Scheduling and other early struggles.

Last week was a disaster of feeling discouraged.

We had to scrap the original schedule I made because Dad started teaching the middle schooler math. Except I am teaching math again. He is a back up but I still needed to plug in times for one on one.

My original home school schedule left me a shadow of a mom.

Not even kidding. For some reason, I tried to jam everything in the morning, and I ended up being a harried, horribly hungry, and totally overwhelmed mom. The baby sensed the frenzy and got fussy.

So last week was kind of thrown off because I thought I could just wing what we needed to do and when. Errands threw me off, my mom visiting a few times threw me off, and I just wasn't sure what to do and when.

Schedules can be comforting, I've learned - as long as they don't schedule every second.

And schedule breaks, for heaven's sake!

I definitely wanted to include my challenges and struggles in home schooling. So here is the first major one that I have had.

Scheduling for four kids, small group, church, husband, the home, the kids' other needs, writing, friends, family, never mind that I still haven't really scheduled anytime for my own creativity but I hope to change that soon!

I really don't want to be a resentful person, but I find myself in the victim role put there by myself when I don't give myself time and recognize when there is too much tension or stress.

So this week feels much better.

Here is my schedule. This is only for the main subjects that I directly lecture or have an agenda for. As with most home educated children, some other things are happening that are child led learning. And we are always looking for opportunities to show them "on the field" rather than from a text book.

Additionally, spelling lists are given and independent "for fun" books as well as books that I assign are also apart of our curriculum. Also, we do many creative projects that blend English and Science with art and those aren't on the main generic schedule.

Daily Schedule (this is adjusted if we have errands or piano lessons, etc):

9:00 -11:00 is my grammar and writing English block of time.

11:00 lunch, tidy, chore block

1:00 Science (lectured and discussed with the older two)

2:00 Coffee and Snack break

3:00 Math Block (kids tagteam watching the baby if she is awake for lecutre/learning time)

Bedtime - Books with Little Y and devotion time

With Little Y, I find myself working with him in the morning or afternoon when the kids have their work done for the day. For instance, today, we discussed the article on Chimps on his Big Backyard magazine subscription and we did a maze and made and read the little booklet.

He also made a card for his baby sister's upcoming birthday - so sweet.

We are keeping all media to a minimum for the big kids.

Little Y has game time when I am lecturing science, but sometimes he plays or does another activity.

Yesterday, I bought marshmallows and toothpicks for a learning activity and to introduce shapes, designs, and architecture. I didn't think it was as cool as I expected it to be. Mainly because the marshmallows were not co-operating. He spent over sixty minutes playing with it, so for that reason, I think it was a big success. I am sure he was learning tactile and other skills by doing this activity. Big brother also played with it some, but this was definitely more of a preschool craft.

Crafting

Three posts in one day is a little much but I wanted to establish here... just a few pictures of craft and free time from a few weeks ago for the kids and a link to an article about crafting.

For my birthday I got a few books about making felt creatures from my dad. :)

I feel like I am way too serious and this will help - that and my husband and kids being able to crack me up (this balances out the infuriating effect that they can also have ha ha) - anyhoo, I found this article about how important crafting is for kids.  Here is an amazing quote:

"It [crafting] has been shown to increase intelligence in seemingly unrelated areas."

There have been studies on the effects of say, knitting on the mind of the knitter and how it is pretty much the same as meditation!! I simply love hand sewing but have never really found myself too crafty, despite my genetics. I have some really crafty and artsy relatives. Aside from painting a few times a year, I really don't find myself wanting to craft and haven't passed that on to my kids.

But the simple creatures in the aranzo aranzi books are really fun. There are some pretty funny little descriptions in the book and it really ends up cheering us up and is super fun. I'm almost done with a robot panda for Little Y but Sissy made these creatures completely uniquely...there are no limes or pirates in the book and the faces were completely unique and funny that she made:

pirate lime couple. respect it.

Brother is still into lego building and is realllly into his Percy Jackson book series currently, so that takes his free time (does he even have free time because Little Y always wants to wrastle?)...he also loves making little comics and he has started his sketch book again. He really isn't as into lego as he was a couple years ago, but he did this one the other day - just a little vehicle contraption -  but takes patience nonetheless and I'm always happy to see what comes from my little guy.

So yeah, free time, projects, structured learning, independent projects --- Roots and Wings Academy is in business.