Wow. I have not had time to check in here!

It is crazy busy around here lately, but mostly I guess because of school. I'm having a hard time adjusting to trying to teach more than one kid - more than one level. I have a hard time finding time to work with the kindergartners at all. Ever.

Sad. I know. It shouldn't be like that. And they're still getting SOME things in, because when something comes up in daily life or conversation, I pull as much into it as I possibly can. And it's working well. My 5yo is asking and interested in learning about phonetic blends, and has begun to understand that not only do letters make sounds, but sounds make words. He's being able to take apart simple words, like "cat" for instance, and tell me what they start with and what they end with. He's doing this on his own, without prompting from me. The vowel sound in the middle of the word is a little harder, but he's obviously working on understanding that, too.

And there's more. He picks up little things here and there all the time. He attends our cub scout meetings, and picks up quite a few things there. We did food guide pyramids with the Tigers recently, and he participated in that activity. And repeated it at home. Twice.

So he gets things. I just feel bad about not being able to sit with him and work with him to help him go as far as he COULD if I had more time to sit and do it with him. Know what I mean?

Illuminations is going pretty well. We've tweaked it so that we have one day of just science, read-alone time, and a unit workbook of choice. (Yes, my 9yo son asks to do these. We print off the freebie of the week from SchoolExpress, or I go back in my files and pull one from earlier in the year that we didn't do yet. Or I'll find something of interest on a holiday or event - like the election coming up soon.)

We had a week where I was sick a couple of days, and a week where ds9 and dh went camping, so we didn't get much done either of those weeks. We should finish that one week that we've been working on for three now by Saturday. LOL S'okay, we don't usually school from about mid-October through December in the first place, but since we took almost 3 months off during the summer - which we don't normally do - I wanted to get as much done this holiday season as possible. I need to quit stressing over it.

Thanks for listening, and check out my new weight loss blog that I just added tonight! Well, there aren't any posts yet, but check it next week! LOL

Okay, so I'm not being great about remembering to blog here. The plan is to blog at least twice a week, once at the beginning to say what's planned and once at the end to say how it went. I figure on sticking an extra blog in there from time to time to talk about specific things, like the beta language arts program we're using, etc etc, so that my total blogs are about 10 a month. We shall see.

The main reason I haven't blogged much this past week is that we're having a bit of a hard time getting back into school. For my K-ers, I need to get to the library. But, all our current cards are blocked or expired. I can get a new card for my 5yo, but my driver's license isn't current and so dh needs to go with him... or I need to go renew my license. (Duh.) But dh is working lots, opening a store, and just flat hasn't had time. Hopefully we can go on Tuesday (they're closed over the weekend and Monday for the holiday).

Then my 9yo is working on his stuff. We're using a beta language arts program put out by Bright Ideas Press, the publisher of the Mystery of History and Christian Kids Explore science series. The program is called Illuminations 1 and it schedules several existing curricula (grammar, writing, vocabulary, etc), and tweaks several of them to fit in nicely with the history studies. It also schedules appropriate readers, and provides study guides for them. Awesome! I'm excited! But we covered through lesson 16 of MOH already, so this is month repeat for us. Not that we couldn't use the review since we took off for the summer, but still. A little hard to get motivated when you're mostly just reviewing!


SO. Hopefully in a couple of days I can post about our K themes and what we're doing there, and more about Illuminations and how we're loving it! We've used it for a week now, but didn't get to the literature portions and are still waiting on a book here and there. And, like I said, we're quickly reviewing the history lessons that take all week on the schedule, because we've already covered them. It's a fantastic program and I can't wait to get to next month when my family can get the most benefit! We'll still be using Winter Promise's Quest for the Ancient World, but I don't see a way to make that schedule work when the Illuminations schedule is only put out monthly. We'll use it for activities and extra reading here and there. :)

Maybe I'll post an updated curriculum list this week. :) I'll let y'all know how it goes! TTFN

Okay! We started school on Tuesday as planned, and we got to do most of the things we'd planned to do (as mentioned in my previous post).

First, we hunted for our school supplies:

We found them in all sorts of places, including in our dresser drawers!

Then we decorated our supply boxes, to have a place to store them:

Then, we went to our aunt's new apartment to go swimming. Only, just as we turned the corner to get to the apartment, it started raining. It rained for a whole hour, all of the time we'd allotted to swim! We were so disappointed. Luckily, our cousin had some bubbles and we played with them. Silly Mom forgot the camera, though!

When we got home, we painted pictures and made our own story books:

We read some books that are part of our first kindergarten theme: The ABCs. And then we had some fun! Plus, Mom forgot to take any pictures of ds9! Oops. I can't do this. Can you?

We got in plenty of map work (our treasure map was a blueprint of our actual house, and had X's to show where to find supplies), visual discrimination, large motor skills, fine motor skills, literacy, reading, and some great cuddle-time. Yes, thanks, we actually DID do school today. ;-)

I'll post tomorrow about our first full week! See you then!

Hello! I'm back!

A quick update:

At the end of May, my sister-in-law and her husband and two children moved in with us. It was supposedly to be for only 2 or 3 weeks; I did know better than that all along. We soon discovered that having that many people and that much noise was simply TOO much for my ds9, who is already easily distracted by noise. SO, for the first time ever, we took the summer off of school. SIL and her family finally moved out the second weekend in August (ugh), and we've taken a week off to just *breathe* a little. Dh has been working like a dog, though, with his work. One more week of that and he should be good until November, when the franchise opens yet another store. ;-)

SO. We are starting school tomorrow, Tuesday, August 19!!! We plan to work on a 4-day week, Tuesday through Friday, with Saturday being our "make-up" day to finish any work not completed during the week. This is, of course, a trial run of this schedule, and if we find ourselves ALWAYS having "make-up" work, I will change the schedule to 5 days in the first place. Our Mondays are taken up with cub scouts, and that's my heavy housework day, and usually our family outing evening of the week. Sunday is the Lord's day, of course!

What will we do for our first day of school? Well, let me tell ya!

First, we're going to do a scavenger/treasure hunt for our school supplies. Ds4 and ds5 will have treasure maps with red X's to mark where their supplies hide; don't worry, they'll still have to hunt a little when they get to the right spot! I've hidden supplies behind doors, inside drawers, and even in not-so-plain sight. They'll love it! I made little picture books for them, with a drawing of each school supply and a label and blank box to check off when they find it. For ds9, he won't have a treasure map nor a picture checklist; he'll have a text list of supplies (along with the number of each item that is hidden), and he will just mark them off as he finds them! No hints for him - a true scavenger hunt.

After we find all of our supplies, we will decorate the boxes to store them. I didn't buy boxes this year - ds9 will be using a large art supply box from RoseArt, and the two littles will be using some discolored Tupperware (from a house fire, years ago). We'll break out the Sharpies and the stickers, and fun-up these boxes!

Then it will probably be time for lunch. Following lunch, assuming it's not raining, we'll deck out in swimming suits and sunblock and head to SIL's apartments to go swimming. It's a good 30 minute drive, so our tummies will have time to digest. ;-) We'll hang out for an hour or two before heading back home.

We still have to do something that actually qualifies as school! So, when we arrive home, we'll break out the books. Ds9 will read in his new Roald Dahl book, James and the Giant Peach, and I will read aloud to the two youngers who will then make their own books - complete with colored illustrations. At request of ds5, we will then get out the Math stuff. I know I have strange children, but they really love the MUS blocks and workbooks! So we'll do a little math, and then - at the request of ds4 - we will spend the rest of the afternoon blowing bubbles, and call it a day.

I hope to update tomorrow night with pictures! Happy not-back-to-school, everyone!!

Now that ds9 is getting bigger, getting older, and getting BORED with his school, I've decided that it's time to let him have more input on how we cover materials.

Not WHAT we cover, mind you. Only how we cover it.

You see, we've had some issues lately with him not completing all of his work. Now, I've re-evaluated time and time again how much work he is doing, and let me assure you - he is NOT trying to do too much in a day. Until our most recent schedule, I've been overly stressed that he's not doing ENOUGH.

He was skipping entire subjects for weeks at a time, because he'd leave it for last to do, etc etc. He's just not disciplining himself to get it all done, and I've let him get by with it TOO long now.

In addition, I've recently realized that, although he does function best with a loose but regular schedule, that schedule needs to change every 6-9 months or so. After about that long of a particular schedule, he gets bored with the format and needs it changed up to a NEW regular schedule.

Fine. Today, I showed him our new plan for history. We've been using the Mystery of History, almost exactly as it's written and supplementing with some Usborne and Kingfisher, a lapbook here and there, and some good literature from the book list in the back. He likes it okay, but isn't impressed. We now have the Winter Promise guide for Quest for the Ancient World, which is more laid out with its literature approach and includes more hands-on projects. Telling him about it, I could see his eyes light up. I think part of that is the schedule; he's the type to love checking things off a list, and part of it is the certain inclusion of projects.

He confided in me that he hates his vocabulary book. I've just been handing it to him and having him go at it. I guess I need to pick up the teacher's guide and actually dig into it with him, make it come alive for him. I'll do that. He also told me that he LOVES the R&S grammar and can't wait for us to get the next book! *WOW*

He asked me to include lapbooks (which we already do some in history) in his reading studies as well. I recently gave him the freedom to pick whatever book he wants. (My criteria will be that it be actual literature and not junk - right now he's into the Chronicles of Narnia series and I have a feeling that The Hobbit and Harry Potter are not far behind.) He told me that he'd like to do a lapbook with his literature choice, and he'd like to put something into his lapbook for each chapter he reads. So I'm on the hunt for how to put together a literature lapbook without buying a project pack for every book he reads. LOL

He likes how we're doing math, our foreign languages, art (lapbooks again for now), music (with the soon-to-come addition of actual piano time). Bible is incoporated with his history studies, and handwriting is worked into his daily warm-ups with journaling. (We're working in some American history with his warm-ups as well, utilizing notebooking there which is new to us.)

So. We're reworking things here, and will continue schooling hard through the summer. It's south Texas, folks. It's too hot to do anything else! ;-)

I just realized that I forgot to blog yesterday! It's okay; my husband was off of work last night and we usually spend those evenings together, so I've got a good excuse!

I was going to blog about cub scouts yesterday, since we had a field trip with them, but I'll just do that tonight instead. K? :D

My husband and I recently started our own cub scout den. My oldest son (9) has been involved with cub scouts since he was two years too young; I have a brother who is only two years older than my son and so ds has been going to scouts since my brother joined in the first grade.

When we moved to Austin last year in January, ds9 joined a local pack and has been participating with them for a year now. It got to where our schedule just didn't fit, and neither our den nor the other den was able to move their meetings. We met with the age group up's den for a little while, but they weren't doing much that ds could earn credit for, and it was mostly sit and listen time which was boring for him.

All the while, since we've moved, dh has been disappointed that he's not been able to be more active with the scouts. He was the one to go to the meetings and such before we moved, but his schedule here just didn't allow it. In April, his third store opened and dh is no longer on the actual schedule. Instead, he's to supervise over the various stores and since he's only got the 3 right now (he'll eventually have 15 stores, with 3 helpers over 5 stores each) his schedule is pretty open and lenient.

Anyway. All of last year, we used the scouting program for our science curriculum. Probably didn't cover everything we could and should have, but what we did cover my son knows from top to bottom, deep and wide. He earned a lot of recognition for all that he was doing, and was often disappointed when we couldn't participate in extra activities that were in contradiction to dh's work schedule. Plus, the pack just doesn't have a lot of things they do. Busy parents, I suppose.

So, we jumped in and decided to start a den of homeschoolers. It is a multi-aged den instead of being segregated by age like then dens usually are. We encourage siblings to come and to participate, and even are making arrangements so that dads can participate monthly. We plan to be very active, especially on the service side of things, and to give the homeschooling boys plenty of opportunity to TRULY do their best in the program.

This past month, we've dropped quite a bit of money for uniforms, training, and art supplies, but it's totally worth it. My almost-5yo is begging to be a Tiger, but understands that he must wait one more year. My 3yo, at the museum yesterday, was standing near the boys and they were all being rowdy. My dh (the leader) said, "Signs UP!" and even my little guy, without turning around to see the other boys, knew what this was and threw his two little fingers in the air and was quiet.

How appropriate. I love this program! And it's a good thing, because it looks like we're in for the long haul....

I just thought that an appropriate first week post might be to include what a day of schooling looks like for us, and what materials we use on a regular basis. Does anyone care? LOL

We wake up around noon each day. We get up and get dressed, and I start on lunch while I check email. Sometimes ds9 works on a school subject, or sometimes he unloads the dishwasher or clears the table. (Hopefully I cleared the table the night before, but that doesn't always happen. LOL) It takes us about an hour from the time we're up and around to the time lunch is done and put away so that we can begin with school.

My younger two (3 and almost 5) usually go outside or into the garage to play for a little while, as I get my ds9 started on school. My middle son will be 5 next week, and is very excited about it! We will begin school with the younger ones either the next day, or the next week. Look for an update and curriculum choices for them soon!

For my oldest son's subject schedule, I've decided how many days each week each subject should be done. I made color-coded tabs for them, and a cardboard backed pocket folder, where ds9 places the tabs in whatever order he desires. (So long as he uses all of the tabs, and no two tabs of the same color fall on the same day.) We have a minimum task to accomplish for each subject, and up to an hour to complete each of those. I'm trying to allow him to use any time he doesn't need within each subject's hour as free time.

He goes and picks a subject - he usually starts with math or English - and we get him started on that. I go and start a load of laundry, and check on the two little boys. Often, I return to the computer to finish checking my email and my 'home' message board at the Spot. I'll go switch the laundry and start a second load, and get ds9 started on the next subject. After those first two self-study type subjects, the rest are more involved on my end, and so I begin to put together whatever we're doing for history and Bible or Science.

About the time that my first load of laundry is finished drying, ds9 has completed his two subjects and it's time for teacher intensive studies. The two little ones usually come inside and get a drink before retiring to a bedroom to watch something on Noggin. Ds9 works on his subjects, with frequent interactions and helps from me; sometimes I have to stay right with him to work through, and sometimes I'm just needed periodically to let him know what to work on next within that subject... or help him understand whatever he's reading or doing.

During this time, I'm back and forth with laundry and a little clean-up, and - if I get a chance - I check in on the computer. Usually depends on which subjects he's doing as to whether I have time to plop down a moment or not. Dh comes inside (he's usually outside doing... whatever it is he does out there LOL) close to ds finishing the intensive works, right around 4 or 5pm. He'll ask what's for dinner, and I'll get started on that so that we eat around 6pm.

Dh usually lays down for a nap, and ds finishes subjects like handwriting, typing, logic, language (ASL or Latin), and reading time. Hopefully by now I have the clothing put away, and will work on putting away a second load of towels or something similar. The little kids bug me for something to do, and we usually get out coffee table toys or puzzles or something like that.

I wake dh up at around 8pm, and he gets ready to leave for work at around 9. Our goal is always to have school work done by the time he leaves for work, but of course we have various activities that we add into this basic schedule almost every day of the week. I try to make sure we don't have so much planned for a day that we CAN get things done... as long as I have reasonable cooperation from my student. ;-) We go to bed between midnight and 2am. The little kids go to bed around midnight, and I really don't like being up much past 4am. Birds chirping prevent me from sleeping. LOL

At night, after dh has gone to work and ds has finished his school, I spend a little time with the kiddos doing whatever they are doing - playing a game or getting out a tent to play with, or something else fun. After about an hour, they settle in for watching tv (around 10pm) and I jump on the computer for Mom time. That's where YOU all come in! LOL!


Here's what ds9 is using this year! Our year flips around February, so he's just begun several of these for the 4th grade.
Math - Math-U-See Gamma, soon to be followed by Delta. 5 days per week.
English - will begin Rod & Staff 4 soon, 3 days per week. (Using Remedia Publications Beginning Outlining, 1 day per week, until this arrives.)
Vocabulary - in lieu of spelling, as ds can spell on a high school level. Using Words Are Wonderful, Book 1, 2 days per week. (Using this 4 days per week until R&S arrives.)
History - Mystery of History, 4 days per week. Recently received the Winter Promise guide for Quest for the Ancient World, and use a ton of lapbooking, encyclopedia, and living book supplements.
Bible - incorporated with MOH, but we use Christian Liberty Press to supplement. Currently in Book E, covering the first half of the Old Testament. Also reading the Bible itself, and a Bible story book. One thing or another from this list, we do 3 days per week. (Sometimes more if our history lesson is Biblical as well.)
Science - Had been using Considering God's Creation, and recently decided to add a free student reader on Life science as our base for using the CGC notebooking pages. We're also involved in a co-op for spring and fall, but they're on hiatus for the summer. We've used Media Angels creation science units as well, and will continue to supplement with those.
Reading - We read a lot to go along with our history studies, and a monthly book club. He reads a chapter or two a day, and I'm trying to begin including some "free time reading" as well as this assigned reading. With history, the vocabulary and background concepts are covered during history time. WIth our book club, we meet every other week and discuss with other kids as well as have a craft project. They are mostly utilizing good literature for those.

I include a class which I refer to as "Skills" that includes handwriting, typing, and logic.
Handwriting - Dictation of Bible verses or poems 2 days per week, plus a daily journal.
Typing - Once weekly and includes email pen pal letters and/or typing all current and past memory work.
Logic - Finished the Dr. Dooriddles and recently started some Mind Benders. Once weekly.

I also include a class which I refer to as "Culture" that includes music, art, and foreign languages.
Music - A free online theory workbook, and soon to add piano and recorder lessons from me; I'm a musician myself. Once weekly.
Art - Currently working on a lapbook from Hands of a Child, and hope to obtain Teaching Art to Children soon. Crafts and other projects with cub scouting. Once weekly.
Foreign Languages - We work on two languages, each once weekly. We do American Sign Language as well as Latin. ASL: Beginning Sign Language series, starting with Signing At School. Latin: Getting Started With Latin.

It works out to 6 subjects daily, including one of the easy subjects of the Skills class. We try to do a daily warm-up that includes journal writing and a quick American Minute. (We haven't covered US history yet, and are studying the ancients. I thought this was a good way to get in at least some US history as we begin our classical cycle.) I allow the skills, warm-up, and reading to fill one hour, and the rest of the subjects have an hour to themselves. ;-) That's a total of 5 hours daily, with free time wherever he has extra time after completing any given subject. In theory. ;-)

HI there!

This is my first post here. I've only half-attempted blogging once or twice in the past, and am a little nervous... but I firmly believe that blogging daily about whatever is on my mind will make it easier to sleep at night and to breathe the next day. ;-) So that is my goal for this blog!

What? You don't have a clue who I am? Well, where have you been?? I'm everywhere! HA!!

Well, if you really need an introduction, I suppose I should accomodate you. :D

I'm DaLynn, a 28yo Christian, wife to Bill for almost 7 years, and mother and teacher to our three boys who are 9, almost 5 (in a week), and 3 1/2 (August). We've been homeschooling for a full 2 years now, and have always used an eclectic mix of curriculum. I read Well Trained Mind last fall and have begun to move most of our educational goals in line with that, but still use a little of everything and a mixture of approaches to accomplish those goals.

We live in Austin, TX and my husband works nights as a bakery manager for the area franchise of a national chain bakery-cafe. Because we have the option as homeschoolers, we've modified our schedules to best accomodate his sleep patterns. Basically, we stay up late and sleep late. It works for us!

I have a tendency to be long-winded, but I'll try to curb that in these blog posts. (Remember, I'm learning! Don't shoot if I forget!) I enjoy meeting and chatting with others, so if you're up late or see that we have something in common, or just want to say hi - I'd appreciate a note or a hello! It's nice to meet you!