A Glimpse Into Our Homeschooling Life ...

Last week we signed the kids up to take a Digital Photography Course - one of the ladies in our small town is teaching it and we thought that it would be a great experience for the kids.  They get both classroom time and outdoor skill development time - they told Don and I that the classroom time is a bit boring (they are the youngest in the class) but the outdoor skill development time is really good.

Here are some of the pictures that Josh took:

Josh was trying out the different settings on his camera when he took this picture.
It's my favourite one of all the ones he took yesterday.

This is a picture of the instructors daughter - she was one of the models last night.

This one is part of a bridge.

This is a picture of the barn where they were taking their pictures yesterday.

This one was taken from the instructors vehicle - she took the class out into the country so they could get some shots.

Here are some that Charlotte took:

Trying out the different color settings on her camera.

Inside the barn.

The outside of the barn and a bit of fence.

Beautiful sky shot.

I love the simplicity of this picture.

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Today we ended up stopping school for a while .... another bird hit Charlotte's window - we really need to put some streamers (or something) up so that they quit doing that.

Anyway, Charlotte headed outside to get a closer look at the bird and I headed to her bedroom so that I could see if it was still laying on the ground - it was.  At first glance it looked as if it had died, it was laying belly down with its wings outstretched and it had its face buried in the grass - closer inspection revealed that its chest was moving ... a good sign.

As the kids were looking at it they noticed that it was blinking - Charlotte noticed some red on its throat and she thought that it was blood.  I quickly grabbed my camera and headed outside to take a look at this little bird - which we originally thought was a Downy Woodpecker.  Almost as soon as I reached the kids, the bird tried flying away - it didn't quite make it because it headed right into the skirting on our trailer, landed on the ground and sat there for a while.  I managed to get a few close up pictures of it before it up and flew off into the trees (almost hitting Charlotte on its way).

What we originally thought was a Downy Woodpecker, turned out to be a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker.

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Sunday night we had a friend spend the night, his parents came and picked him up on Monday - while he was here, the kids all went outside and were playing.  Pretty soon, Charlotte came running in the house saying over and over "I need my net, I need my net", she grabs her butterfly net and heads back outside - next Josh comes running in saying "Just need to grab something, Mom", as he rushes past me .... and out the door he goes.  The next thing I hear is a whole bunch of commotion outside which is quickly becoming louder as the kids make their way into the house.

"Mom, Charlotte caught a frog!!!"
"Really, where did she find it?"
"In the grass"

So, the bucket that the frog is in gets put on the table and the camera's get brought out, lol:

Here's a close up of it - Charlotte set it free after we took some pictures of it.  It was really funny, Jake (our dog) was extremely interested in this little guy and he got quite excited when he realized that if he nosed the frog he could make it jump, lol.

This past week the kids and I have been trying to come up with a school schedule for the next school year - granted we are doing year round schooling, but our official starting date (for the new school year) is the day after the August long weekend.  There isn't anything magical about having this as our starting date, it was just something that we started a few years ago ... it worked well for us so we have kept doing it.

Anyway, I have been researching different methods (or styles) of homeschooling to see if I can 'tweak' the way we do our schooling .... I have to say, I really like the RC method - the basis is that the kids are independent in their learning and it focuses on the 3 R's (reading, writing, and arithmetic), which is something that we will be doing ... even though we have a full schedule done up.  Now, knowing how much my kids thrive when they have a school schedule, we sat down and did a rough sketch of how it will look ... there are still a few things that need to be added (we haven't figured out what Charlotte will be doing for Language Arts).  This is what we came up with:

 

Time	Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thurs.	Fri.	Sat.
9:00- 9:30	Bible	Bible	Bible	Bible	Bible	Things to be
9:30- 10:15	Math	Math	Math	Math	Math	done before
10:15- 10:30	BREAK	BREAK	BREAK	BREAK	BREAK	Mom gets
10:30- 11:15	Math	Math	Math	Math	Math	home from
11:15- 12:00	L.A.	L.A.	L.A.	L.A.	L.A.	work
12:00- 12:30	LUNCH	LUNCH	LUNCH	LUNCH	LUNCH	*one math
12:30- 1:30	Read& Report	Read& Report	Free Afternoon	Read& Report	Read& Report	lesson
1:30- 2:00	P.E.	P.E.	*Library	P.E.	P.E.	marked & corrected
2:00- 2:30	Science	Science	*Extra Curricular Activities	Science	Science	*science experiments
2:30- 3:00	Social Studies/ History	Social Studies/ History	-swimming -bowling -etc. -wild days	Social Studies/ History	Social Studies/ History	with Dad.

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It seems like this school year has just been flying by, even though that is how it feels we managed to get a lot of our schooling done - I think this is the first year that I've actually felt like we have gotten a full year of schooling in.  Last year we were on the go a lot with activities in our homeschool support group, this year, however, we decided to stay home more and focus on getting more bookwork done.

On Monday afternoon we had our final visit, for this school year, with our facilitator - she is a wonderful lady and the kids really, really like her.  We have been very blessed with our facilitators - we haven't had one that hasn't really meshed with our family. 

This school year we have been discussing whether we should do year round schooling with the kids - originally we decided that this would not be a full course load all year, math would be the subject that is done all the time (except for Sunday's and Christmas - other holidays were up for "negotiation", lol).  Recently (within the last week or so) Don and I discussed different "systems" that homeschoolers use - some use the semester system, some use the quarterly system and some use the trimester system (this is where they work for three months and get one month off).  I had read somewhere of a family that does school for three weeks and then takes 1 week off - we decided that we are going to try that out.  This option would still give the kids their breaks, but would spread it out throughout the year.  On Tuesday I brought up this idea with the kids and they both agreed to giving it a try - so, that is how we will be working through our school year now.

I still need to do a few things on this blog (to get it up to speed with what we are planning) - take off the things on the sidebar that the kids have finished, add things that they will be doing (math, assigned books that they will be reading, etc.) ... basic housekeeping things, just need to find time to actually do this (and with how long it takes me to update this blog, that could be awhile, lol).

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