October 16th, 2017
The last few weeks we have been slowly finding our groove for the school year. Last year was my first year and I remember starting off with a wide variety and amount of curriculum along with a detailed plan. I quickly realized flexibility was key. So this year I decided to focus on what I wanted my kids to learn or grow in by the end of this school year.
For my oldest, who is in public school, I wanted to still spend time with him in regards to what he’s studying in school. We haven’t really done that and I feel like that’s ok. His grades are good and being at school (or on the bus) from 630am-330pm for him is pretty exhausting. What we have done a lot of is spiritual faith conversations. I purchased him a book called “Do hard things: A teenage rebellion against low expectations” and gave him “boundaries in dating” that I already owned. He’s been reading them and talking to me about them mostly on his own. I really couldn’t ask for anything better than that from a teenager! Time with him is sparse in his busy life so I need to try harder to set aside time thats specifically for him. For example take him around town and video tape him doing skateboard tricks. This would make his day!
For my girl Lyra, who is 7, I wanted her to gain some strength in Math. Last year I used abeka arithmetic and there were mostly worksheets and not a lot of teaching involved. Being a first year homeschooler with no teaching background it was in hindsight not the best choice for us. So this summer I started Lessons for a Living with her. We LOVE it! She tested as being ready for book 3 but I disagreed and thought she needed a stronger foundation so we went with book 2 and will be finishing it this week then will start book 3.
Grammar we hit pretty hard last year and it was tedious. This year I’m shelving the few grammar workbooks I purchased and we are focusing on simple things: handwriting with daily copywork and writing stories. She has always excelled at reading and story telling so we take turns writing stories and “grading” one another’s grammar. She has a rough handwriting which frustrates her so her stories are more like sentences which is fine at this point.
She loves the Story of the World history. We do maybe a chapter a week sometimes we skip a week. I’m okay with it spilling over into the summer. We also have taken breaks and had history lessons on other subjects like Civil War when we went to an event at the Civil War Museum.
She has so far had a steadfast interest in animals- particularly horses- and becoming a veterinarian. So I have a couple books “I want to be a Veterinarian”, “zoology for kids” and “uncover a horse” that we read and talk about together.
I also intended to use Pearson’s Interactive Science but don’t really like it. I’m taking some concepts from it and finding my own things online to teach them about. Again nothing officially scheduled or planned for that. We did the solar system and weather some. We are currently working on a leaf project and discovering things about leaves, plants, trees and the photosynthesis process. Last year her science workbook covered this but I was so focused on getting through the book in time that we didn’t dig into it.
We also do some art each week. My husband tends to help with this on the weekends. He is an artist at heart whereas I am not. I’m working with my daughter on piano and I’m trying to teach myself guitar!
We cook around here most days and I have the kids help with that. We also each do chores every day. And we try to do a lot of reading. We do some Spanish occasionally as well.
I do have a geography book for her and a map that we use. We enjoy it. I’ve done a few games where we talk about food or a culture from a country and she has to find that country on the map while I’m talking. We’ve done a lot on Egypt and the surrounding area because of Story of the World. We have also done some map work as well.
I don’t use the monthly schedule reguarly but I have monthly chunks sectioned out then I have it broken down in to weekly chunks that I focus on. But each day I just write on a small marker board which subjects we are covering and she does really well with seeing that and wiping them off as we complete them.
My youngest is 4 1/2 and is either really smart or has been paying more attention to his sisters school than I realized. He’s sounding out some words, he can visually look at a letter or word and write it down. I always had to break down each letter formation by step for Lyra but Caelum just copies what he sees. So I mostly just have him practice counting (to 100 and by 10’s), write his name and other random pages from his phonics book, and sound out words. I think I’m going to go ahead and get him the first book in Lessons for a Living for math. He flys through his pre-K math workbooks. We use “teach your child to read in 1000 lessons” once or twice a week. I usually don’t officially do school with him but wait for him to initiate because he usually does. We try to do a lot of art, crafts and science projects too but these take effort that I don’t always have. So we will play outside or go walking in the woods and use that for hands on learning.
With all this being said if we have 3 good school days a week I call that a success. Days can be full of distractions, bad moods, sickness, appointments, errands etc…. that I HAVE to make room for so they don’t come as “annoying interruptions” but as expected pauses.
I read in “teaching from rest” an excerpt from “Holiness for Housewives” that states: ‘Can you hit the pause button on your frustration long enough to realize that people rank infinitely higher than anything else on the list? Have you considered that God may have scooted these people into view for the very purpose of slowing you down?’.
Then C.S. Lewis states “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s “own” or “real” life”. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life- the life god is sending one day by day’ what one calls one’s “real life” is a phantom of one’s own imagination.”
I also listend to a pod cast where it talked about Honoring your Homeschool in the sense that you make it your priority and allow it to take precedence over constant needs of others and interruptions.
So here’s to finding a balance!