{Week 6}

Hiya!

I've lived to tell about another week of homeschooling!

I'm really excited about all the stuff my kids are learning through Classical Conversations.  It sure can be an overwhelming program, but your kids learn a LOT.  And the parent does too!  One of the things we're currently learning is a timeline of the history of the world.  Sound like a lot of information to memorize?  Well it is!  But we're learning it in chunks, week by week.  And we learn the information set to a song, so it makes it easier to memorize.

Each week in CC, the kids do some kind of fine art.  For the current 6 weeks set, the fine art is drawing.  The kids all learned about perspective this week at CC.  Here is Claire's drawing (you're looking down a street with buildings on the right and trees on the left)

Here is a snapshot of my personal dry erase board during Essentials at CC this week.  We were identifying all the parts of speech and then diagramming the sentence "Do any of the kids laugh loudly?" 

The final shot of CC this week is of Claire's Foundations class reviewing their memory work.  The class decided to go outside for their review since the weather was so nice.

Tuesday got off to a sluggish start. I had spent the previous night upchucking my dinner and then some.  So Tuesday morning I wasn't exactly bright eyed and bushy-tailed.  BUT.  I put on my big girl panties and we got to work anyway.  Attitudes were pretty good that day.

Cade, our resident artist, decided to draw this picture on our white board during one of his breaks.  The drawing uses the perspective concept that he learned in CC on Monday.  The drawing is his viewpoint from his desk (the three rectangles at the top are the windows in our living room upstairs).

Wednesday we got started on time (hallelujah!)  And it went pretty well except for battling some serious attitude issues.  Scott's solution was to put the offending kid in "solitary confinement" in the guest room for the entire day with nothing but books (obviously the kid could come out for meals and to go to the bathroom).  And so it happened.  One kiddo got solitary after repeated warnings.  And it wasn't pretty.  There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth.  But OH!  The change in this kiddo was a complete 180.  He/she was MUCH more cooperative and pleasant the rest of the day.  I relented and let him/her out of solitary in the early afternoon.  But the time spent in solitary was enough to do the trick.

Thursday was our last school day of the week (see Friday, below).  So we crammed a whole bunch of assignments into our day.  Taking a long snack break didn't help us stay on track (oops).  But we did our best to get a lot done.  At times, it felt like I was repeatedly bashing my head against a brick wall.  Not sure why I felt that way.  But there ya go.

Friday was a fun day.  I started off the day at a Celebrate Calm workshop and then met my mom and the kids at the Heard Museum of Natural Science. Here are a couple of pics from our outing:

My mom joined us for the fun...

Claire as an owl...

Cade as an owl...

Because if two do it, then the third has to do it too.  Jack as an owl...

Dinosaurs LIVE! was part of an exhibition going on at the museum.  The dinos were very realistic looking (and sounding)

 

 And a lemur...

There was also a butterfly area...

And then some random pics from the week.  Reading rocks! Right Cade?

Claire Bear working on some math.

Jack, reading about Mozart.

A BRILLIANT idea I had was to make these "dollars."  In order to help encourage attitudes to be happy and eager, the kids can earn laminated dollars by doing good work with good attitudes.  Once a month, the kids will buy small toys, $5 gift cards, etc from me.  The kids are THRILLED with this idea, and attitudes have improved!  It's especially fun to reward a kiddo with a dollar and see the jealousy pass over the others' faces.  It makes the others work a little harder so they can earn a dollar too!

And to show that we're not all work around here, here's Cade in a distracted moment (which lasted for about 10 minutes).

And Claire reading.

Shout out!

Shout out to Erin, Becky, & Julie who read this blog.  I think you are the only ones.  :)

::sigh:: (Week 5)

This week marks the beginning of our time to really get all of our work done.  The first several weeks, we've been trying to hit all the subjects but not necessarily complete all of our work.  That fantasy ended this week.

Tuesday was dreadful.  We got started late, took a longer lunch than expected, and didn't finish until 4pm.  And at 4pm, we weren't even done with all of our work.  Jack was in the middle of a grammar lesson and still had to tackle latin.  Claire still needed to do a reading lesson with me.  Cade was blessedly finished.

But a neighborhood boy came calling for Jack at 4pm, and I didn't have the heart to say, "NO!  We're still doing school!"  I mean, who still does school after 4pm???  Apparently we do.

There were a couple of factors that led to us working late in the day on Tuesday. The late start was one.  Taking a longer lunch for me to rest was one factor.  But the fact that there are a lot of subjects my kids can't/won't do by themselves means that they have to wait for me to work one-on-one with them.  There's only one of me.  And there's three of them.  So while the kids may get numerous breaks during the day (waiting for me to work one-on-one with them), I don't get many breaks.  And we end up doing school past 4pm.

Something's gotta give.  I'm exhausted.

Wednesday got started late (again).  I met with a friend at 8am for an hour and then the biweekly cleaning lady was here when I got home around 9:30.  So we didn't get started until 10:30 or so (it's hard to do school when someone is vacuuming around you).  And the boys had piano lessons at 1:45.  So we got 1/6th of our work done that day.

Thursday we got started on time.  Hallelujah!  And we got pretty much everything (except Latin -- easy to skip that) done.  And minimal tears, too!

Friday was great.  We were supposed to go on a field trip to the Heard Museum of Natural Science.  But it actually RAINED!  It RAINED!  Did you hear me?  It RAINED!  Because half of what we had planned to do at the museum happens outdoors, we rescheduled our field trip and did school instead.  BUT.  It was a very relaxed day of schooling.  We purposely did about half of our subjects and had a stress-free Friday.  It was really nice.  Wish all of our days could be like that!

A bright spot in the week was when I caught Cade helping Claire with some of her math homework.  She wasn't having a hard time per se with her work.  I think Cade just wanted to feel helpful (and not do his own work).

Another bright spot is the Bible study with which we start our day.  It's called Grapevine and we are currently studying the Old Testament.  The schtick of Grapevine is "stick figuring through the Bible."  Below is an example of the stick figuring.  We read Scripture, and then the kids will copy the simple stick figure drawing(s) I draw on the dry erase board.  Wednesday morning we read about Cain and Abel in Genesis.  Abel is on the left, happy that he is bringing God the best of what he has to sacrifice to God.  Cain is on the right, grumpy, and he's not bringing God his best offering. 

When people stop and ask me how homeschooling is going, I tell them it depends on the day.  More realistically, my answer depends on the hour in question.  Some hours are good.  Some are not so good.  But overall, the kids are learning stuff, and I'm enjoying watching them struggle through difficult subjects and seeing the light bulbs turn on.

That Week When I Stopped Naming the Weeks (Week 4)

So forgive me.  I'm just not creative enough to keep on naming every week something different and cute.  So this is the week when I stopped naming the weeks.

This week was... hmmm.... well it was tiring.  It's sinking in that I'm going to be doing this (homeschooling) every day of every week.  With not that many breaks.  Now I knew this at some level.  Obivously I'm going to be doing this every day of every week.  But I don't think I really realized that it was going to be EVERY day of EVERY week with little break.  And I'm starting to feel it in my bones.

Scott had to have a sit down talk with the kids this week to remind them that bad attitudes were not permissible at their former school and they aren't permissible at home either.  There were several days that I had to "fight" bad attitudes for most of the day, and that is just plain exhausting.  Thankfully, Friday was a good day with every one cooperating and in a pleasant mood.  Especially for one of my kids, this will be an on-going battle.  I'm not above handing out extra work to discipline a bad attitude.

I'm starting to realize that my kids aren't ready to work completely on their own yet. I'm not talking

about working independently from a task list.  I'm talking about the kids being given an assignment (that they understand) and working on it by themselves.  Kids are getting frustrated and overwhelmed as well as getting distracted and spacing out.  This is unfortunate, because I was trusting them to do some of their work by themselves so that I could work with another kid at the same time.  There is 3 of them and only 1 of me.  

This may mean that my days get longer as I have to work one-on-one more often with my kids.  *sigh* Hopefully this will be a temporary deal.  My goal is for my kids to work mostly independently (as they get older) with self-direction and discipline.

Our days aren't only serious, by the way.  There is lots of snickering and laughing through the day.  For example, here are two pictures of Jack telling us some funny story this week.

 And we also perform stupid human tricks. 

Of course we also get lots of work done.  Here is Cade, working on Essentials grammar work for Classical Conversations.

 

And Claire reading...

 

And Jack working on math...

 

One of the activities the kids can work on when they don't have work they can do alone (and I'm working with one of their siblings) is to write.  Write stories, write letters to friends, write anything.  Here is an example of Claire's writing...

 

And finally, a funny graphic that is close to the truth.  Except in the last square on the bottom right, I'd also be pictured pulling out my hair while simultaneously smiling genuinely at my kids.

{in-between-weeks thoughts}

Hi there!  I have a couple of thoughts that I thought I'd share in an unscheduled post.  

This whole home educating thing... it's about so much more than just educated my kids.  It's really about character development.  

It's easy and tempting to blow off character flaws in your kids when you don't see your kids that often (ie: the kids spend 7+ hours at school).  Or when you don't have to deal with the flaws day in and day out for months on end.  I know this from personal experience.  I would endure summers and be SO SO grateful when it was time to send the kids back to school.  Because I couldn't stand the kids by the end of August.  I couldn't stand them anymore because the kids had these annoying tendencies (habits) and character flaws that were incessantly in my face and seemed to never go away.  "Great!  School is starting.  Let someone else deal with my kid for 8 hours a day.  Better them than me," is how I felt.

Now that we're homeschooling, I can't let these bad manners and habits and flaws stay alive and well.  For my sanity (and everyone else's sanity here at the house), we have to confront these issues, help the kids see their sins, and encourage them to repent and change.  

This also goes for me.  I need to be on my knees, asking God to show me my flaws (sins) so that I can repent and change too.  For example, my recent snarky-ness with the kids has no place in our homeschool.  That kind of attitude/language does not foster an encouraging environment in which the kids can learn.  

Now that the kids and I are going to be rubbing elbows with each other for 6 hours a day Monday through Friday, we all need to gauge our weaknesses and flaws, repent to Jesus, and change. 

On a lighter note, we ran by the library this past Friday and I caught the boys sweetly waiting for me.  Jack so adores his big brother.

We also had to pick something up at Sears that I had ordered online.  On our way through the store, Claire and Jack were hypnotized by these massaging recliners.

That Week When They All Cried (Week 3)

Ahem.  This has been a rough week.  Not necessarily for me.  But for the kids.  School was going pretty well last week; we hit our groove and had a pretty good routine down.

And then this week we hit a brick wall.  Repeatedly.  With our faces.

Child 1 (not necessarily in birth order)

One child has a history of getting overwhelmed and stuck.  This happened last year in public school, usually in math.  Said kid would start staring off into the great beyond during class, not doing their work.  The teacher would get on their case, but this kid would still drift off into la-la land.  The interesting thing was that it didn't appear that the actual math was the problem.  This kid got A's in their advanced math class.  When quizzed on their math, they would get the answers correct.  But repeatedly, this kid would have to skip recess and stay inside to work on late work.  Math wasn't the only subject in which this kid turned in late work.  History and English weren't immune.  But it was usually math that this kid got hung up on.

Fast forward to this past week.  This same kid became stuck. And overwhelmed.  And cried.   We're not even to new material in math; it's a review of what they learned in public school last year until we get to new material in the book. 

My kid says they can't even start the math problems.  They say they're no good at math.  They start crying.  They claim they're tired. They says they feel worthless.

I don't want this kid to hate school (or math) or himself/herself. 

Pray that we can find out what the issue(s) is/are so that we can find a solution.  The solution is not to not do math.  We have to do math.  But we can't continue the way we've been doing, because that way is no longer working.  

The problem could lie with the curriculum we're using.  It could lie with the kid (ADD? something else?).  The problem could be some distraction that could be taken away.  WHO KNOWS?!?

Child 2

Then there's the other kid that gets so frustrated that they can't get the words out of their mouth (to answer one of my questions) that they slam their hand down on the desk, hurting themselves in the process.

Child 3

Then there's the kid that keeps injuring themselves.  Tripping and falling.  Stubbing a toe.  Walking into a door.  It seems that this child is prone to injury.  And crying about it.  Constantly.

Inhale.  Exhale.  This mom shall overcome!  Surprisingly, I made it through the week relatively unscathed.  Usually when there is that much crying in the house, I join in on the fun.  But not this week (there must be something to that praying thing!).  I was strong, in control of myself (for the most part), and joyful.

On a lighter note, here is Cade, diligently doing his studies.  (kidding -- i paid him $5 to look like he was busy and studious)

 

All 3 kids working...

Jack, diagramming a sentence on the white board.