This weekend

This weekend I didn't get a chance to make lesson plans, so now I am trying to get this week's plans done quickly. Hopefully I can get them done before all the children wake up and start saying strange things like, "I'm hungry, what's for breakfast?" I mean, what's up with that? Don't they know I am on a DIET, I don't want to talk about food!

So, I had better get going so I can finish the lesson plans, and start breakfast. The day just goes so much smoother without those questions.

Making It Up

I have a lesson schedule planned for school to help my older boys get "caught up" and to keep us moving. Last week I lacked the drive to push my older boys to accomplish all of their scheduled lessons. So now each day of this weekend they will work on it to get caught up. Part of me feels bad, but another part feels like if I slack off on the dishes or laundry, I have to work harder to get us caught up (and give us some clothes to wear-grin). So they should have to understand that if they slack off on their work then they have to work to catch up. So even though they are sad that they have lost their weekend, they are hopefully learning to get their work done when it is due.

Our Textbooks Came

Our Textbooks came and now I am busily planning the lessons for the year for them. Noah is so very excited to use his new Rod & Staff grade 2 science. I am going to coordinate each lesson with colorful books from my library or from the public library. I don't like to use the public library for science books though.

The girls are upset, because they don't get their own. And Elijah and Moses want to not do any math and do only English, Science and History. It is so funny to see what they are strong in.

Elijah is very good with English, something I struggle with. Noah is good with math and he loves science. Moses is good with reading, but he doesn't really like anything else! Chloe is doing well in her Rod & Staff grade 1 math even though she is just 5, and we are getting close to her starting to read. She is almost finished with her letter sounds book. Mara is enjoying the Rod & Staff preschool books and has just finished the first book. She is eager and loves doing her lessons. And Brook my soon to be 2 year old has just discovered that she doesn't have to scribble. She has learned to draw circles, not perfect circles, but still she is drawing and not scribbling and I think it's great! She is so cute she will draw a page of circles and then bring it to me to color in her shapes. She is so pleased!

My Palm Died

So, I thought I was going to have nice alarms on my Palm for each of the children. God has other ideas, because yesterday my Palm breathed it's last. So that idea didn't work out. I am still waiting for my Rod & Staff order. I have never waited this long, but usually I place my orders in March or April before the rush. I think I will do that again this next year.

Yesterday I let the boys skip school and we watched Ice Princess together. It was fun, and we enjoyed it. Well, I had better get busy, I have lot's to do today.

Those Draggy Days

Yesterday was a draggy day. You know the kind where you are tired and can't seem to focus? Well, yesterday I got so bad, that I didn't even want to homeschool anymore. I started feeling like I was ruining my children and that they should be in regular school. I was miserable.

But the Lord spoke to my heart as I cried out to Him. He showed me that having independence for my children in their school work is good, but I still need to connect with them daily. I have been doing this with my littles, but the olders I would only make myself available for questions. The Lord spoke to my heart about needing to have daily time with each one no matter the age even if they don't actually need my help so that they see I am interested and what they are doing is valuble. This was revealed in the shower where many things are made clear to me in the quiet.

So when I got out of the shower I made a schedule. I took all of the daily chores that I need to do and I put a timetable to each thing adding an hour for each child (school age). I then put it on my Palm pilot and added alarms. I get sidetracked very easily, and having alarms should snap me out of it.

Now, this might seem like a no brainer to some of you out there that are homeschooling, but I have noticed that these things happen gradually. I mean I didn't set out to teach my sons that way, but just sort of slid into it. I actually think it is good when I start feeling frustrated and ready to give up. During the daily grind it is so easy to not see where problems are even though I feel them. But when I am ready to give up, the problems are brought right before my eyes and I turn to the Lord to guide me through them.

So, now I am encouraged and the Lord has strengthened me to run this homeschooling race for a bit longer.

Taking This Week Off

I am going to take this week off to focus on my home. Right now it needs a bit of extra attention and the children need some extra cuddles and training. So for the rest of this week until next Monday I won't be blogging. I will be back soon!

Today Will Be Busy

Yesterday I didn't get anything school related done. I ended up going into town to help take my neice to urgent care. She broke her toe and was covered in mosquito bites. So today I will work like a crazy person (do crazy people work?). I will get the school bins organized, get the new texts ready to be used, get caught up on the laundry (is this possible?), get some food things prepared in advance for this week, groom the dog (we have a Samoyed, he is all fur), and finish pulling the weeds in the front yard (these are taller than me, I had some physical problems and couldn't get to them, and then I was AFRAID to get to them).

Let's look at the time each task will take:

School bins organized-1 hour for 6 bins

Getting the new texts ready-1 hour (we have to remember interruptions)

Get caught up on laundry-3 hours (time needed for washing and drying 6-7 hours)

Advance food preparation-2 hours

Groom the dog-1 hour

Finish pulling weeds-4 hours

Okay, let's add it up: 1+1+3+2+1+4=12 hours. Hmmm, 12 hours of work. But I didn't include normal meal preparation and the normal Sunday things.

Maybe I should redo my to-do list.

Today is Errand Day

Today is errand day, so we don't do any bookwork, but of course the learning still continues. The three boys will be with me and David will stay at home with the girls.

I have so many plans for this weekend. I need to get caught up on my grading, I am way behind. I need to go through each of their school file boxes and reorganize them. Each child has their own Sterlite file box for workbooks, texts, paper, pens, crayons whatever. They only have to grab the one box to get started. Any extras like dictionaries etc they have to pull off the shelf. These boxes have become a mess, so it is time to get them cleaned up and explain once again why it is important to keep things neat. And also how we should not let our baby sister play in our bins.

I also need to get some final lesson planning done and finish with some other details. I think that I will enlist my older boys to help me grade the younger children's schoolwork. It will be good reinforcement for them.

I have decided that I am weak in English. So, I am going to start in the first textbook and work my way up to learn it so I am able to teach it better. I want to start this weekend, because they are starting their new English texts on Monday.

I had better get the boys up and fed so we can have an early start.

Have a wonderful day whatever it will be!

Isn't It Exciting!

I get so excited when I see one of my children learning to read! Right now Noah is doing great, and I just get so happy as I watch and listen to him reading from his reader. And when he does his workbook pages and figures it out on his own, I am just thrilled. Yesterday he had to read two sentences and then combine them into one. He did this very easily and I was such a proud mama. I am looking forward to when it clicks with Chloe and she starts to actually read. We are working on blending the sounds together (I think that is where Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons shines). She hasn't really gotten it yet, so I might bring out my book and do the first few lessons with her so she will understand the process. She knows all of the sounds already.

Maybe this is corny, but we read in the bathroom. For me it is some of the rare quiet time I get to read. But my older boys have picked up the habit also. I love to see the books they pick to read. Usually it is some sort of science book. It is so neat to be discussing something and have them already know about it even though we haven't officially covered it yet.

As I made out my annual lesson plans for Noah, I saw exactly how far he should progress in reading this year and I got VERY excited. I personally love to read and I want my children to have the same joy. So, when I see them developing it, I am thrilled.

Blushing and Honesty

Yesterday's post included a link to Spunky's site, where I misinterpreted a statement she had made. I am so sorry Spunky, boy is my face red. Anyway, I am so glad she happened to read that post and correct me. I would have felt awful if I had misled people. I wouldn't want to be untruthful at all, even if it was by accident.

It is so important that our children see us living honest, humble and truthful lives. Something as simple as giving the extra quarter back to the store clerk, or being corrected in a misquote and humbly accepting the reproof is what our children need to see. But there is more. How many times do we try to present ourselves without any flaws? I don't mean our appearances although some people go to extremes there also ( I gave that up a long time ago, if it's hopeless, it's hopeless-grin), I mean what our lives are really like.

I know that it is easy when talking with some to give the impression that I have it all together, expesially if they don't know me. Once you get to know me than of course you know that I am FAR from together, but I am still growing.

For example, on this blog I could carefully post only the homeschool items which make us appear to have it all together and be "successful" homeschoolers. But that wouldn't be the full picture. Yesterday, I had absolutely no desire to do any school, and it took every ounce of strength I had to get it done with my youngers. The olders I let off of school and had them do extra chores. I was in the mood to clean and so school fell behind. Did I have my children cheerfully helping? Nope, we are still working on that, so there was a lot of prodding involved. And my children ended up doing a lot of playing when I dropped my prod. Was that good? No, if we were going to focus on work and diligence instead of book learning for the day I shouldn't have dropped my prod, I should have been diligent in my training. But I am not perfect, I struggle, and I think honesty is what we as a homeschool community need to share with one another. It is so hard though with Pamela Perfect and Ellen Excellent giving us examples of their days.

I am not saying that I think we should always just blurt out our struggles, but if we are sharing we shouldn't try to gloss things over like we tend to do. We should be honest with each other. Especially if we are Christians where we should be bearing one anothers burdens. How can we bear them if we aren't even honest enough to share them? So, on this blog I will fight my natural tendency to make things appear better by leaving out the not so perfect details and try to share honestly and hopefully with humility.

And I try to live my daily life the same way. I hope my children see this and learn to be honest in their lives. And you know what? God blesses it! I can't tell you how many times people have made comments about how amazing I am. I am always shocked because they KNOW my flaws. But somehow God works a transformation and only His goodness shines through! What a miracle!

Don't You Just Love...

Don't you just love all the different ways people homeschool their children? I mean there is classical, eclectic, traditional, unschooling, unit studies, the list just seems to go on. When I go onto a homeschool website or blog I get to peek into what others are doing and I find it so encouraging. Some people are dedicated to a certain method, and some use differing methods depending on the child.

I was recently reading some education posts on Momys, particularly on about Alpha & Omega. It is so interesting to see how for some they really enjoy this curriculum, but for me I thought it didn't have enough depth or really teach anything. I guess it is all in our perception. On Spunky's site, she had made a comment about textbooks only being the appetizer, and the real meal was in other books. She felt that textbooks were inferior (please see her correction on this assumption I made in the comments below). On Titus2 Teri Maxwell shares how she used many other methods and wore herself out teaching and then prayerfully switched to Texts. Her older children shared how they wished they would have been taught from texts all along they felt the education was superior.

For myself personally, I am using texts this year. After the texts arrive, I am hoping to purchase some "real" books to accompany these and have them as required reading on the topics covered in the texts. But for me at this stage this is what I am using. I also have Student of the Word curriculum, and this is the phonics program I use. As my children approach high school, I will switch back to S.O.W. as our complete curriculum. But for all the grades and younger children I have I felt we needed something else for now.

But I just love the incredible diversity in the homeschool community! It challenges me to think and do better in educating my children!

Do You Remember...

Do you remember the times in school (if you were in public school, not sure about private) when you came into the new school year and the teacher handed out new textbooks? Sometimes, pretty rarely, but sometimes our class would get to be the first class to use a book, so they were really new. I remember the teacher handing out the books and then guiding us all in opening them and breaking them in. She would instruct us to first open the outer covers holding all the pages upright, and then to take a few pages from each side at a time and slowly press them down until the whole book had been pressed open. We would all do it and I actually enjoyed it.

This morning I was breaking in a new hardcover reader and I was going down memory lane to those times in school. Sometimes those journeys are so pleasant.

This year we are using Merrill Linguistic Readers (I use the workbooks also, but Rainbow Resource doesn't appear to carry them anymore) and I love them. I was breaking in the D book which has never been used, because I just started using these with Noah, the older boys have never used them. We have used in times past Teach Your Child in 100 Easy Lessons, and Phonics Pathways. I have also tried Alpha Phonics, Saxon Phonics and Victory Drill, but none of them really clicked. The Merrill has really worked well and I see Noah learning so many things that the two older boys didn't. Yes, I have flitted around with different programs, but now I have finally found the right one.

Waiting

I have finished almost all of the annual lesson plans I am working on, and it has been so encouraging! It is so good to see where each of my children will be going this year instead of just going with the flow like I usually do.

So that brings me to my topic for today. Now that I am almost finished with my plans for the subjects that we have books for, I am getting more eager for the other subjects to arrive in the mail. I am not good at waiting and never have been. Even when I am pregnant, I can't stand the wait, I want the baby NOW. I am thankful that the Lord hasn't given me what I want and let me have a premature infant! Isn't He good to not give in when it isn't for our best? I usually just get my mind on other things, which is very easy to do with 6 children needing Mama and a husband that likes attention too! But now that things are a little quieter, my mind has turned to expecting a package and realizing once again that I don't like to wait. I never have, and I guess that is why the Lord allows me to wait so much, so I can learn patience. I wish I would hurry up and learn it so I don't have to wait anymore!

It looks like I will have to wait just a little longer to get our new books. Here's hoping that they come tomorrow! But if they don't I will use this time to think and pray before making plans for those subjects. I will use this waiting time wisely (even if I don't want to). Maybe someday I will enjoy the wait.

Still Plugging Away

I am still planning, and I have to agree with Christina that it's fun. I am eagerly awaiting my order of history and science books. Whenever I recieve a new box of schoolbooks I feel like it's Christmas. I get so excited! There is nothing like new school books and office/school supplies to get me excited!

I am truly frustrated with my two oldest boys penmanship. They write like first and second graders. We haven't even gotten into cursive really. I have wondered if something is wrong, but I just think that I have been way to easy on them. If they complained or cried about a writing assignment I have in the past excused them from it. I thought I was following the Moore's idea that they will get it later. But it hasn't improved and only the times when I have had them working diligently has it ever improved. So, I am admitting my mistakes to you, and I am trying to turn away from them and be a strong inforcer of diligence and hard work. The children coming up after the two oldest are doing much better on penmanship (and spelling and math etc) because I have begun to be more disciplined with them. Now I have to undo all the mistakes I made with the first two. Poor guys, they have to suffer for my weakness.

Well, today is our day off, we do 4 day school weeks and school year-round. The girls and I are going to my sister-in-laws house to go swimming. It will be fun I know, but I don't really want to go. You know sometimes I think I'm wacky because it sounds more fun to me to stay home and work on school planning! But I promised my girls, so I am forced to go and have fun! I guess I will just have to suffer through it. ;o)

Planning, planning, planning

Yesterday was a lot of fun! We had cake (yum), played games and relaxed. Today it is back to the routine. Except that we will have to squeeze it between a visit with my sister. She is coming to visit us today and we will have a good time. I am very glad she is coming, but I am one that has a hard time keeping us on track with to many interuptions. So, we will work hard on lessons after she leaves so that we get done before David gets home from work.

This morning after my quiet time, I worked on planning lessons for the year. Now, I know that you are thinking that's crazy because life will interfere and I won't be able to keep them. You're right, but at the same time I need to know just how much I can reasonably expect to accomplish this year. We need realistic goals, not wished for dreams that couldn't happen and only lead to dissappointment. So this morning I started on planning Elijah's English scope. I was very encouraged to see how much we can accomplish REALISTICALLY and am looking forward to doing each subject. Usually I just have wispy ideas of what I want to accomplish with each child, but I am going for more structured this year.

What I did is list each lesson and the page numbers for each lesson. I left a blank box in front of each lesson to pencil in the date. The picture at the beginning of this post is a sample page I scanned. I am using pencil, because I know that life needs flexiblity and erasing is so very important. Now I know exactly how many lessons need to be done a week to complete the level and move to the next. I will add part of the next level in the plans for this year, because we will be able to do it. This will help my son to catch up if needed or get ahead. I don't really pay a whole lot of attention to grade levels though.

Over the summer we have been doing light schoolwork just to keep things going. Alpha & Omega Lifepacs. I won't be having them finish them. When I have a subject planned I will move them into it and the extra Lifepac books can be sold on Ebay or whatever. This way they are not interrupted in their studies and I am introducing the new courses and books gradually so they are able to ease into it. This is going to work very well I think.

Today is Mara's Birthday!

Today Mara is turning 4! So we won't do any lessons today. We are going to take birthdays off this school year. The children will clean and tidy the house while I make a cute cake. David is going to get off of work early today so we need to get working early. This is going to be such a nice change of pace for us, aren't birthdays great!

Making Birthday Hats

Yesterday after we finished all of our official lessons for the day, we made birthday hats for Maranatha's birthday this week. She is turning 4 on Wednesday, and so that means that we get to have a fun week making things and preparing. We made ladybug crowns to match the ladybug cake I will bake tomorrow on her actual birthday.

We made them out of corrugated red bullitin board border that I bought from the Dollar Tree. I measured each child's head and cut a piece and stapled it to size to fit. Then we wrote names on the inside so we wouldn't get confused (because somehow we always do!). Then we cut out black construction paper circles (I wanted to buy self stick black foamies, but finances said no) and glued them all around the crowns. Next we took some black pipe cleaners and cut them in half and curled the ends. These we taped to the inside front for antenae. Now we have cute theme hats that cost about .75 for 7. We had so much fun making them! I wished that I had a digital camera (that is on my Christmas wish list-I wish I could afford to get one-that is what a wish list is, not a shopping list, a WISH list),so that I could take pictures of them they turned out so cute!

Getting it together

On my other blog, I am making my Home Management Binder. This will take me lot's of time, because I am taking it slower than usual. Today I have started creating my homeschool section of my binder. It will have attendance sheets and lesson plans for each child school age. I will also put the letter from the school district and HSLDA phone number and membership information. I want to put goals and reading lists also, but like I said I am taking it slowly so that I get it just the way I want it. I have printed out some nice attendance forms from a great website, and I haven't really decided how I want to do my lesson plans. I know for the older boys I am going to give them a weekly list and they can complete it however they want and just check it off. But I am uncertain of how I want to make them for the rest of the children. I have Edu-Track, and it is good, but I have decided that I am more of a paper in my hand gal so I don't use it. I am thinking daily checklists that I can print up, write page numbers on and put into my binder. This way it won't be too difficult to use, I can make up a master list and pencil in the extra activities, page numbers, etc. and not have to much extra to write out.

I had better get on the ball, because our new school year started in July and I am so very behind on grading. Of course I review it daily and have them correct things, but sometimes if I am busy I don't get to it, and just recording the grades is going to take a lot of time. I have started giving report cards. I didn't used to think it important, but now after seeing how much the chidren enjoy seeing their progress I do. They get excited and eagerly show Daddy their report cards. And it is a nice record to keep on hand of school years.

If you are interested in doing report cards, there are a couple places that I have found where you can print them out. This place, and this one offer nice looking printable report cards. You then just write in the info. Or if you are a super perfectionist, use it to create your own report card template that you can fill in on the computer and print out.