When Life Gets in the Way...

Wow, did things NOT go as I expected over the last month.

The day after my last post was my baby's "due date" and, while we did have school that week, my heart wasn't in it. The next week I had the kids work on their own somewhat but I was getting thoroughly discouraged that baby hadn't arrived yet. By the third week after my due date, I had given up on school and just tried to keep the house in order. Finally I went into labor early Halloween morning - two and a half weeks after my due date!

Since we had a home birth, the kids learned all sorts of things that day: Mom can scream really loud. The placenta is gross but kinda cool. How to tie off and cut the umbilical cord. All of the pain was totally worth the new baby - and lots of other details about childbirth.

Since then, school has been sporadic at best but we've had lots of informal discussions on various topics. (Like why we put candles on birthday cakes and why Mom had her baby at home and sister had hers in the hospital.)

Hopefully now, with Dad's work schedule changed and baby sister here (and Mom recovering) we'll be able to get back onto a schedule.

What did you learn today?

A Day in the Life...

It's been a little over a week since I posted an update here and, in spite of being so close to having a baby, we are actually doing pretty well when it comes to our school/chore routine.  So, I thought I'd share what a typical homeschool day looks like for us right now. (Of course, this will all change when I have the baby - hopefully within the next week - and then again when Rock's work schedule changes on the 19th.

The kids are usually up before me, sometimes as much as two hours. But they know I need my sleep and don't bug me. Eli and Miri have gotten really good about getting Will out of bed, changed, and fed so that helps a ton. They also feed themselves so when I get up (usually between 10:30 and 11:30), they are ready to start chores. As soon as I'm ready for the day, we can start.

If the house is a total disaster, sometimes we will take the day off of traditional schoolwork to get the house back in some semblance of order, but on a typical day, we only work for an hour or so. Right now, it's Josie's job to unload the dishwasher right now, so she does that, while Eli, Miri, and Sarah, sweep and pick up the living room (which is where we have school). Emmy's still in bed at this point and we don't bug her yet.  Those are our only morning chores. When the living room is clean, I start digging out the stuff we will need for history and the kids get out the school table and chairs. Then I send someone out to tell Emmy we are ready to start school. If she doesn't come right away, (which is common) we start without her and she has to catch up later.

History is our first subject. Later, I'd like to add devotional (Pledge of Allegiance, prayer, word of the day, song, rules, scripture memorization, etc) back in but I'm saving that for when life settles back down with baby and Dad's new work schedule.

Anyway, so history. We are using Story of the World Volume 3 this year, which covers about 1600 to 1850. We figured out last year that we like lapbooking, so before school started this year, I made a minibook for every reading in the history book. So, at the beginning of every history lesson, I hand out the minibooks and explain what they are supposed to do with them. They get started while I read the day's story. Then we do the review questions from the activity book and I help them finish their minibooks. When they've assembled the minibooks, they glue them to a cardstock lapbook pages which will be wire-bound with the other pages at the end of the year. I keep the finished pages so they won't get ruined before I have a chance to bind them. Emmy is a little old for my lapbooks so she does a narration page instead. At some point in the lesson, someone colors a timeline picture and glues it on our wall timeline.

History usually takes 45 minutes to an hour and, by the time we are done, it's lunch time. So I send everyone to fix themselves some lunch while I eat quickly and fill out my planner page for the day. I also write a post-it note for each of the kids with their independent work listed on it. Then they clean up lunch and we get back to schoolwork.

After lunch, we do phonics and grammar. I get Josie and Sarah going in their respective Explode the Code workbooks and then move on to grammar. We are doing the Winston Grammar program. Each lesson includes a small amount of instruction from me and then a 12-sentence worksheet for them to do independently. Eli and Emmy started the program several months before Miri so they are at different points in the book. In order for me to not have to teach two lessons per day (and to stretch out the program) I teach one lesson and assign the first half of a worksheet, and assign the second half of a worksheet to the other student(s).

At this point, Emmy and Eli only have independent work left, so they go off to do their own thing.

Next is science. Emmy's doing an online science class that goes along with Exploring Creation with General Science. Eli is doing Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics along with the worksheets and lab pages that I made to go with it. Miri, Josie, and Sarah are doing Exploring Creation with Flying Creatures. I made minibooks to go along with this book as well. There is a minibook to go with most lessons. They start their books while I read aloud from the textbook. Then I help them finish the minibooks and glue them on cardstock pages, just like the history lessons. If there is an experiment or project, we do that as well.

Now, unless someone needs to do a spelling test, everyone goes off to do their independent work except Sarah. The big kids write their spelling words or do a test. Sarah and I do Letter of the Week. We sing the alphabet song and the letter song, talk about the letter, and then do some sort of cut, color, and glue activity in one of her mini lapbooks.

After that, I am pretty much done with school for the day, except for being available to help as needed. The kids take one to several hours to finish - it's up to them. They do math, gospel, handwriting, reading and anything else we need to work on.  At some point in the afternoon, they do have more chores to do and they have been largely responsible for dinners so that and fee time in the evening pretty much fills out the day.

What did you learn today?

You Can't Force Learning...

We had a good start today but I don't know how well it will end.

Emmy forgot to load the dishwasher last night so I made her do it before school. I didn't notice that she forgot to run it afterwards.

We read about the Ottoman Turks in history and did a minibook and assigned "homework" for the older ones.

Eli, Emmy and I learned about coordinating conjunctions while Miri did a grammar quiz and I read Josie's spelling test words to her.

Sarah finished up the "B" section in her letter of the week.

We did a chapter review in the girls' science and they made maps of parts of a bird while Eli rotated the laundry.

I discovered Eli hasn't been doing all of the written work in his science notebook.  I've only been checking it once every few weeks to make sure he's doing it. Now I'll have to check more often, 'cause that just isn't going to fly.

Will wrestled all over me while I tried to teach.  He's teaching me concentration and patience.

I wrote out all of the independent work everyone needs to do on post-its and Emmy went to her "room" to work.

I decided to organize the dirty dishes in the kitchen so I could see what still needed to be done, 'cause for some reason we haven't had much clean silverware lately - and we've got a LOT of silverware.  (And a lot of dirty dishes.  Funny how, when mom is incapacitated, that's the first thing that piles up.)  Turns out, Emmy's only been loading the less gross, more easily reached silverware.  The stuff in the bottoms of the dishpans has been sitting in there molding and then she won't touch it.  (Exact same thing her sister did until she moved out.) There was only a handful of utensils in the dirty dishwasher and an entire dishpan of them on the counter.  So I made her come in and fill up the silverware tray and she had a fit because I was keeping her from doing what she was supposed to do.  Aaaargh! When are these kids going to learn that when they do a halfway job of a chore, no amount of schoolwork is going to get them out of coming back and finishing the chore!?!?

(Ahem. Sorry, just needed to vent a little.)

So now, everyone has had lunch and is back to doing their independent work for school, the dishwasher and clothes washer are running and we are on track to be finished with the important stuff before Rock gets home from work and wants my attention. - No wait, I haven't had lunch.  Well, I guess I know what's next on my list.

What did you learn today?

Aaaah, the Flexibility of Homeschooling

Mom is the only person for whom school is cancelled entirely when she's sick and that's okay because we're flexible like that.

I got a bad cold that totally wiped me out over the last week or so.  The kids did a few school things independently and did a pretty good job of keeping up with their chores and I spent my days napping and reading.

So that's why I have no records for the last several days.

What did you learn today?

Life's Harder Without My Laptop - July 14 thru September 26

My laptop died. We're not talking about a dead battery here, or the hard drive going out. It's the motherboard. The experts (i.e. Rock) have comfirmed that this poor computer will never see the light of day again.

So what does this have to do with homeschool? Convenience, mostly. I used to be able to print schoolwork from my spot on the couch. Now I have to go

clear into the bedroom to do so. I also used to be able to blog about our day as it progressed (not that I was all that great about it) instead of saving the task for later. That's why it's been months since my last post. Well, that and the fact that my poor pregnant hips can't stand sitting in an office chair long enough to blog.

Anyway, I've found my iphone, and while it's not an ideal solution, I can blog from the couch again. Baby could be here any day now, so that will help as well. Maybe I can fet a new laptop for Christmas.

Meanwhile, we have been having school and it's been going pretty well, in spite of me being pregnant. I've been a lot more relaxed about things and I think that helps.

What did you learn today?

"Stay"cation Week - July 4-12, 2014

There was no school this past week but there were plenty of learning opportunities.  We wanted a vacation this year but didn't want to spend a ton of money on a hotel and camping is just too hard with a toddler, so we decided to stay home and visit places nearby every day.

Our "staycation" week was supposed to start on Friday - Independence Day - with a barbecue in the backyard and fireworks at the park.  Well, it started with me in the hospital with a gallbladder attack that left me barely able to think.  They put me on morphine and anti-biotics and kept me until the pain went away.  They didn't want to do surgery because laprascopic is impossible during pregnancy and conventional surgery too dangerous unless absolutely necessary.

We had decided last week that we needed to get together with Kjeri and her fiancee and his parents to plan their wedding (she's pregnant as well, so we're planning a "shotgun" wedding) on Friday so they all came to the hospital and we had our planning session there.  I was released that afternoon with no more pain and some prescriptions for meds.  We were able to see the fireworks from our backyard so it was all good.

On Saturday, Kjeri, Emmy and I went dress shopping with Erin and his parents and found the perfect wedding dress, as well as flower girl dresses for all five of the bride and groom's little sisters.  Then we went home and had the barbecue that had had to be postponed the previous day.

On Sunday, we had planned a short, one-night camping trip but I failed to buy supplies on Saturday and we didn't want to dig out all of the gear so we drove up into the mountains and cooked hot dogs and s'mores over an open fire.  The kids got filthy and then played in the creek while Rock messed around with the fire and I read my book.

On Monday, we got a membership to the local swimming pool and spent the afternoon picnicking and swimming.

On Tuesday, we drove out to the Salt Flats and learned a bit about the ancient history of the area and how the salt flats got there.  We also stopped by the Great Salt Lake and got eaten alive by the gnats.  I don't know how anyone can swim in such a stinky place - in fact, I've never actually seen anyone swim in that water in person - only in pictures.  When we got back to Ogden, we took the kids to dinner at the Golden Corral.

On Wednesday, we took a break from all of the running around and got some much-needed housework done.  I was amazed at how messy things could get when we were home so little.

On Thursday, we went to the Aerospace Museum at Hill Air Force Base and spent several hours wandering around looking at all of the airplanes and talking about World Wars I and II, as well as a little bit about Vietnam.

On Friday, we got a membership to the Hogle Zoo.  For our huge family, the membership was only $4 more than a one-day admission, so we went with that.  We also rented a wheelchair because I couldn't walk that much and the kids had fun pushing me around.  It was a fun day. The next time, we go back, though, I plan on choosing one type of animal and learning more about them before we go so we can make a unit study out of it for school.

On Saturday, we made no plans so that Dad could rest up from all of the fun we had the rest of the week and get to bed early so he could work early this morning.

I'm hoping we'll be able to have school (at least the basics) this week and next in spite of all of the wedding-planning frenzy.  The wedding is in 13 days and then, hopefully, things can get back to "normal," whatever that is.

What did you learn this week?

William the Silent, How Birds Fly, and Magnetism

I found out Eli hadn't done his science worksheets from the other day so I had him get started on that while we waited for everyone to be ready to start school.  He had a fit but did eventually do it.

Yearbook: We assigned Josie do to the next week of yearbook pictures.  Later she took a few of us doing Winston Grammar.

History: We decided to skip history because we couldn't find the story book.  Emmy was assigned to find it since she was the last one to have it.

Language Arts: I did the first Winston Grammar Basic lesson with Miri while Emmy did Josie's Calendar Notebook with her and helped Sarah do Letter of the Week.  Then I did a long review lesson in Winston Grammar with Emmy and Eli (we haven't done any for nearly a year). 

I quickly filled out planners for everyone so they would know what else they need to do today.  Then I had to go get Kjeri from work.

History (round 2):  When I got home, the kids had found the book so we read about William the Silent and did a minibook. Then I assigned extra reading and narrations.

Science: I read the girls' science lesson to them about how birds fly and we did a fun little experiment with water and straws.  Then they did their minibooks.  Eli did his science with little help from me. (I helped him find a bunch of things to see if they were magnetic and talked him through a few of his review questions.)  Emmy watched a lecture on the Virtual Homeschool Co-op website.  

Everything Else:  The kids did spelling, math, gospel, p.e, and reading on their own.

All in all, things went pretty well today - except that I can't believe how exhausting all of that stuff is.

What did you learn today?

It will all even out in the end...

So today we did history all together.  Then I had Miri do the pre-test for Winston Grammar and learned that she knows no grammar at all (which didn't surprise me).  I did a Letter of the Week lesson with Sarah about the letter "F."  (She knows more letters than I thought she did!)

Then we did science.  I read aloud to the little girls about animal classification and then we did our minibooks.  Then Eli decided he couldn't do his without help.  He had 4 projects/experiments to do.  Three of them were simple little things but one was not.  Let's just say it involved 8 different kinds of liquids in the same container (greasy, sticky, and stinky) and a bunch of objects dropped into the liquid.  It was a huge mess and a lot of time and I think we'll skip or simplify that one when the girls do this book.

Anyway, needless to say, we didn't get much other school work done today, but science was certainly memorable.

What did you learn today?

Park Day

Today was park day.  We didn't see any homeschoolers at the park we were supposed to go to so we went to one that was less crowded and picnicked there.

Then we went to the library and played and read and checked out books.

And, yes it counts as school.

What did you learn today?

First Day of School... Again

So, not long after my last post, we found out we are going to have a new addition to our family in October so that kind of messed up all of my plans for the summer and fall.  I took off the rest of the winter and spring to deal with morning sickness and do some planning for a new school year.  I rethought everything I had planned before and decided we needed to get back into academics this summer.  I just haven't taught the kids enough self-discipline to be able to unschool - and I need to keep them busy in school so they're not making as many messes.  They are doing most of the chores because, as usual, pregnancy has been miserable.

All of that said, today we started school - for the second time this year.  I am trying to figure out a schedule that will work with Rock's and Kjeri's work schedules as well as chores, meals, moods, energy levels, and William's nap.  I'll post that here when I figure it out.

Before I had to take Kjeri to work at Arctic Circle, we managed to talk about plans for the yearbook this year and Miri volunteered to do the first week.

After I got back from taking Kjeri to work, we did a history lesson - that took about three times longer than necessary because of an uncooperative child or two - and we managed to do a science lesson each as well.  We are using Story of the World: Volume 3 and I made minibooks for lapbooking for all of the lessons.  We'll do a minibook and glue it onto a sheet of cardstock each day instead of a folder-style lapbook.  When a page is full, we'll get a new sheet of cardstock and file the full one.  At the end of the year, we'll bind the cardstock pages together with my binding machine.

We also managed a science lesson each.  Emmy is doing the Virtual Homeschool Co-op online with Exploring Creation with General Science so I don't have to do much with that.  Eli is doing Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics pretty much on his own with the workbook I created for it.  Miri and Josie are doing Exploring Creation with Zoology 1: Flying Animals of the Fifth Day.  I read the lesson aloud to them and then we have minibooks/lapbook activities to go with.  Sarah just kind of listens in on whatever else is going on.

The kids all exercised together on the Wii for P.E. so that is one more subject we got accomplished.

Hopefully things will get better as we get into things and I figure out a schedule.

What did you learn today?

A Good Day...

I'm not updating this as often as I had hoped to...

Anyway, today was a good "school day."  I realized that the morning routine is starting to work.  The younger kids get up long before the teenagers and so far on their morning routines, they are supposed to feed themselves breakfast and pick up the clutter in all of the common rooms.  It only took them about 15-20 minutes to do it.  We are also working really hard at keeping up with the dishes and the laundry and are managing to do pretty well with that as well.

I'm noticing that, without the stress of academics, I have more time and energy for the "lessons" that we've always skipped.  Today, after lunch, I got the little girls working on cleaning their room and then had a sewing lesson with Emmy.  After that, I taught Kjeri some of the finer points of baking chocolate chip cookies.  (No, seriously.  She now knows why my batter is always so much lighter than hers.)

In a couple of weeks, when we get the tax return, I'm planning to have them help me work on finishing the basement.  I've also got plans for planting a garden this summer and doing some drying and canning after that.  We might even spend a whole year on this kind of curriculum.

I learned that we don't have to study history and science to learn something important.

What did you learn today?

Sometimes you just have to stop and find a new direction...

Yes, I know, it's been 13 days since I posted here.  That doesn't mean we're not doing anything structured - it just means that I'm having a heck of a time figuring out how our homeschool needs to look right now.  I would love to sit everyone down at the same time in the same place every day and go down the list of subjects and things to do for school but it's just not the right thing at the moment.  I've thought about unschooling but the kids have some bad habits that I think they seriously would not accomplish anything.  I've also considered trying the school-at-home thing like I said above and just trying to bull my way through but with burnout, I know that's just going to make things worse.

So, right now I'm seriously considering a few months of what I'm calling "life school."  We desperately need to get into a routine to get the house in order and keep it that way, as well as getting a room finished in the basement for Emmy and possibly one for Kjeri (if we can convince her to move down there).  The idea is that we would mostly scrap the academics and focus on learning some of the basic skills needed to care for oneself and one's home.  Mostly cleaning, cooking, personal hygiene, nutrition and exercise, first aid and home remedies for illness, food storage, goal setting, personal finance, and the skills that we will use to finish the basement.  The only formal academic subject we will keep is math.  Everyone is so behind where I think they should be in math (except Miri) that I don't feel like we can ignore it.  I will also watch for opportunities for writing assignments and teachable moments as well as expect plenty of personal reading time.  I'd also like to spend more time playing board games and baking with the kids.

It sounds pretty rigorous written out like this (at least to me it does) but what all of this really means is that we'll work really hard together to live a more orderly life.  I think Flylady can help and I've got to figure out how I want to implement all of it so that I don't just keep talking about it and never get anywhere.  So that's my next plan.  Hopefully, I can find something that will work for us.

What did you learn today?

A Good Day... Finally!

We actually had school today!  Yeah!!!

We got started really late 'cause I was trying to get the house clean first and then we had to have lunch and then we had to clean up lunch and... well, you get the picture.

Anyway, I wrote some topics on the blackboard for the kids to choose from for essays for the week and explained that I am going to have each of them write me an essay every week, with the lengths depending on ages and abilities of each kid.  I told them to make this first one as long as they could (except Kjeri, who could probably go on for pages and pages) and then we would see where we need to set the lengths next week.  Miri is the only one to have started on hers, Josie is going to dictate to a big person, and Eli had a fit about doing it - this is going to be fun.

I also assigned math to everyone except Kjeri - I still haven't found the book I want for her yet at a price I can afford.  I ran out of time to do Emmy's and Josie's math with them so hopefully I can make up for it tomorrow.  So, pretty much, Miri and Eli did their math.

Today was a science day so I worked with Eli, Miri and Josie to catch up on the minibooks for our botany lapbook that we will be putting together when we finish the book.  On Friday, we will get back to reading the book and making the minibooks as we go.

Also, Emmy spent a lot of time practicing piano, Eli, Miri, Josie, Sarah and Will played with wooden blocks and the giant Legos for quite a while, Emmy made brownies for dessert after dinner, Josie and I looked up Big Ben on Google Maps and Wikipedia (no, wait, that was yesterday), everyone took a turn rotating laundry, almost everyone worked on washing dishes, and I listed a couple more things in my Artfire studio this morning (after getting home from grocery shopping with Rock in time for him to go to work).  All in all, a pretty productive day.

What did you learn today?

We Didn't Skip Those Days Entirely...

... honest.  I've been struggling pretty bad with my depression - especially since the move three months ago - and so I decided to go back on my meds last week after being off for about two years.  They always make me loopy for a couple of days so I knew we wouldn't get much done.  We did, however, play some board games (Clue and Monopoly) and read some books and spent time playing with Legos and wood blocks.  Eli and Emmy each made a dinner and Emmy started teaching herself piano.  Oh, and I have been having everyone work on their math.

What did you learn today?

First Day Back After Christmas Break

We are starting off slowly.

I spent some time with each Miri and Eli setting goals for their math programs.  We set a date for each of them to finish their current math books.  If they finish early, they will get a break from math until starting the next goal.

Josie did a bunch of pages in her handwriting book.

Emmy worked on organizing the basement for a little while and did the other chores she is responsible for, as well as getting Will to sleep while I made dinner.

Kjeri is having a rough day and so I didn't ask her to do anything but load the dishwasher.  Hopefully she has gotten some writing done on her novel today.

Eli, Miri, Josie and I thoroughly cleaned the dining room so we could actually use it.

Miri worked on the purse kit Erin bought her, Eli played Legos, and Josie and Sarah played Play-Doh.

I posted a new tutorial on my KaelMijoy blog and promoted it everywhere and learned that those are the kind of blog posts that spread the fastest.

What did you learn today?

Stay Tuned...

School will be starting up again on January 8th.

What did you learn today?