The Week That was Short {Week 10}

This week was a short week.  We did CC on Monday like usual and homeschool Tuesday through Thursday like usual.  But Friday we took off to go camping... even if it was just for the night.

Monday  CC.  Long day.  Again.  Ugh.

Tuesday  Tuesday was my Mom's birthday.  She turned 71!!!  So I rushed to Target at 8am for some essentials plus some pretty flowers for my mom.  Which means that we got started late with school.  Oh well.  Seems like a troubling theme in our school.

Here is Cade pretending to be deep in thought about something in math.  Notice the Nerf gun sitting nearby?  It was questionable whether actual school was happening here.

Wednesday  I woke up grumpy on Wednesday morning.  But we managed to get school done anyway.  AND we got rain on Wednesday, which is completely not homeschool related. 

Also not homeschool related are the chores that the kids are doing now.  Here is Claire happily vacuuming (this was Jack's job, by the way; she commandeered it from him)

Thursday  We started on time Thursday (hallelujah!) and managed to get quite a bit done in the morning.  And that was a good thing because I had a LOT to do Thursday afternoon to get ready for our camping trip on Friday.

How do you stay organized?  Because I know you're dying to know, here are some organizational tools I use to keep us (somewhat) on-track and organized.

I use Homeschool Tracker Online to keep up with what assignments the kids have done and still need to do this year.  Here is an example of what a detailed listing of weekly assignments a kid (in this case, Cade) needs to complete. 

I got tired of hearing, "How much school do I have left today?"  So I typed up these simple lists for each kid. I then put them in page protectors so the kids could mark out with a dry erase marker once they had completed that subject for the day.

And here is our daily schedule each week.  We follow this pretty much to the letter to keep us on track.  If a kid hasn't completed a subject in the allotted time (usually because they were playing around and not concentrating), then it'll be finished as "homework"  later after everyone else is done with school.

General Thoughts  Regarding trying to fit all of our schooling in to normal, doable hours... Well, I think I've managed to find a few minutes during the day that was not being used in a productive way.  So at least this week, we managed to get Essentials done too.  Which is a miracle. 

I spoke with Cade's Essentials tutor about some of the problems we have been having.  And she was very helpful in a couple of different ways.  She reminded me that I can scale the work to what we can handle.  The more advanced students, who have been in the class multiple years, can handle more work.  But since we are first year students, it's OK if we're not doing the same level of work.  Also, she gave some practical tips on working with Cade.  One of the problems was that I felt like I was doing some of the work myself (in regards to proofing and editing Cade's writing).  She offered that it might feel like that for a while.  I'm MODELING how to edit and proofread for Cade.  So it's OK that I am doing some of the work alongside Cade.  At some point in the future, Cade will understand what is necessary when editing his writing and will be able to do all of it himself.  He's just not to that point yet.

And Scott reminded me of this first semester's goals:

1. to get out of the semester alive
2. to want to do homeschooling again next semester

And the goal of this entire school year is to want to do it again next school year.  So pushing ourselves too hard and making ourselves miserable just to finish assignments the way I think they should be done is NOT in our best interests.  The kids will get there.  They'll eventually be writing, thinking, problem-solving, etc how I want them to.  They're just not there yet, and it's not our goal to make sure they're at that place by the end of this semester.  Or the end of the year. 

Grace: it's what's especially for homeschooling moms.