The Home School Month Ahead: August 2014

If you find homeschool organization boring and don't want to know what other homeschool moms do, you can skip this post, you won't hurt my feelings. I for one, enjoy seeing what others do so I can get great ideas for our own school day!

August will be a light month for us, we will only be doing 2 days a week of school to ease back into the school year. This frees up days for us to enjoy the rest of the month! The public school children return to school around the 7th, so that's when homeschoolers take back the park, pools, museums, etc. It's ok, we don't mind sharing the world with all the children, but it is nice to have less busy places to take our children too. It makes kid counting a lot easier at the park.....

So what's up for our family in August!? Well, I finally got to sit down with my nifty Well Planned Day planner and get to organizing!

We will only do school on Mondays/Wednesdays and not every subject. We do not go in any particular order of school work, I ask the kids what they want to work on first. Some people like to get started early in the morning, get math done and out of the way. For us, we are still working on that "magic method.". I do have subjects we do together and some we do separate. Remember H is going into 4th grade and E is going into 1st. So we cannot do EVERYTHING together. Math, Grammar and some electives are separate. So here's our basic August Monday/Wednesday 'to do' list. (I don't say schedule because I do not schedule out block of time in any particular order.)

Bible Study: We do YES Lessons just like I did as a kid in my church. You can find them for free if you are interested here: http://www.coghomeschool.org/site/cog_archives/yes_lessons/COG_Library_YES_Lessons.htm

Along with the YES Lesson we work on Character Studies from Confessions of a Homeschooler. If you haven't bookmarked her blog already, you should open a new tab right now and save it! (Come back here though...) AMAZING resource.

Math: H is still catching up on Teaching Textbooks 3 as we started it late last year. So he's got to finish that up and then move on to Teaching Textbooks 4. Eli does worksheets and Life of Fred. We love Fred, he's great. I highly reccommend it as a math program.


History: We wouldn't normally do History in this part time summer month, but we have a few chapters left to finish up before we are done with Story of the World Volume One. Since we are excited to get started on Volume 2, the Middle Ages to Medieval Times, we need to get done with Volume One! I really cannot speak highly enough about this book series. Reasonably priced, well done, a good history program for elementary students.


ELA: English Language Arts, I don't even like calling it ELA, since that's not we grew up calling English, but I do use it to mean any and all English, Grammar, Spelling, etc. I am VERY literature based and believe children learn best through stories and books, not textbooks and boring technical information. So, we are currently reading Chronicles of Narnia. We are just reading it as we go although I did find several lapbooks and unit studies on it. Surprisingly it was not listed on Teach With Movies, but we will be watching the movie version.
Also in ELA we use a program called Five in a Row. I love, love, LOVE this program. It is similar to how I taught literature based lesson plans when I taught early childhood. We are currently on Volume Two, even though it's suggested you start Volume One in the fall. I decided there were more books I wanted to try in Volume 2 for now.

I love the fact that FIAR is pretty much all you need for a young child other than Math and Phonics! I pick and choose the stories we want to do based on time of year, interests, availability, etc.

Phonics: E is still wrapping up his Saxon Phonics K book from last year. He is doing so good in reading, I could likely just skip the rest of it and he'd be fine, but I do want to cement a good understanding of Phonics since I feel H missed out on that in public school. E goes through his lesson and worksheet in less than 10 minutes.


Electives: We will add more electives in September but for now the only true electives we do is H does a Typing Instructor program on the computer.

He seems to really enjoy this and it reminds me of the typing tutor programs I used as a kid. (On my rocking Commodore 64 mind you....)
In September we pick up more electives like American Sign Language, Handwriting, Music, Creative Writing and Art. I look forward to all of these!

So I hope this helps you see a little bit of just one fraction of what one can do in the area of curriculum!

What are some of your favorite curriculum? Free resources?

~~Amy

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A Day in the Life of Homeschooling

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One of my favorite books about homeschooling is Homeschooling: A Patchwork of Days: Share a Day With 30 Homeschooling Families that shows how so very different every homeschooling family is. I enjoyed the book and in talking with other homeschooling families I realize it really is true. So, I thought I'd share our journey with you, periodically!

6:30am: The alarm clock for my husband goes off, I poke him to make sure he's up and heading out the door by 6:45. The dog steals his spot in the bed and we sleep until my alarm goes off at
7:30 am: The beauty of homeschooling is I'm not rushing around, even though it's currently summer, and we wouldn't have a bus to catch, there is simply no rush. I lounge around, roll out of bed, make myself semi-human and emerge from my room around
7:45-8:00: The time is fuzzy on this because I'm pre-coffee. Often I'm awoken by fight and screams but today I find them curled up on the sofa watching Peter Rabbit on Nick. I decide to snuggle with them a few minutes and that seems to make a world of difference. I get a lot of "I Love Yous" and snuggles before making myself get up to start breakfast and most importantly, coffee.

8:45: By now some form of breakfast has been started and possibly eaten. They continue to watch TV while I eat breakfast and watch my Golden Girls (shut up, I love that show.) Once coffee is in, I fully intend to get up and get going on cleaning, but I get sidetracked by my iPad. I check emails for my business, fart around on facebook, and check our Homeschool Helper app.

9:00ish: The best friend calls and we talk off and on for a couple of hours, which is not a very common occurrence but somehow my boys were occupied with Legos and leave us to our conversation for quite awhile.

A rainstorm is threatening to take place so I get the lead out and by

11:30: Get our lunch made and eaten so we can get on our way to the library. We need to pick up a book for our  (FIAR) curriculum and they're holding it for us.

12:30: We've gotten our book from the library along with a few more, one Egyptian one since that's what we're studying in history (Story of the World, Volume 1) and one about a Ghost Eye Tree, which works out since our Five in a Row (Five in a Row): Volume 1 FIAR book is Storm in the Night and we are in the midst of thunderstorm season, so this works out perfect! In fact we just beat a storm and get home before it starts pouring.

1:00-3:30: We work on actual school. Both boys do Lesson 11 of Saxon Math (Year 1 and 3) with minimal fussing. I find Saxon to be super easy to follow, instructional enough to ease my math fears but flexible enough for me to skip stuff, or gloss over things they already know.
When I work with one child on math, I send the other to play quietly or in "centers" (shelves set up in the living room with toys, games, educational activities. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't, and today it works.

After Math, we work on FIAR and read our storm inspired books, which is great since we are reading them, snuggled on a sofa in front of a stormy window! The boys go off on a tangent about storms, and cats, and hurricanes. Harrison and I have a quick lesson about Italics and Quotation Marks.

I redirect them so we can do History The Story of the World which is a discussion about Egyptians and hieroglyphics. We read the additional library book we picked up and Harrison is intrigued by the stone and clay buildings they lived in. The book suggests making a clay Egyptian home so we do. Eli's quickly turns into a house for Luke Skywalker on Tatoonie, but he's 5 and we let that stuff go. He still absorbed things! Harrison does a little mapwork and a coloring page to go along with the chapter. Eli even asks to do a map page, and apparently paid attention to my directions because he colors the two areas of the map correctly!

Once we get cleaned up from History and our clay houses, we start Science which is Apologia Exploring Creation with Zoology 1 It's slow going because it is a lot of reading, but I feel it's a very well rounded curriculum with a Christian perspective which is what I want. Harrison has to write down a short review of what he's learned in the chapter, and that's a little tough, as he hates writing. I wonder if letting him read it himself and then discussing it would help him absorb better, I'm still figuring out his learning styles. Since the book focuses on flying creatures, and we started learning about birds, I get out the Audubon coloring pages I have and told him to pick his favorite. He chooses the wild turkey and he colors it while I look up the sounds a wild turkey makes on the iPad. (Ducky Dynasty episodes play in my head at the same time.) I remind them we'll go on a nature scavenger hunt later and I get a mixed review of yeahs and nahs. Oh well, kiddos, it's in the plan and I know you'll have fun once we go!

3:45: We get things cleaned up, grab a snack, turn out the lights and get ready for our Scavenger Hunt! The first nature area I want to go to, I forget is closed on Mondays, so we head off to a nearby town. I again get stuck when they are doing road work and I take the long way around back to our town and the other side of it to an area called the Rigolets near Fort Pike. (Not a great day for limiting my gas consumption, but ya know...). All on the way we look for birds and other things on our list. As we near the Rigolets we find plenty of birds as the storm in the Gulf sends them inland.

We throw rocks in the water, we find birds, a crab and a few bugs. We mark off our findings and only have on misadventure of them being scared of dragonflies (it was a LOT of dragonflies, but come on boys!) But instead of totally falling out that the entire day is ruined, I'm able to redirect my "sky in falling" Harrison to admit he had a blast throwing rocks and finding the crab even if the dragonflies scared him. We bring our findings (rocks, a cicada shell and the feather we found a few days ago) to roost on our window sill in their "collection spot".

5:30: The boys request "alone time" which is pretty much code for tearing up their room, but since I'm peopled out I oblige. They've gotten along quite well for the day with only a few timeouts for potty mouths (REALLY trying to curb mean talk, potty talk or anything of the kind.) and only a few scraps. They play in their room while I am able to start dinner and have an adult beverage. (My blueberry vodka lemonade, find it in my recipes tab.)

6:30: Daddy is home!! Dinner is ready and waiting on the table (NOT a common occurrence!) We eat a fairly whine free dinner. After dinner I start the dinner dishes while they do chores from their Choreganizers, which I LOVE. They get things a bit spiffier and spend time with Daddy. After dishes are done and leftovers put away, I sneak off to work on an order from my Etsy shop and sit down to write this piece out!(which takes awhile!) While I write this piece, Daddy gives them baths and they play/watch TV in the front. Bedtime snack, brush teeth, book, prayers and bedtime!

This is just ONE day. For our summer session we really only do school on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays because Tuesdays/Thursdays/Sundays, I go work out with the BFF and if the weather cooperates we go swimming. (What a tortured life they lead!) There are also days of errands, visiting grandparents, playdates, parks, and more. The home in homeschooling is a bit of a myth I'm afraid.

Our work load isn't terribly much now either because I'm not doing it "all". Come Labor Day when we pick up fall session, we will add Phonics for Eli; Geography for both; Grammar for Harrison; more handwriting for Eli with emphasis on fine motor activities; Spelling for both; and a general 'theme' every two weeks for added things like music, art and crafts. Will we get it all done? I'm quite sure not. Will we have fun trying? I hope so!

Once upon a time, I enjoyed teaching! I feel like homeschooling is bringing back that part of me that I used to be fairly good at!

There are various reasons why I'm homeschooling but I am definitely accepting it more and enjoying it more. I'm not as frustrated, tired and DONE at the end of the day as I thought I'd be!

And trust me, I do not just sit down and DO these things! I sit down, once a week and plan everything out, making sure I have the right books, papers copied, the math lessons prepped, etc. I double check the night before that I've gotten it all ready. I'm intrigued by the unschoolers of the world because my brain just doesn't compute that!

So this was just one day in our world, hope you enjoyed the ride!
~~Amy

Getting ready....

Can't believe it's almost the end of June! Our summer home-school session starts next Monday, the 24th!!! Crazy! I've gotten all our curriculum, made our lesson plans and gotten stuff prepped for the first week or two. I'm very excited!!
For those curious about what we're using, here's a rundown:

*Saxon Math: 1 for Eli and Saxon Math 3 for Harrison.
*Five in a Row for overall curriculum for Eli. I think it's a tad young for Harrison, but I think that he will enjoy doing it with us, especially the crafts. I really like this program because it takes a book and they read it every day, (hence the five in a row), which really reinforces the points in the story..it's how I like teaching literature.
*Apologia Science: Flying Creatures of the 5th Day. I think this will be too advanced for Eli, who's a Kindergartner, but he can listen in or he can just do the experiments with us.
*Story of the World: This is a great classical history curriculum that again may be too advanced for Eli, but he can listen in from time to time, and do the activities with us. I plan to incorporate Harrison's love of Minecraft into this, giving him the task of creating worlds to match what we are studying.

We will add Spelling and Geography for Harrison and Phonics for Eli in the fall. There are a ton of other little things we do that I don't talk about like adding words to our Word Wall, arts, Legos, educational apps on the Kindle and Ipad, etc. They resume PE in the fall as well.

I think we are slowly getting used to the idea of homeschooling. We are getting more used to being together ALL the time. They've had their ups and downs of attitudes, behaviors and getting along. I'm reevaluating how I deal with the children and how I allow myself to react to their behaviors. I know we'll get on each other's nerves, I know they'll have bad days, I know there will be days where the house looks like it exploded (okay that's ever day...) but I hope they enjoy learning at their own pace, and really, truly absorbing what we study.

Thanks for coming along on our journey!~~
Amy

The Hesitant Homeschooler

You know how they say, "never say never."? Well, there is a reason I NEVER said, "I will NEVER homeschool." I did say, "I don't WANT to home school, I'd rather NOT home school" and then that turned into, "I accept one day I will have to for awhile." and now it's, "We are homeschooling next year."

Why the change? It wasn't exactly by choice. I had decided to homeschool my boys when they reached a certain grade because the school has gone downhill rapidly in recent years and it was not the school I wanted them in. I thought I had one more year of "peace" until that time.

Then I learned about Common Core State Standards.

There is a plethora of information of on many blogs. I have a list on the fan page I have created: https://www.facebook.com/notes/parents-and-educators-against-common-core-in-louisiana/helpful-websites-groups-and-fan-pages/174245322724830
You can find a lot of great information on that list.

I won't rant too much here, I'll save that for the fan page. But I implore you to do your own investigating...do your own research, learn what Common Core is REALLY all about, read articles from BOTH sides, not just what the government is putting out. I have actually read the curriculum (for my children's grades.) I have actually read the boring details, the sample tests, seen the applications for textbook authors. Nothing you say will change my mind about Common Core, I am against it and it has solidified my need to homeschool.

And although I love my children with all my heart, and I'm becoming at peace with our new situation....I am MAD. I am PISSED that my husband works 50+ hours a week in the outdoors, sweating, hurting himself, busting his butt to pay taxes for an education we will not be able to use because now the system will be so corrupt, I cannot trust them to do the job we are PAYING them to do. I will not be able to use the FREE homeschool program with the state because it uses the same Common Core Standards.

Am I mad at teachers? No. I was a teacher, I have many, many friends who are teachers, and many of them are just as appalled as I am. Many have been struggling handling these standards and teaching the nonsense to the kids. This is not a new problem. It's been downhill since No Child Left Behind was inacted. This is the icing on the cake, the last piece of ice that brought down the Titanic.

I am looking at this as a lesson, as something God wants me to hear and learn.....surely he must be working on my patience if he wants me to be with my children nearly 24/7. I fully anticipate more purchases of wine, vodka and chocolate.

In theory I respect and understand the idea of home schooling. Now to actually implement it...well, that will take great prayer and preparation. I am prepared to have to shut down my Etsy shops, or only keep my wholesale customers. Shops can be reopened, the kids are only this age once.

When I sat down and looked at it, it really wasn't much. H is in 2nd grade, so 3rd for next year. So it's what ten years for him to home school. Thirteen for Eli.

It really sounds wimpy when I look at that....when I realize what a drop in the bucket of time that is. I will have plenty of time to "be alone" when they are older. Not to mention as they get older, they learn more independently. It's not as if this is a prison sentence...30 years to life. 13 years...less if they go faster than their grade 'suggests'. Can I not make this sacrifice for their education?

I don't know what will happen, none of us do. Maybe Common Core will get repealed and I could put them back in school. I know at some point I'll have to do a couple of years of "approved" home study by the state, which means dealing with their curriculum at some point but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. We can't predict the future...they could make homeschooling illegal!! I won't put it past them.

In the meantime, I prepare, talk to them, research curricula, make lesson plans, think of field trips. H is genuinely excited to homeschool and I must capitalize on that.

This may be the greatest reason to homeschool. When I asked H, "Why do you want to homeschool, what do you think it'll be like?" He replied, "I can play outside, work on computer, read, and do my work and learn in peace and quiet." That is telling. He just wants to learn in peace and quiet. I can't help but think school is crushing the desire to learn!

So here we go, down this new road.

Hope there is a daiquiri shop on the way...

~~Amy