Homeschool...for now

One of the funny things about keeping a written record, is that whenever I look back and read from stuff in the past, I'm sort of embarrassed. I can now do it in good humor, and just laugh at myself and be grateful that I am (hopefully) continually progressing and improving. I feel that way with our homeschool, too. I certainly don't have it all figured out. Every year we make changes and do things differently. And even from month to month or week to week. The good news is I'm totally able and allowed to do that! Our family is always evolving and changing. As children grow they're always in new stages and we have to adapt to that. You may have a newborn at the beginning of the year, but guess what? That baby grows! Their nap schedule changes, feeding, everything. I learn more, or the kids are ready to learn more and be challenged further. All of these are good things, but it makes it hard to answer people's questions such as, "What do you do for homeschool?" I want to say, well this is what we did this week! Or this month here's our schedule. So anyway, I guess that's my little disclaimer as I now record what has been sort of the flow of our daily lives for the last month or so.

When the "school year" first started up again, I don't think I was fully prepared. I mean I was in some ways; I had signed them all up on time for what we had previously decided they would participate in this year. But I didn't really have a nailed down game plan. And it showed! Oh my it was stressful. I wanted to pull my hair out almost every day and I felt like I couldn't stay on top of things, my mental stress was way too high. I expressed all these concerns and thoughts with Kenny one night, although it came out as more of an exasperated "I'M GOING TO PUT THEM ALL IN PUBLIC SCHOOL!" Type of a reaction. Thankfully he can always talk me down from the ledge and he has much better vision than me. He asked me what the end goal was. Other than, "I want them to be smart and love learning" I had nothing. He helped me to see that I had to start with the end in mind, and then work backwards. Here's the things I want them to know or have mastered (some are more tangible than others) by the end of the year. Here's some smaller goals throughout the year to get to that point, and then what does that mean for our daily schedule.

Schedule.

SCHEDULE.

That's what I was so desperately in need of. I know that a lot of people can do "unschooling" or just kind of fly by the seat of their pants. But I definitely cannot. I like lists, I like schedules, and then we can adapt or change spur of the moment if needed. But we at least need to have a foundation, a solid starting point. So I got on google docs and made a nice little schedule for both Tyler and Brynlee. It's printed out and taped up on the wall right by our homeschool desk. If ever they're unsure of what they should be doing, (or if they're way off task) they can look at that and know what's expected. It's not every hour of the day. Trust me they have plenty of "free time" to play and pursue their own creative interests. But there are certain things they need to get done every day.

Mornings:
Mornings are a big deal to me. I get up around 5:30-5:45 and do an Insanity workout. Then I shower and read my scriptures and try to get some reading of another book until the kids wake up. I feel SO much better about myself and my day when I've got all that done before anyone's awake. There's a lot of days Briggs wakes up at some point during that time, but I can handle just him. :)
 Then we do breakfast and devotional at 8:00. Ideally they have their morning chores done before that time. (Morning chores= say prayers, get dressed, clean up clothes, make bed, brush teeth.) But where they're still so young, there's some days where the girls aren't quite awake, or Briggs is asleep so Tyler can't get into his room to get his stuff done. But mostly it works. So we do prayer, a song, and read from the illustrated scripture books. Right now we're in the Book of Mormon (again). Then we go over our poem or scripture that we memorize together. By 8:30 Ty does piano practicing, and ideally Bryn should do her violin at the same time, in a different room. But because I have to practice the whole time with Bryn, and Tyler often needs my help too, or the little girls still need their hair done or Brigham needs a diaper change, or we have to clean up from Cato, or a million other reasons, I often bump Brynlee's practicing to later in the day when things have settled down.

We always have to do our CC memory work, but we do that in the car while we're driving, or take 15 min. to review it at home if we're not running around that day.

They are both doing Saxon Math. They each do their spelling words (either written or orally to me) from The Natural Speller by Kathryn Stout. They're both supposed to read for 20-30 minutes a day. I let them choose what they want to read, but there's a couple times I have to help make a better choice. Bryn likes to pick books she knows by heart instead of higher-reading ones that will challenge her a bit. On M W F there's an hour blocked out for "mom teaching time" and this is where I fill in with The Family School. Over the summer I tried it out for like $1 a month to see if we liked it. And at first I wasn't going to continue with it, but I changed my mind. So now I use it for History lesson on Mondays, Science lesson on Wednesdays, and Music (or Art) on Fridays. I reference it for other things to get ideas, but don't carry out their full lesson. Anyway I've really liked that, and I know the kids enjoy it too. That always has handwriting practice that comes with it.

Extracurricular activities:
Monday is Tyler's piano lesson, but that's the only interruption to our day which I'm so grateful for. And it's not until 11:30, so it's a good benchmark to try and get everything done before we stop for that.

Tuesday Tyler goes to FIELD School out in Palmer. It used to be called farm school, but they just changed the name this year. I drop him off at 9:30, and don't pick him up until 2:30. It's the longest he's been away from home doing his own thing and I think it's awesome. He loves it and so do I. They are outside almost the whole time. The focus of his class this year is on trees and all things forestry. It's called the "natural numbers and nouns" class. After I drop him off we go straight to Brynlee's violin lesson. She's just blossoming with a new-found confidence in this and I love watching her. The only annoying thing about it is her teacher has only one son, who's now a teenager. So she's not very understanding about little kids. Madison and Kelsey sit on the steps down by the front door and I bring the iPad and snacks and headphones and demand that they don't make a peep, and don't come up the stairs. It's pretty stupid, but I don't know what else to do about it. The teacher we were going to have for Bryn had to cancel at the last minute because she just has too much going on and couldn't take any more students. But I told her that when she does start taking students again, we'd love to switch ;). Not because Bryn's teacher isn't good, but because extra kids is just part of the package with us.  Also later that day, at 4:15 Brynlee has her dance class.

(Pretty much we are in and out of the car a lot Tues.-Thurs. and I don't like it. But it's sort of too late to change it. Live and learn I suppose. Next semester we'll make better time choices.)

Wednesday: Madison and Kelsey have their dance class at 9:30. This is probably the first thing that would go if I could change anything. I won't have them doing it the second half of the year. At least not at this time. They do love it, and it's been lots of fun for them. But I hate the interruption. We just bring stuff in the car to do while we sit and wait for them. Later at 2 p.m. Tyler has his cello lesson. That night we have Cub Scouts. I'm still in charge of that by default because they still haven't called anyone else to it!

On Thursdays we are still doing Classical Conversations again this year. We really love that and I can't say enough good about it. We are there from 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. and it feels like a full day.

Because the older two end up getting a lot more of my time, I try to make sure and get "one-on-one" time with Madison and Kelsey each day for about 30 min. each. With Madison we always do a reading lesson from the book, "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons". She is really just doing so awesome with that and loves it so much. She also has some Explode the Code workbooks, and Kumon workbooks, learning to write letters and numbers that she likes to do with me. For Kelsey, she mostly just likes me to read the stack of books she picks out. But we also like to pull out the white board and practice writing her name. :)

Since work is also a big part of their learning, we still do each child has 2 days (except Kels has one) where they are Mom's Kitchen Helper. They are in charge of setting the table that day, and they help cook and clean up. Also, whoever's "day" it is are in charge of collecting the eggs and checking on the chicken's food and water. They all take turns with Cato, taking him out to go potty and cleaning up after him if he does go in the house.

We read a lot during the day, but we always have a "family read-aloud" going where I read out loud to them about a chapter a day. We are currently reading The Wind in the Willows. We found a beautiful copy from the library with lots of illustrations to help keep their attention. :)

So yes there's a million interruptions every day and some days don't go well at all. But for the most part, our schedule has really helped things to run a lot smoother and we all feel good about what has been accomplished at the end of each day.

I'm also taking some free online courses at Hillsdale College. It makes me wish SO badly I could go back to school. It kills me how little time I have to study and read when I wish i could spend hours a day (selfishly) on my own learning. But I just finished up the course K-12 Education: Theory and Practice. It was awesome. I just started Constitution 101. There's always a lot of suggested supplemental readings along with each course that is fun to delve into. For example, I'm reading Plato's Republic right now (and Little Women, but that's just strictly for pleasure), which I never thought about reading before.