Week 2: let's simplify!

The first week had some good moments, but getting H to do his work was becoming a Herculean task, and after Monday I was ready to pull my hair out. I met a friend at a park and she recommended pulling back more - keeping it fun and easing in a little more slowly. I immediately knew what I needed to do. The rest of the week I have dropped structured math completely, and we have focused most of our school day on project time. We still have circle time first thing, and H still has to do a handwriting page and practice math facts, but it has been so much more fun and he is engaged and working hard. I know we will have to add math back in soon, but it has been a great week and we are all just enjoying learning so much now!

Here are some high points:

One morning during circle time, I gave them their sketch/project books and they had a blast decorating them and doing some leaf rubbings and sketches inside. It was then that I heard Henry (my anti-perfectionist, anti-handwriting boy) say, "I am going to make a perfect 'A' too!" After his brother had been working really hard on his "A."

(Notice the flowers on the table. We did some watercolors one day, too, the goal being to sketch and paint them, but I didn't get pics of that.)

H's big project he is working on right now is a head-to-toe costume of a Clone Trooper that he will wear for Halloween. Right now we are working on cutting templates out of paper before we use cardboard. He is doing lots of measuring and cutting and problem solving with that! 

One of the best perks of homeschooling is taking 5 minute bike breaks!

We also have time for lots of other fun things:

Board games 

Lego creations (AT-AT Walker)

Impromptu STEM challenges (experimenting with zip lines)

And of course stalking rabbits in the back yard.

Probably the most gratifying experience this week wasn't even part of the school day. H was practicing piano - or that's what he was supposed to be doing. Instead he came up with a little song he liked. He kept playing it, and since I was in a schooling mentality, I asked if he wanted to write it down. He worked really hard and figured out how to write the notes on the lines (he hasn't learned where actual notes are yet, just intervals and relative motion). It really helped with his music theory, though, since he had to figure out where measure lines went, how many counts each note got, and how to explain where your hand went. We tested it by having Dad play it when he got downstairs. 

So that was our week! And just in case you think I have forgotten I have other children, here are some good pics of their cute faces!

Let the adventure begin!

We have just finished our first official week of homeschool. And everyone is alive. And, although completely exhausted, I am still sane - or as sane as I ever was. Hurrah!

It was an exciting week. Jimmy was out of town, we started homeschool, we even drove through a flash flood and had massive thunderstorms! Here is one day's synopsis that I texted Jimmy:

Highlight: morning routine and circle time are going great. Smooth and everyone is happy.

Lowlight: Archer deciding to ride down the big hill for the first time at 7:30 in the morning and totally eating it at the bottom. I am pretty sure we woke up the neighborhood.

Highlight: successfully doing a piano-doctor-Costco combo to fill the morning

 Lowlight: [2 potty trained children] both pooping in their pants AT THE SAME TIME!! 

Highlight: After figuring out I needed to separate everyone for quiet time, Henry and I got through his lesson material, albeit with some struggle.

Lowlight: After packing everyone up to go swimming, even making pasta salad so we could just stay and eat there until bedtime, it started pouring as soon as we got there and couldn't swim.

Highlight: We crashed at [a friend's house] instead. That took us pretty much to bedtime.

For anyone who is interested in the nuts and bolts of how school started, here it is.

The focus this week was simply establishing routine and expectations (you know, helping your kids figure out that there, unfortunately, is more to life than playing with Legos). For the past few weeks (all summer, really), I have really been honing in on routines at home - chores, cleaning up after meals, scripture study, etc. - so that this homeschool journey won't be so overwhelming. The more the house runs itself, the more I can focus on what I care about.

So this week I really only focused on 3 things: morning routine (which we have really established over the past few months), school routine (just writing, math, and reading this week), and home routines. Everything else I forced myself not to care about. I tried to keep my schedule clear except for swimming and other physical activity outside, mostly to wear the kids out so bedtime would be easy!

Our morning routine is firmly established now. When the kids wake up, around 7, they get dressed, brush teeth, say prayers, and do a simple chore that they are used to (wipe a toilet or sink, pick up diapers, clean their room, etc.). At this time I put in a load of laundry and do what I can to tidy up, mostly upstairs. We eat breakfast at about 8:00 or 8:30.

At 9:00 sharp, we gather around the table in the homeschool room and begin our day. Circle time has become my favorite thing! We open with a song or two and a prayer. I usually put a coloring page or blank paper out for the kids to occupy their hands while we do circle time. After prayer we do devotional - a thought or story or short video about the topic of the week. This week was courage, since our theme for the year is "Be strong and of a good courage."

After devotional we do our Spanish practice. It's just a phrase or two we work on per week - this week was please, thank you, yes, and no. Then we do a manners/social skills thought - we covered please and thank you, apologizing, and how to address adults. All of the circle time takes about 15-20 minutes.

Then the real work begins. The little ones play (I'll do a post about our rotation system later) or work on some "school work" while I work with Henry. He does copywork (a sentence or two that should be copied perfectly - quality not quantity here), a handwriting lesson (Handwriting Without Tears), and a free writing topic, plus his Saxon math lesson. If he is focused (which, so far, is about half the time) he can finish this by 10:30 and have a snack. Then the idea is to have project time from then to lunch, although we have been going swimming and to the library and other things lately that have cut into that.

After lunch Henry can finish up anything he has left (he also has to do 20 minutes of silent reading and 10 minutes of reading out loud, plus piano), or keep doing project time, or play. I am reading Stuart Little out loud, and will read that at some point. The afternoon is also when we will do things like art, history, and science projects as they come up.

So there it is! That's our schedule so far! It is intense, but not nearly as draining and exhausting as I had anticipated. Stay tuned for more!

Homeschool: jumping into the unknown!

Well, we are going to bite the bullet and take the plunge. Next year Henry will be homeschooled. Archer will go to kindergarten at the school, but will basically be homeschooled, also, since it's only half-day. I'm going to write a number of posts with my thoughts about how we are going to be doing things, and they may not be very exciting, but I just want to have a place to put down some of my thoughts in a more narrative form than all the lists I am making in OneNote! You know, for the record :) Yeehaw! 

Right now I am being inspired by this wonderful book by Lori Pickert - "Project Based Homeschooling." I have heard that the key to homeschooling successfully is truly knowing yourself and your kids. As soon as I started researching this method, everything just clicked in my head. THIS is how my kids learn! It is how they operate, and if we set it up right it can provide me with the structure I need to stay sane! 

Basically Project-Based Homeschooling is a Reggio-inspired method where you provide a lovely learning, encouraging environment and become a mentor for your child to learn through doing his own projects. Very child-led and open-ended. I love it!

We will still use a math curriculum (Saxon), and do handwriting and writing work, plus we will have read-alouds, a history curriculum (which we will use loosely), and we will attend Classical Conversations, a Christian co-op that is one day a week. 

The plan right now is that the mornings will be dedicated (read: I will be dedicated) to "school." He will get his math and writing done first (roughly an hour or so), and then we will have a couple hours devoted to projects we are working on. Any of the kids can have projects. Then the afternoon will be relaxed - down time, maybe some science or art projects, or a history lesson. The frequency of those, and how structured they will be, remains to be seen. 

That's my overall plan in a nutshell! 

Meet the authors

I was trying to get some one-on-one time with the little boys, now that Levi has stopped napping, and the best way I could think of to do so peaceably was to have one do ipad time and the other work with me. I also wanted to work with them on reading and writing, since both of them are right on the verge of reading and are showing a lot of interest. After doing a math worksheet with Archer, we started writing these books (he drew pictures, I wrote the words), and it was so perfect! Levi even quit games early to come join us, and we've been working on them for an hour now. Some days this would definitely NOT happen as smoothly, but today we needed it!

Crafty Christmas: Collared Aprons

I saw some of these collared aprons on pinterest, and thought they would be cute and fairly simple to make. Originally I was going to make everyone a different kind of apron and found all kinds of cute patterns, but then the reality of making a gazillion Christmas gifts hit me and I decided to just do one type of apron for the girls and one for the boys.



These aprons are awesome. Super easy and really cheap - especially if you already have a few men's shirts lying around. I used 2 of my husband's and one of my grandpa's, and I ended up mismatching parts of each shirt onto all the aprons, so everybody got a little of Grandpa's shirt in their apron (he died last year).

I just used one of my old aprons as a pattern and cut a roughly similar shape out of the front of the shirt. One of them (the one with pockets) turned out really well, but the other two I cut too narrow at the top, so it felt awkward to wear, so I pieced in a strip of fabric on the sides. Then I used long, wide strips from the backs or sleeves of the shirts for the ties, hemmed up any exposed edges, and was done!

Think time

Free, alone think time. It's a rare commodity around here. I feel like during the day my thoughts are jumping from one necessity to the next while trying to be engaged with the little ones clamoring for my attention. Then at night after the boys are asleep, I always think I'll have some, but then the list pops up of things to prepare for, things already on my "to-think-about" list (I'm pretty sure I actually have one of those on my Google Task Lists). This morning Jimmy didn't have classes and he blocked it off in the calendar as family time. What a gift! He took Archer with him to get his safety and emissions done and was gone for a couple hours, while Levi napped. I decided to clean the kitchen. Without kids around, cleaning is so fun! You know, at least more fun. I put on some music, planning to sing and dance while I worked, but instead I just thought.

I thought about politics. I thought about social problems. I thought about issues my kids may run into. I thought about women's rights. I thought about my place in this wide world. It was really valuable, quality-thought think time. Afterwards I realized I was truly refreshed and felt like a real person. Taking a shower and actually getting ready for the day might have helped, too. They say meditation is important to your spiritual and emotional well-being. I couldn't agree more! Even if you're mopping at the same time.

Raking time

Well, it snowed last week, which means the trees have been dropping their leaves in buckets. Well, I wish it were in buckets. As it was, I raked the yard with the boys in the afternoon, and when Jimmy got home, he cleaned up the last bit and towed the can to the driveway. We'll have to rake again in another couple of weeks, but it was a nice day, and it should cut the work next time in half. Henry was a super helper - he stayed outside after I went in to keep going!