Sarah to work on her own. She has been in an American school for the last two years and she has forgotten how to work independently without someone spoon feeding her. So I know that I have a challenge on my hands. I want them to have a fun day but they need to re-learn how to focus and not be distracted.
Well we are pressing on. I will let you know how things are going.
Because of the price of plastic containers here in Brasil I had to use an available option here. I had a friend in the states send me some velcro so I was able to label the boxes with numbers. I also downloaded the forms from the Workbox web site. Rebekah's boxes
Sarah's Boxes
Sarah's no. 1 box ready to be completed (and her cinnamon toast for breakfast)
Because Rebekah wants to finish her 7th grade work by February her day has been longer than her sister. Sarah was finished by 3:00 but Rebekah just finished around 5:00pm. So I am going to have to look at her work and see what I can do to reduce some of her other work.
Our day began with a little instruction of how things work. I then read our read alouds and actually stayed on schedule. We did not get as much completed before lunch as I thought we would. They only had 4 or 5 boxes (out of 12) completed when we sat down for lunch. I had a couple of times when they were both needing my help at the same time and they wasted a little time while I was trying to figure out how to help them as quickly as I could.
I think this would be much easier it I had been able to start this system when they were younger. But I still think that it is a system that will work great once we get thing going.
I can´t believe that I am actually excited about one of my children going to school!!
But here is the situation. We have been in Brasil for almost 2 years and Joshua wants to learn Portuguese but he needs more exposure to the language. He already understands a lot of Portuguese but he just needs to speak it. He needs to hear it on a daily basis. We have talked about having friends come over and play but all of his friends at church are in school all morning. So our solution is to send Joshua to school, a Brasilian Christian school. He will start in the middle of the Kindergarten year, the schools run from Jan - Dec. here. But we have asked them to put him in the class with the younger students. Some of them are still 4 and there were some boys that are his size that are just like him (a little immature, just turned 5 and such) He will go from 7:30 am to 11:30 am. The school told us at that age they don´t do writing and reading. So that falls in line with my goals for him.
In the afternoon we may do some of the school work that I had planned but not all. Since we plan to be here in Brasil for the next 18 years or so we want him to get a good foundation. A year ago he was not ready for a situation like this, he would have cried just talking about it but the time is right. He is so excited. The plans are to start him in August after the July vacation month here in Brasil. We have plans to travel some ourselves. I will take the camera and try to post some of the sites that we come across.
I´ll keep you posted on his progress and what I decided to do in the afternoons. Nature study is still on my list but I may delay some of the other things.
Since I did not start homeschooling until February we only had about 12 weeks of school. After trying to decide what to do in this short amount of time I decided to do the first Term of Ambelside year 4. We are so excited that we finished this term last Friday and also finished some of our books this week. We finished Poor Richard and Robinson Crusoe. We have all our books for Term 2 & 3 and we will take a couple of weeks off and then start back with our core subjects, Language Arts and Marth and Science. Sarah will be joining us after she finishes this next week, her last week at the International School.
Rebekah is determined to make up the year she lost by going to School (They held her back at the International School). Her reading has improved so much this school year. She has been reading her 7th grade Literature book to me out loud these last two weeks and she is doing great. I am very proud of her accomplishment. We have a schedule to complete all her work by the end of January and then we will start her 8th grade work.
When I first started Homeschooling in 1999 the first book I read was Sally Clarkson´s Understanding the Wholehearted Child. I loved the book. She quoted Charlotte Mason´s writings a lot in this book. This made me eager to read Charlotte´s book. This started my journey toward a Charlotte Mason Education for my children. In 2003 our Mom´s group in Shelbyville started a reading group on Karen Andreola´s A Charlotte Mason Companion. So I started reading that book and even though the reading group dissolved before we finished the book, I went ahead and finished the book and I loved her ideas and philosophy of education.
In 2006, I was looking for a way to homeschool closer to the way Charlotte Mason taught and I came across Amblesideonline. While looking through the files I found the original Charlotte Mason Home Education. I started reading it back then but I never finished it. I picked it up a few months ago and I have started reading it again.
This is such a meaty book. This is a quote from Charlotte Mason's book Home Education. Here she is talking about a mother:
"She must ask herself seriously, Why must the children learn at all? What should they learn? And, How should they learn it? If she take the trouble to find a definite and thoughtful answer to each of these three queries, she will be in a position to direct her children's studies; and will, at the same time, be surprised to find that three-fourths of the time and labour ordinarily spent by the child at his lessons is lost time and wasted energy."
In some way I have asked my self these questions many times. I have changed some of my answers over time. When I started out home educating I followed the advise of a seasoned homeschooler in choosing my curiculum. Over time I have abandoned most of those book and moved to a more pure Charlotte Mason style with living books. The tried and true books have stayed. For us it has been the Making Math Meaningful curiculum and Getty Dubay Handwriting. We have continued to read living books which we began when Rachel started school.
We have such a long way to go to be 100% Charlotte Mason but we are so much closer now than we were when we started 10 years ago. Since starting Ambelside we have add nature study, artist and composure studies and hymn and folk songs studies. We were doing artist studies before but we were not focusing on one particular artist.
I am really excited about starting our new school year in July. I think this will be our best school year yet. I think the girls are looking forward to it also. All our books are purchased and have arrived (with only a few that will be brought this summer.). We are ready to go!
Since Joshua is turning 5 later this month I have started thinking about what direction to go with his formal education. I have always thought and believed that I would not start his Kindergarten year until he is 6. But lately I have been reading a lot about what Charlotte Mason taught about what to do with children in the years before formal education begins at at age 6.
I have decided to do some work with him each day. It will probably only be about 45 minutes to 1 hour and then he will be doing a lot outside. He is already learning a lot. He has learned to count in English and Portuguese (1-10) and he knows his colors in both languages. I want him to continue to learn in both Languages. He likes to sit down and do some craft work and he like to build things with our tanagrams and counting bears and a small set of wooden blocks.
So this is my plan.
For Math I am going to use Saxon K and take it slow
For Pre- reading we will be learning the letters and their sounds in English and maybe in Portuguese ( I'm not sure how that will work). We will use Color sheets and letter tiles and as I continue to read Charlotte Mason I may come up with more Ideas.
For Handwriting we will do some simple activities but not a formal curriculum.
For Bible we will continue to work on his AWANA Cubbies book and memorize verses.
For Art we will be doing that with Sarah and Rebekah (Rebekah may be leading this for me)
For Nature study we will continue the One Hour Challenge. I also will be giving him some outdoor activities so he can spend time exploring outside not just playing with the cat and kittens all the time.
Slowing increasing things with him will probably work best. He is one that does not like change. So gradually adding activities will be good for him. If his interest are stronger in one area over another we may concentrate in that area. I will keep you updated in what we are doing and how things are working.
Well that is the plan right now. I like to start planning in advance because sometimes my schedule changes 4 or 5 times before school begins. We are planning to start the middle of July.
Since we school when my children in the International School have classes April has been a light month. Actually we only went one full week in all of April (that was the last two days of March and 3 days of April. Then we were off for Good Friday then the week after Easter and then two days the following week This last Friday was Brazilian Labor day so we did not have school.
Next week we dive in for four weeks straight(with no breaks). We are finishing school on Monday June 1st. My girls in the international school will not be finished until June 5th but they will be having half days most of the week.
So even though we will wind down the First of June we will only take a short break and start up again. Sarah will join us then. I´m counting the days.
Rebekah's boxes
Sarah's Boxes
