New School Year!!

Today is our first day back to our school schedule. We are doing a couple of things today: setting up notebooks and schedules and picking books. We are also using Farmville (on Facebook) as an activity. Today we learned how to figure out profit! (Sale price – cost = Profit). With Collin we added in the time factor. It’s cool to have an engaging game to use for a concrete illustration. Yay Facebook!

Work

This is the view from my ‘desk’ at work, which I share with the most talented people on the planet.

Public Speaking

Collin is taking a class called “US Made Leaders”, it’s a leadership class and today they had to give a speech. He’s really talented. Not nervous, speaks out, connects with his audience…I wish I had this kind of poise when I was 12. I’m very proud.

Math

Leslie finished her Math-U-See Beta book today!
Here we come multiplication….

I did an oral exam with her just thumbing through the Home Learning: Year by Year book, which gives a broad overview of all she should have learned in 4th grade. The PS was no where near close, lol. But she’s doing remarkably well and I’m proud. They both are, but today is about Leslie because she finished the math book!

HS Moms: Have you discovered testdesigner.com? It’s marvelous for making test like worksheets, and it’s FREE. Leslie loves these. She’s all about getting the gold star.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays

Tuesdays
We do lessons from 9-11. We do all the daily stuff plus Science on Tuesday. Right now we are working through The Fairyland of Science which is alot of fun. It was written in the 1920′s and so it’s really old, but it introduces basic concepts in such a delightful way that I couldn’t pass it up. We supplement this with experiments from Science Lab in the Supermarket and by watching and discussing various science shows on Discovery. We love Planet Earth, Mythbusters and Time Warp. It’s really really cool to watch them learn something and then be able to apply it… “Why won’t that work, Collin?” “Because all the energy will go to the weakest point…I’ll bet the roof blows off first!”

I head to work at noon and Debi or Burt picks them up at 2. Leslie has her chorus class in the afternoon and they hang out with the Rutledges until I get done with work around 9 pm. Then home, chores and bed.

Wednesday
Wed is very similar. We do lessons from 10-12, have lunch and I go to work at 1:00. Wednesday is poetry day – Leslie is studying William Blake and Collin is doing Rudyard Kipling. It’s cool. Collin is very good at oral interpretation. I see a debater in the future…

I go to work at 1:00 and leave them home to do chores and free time for a couple of hours. I work about 5 minutes away, so I can always get home quickly if they need me. I pick them up at 4:00 and they spend the evening with me at work/church. Both have jobs here. Collin has begun helping in the nursery on Wednesdays – he really loves the 2/3 room! Leslie works with the video team, either on iris or a camera. We finish services around 8:30 and are usually done with the turn (where we strike this week’s items from the stage and set up for Sunday) by 10:00. Home and bed by 10:30.

A Day in the Life

So what’s our day look like? Some folks ask me (incredulously) how on earth it is possible to work full time and home-school. It took us several months of working it out but we’ve finally gotten into a grove that works for all of us. I thought I’d share it here so that you can gets some ideas for your own family.

When I started this post, I though I’d do a whole weekly overview, but apparently I’m wanting to get way too detailed! I’ll do a couple of days at a time.

Sunday:
7am-3pm: Work

Since I work for a church, the kids come with me and they serve too. My son does tech for our children’s program, and my daughter is on the praise team for the children’s ministry. This means that most of the time, they are either in class or helping while I work in the auditorium with the main services. On the odd day that one of them isn’t on the schedule, they hang out in the green room with a book or a Nintendo DS (depending on what they’ve earned).

3pm-10pm: Free time

We hang out at home. Laundry, tv, playing with friends, Wii, etc. It’s our down day!

Monday
7:30 – 10:00 Chores and free time

My kiddos have a set of chores that must be done before 10 am. It includes breakfast – everyone does their own thing for breakfast in my house because we all get up at different times and have different obligations and needs in the morning. For years I tried to get us all around the table and it was just miserable. This way works WAY better for us. I generally wake up at 7:30 and use my phone while laying in bed to check my email, Facebook, read the news, ready my bible and check the weather. I enjoy feeling like I’m being lazy by staying in bed, but I’m getting mentally ready for my day. It’s just one way that I find time for me! By 8:30 I’m out of the house for a run/walk. I get home, shower and have breakfast and we start school at 10 am.

10am-Noon: Lessons

We have a set of items that we do every day: Math, Reading, Copywork, Journaling and Bible. Then each day we add one “special”. Monday is History. Curriculum – We use Math-U-See for math, Ambleside Online for Reading and Copywork, and I’m using Sword Fighting for Bible. I give them a journal starter (google it!) and they have to write a paragraph every day from that. For History, we are reading This Country of Ours by H.E. Marshall, another Ambleside Online recommendation. It’s written like a story rather than a dry text and the kids love it.

I use the Charlotte Mason approach to my homeschooling, where the children read the books and then they narrate it back to me – showing that they’ve learned it. Occasionally I do a google search and pull up some sort of worksheet about what they are learning. I do this primarily for my daughter who really likes to see that 100 on the top of her page! I use the CM Organizer at the Simply Charlotte Mason website to organize and log exactly what we do every day – it’s a marvelous tool and really saves me time and energy. And let me tell you, as a single, working, home school mom, anything that saves you time and energy is worth it’s weight in GOLD! I’m fortunate enough to live in Michigan where there are few requirements about home school documentation, but I want to be as detailed as I can about what the kids have learned because it helps me make sure that nothing falls through the cracks. It also ensures that I’ll have a ready transcript anytime it’s needed.

Noon – 1:00 Lunch and free time

1-2 Lessons

Here’s where we finish up anything that needs more work or follow a path we found interesting that might not have been on the schedule. A cool idea for a science project that came from someone’s reading, watching a related Mythbuster or History channel show on the Tivo that relates to lessons…that sort of thing.

3-6 Free time/Errands

The kiddos have another chunk of chores that have to completed by 5 pm (to coincide with the days I get home from work at 5). Once they are finished with them, they have free time while I do general housework or errands. I’m blessed that they are old enough to be home without me while I do this.

6 Dinner

Preparing dinner is a full family affair. Everyone cooks. It’s a lifeskill that everyone needs. I guess I could call this “Home Economics” I generally sneak in some random lessons during this time – chemistry or maybe some math (measuring is great for practicing fractions!). Right now we are cooking things we found from YouTube on Depression Cooking so we’ve been talking about history and the Depression while we cook. Get this – my kids think peeling potatoes is COOL. Ain’t that a hoot?

7 – 10 Chores and free time

Yes, another chunk of chores and then free time. We tend to play the Wii (Rock Band is the BOMB!) or watch TV together. Sometimes we go our separate ways for this (I’m on the computer, they might be playing games…etc) it all depends.

10 Bedtime for the kids.

We do “thankful” every night by going around the room and asking what each person is thankful for that day. It’s a great way to end the day.

10:30-Midnight

This is when I finish up anything, ready for tomorrow and my own downtime. I play Star Wars Galaxies on the computer with friends maybe twice a week, or I read, or just go to bed early. lol. Without my own recreation time, I’d have nothing to give to the kids or anyone else. It’s important.

I love Mondays because it’s one of my days off. If you work a traditional job, this may be what your Saturday or Sunday looks like. I try to get all the little nagging stuff off my plate on Monday so that my other days, which are FAR busier than this one, don’t get overwhelming.

Melinda Mae

Have you heard of tiny Melinda Mae,
Who ate a monstrous whale?
She thought she could,
She said she would,
So she started in right at the tail.

And everyone said,”You’re much too small,”
But that didn’t bother Melinda at all,
She took little bites and she shewed very slow,
Just like a little girl should…

…and eighty-nine years later she ate that whale
Because she said she would!!!

If I Were President

This was Leslie’s journal entry last week. I had to share!

“If I were president, I would help the environment by using solar powered cars. I would stop putting more and more people in the army. I would lower gas prices and give money to the poor. I would give toys to the poor. I would eat healthier food instead of eating pizza all the time. I would get five dogs and give them a dog room all to themselves.”

Enrichment

Just wanted to give ya’ll some insight into the enrichment that the kids are going to be involved in this term.

Leslie is taking Elementary Chorus with OHMI this term. It’s a terrific program. We went to their Christmas Concert and were blown away by the high level of instruction. She’s already been to one class and came home very excited. She also continues to be involved with the AWANA program at a friend’s church. On a sad note, Leslie’s wonderful piano teacher, Miss Alison, is moving away, so she won’t be able to continue her piano lessons for a while. Alison was truly a gift to us and we will miss her.

Collin will be joining the Boy Scouts! He’s been asking about it for years, and I’ve always said no, but this seems like a good time. We have friends who are active in a local troup and he’s going to join them. He also continues to be very active in our junior high youth group, Breakaway, and goes to a small group bible study twice a month.

We’ve also joined a local homeschool group, Enrichment Hub, that operates out of Kensington. While not a Kensington ministry, we use the church building and many of the families are Kensington folks. I’ve even run into an old friend from college in this group! Go figure. Through this group, we get to go on weekly field trips (swimming, ice skating, tumbling…museums, etc) and every Friday is enrichment day – the kids take 3 classes on that day: they both take Drama & Beginning video editing, Leslie takes guitar & Collin takes Alternative Energy Engineering.

In addition to these great things, they’ll also be taking Karate beginning next week. It’s a great program that has classes on M-F at the same time and one on Sat morning. A monthly fee allows them to attend any classes, so we can flex it around my freaky work schedule! God is so good to us.

I was quite anxious when I started this that the kids would really suffer from a lack of time with thier peers, but now they have even more than they did before! Amazing.

As you might imagine, having the kids involved in all of these activities can get pricey. To that end, I’m setting up a savings account at SmartyPig so that anyone who wants to help can contribute to their tuition. It’s a pretty cool concept. If you want to contribute, let me know and I’ll make you a co-owner of the account. Then you can deposit money whenever you want and see the account on the web. I rarely ask for help for me, but I’ll take anything to help the kids. As I finish getting that set up, I’ll post it here.

Thanks for stopping by!

Great New Start!

Today was a really great “first” day. We spent most of December getting out of bad habits and easing into homeschool. Today we started with the curriculum. It really was fun. The kids read thier assigned books independently (Collin’s reading King Arthur, Leslie is reading The Princess and the Goblin). Then they each wrote a summary of what they’ve read. Right now, with Collin, I’m focusing on neatness – his writing is so illegible that it’s difficult to even pretend to check for spelling. One battle at a time. Since he hates writing so much – making him do it over is pure torture. Therefore, I’m predicting that he’ll very quickly choose to do it right the first time! We shall see. Leslie seems to have a pretty good bead on grammar and spelling for the most part. What I’m going to do with her is pull all the words she uses in these summaries that she spells wrong and make them next week’s spelling words.

Collin and I read some Rudyard Kipling – “A Boy Scout’s Patrol Song”. At first, he wasn’t sure about the heightened language – but once he started getting into the meat of it, he really got into it. He does well at oral interp. No formal assignment today, we just read it and kinda talked about it. I want to get him in the habit of cadence and really enjoy the poetry before it seems like work to him.

Leslie, who already LOVES poetry, and I read some William Blake. We talked a little about the Romantics – that era and what it meant and then read 3 fairly short poems. She really likes them. She loves talking about how they make her feel and describing the scene.

For history, we read about how George Washington resigned his commission with the army and went home after the Revolutionary War. Then we read about the Continental Congress and how difficult it was to get all the states to agree. We talked about States rights vs Centralized Government – it was really awesome how it turned into a civics lesson. Who knew when I started with George Washington, it would be so relevant to today? Boo-ya!

We also read the intro to the awesome science book, The Fairy-land of Science. It talks all about how science is just as cool as fairy tales….we shall see.

We wrapped up the day by watching North by Northwest (yes, the Hitchcock film). We talked about all the elements of a great story – character into, development, foreshadowing, denouncement, etc…. Man, I LOVE introducing them to great art, even in film. Enough of this and maybe they’ll know the difference between good stuff and garbage and I won’t have to go see any more “Air Bud” movies. One can only hope!

I wanted to do some Sword Fighting (scripture memorization) today, but didn’t get around to it. We’ll do that tomorrow.

I’m hoping to get do Bible, History, Literature, and Math everyday. Then we’ll do Science twice a week and Art, Music & Shakespeare once a week. We do something for citizenship everyday – I want them to be steeped in stories of people who did the right thing. Right now it’s Farmer Boy from the Little House on the Prairie Series. They are fascinated by the respectful attitudes that the children in those stories have for their parents and other adults. We work geography into almost everything we do – any time a place is mentioned in any story we read, we find it on the map. Today we traced Washington’s route from NY to Virginia and back to Boston.

I later asked Leslie how school went today and she said “that was school? It was just fun!”
Hooray!