We're Not at Home....Schooling - Homeschool Blogger

A Post Inspired By 2 of My Favorite Homeschool Books;

Thu, 9 Nov 2006 18:50:00 -0600

both by Nancy Lande. They are Homeschooling: A Patchwork of Days and Homeschool Open House.

Both of these books actually consist of "day in the life" journal type entries by many different types of families, both in the U.S. and in other countries. They invite the reader to spend a "typical" day in the homes of homeschooling families.

Like most of these families, our days tend to vary widely, as does real life. But there is a general pattern, as I try to maintain a "rut to run in" as suggested by Debra Bell, author of The Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling, another favorite homeschooling book. The idea of the "rut" is not to imply that the days should be boring, predictable in a bad sense, or stale. The idea of the "rut" is to have a basic routine for our days, to eliminate time wasted while deciding what activity, subject, chore or project should come next.

Our routine for this year stemmed from my desire to have more continuity and organization in our days and higher standards for both quantity and quality of learning goals and actual "work" accomplished.. My first goal is to start school each day by 9:00. That goal is not yet fully realized. I have raised little night owls that like to stay up late and sleep in. But it is a goal I am working towards. It depends somewhat on me getting my own rear out of bed before 8:30 a.m.!

A recent, typical, successful, yet realistic view of a school day in our home.

The alarm goes off at 5:15 a.m. (Note to self: find a better station to waken to than one that will rouse you from a deep sleep to the lilting strains of "Crazy Train" by Ozzy Osbourne. Is it my fault they were playing light favorites the night before when I set the alarm only to switch to a bang your head/get out of bed format in the early a.m.?)

Rick hits the snooze button about 4-5 times before he gets up and heads to the shower. When he comes back upstairs and turns on SportCenter, that is my signal to get up, or throw his pillow over my head to drown out yet another discussion of football, baseball, golf ball, whatever-ball. It's about 6:30ish by then.

I head downstairs and let the dog out, and the cat in. Then I let the dog back in and the cat back out. I peer into the fridge and see what possibilities there are for packing Rick's lunch. After consulting him, I pack his lunch. He usually leaves no later than 7.

I sit on the couch and try to stay awake enough to read and pray. I am using a daily devotional that my church provides. I am also reading again A Woman After God's Own Heart, by Elisabeth George. I sometimes jot down scriptures and thoughts I have as I pray and read.

By now its usually about 8, and will have a bit of breakfast and check email and my favorite homeschool sites. Somewhere between 8 and 8:30 I will begin the process of awakening my daughters. Actually getting them out of bed is a different story. I could be more firm about this, no doubt. But since we have the luxury of wakening slowly and gently (most days) that is how I do it. If I am on one of my let's-get-going-earlier crusades I will be more authoritative about it. Truth is my girls would probably not roll out of bed til 10:30-11:00 many days and that just will not work.This is, admittedly, an area that could use more structure and discipline on my part, first for myself and then for my children.

So let's pretend we are all up and awake by 8:30. The rule is if they want to eat breakfast right away, they can. If they don't want to eat just yet, they must make their beds and straighten their rooms and feed pets first. Either way everyone should be dressed (pj bottoms and tshirts are allowed), fed and have made their beds by 9.

We always begin our school day by reading aloud. This is a pleasant (for the most part) way to ease into our academic schedule. We always do Bible first. We are using Keys for Kids http://cbh.gospelcom.net/kfk/home.php, and will also sometimes review AWANA or personally chosen passages of scripture we are memorizing. After the story and scripture reading, I will pray, thanking God for all things and asking his blessing on our family and any other concerns we might have.

After Bible I will continue to read aloud. We alternate days of history and science. Right now we are reading Stories of the Pilgrims, as suggested by Beautiful Feet Early American History. It's a bit young for Katrina, who is 11, but it is a good overview of the daily life and struggles of the pilgrims to get to America and survive here. On the other days we will read aloud from Abeka science. I try to keep the girls on the same subjects in science. If there are corresponding chapters in both girls books (6th and 2 grades) we will read both. We are just finishing mammals, which both books cover. When we start the "light" unit next week, we will be using only Katrina's book since the 2nd grade doesn't have a unit on light.

We continue reading aloud. Right now we are a third of the way into These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We finished Little Town on the Prairie recently and to my suprise Katrina wanted to read the next book in the series. I am pleased because she was not at all interested in the books that tell of Laura's early childhood. Laura is about 16 in the book we are now reading, which is infinitely more interesting to her than the ones where she is 5-10 years old. I hope someday they will read the earlier books as well. There is so much insight into the pioneering life in the earlier books. Katrina is attending an 1880's schoolhouse this month. She will spend an actual authentic school day there,dressed as an 1880's girl, eating lunch from a tin pail, writing on a slate and participating in an old fashioned spelling bee. Because we are reading the Little House series, she has a good idea on what things were like back then.

All this reading together snuggled on the couch takes about a half hour. My voice can't go much longer even with Katrina reading part of the science. During science and history Jadyn (7) will often play quietly with a small toy or else try to escape only to be ordered back to listen. She often appears not to be listening but then will ask a pertinent question while I am reading or right afterwards. As long as she is quiet I will usually let her move around, draw or play with a little toy, to occupy her hands. It seems to help her concentrate.

More on the rest of our school day later.

Fridays in Our Home (School)

Fri, 3 Nov 2006 11:47:00 -0600

I tried something new when I scheduled our homeschool weeks this year. Last year I noticed that by Friday, things around the house were starting to deteriorate, just in time for the weekend. We were doing chores daily but the deep cleaning and straightening were not up to par. So I would either skimp on the academics to make time for catching up around the house, or unenthusiastically make a list to do on Saturday of routine chores vs projects and family activities, our preferred way to spend our only truly free day. I am a person that hates to start a home project when the daily chores are not done. I also don't like to go out when things are not caught up around the house.

So this year I scheduled Friday to be a *light* academic day. We do our Bible lesson, and read aloud together. We do a bit of math and some independent reading and such and we are done! That gives us the rest of the day to clean and organize and prepare for the weekend, and sometimes go to the library or park. Or sit at the computer and blog

My goal is to complete *school* in the morning and then quickly whip the house into shape for the weekend. That leaves the afternoon to do other things.

Why did it take 6 years of homeschooling for me to figure this out?

Note: This only works when I actually do it. Right now I am getting nothing done.

A "Slogging Through" Day...

Wed, 1 Nov 2006 19:20:00 -0600

We've had a couple weeks here where school was not really up to par. We've just been "getting it done."

My daughter's best friend is moving away this weekend. 7 hours away. Her mom happens to be a very close friend of mine. We are, in essence, both losing our best friends.

In light of that we have been spending more time with these friends, or at least my daughter has.("My" friend has turned into a packing-to-move-house-is-on-the-market maniac :) Daughter's friend is also homeschooled and we have taken advantage of that by taking little day trips and spending as much time together as possible before they leave. I have been scheduling, and doing all academics, but have not been very motivated to do more than the minimum. Just enough to count it.

Today, I planned for more than we have been doing. And doing it all was hard. After feeling like a slacker mom for the last 2 weeks, today we put our nose to the grindstone a bit more. It was like exercising after a 2 week break. (maybe-I don't exercise that much) I didn't OVERdo it, I just didn't UNDERdo it. It seemed to take forever, we weren't into it til about halfway through. We "slogged" through the subjects. Somewhat sluggishly at first, feet dragging. But as we went on, our higher goals inspired us. OR at least inspired me, and fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately, from my children's point of view) my ambitions are their goals, at least for now. Finishing was its own reward. The feeling of accomplishment, of a productive day of learning, was motivating in itself.

My dad used to say "You have to do it, so do it right and get it done." Schooling at home will not always be fun (I bet you all just shot straight up and said "I did not know that!")

Someday, I may just be able to come right to the point without pontificating on it quite so much. As I concluded the thoughts above, a quote from a far more eloquently spoken and less verbose person than myself came to mind. So I will leave you with that.

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why I Love Homeschooling-Today..

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 18:21:00 -0500

If you have been homeschooling for any amount of time, you know that rough days are part of the package. They are gonna happen, period. You will oversleep, the kids won't want to get up, the phone won't stop ringing (and you won't stop answering it), bad attitudes will reign (yours and theirs), there will be sickness, boredom, restlessness, the cat will throw up on the rug, sisters will fight like...sisters (that want to throttle eachother), and your 6th grader will still insist on reading aloud as though there were no such thing as puctuation. Just roll right on past those commas and periods. Your second grader will be unable to retain the fact that 6+4 is the same as 4+6 and that looking at the first letter of a word and running down a list of words that begin with that letter is not an acceptable speed reading method. That new curriculum you just spent beaucoup bucks on hasn't made history any more thrilling than the $5 reading guide you already had. Assignments that should have been completed by lunch are dragged out til their presence on the table is threating to push back dinner til who knows when? And oh yeah, what is for dinner anyhow? You will wonder some days, in desperation, if there are any redeeming qualities about a Sponegebob marathon that you could count for something, because it's raining, and you are fresh out of creative ideas to keep them occupied.

Sometimes our family experiences all of these things, or similar things, in the same week, and more often in the same day. They are a part of homeschooling that cannot be separated, because they are intregal to life. Homeschooling settles us squarely in the middle of life and the real world, which some insist we are avoiding. Ah, would that we could, avoid the annoyances of life and the real world. But no, as aggravating as all of the above can be, I would not really want to skip right over these trials and frustrations. How much sweeter they make the good days (and moments). And honestly there are few days that are completely trial ridden or completely uptopian...for that is not how the real world operates. Days on end with no challenges or frustrating moments would indeed ill prepare anyone for life in the real world. Being at home all day with children, teaching them everything from math to manners, grammar to Greek, writing to worshipping does not lend itself to a constant idyllic existence. But that isn't really the goal anyhow. At least it's not our goal.

A few of my favorite homeschooling moments from today:

Letting the girls sleep in after a later than usual bedtime last night. Late bedtimes and sleeping in are not good options when you are in government school.

My 7 year old daughter and I taking a walk to identify leaves while her older sister had her piano lesson. Me, carefully trying to identify trees by their leaves and bark and choosing a sample leaf from each tree; while 7 year old runs wildly from tree to tree grabbing handfuls of colored leaves, presenting them joyfully to me to "take home for our clection"! (collection)

My 11 year old daughter begging me to read a chapter aloud with her in science (A Beka, yes! We have a winner!) and learning more than we ever thought we could or should about domesticated and wild canines. Cuddled up on the couch the whole time. Practicing for an old fashioned spelling bee in an 1880's one room schoolhouse in November.

Same 11 year old daughter reading to 7 year old from a chapter book based on a kid's movie, after I refused. (OK-I was driving and even if I wasn't I detest children's books based on Disney or Pixar movies, although I often like the movies) 11 year old patiently reading aloud 3 chapters of this book, while little sister sits in the back seat talking to her rubber snakes and lizards, having quit listening after the first 5 minutes.

The excitement and pride of an emerging reader who is finally starting to "get it". Smiles, hugs, great job stickers, and requests by the new reader to "read it to you again, Mommy"!

Reading aloud a letter written by 11 year old (as a writing assignment) demanding "my monkey back"! when she really meant to demand her "money" back! :~) from an errant mail order book company. Laughing uproariously with her over it. "I want my MONKEY back"!!

Going to the playground to meet friends only to be stood up (they forgot, it happens :~) and having a great time just playing together. Pretending to eat cedar chips at 7 year olds "fast food restaurant" under the slide.

Snuggled on the couch, praying for Poppy (who just had his gallbladder out) and thanking God that he is home now and all better, and for all of our family. Thanking God for the rain, the autumn, our many friends, and all of his blessings, which could never be completely listed, including sharing our days, the good parts and the hard parts.

So yes, I love homeschooling today for all these reasons and tomorrow I will love it for the same reasons and a bunch of new ones too. It will also make me crazy for reasons new and old. That's life!

Who was it that said "I can't go forward and I dare not go back?"

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 20:31:00 -0500

I think it was Black Beauty, in his memoir by the same name. Anyhoo...

A few weeks ago I was gung ho to start the new school year. Man, I was an organizing, list producing, lesson planning, excel spreadsheet making person. I was ready to go.

Only thing was, I didn't have all of my *stuff* yet, meaning I was camping out by the mailbox just waiting for the Abeka fairy to bestow quiz and test books on me. Finally everything came. I eagerly added columns to my spreadsheets detailing just how this new booty would be added to our already about to bust schedule.

And then I lost it.

We are supposed to start Monday. I am not ready and I don't wanna. Foster baby has a doctor appointment at 2:00 that day. So we have to stop school by 12:30 to get ready and leave by 1:30. I still have lots of photocopies to make and not much time over the weekend to do it. I *can* be ready but I have lost my mojo.

So in conclusion, I don't know if we are starting Monday or not. We'll see.