Adjusting

T, 3rd Grade

K, 1st Grade

L, Preschool

In my last post on my other blog, I shared some of the wonderful adventures we enjoyed during the summer months.  Reading straight through that post, one might get the incorrect idea that we've gotten things pretty well figured out, that our schedule is ticking along gracefully, and that we're constantly trying new, amazing things.  This blog post will put to bed any silly notions of the kind.  :)

Earlier in the summer, I put together these assignment books and began filling in tentative lesson plans.  This was a huge step for me; I'm usually the kind of mom who looks at assignments the day before the day of and hopes that I have everything on hand that we'll need for the day.  (I do NOT recommend this method.)  I was thrilled with myself for this summer-time achievement and began to wonder if I were finally getting the hang of this preparation stuff.

Not only that, but many of the things we did between school years counts as academic work, and I loved the idea of having a few extra days to count here and there as needed.  (Since the CA public school requirement is 175 days per school year, we make sure to complete at least that many days. While this isn't a private school requirement, I feel better getting in at least that many.  I know, I'm weird.)

I also had this seemingly-great idea to start off our first two weeks with a bang - we would hit the books hard, and after that, we could lighten our schedule if needed.  Besides, I was tickled to think that I would be able to start teaching the boys music, and some introductory typing and foreign language were also in my plans.  Additionally, I developed a plan that would give more flexibility for field trips, park days, and catchup work when needed.  This was going to be my most-organized, most fun, most involved academic year yet!

As Proverbs so aptly states, "Pride goeth before a fall," and I was about to come down hard.

A mere two weeks before our master schedule was to be put to the test, we found out that our fourth spark plug was on his way.  Two days later, I was leveled with the most severe morning all day sickness I've ever faced (not that this was saying much, since I'd never before had a tremendous amount of prenatal nausea).  It was all I could do to survive the day.  In the morning, I prayed for nap time to come.  In the afternoon, I prayed for nightfall.

I quickly changed my teaching strategy.  Instead of starting off strong and tapering later, we focused on the basics and left extracurriculars for later, assuming I'd feel better later in the school year.  There were no music lessons, no typing instruction, and I didn't get out the Foreign Language CD until three weeks ago.  And there's nothing quite like taking "first day of school" photos 9 weeks into the school year!

Am I discouraged?  Not at all.  This may not have been my plan, but it was God's.  He knew that I wouldn't be feeling well at the start of the school year.  He graciously allowed us those extra days during the summer, knowing that we'll need some unscheduled time off in April when the baby arrives.  He prompted me to work out those assignments months earlier so that when I could barely function, I could at least look at the current day's reading pages and show the boys which section of math to focus on.

While music and other extra academics are fun, there's still plenty of time to focus on them later on.  We have the needed books and CDs for these things so that, when time and health do allow, we'll be ready to jump right in.

For now, the new schedule I'd arranged months ago is working amazingly well.  We're able to focus on our weak areas and we're continuing to grow in our strengths.  The spark plugs are learning some incredible things, and they're remembering what they're learning.  We're discussing and tracking the baby's progress, something I'd never considered studying this year.  (I highly recommend visiting The Bump website for baby updates.  It shows the baby's size based on a different piece of fruit each week, something that young children can easily relate to.) 

This school year may not be anything like what I'd envisioned, but this is much better because it's what the Lord had in store.  From now on, hopefully I'll be less likely to get caught up in my own achievements and will more quickly realize the Lord's leading and preparation for life's crazy twists and turns!

DIY Lesson Planner

In my last post, I mentioned that I'd developed my own Lesson Planner.  Last year, we used a planner similar to this one, but when my mom-in-law sent me this link for a Unit Study Lesson Planner, I was intrigued.  However, there were a few things about the Unit Study Planner that I didn't care for, and I didn't want to pay much for them, either.  So, I made my own!

First, I experimented with Microsoft Word until I created a layout I thought would work for my needs.  Then, I printed out two sets, one for each school-aged spark plug, bought four sheets of cardstock, and had them bound at Kinko's.  All said and done, I think I paid about $12 for both, rather than the $15 each for the pre-made version.  And, mine's tailored for my personal use as well!

T's is red, his favorite color, and K's is green for the same reason.

Here is T's, above, with block assignments on the left and activities and vocabulary on the right.

K's, above, is backward.  I'll pretend that I wanted to see which layout I like best instead of admitting that this is the result when one doesn't pay close attention to page direction before binding.  :)

I think I will love these.  I can already see, though, that for next year I'll be doing things a bit differently.  For starters, I will buy a slightly higher grade white paper to avoid the ghost imaging from the back sides of the pages.  Secondly, I will take up Kinko's suggestion of adding a plastic sheer cover on the front and back.  Third, printing out a school schedule (shown below) to include would be very helpful (I made our schedule after binding the Lesson Planners - oops!).  These upgrades will raise the cost a bit, but I think I will be happier with the end result if I incorporate them.

As I mentioned earlier, I developed these based on what I think I will need and like for the coming year.  Because of that, I doubt that these would exactly suit anyone else, but if someone would like the Word files for them, either to use as-is or to use as a starter template to alter as needed, leave me a comment or send me an email and I'll be happy to give them out.

Happy planning!

"It's Over, It's Over, It's Over!!"

(Spark Plugs making "healthy" cookies on the last day of school)

I'm not sure where the lyrics came from, but I distinctly remember in my childhood my mom singing to us, "It's over, it's over, it's over!" whenever a major event had ended.  When the school year finished for us, this was the first thing that popped into my head!

We're now into our fifth week of summer freedom.  The time is flying, as evident by the fact that I'm writing this post four-and-a-half weeks after summer vacation began!  All totaled, we completed just one more day than the minimum California state requirements for public schools.  I briefly felt guilty that we had not aspired to more, but when I thought about the fact that we completed all of our textbooks, never took a sick day, accomplished every goal and more, and only had two half-days in the entire year, I realized how crazy it was for me to think that we'd slacked in any way.

So, how did the school year go?

Looking Back:

As burned out as I got in the final weeks, this year was a banner year for us.  We learned much more than I ever expected, tried more new things than I thought possible, and increased our love of home schooling 10-fold.

Where curriculum is concerned, I LOVED using Modern Curriculum Press for math.  It presented the concepts in very simple, easy-to-follow increments, with lots of review problems to use when needed.

The Weaver Curriculum, which we used for Bible, Social Studies, Language Arts, Science, and Art, definitely had its pros and cons.  I loved how it developed unit studies based on a chronological study through Genesis.  I despised they way we stayed on one verse for months and then flew through multiple chapters in a single sitting.  The hands-on projects were wonderful; the disjointed history lessons were not so (the biggest faux pas that comes to mind is the Social Studies lesson where the parent is instructed to educate the child on George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and the Civil War all in one afternoon).  The preparation time associated with The Weaver, in addition to glaring grammatical and punctuational mistakes, drove me crazy.  Overall, my take on The Weaver is that it's an excellent start; I only wish someone would go in and finish it up, clean it up, and balance it out.

Bob Jones' reading program - sans any busywork assignments - was a perfect fit for us.  We supplemented with McGuffey Readers - may I just say that if everyone were required to read McGuffey's short, moral stories, we would all be better off?  It's amazing to think that these were once the standard literature for the classroom.  How far we have fallen!

For Health, we read through the suggestions in The Weaver but mostly focused on Abeka's Health and Safety.  The Abeka book worked well and was very simple - just my style.

Field trips are also suggested in The Weaver, but the field trip days rarely matched the days that I had the car, so we tended to go with our GRACE home school group on some of their outings instead.  We additionally participated in several nature walks that a friend organized for us.  We greatly enjoyed these as well.

Spelling and handwriting were our toughest subjects, mainly due to our curriculum, or lack thereof.  Since we liked MCP for math, I expected to like MCP's Spelling Workout.  With its jumble of unrelated word groupings, however, it simply did not work for us, even though I did like the spelling activities.  Handwriting simply consisted of left-over work sheets from the previous year in addition to the Creative Writing assignments from The Weaver.  I loved Creative Writing, but the boys' fine motor skills still need some guidance.

Looking Ahead:

For the coming school year, we'll be keeping some things the same and trying a few new ideas.  Since I already own the next volume of The Weaver, we will again be using it for Bible, Social Studies, Language Arts, Science, and Art, as well as adding in Vocabulary this coming year.  (If I still find parts of it as wildly unbalanced as this past year, we may opt to find a new unit study curriculum in the future.)  To supplement, we'll go through Bob Jones' Heritage Studies (Social Studies and History) and Abeka's My America.

We'll use the next levels of Modern Curriculum Press math and Bob Jones' readers.  Health will come from another Abeka Health and Safety book, supplemented by The Weaver just as we did this past year.

Field trips will continue with our GRACE group and nature walks, and I hope to include more of the field trip suggestions from The Weaver when possible.  

Our new spelling curriculum will be Sequential Speller.  It looks as though it will have many spelling activities similar to Spelling Workout but with logical word lists.  I have high hopes for this new method!

For Handwriting, a friend sent us a free download for cursive writing, which T will start in the fall.  Additionally, he'll be practicing writing his spelling words in cursive.  K will try the popular Handwriting Without Tears.

This coming year, I want to introduce T to Logic, Typing (Mavis Beacon, anyone?), and Music.  We won't go in-depth right away, but we should have a lot of fun incorporating new concepts.

One last change for the coming year:  I developed my own Lesson Planner!  I based on the Unit Studies Lesson Planner found here, but I tweaked mine to fit our personal needs.  Once I get them printed and bound, I'll share photos.

And now that I've mentally run through our year, I realize why it was that the house cleaning got neglected and why I was so tired by the time May rolled around.  To think that we should have done more...silly me!

That said, I can't wait for fall!!  It's going to be a blast.

Bootcamp Results

When we decided to do our Life 101 class, I was excited.  REALLY excited.

Why?

Well, if a picture is worth a thousand words, I think this one image will explain everything. 

I shall refrain from posting more than one "before" picture to save myself the public humility, but suffice it to say that the above is what happens when Daddy works 5 weekends in a row; when Mommy is fatigued; and when the two-week Monstervirus hits.  Ahem.

As embarrassing as the above photo is, at least it's realistic.  We can't always plan for life events, and when they hit simultaneously, sometimes all we can do is clean up the aftermath.  So, when our house turned into a pig sty hit by a tornado, I was very eager to get things back into shape.

Of course, our experiment didn't go quite as planned:

Monstervirus was only half way over when we started, so instead of getting through the whole house, we cleaned 2 rooms.  Total.  Out of 9.  Not including the porch, grounds, shed, or car.  In an entire week.  Not quite the deep cleaning I had in mind!

With everyone walking around like death warmed over (at least, for those who even got out of bed that week), trying to simultaneously accomplish cleaning and some sort of learning like music appreciation, counting, and/or sorting didn't happen.  I think we listened to one CD the entire week, and L counted to 14 once.  That was it.

Not all was doom and gloom, however.  There were a few bright spots in between the illness, two unplanned trips to the doctor, and attempts at school work:

The kids had a great time and loved being involved...until they got bored and started playing with all the boxes that I was trying to recycle.  And, of course, playing with boxes meant they had to pull out all of their newly organized toys to fill up said boxes.  Sigh.  And giggle.

 
They actually don't look too sick in this photo, so that's a plus!

There were some lessons learned along the way, as always (at least for me; like I mentioned earlier, I don't know how much the spark plugs learned with their feverish little heads being congested as badly as they were).  

In The Money Saving Mom's Budget, she recommends decluttering to help with finances.  Amy at Amy's Finer Things thought this was a waste of time...until she located two forgotten, uncashed paychecks.  I laughed at her post about it here...until I found a stash of change that I've been collecting from my dryer's lint catcher.  

I guess the joke's on me!

So, see?  It even PAYS to keep a house clean.

A few things that hit me as we worked:

When I first set the bar at eliminating 100 items from each room, I wondered if I'd be able to reach that goal.  Not only did we reach it, but we far exceeded it; and, IT WAS EASY!  I might try again and get rid of another hundred (after we eventually get to the rest of the house, of course).

The plan to include the spark plugs in this deep cleaning and decluttering was good, but it turns out that teaching them to daily pick up their things and return them to their rightful spots of residence is, at this point, a much more needful activity.  It's the daily buildup of dishes and toys out of place that leads to situations in the "before" picture above.  I do plan to do more deep cleaning, and I also plan to enlist their help again, but through the end of the school year, we'll be focusing on tidying up various rooms each day before nap and bedtime.  I think this will be much more efficient in the long run.


I'm very grateful that we made a stab at this, even though it produced completely different results than I'd hoped for.  At least I knew enough not to expect any specific results - life simply doesn't allow for consistency!

One final note to self:  once a room is cleaned, take photos immediately.  Do not wait until Daddy comes home; do not pass "go"; do not even blink!  If you have spark plugs, a pet, or dust bunnies, they will instantaneously render your beautiful new room dirty again.  

Otherwise, you, like me, will leave your dear little blog readers to only speculate what those beautiful rooms once looked like.

Must I admit that I'm pretty sure my "after" photo would so greatly resemble the "before" picture that it's not even worth posting?

*Blush!*

Life 101 - Bootcamp Style

After tripping over a toy for the umpteenth time and finding the toothpaste uncapped again, I decided it was high time to do something.  Obviously, in our attempts to educate our spark plugs in Bible, math, language arts, and other subjects, one area of training was sorely lacking:  home management. 

Look out, spark plugs! 

Welcome to Life 101, also known as Mama's Bootcamp for Life. 

Between school work, park days, grocery shopping, piano teaching, and all the other little parts of life, the house work was sorely neglected.  I'm doing my utmost to beat back the Laundry Monster and limit my Dirty Dishes Display, but what I really wanted was to hit the pause button on life and get regrouped and reorganized.  The problem was, though, that I couldn't figure out how accomplish this without taking an entire week off of school to do so.

For a while, I toyed with the idea of doing exactly that:  one week, free of school work, for me to purge stuff and clean up all while hoping the spark plugs wouldn't come behind me and undo everything.  But that would send us a week later into the summer, and I wasn't convinced that the give and take would be worth it.

And then I had an epiphany.  Was home management something I wanted to teach my children?  Yes.  (Come to think of it, there was even an entire major at my college dedicated to this very area, called Home Economics.  Imagine that.)  Is it an important life skill?  Absolutely.  Would their future spouses thank me in the years ahead?  No doubt about it.    The answers to those questions settled the matter, and so I began formulating a new plan.

For an entire week in March, we will be cleaning, decluttering, learning to properly care for belongings, and creating permanent homes for what we don't donate, sell, or toss.  The spark plugs and I will be learning how to do this together, so that hopefully they'll learn some skills along the way (and stay occupied so that they're not undoing all the progress).  To keep it both fun and educational, however, I set some goals.  I'll share them below, more as an accountability method for me than for any other reason.  Lord willing, we will:

-begin each day with Bible, as we normally do
-research verses about good stewardship
-tackle one room each day, together
-eliminate at least 100 things from each room.  The 100 items can consist of trash to be tossed; unwanted toys do donate; borrowed things to be returned to their rightful owners; and even gadgets to sell.  I don't care how "The 100" exit the front door as long as they permanently leave our dwelling.  (We can work on math with counting and grouping all of this stuff, too!)
-learn to work as a team and conquer some of our argumentative, selfish behaviors
-have fun and enjoy the sense of accomplishment

This may end up a total disaster, but I think it's worth the attempt.  I won't know for sure that we'll meet all of the above goals, but unless we make a stab at it, we won't accomplish anything at all. 

I'll post later about the exact dates we hope to try this.  In the mean time, I'm going to go lace up my drill sergeant boots!

How Does A Homeschooler Change A Light Bulb?

 (Photo Credit)

This was too cute to pass up.

Q: How does a home schooler change a light bulb?

A: First, mom checks out three books at the library on electricity, then the kids make models of light bulbs, read a biography of Thomas Edison and do a skit based on his life. 

Next, everyone studies the history of lighting methods, wrapping up with dipping their own candles. 

Then, everyone takes a trip to the store where they compare types of light bulbs as well as prices and figure out how much change they'll get if they buy two bulbs for $1.99 and pay with a five-dollar bill. 

On the way home, a discussion develops over the history of money and also Abraham Lincoln, as his picture is on the five-dollar bill. 

Finally, after building a homemade ladder out of branches dragged from the woods, the light bulb is installed. 

And there is light.