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.

She said what?!?!

Today we had some familiar "negative energy" from Sister...she had a bad attitude pretty much off and on all day and was getting pretty belligerent at what was just a simple explanation. This is my challenge with her and probably will never go away. It really is a struggle she has but is getting better with age. She had some privileges removed and hopefully tomorrow her attitude is adjusted in a better way.

The part that was too bad was that she did a great job on her project. She is working on her sanitizer project and had to have the rough draft done in a few days. It sounded great, but when she added a cost comparison I asked her how many uses each cost represented...you can't compare unless you take that into account - or it shouldn't be included at all. She got really p.o.'d to the point of disrespect. This is real life. Kids give us challenges that are kind of funny, but so not funny at the same time.

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Little Y guy is still continuing on with working in his little preschool book and learning letters. The other day big sister was playing school on the chalk board with him - but it was actually just "real" school. She was helping him learn letters. They do a lot of pretend play that ranges from ninja battles, to silly scenarios, making movies,  doing reviews - pretty random but my philosophy is that it is realllly important to their development both socially and intellectually to give them plenty of time to PLAY. To have an eleven and a half year old that still plays like THAT is pretty amazing. I sadly had gone way, way past that level by that age and was hanging out with older kids and worrying if I was cool.

I like that there is a sense of both orneriness and innocence in our kids.

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Little-big brother is working through his checklist every day, too. Last week I talked about how we are introducing a fourth grade social studies text into his learning. He has almost totally gotten over the intimidation of a big text book and I'm having him read sections and answer questions. The sections are very small, and the vocab is easily identifiable. I make sure he writes in complete sentences, and is mindful of neatness. He read the last book in his Percy Jackson series in about 24 hours and we need to get back to the library so he has a chapter book to read. For today, it was Calvin and Hobbes...we have all of them via Daddy's collection. Someday I should really sit down and read them, they are apparently totally awesome!

Summer begins

Goodbye, school year!!

The new journey starts now. This blog is a place for me to record what they do...part of what they do. The part that I need to recognize as apart of their education and to hopefully catch any gaps as well as recognize our achievements...and maybe discuss some struggles.

I may post educational articles and insights...I am not sure who my audience is and what I'll be comfortable sharing. Am I just recording what I do or sharing what I'm learning? It may be both.

I need to catch up from last week:

Everyone started on their summer/early fall workbooks through this line of books:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1609963326/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

*edited to fix link

Little Y is going through about a letter a week

He learned to cut with scissors

The older two have assignment checklists each day:

Three pages of workbook
Mental math practice on softschools.com
draw a sketch
read for about an hour
one hour of Skyrim
1/2 of free internet time
chores for each (for age level)
devotion time

Today Sis made bread independently which is a great skill!

Tuesday was library day and Sissy spent the day with her b/f/f

Our first garden is live --- learning first hand about life sciences and developing a love of nature/environment