Back to School Shopping...

Normally I'm pretty disgusted by the media's hype on Back-to-School shopping just as we clean up the fireworks on the driveway from the 4th. As if anyone is thinking about backpacks, sweaters and jeans when the weather just FINALLY turned summerish. And of course there will be Halloween decorations out come August and Christmas stuff will be on the shelves before the leaves have even hit their full fall glory. Really, the buy it now and buy it early mindset is pretty irritating, to say the least.

But when it comes to homeschooling, there are certain things that you really do need to plan ahead and prepare for. So as of spring my prayers and research began on what to do with the coming school year, and once the planning was mostly done it was time to actually do some purchasing. Yes, it's still only the first week we've been able to pull out the pool this summer. But if I wait until school really is starting I'll never be ready to start when I need to.

Well, my curriculum arrived a couple of weeks ago. I just ordered the bulk of the extras I needed for the year (art supplies, math books, paper, a few random books we wanted to have around) from Rainbow Resource and Amazon, and everything should be here in the next two weeks. All I have left to buy are the random things that I couldn't find online but are easy to get at Target or the grocery store (three ring binders, spiral notebooks, that kind of thing). Oh and I'm sure they'll all be needing a few pairs of pants and shirts in the next size up come the cold weather, but I'm nowhere near even thinking about that yet!

All in all, for only being July 8th, I think I'm doing pretty well so far in preparing for the coming school year. I'm excited, I'm having fun working out the details, I can't WAIT to break into my box of art supplies and goodies... I feel like it's going to be a good year. A great year. I prayed for guidance and clarity in which direction to go this year, and God was faithful. So I trust that the year ahead will be blessed.

And I am so excited to do it all! For me that's pretty cool, as often I get nervous and apprehensive about starting a school year.

So 2010/2011, third grade, first grade, pre-k, toddler, baby - HERE WE COME!

But - I'm sure glad to be able to sit back and enjoy the summer in the meantime. ;o)

I did it!

Last night I ordered a real, full curriculum for the 2010/2011 school year.

We'll be starting My Father's World this fall. Punky will be doing the Adventures in My Father's World program (designed for your eldest when he or she is in 2/3 grade) and Finny will follow along with the science, history, art and music - I'll just expect a little less of him when it comes to writing or retaining anything (he's only in 1st grade, but I didn't think I could swing two full curricula in my first attempt to go for it so we'll just adjust and make one work for them both).

I plan to use Singapore for both boys in math. Punky will be finishing 3A this summer and will start 3B sometime late summer or early fall. Finny just finished Math U See Alpha and will move into Singapore 1A as soon as I order it (we take summers mostly off, but we still read and do math).

I'm currently not planning on doing a specific LA program for the boys - they don't love sitting to do much of anything and my main goal this year is to get them learning about something (anything!) that excites them and hoping to hit a point where we all enjoy school again. We definitely got bogged down this last year and just got the basics done - which was good to hit those basics but in the end there was no love of learning ignited in any of us. So knowing how little they enjoy the language arts portions of schooling, I have no trouble leaving out the formal LA teaching for a year or two. I know they'll be doing enough with notebooking and the like with the MFW program - and I'm really OK with them lagging behind in language for a couple of years and then hitting them hard with a great self directed program in the middle school years and trusting that the holes will all be filled in at that point.

And I think that's it. The only other thing I am trying to figure out is how to get Goose some fun and educational Pre-K time. He'll be 4 in a few weeks, but his late birthday, shy personality and younger tendencies all made for the decision to hold him back and not consider him a kindergartner until he's newly 6. So technically he'd only be a "three year old preschooler" this year, so I'm not too worried. He won't start K stuff with Awana, church or anything else for two more years. I waffled for a while, but looking at how he's now maturing I'm so pleased we made the call that we made. He'll be so much happier as the oldest rather than the youngest child in any grade-related peer group he enters into, and I think he'll do much better at home when my expectations of him are a year lower. If I thought of him as that older year, I think we'd both get frustrated with the higher expectations that go along with that. I'd worry he wasn't doing enough and then I'd start to push him, he'd dig in his heels, and it wouldn't be pretty. ;o) So thinking of him as slightly younger, I think he'll just fly and do great and I'll be more at ease following his cues and readiness.

As for Girly Pie and Bug, well I'm just hoping I can put together a daily schedule/plan/routine that utilizes naps and quiet times enough to make for some focused school hours each morning with the bigger boys. I figure if I can get all the big guy school stuff done each morning that will leave my afternoons free to enjoy the smaller guys and the bigger two can then enjoy a bit of free time as well. We'll see though. Oh and we are doing a family Bible time each morning, too. So they'll be a part of that.

If there's one thing I've learned over the past few years as a homeschooling mother it's that no year goes the way I intend it to. We rarely accomplish what I plan to accomplish, but we always come away having learned something worth learning. So though I hope that this year we will finally find a groove that works for us all, I do not believe it will go the way I see it going in my mind's eye. But I'm OK with that.

The key thing for me is that I prayed over this coming year like crazy. And the peace and clarity I feel about the things we chose for the year are enough to make me feel quite good that we are on the right path and doing what we're supposed to be doing.

So let the fun begin. I can't WAIT to get that box on the front porch and see all the fun in store for us this year!

Unit Studies!

So for the first time this year I am throwing out all semblance of following a curriculum put together by someone else and I'm going to give homeschooling a try via a unique mix of unit studies and some workbook-type stuff (for the kids and topics where that works well, but in minimal amounts).

It's all very new, and I admit I'm still quite vague on what our year will look like, but last night I was able to come up with (or be divinely inspired with, still not sure which, though I have been praying hard for direction!) a very, VERY vague outline of my unit study plans for September through December.

I'm just so excited to see some sort of goals in writing that I just had to post them here. My plan is to set aside a few nights for each unit and pull appropriate books from the library, good crafts from the internet, and even throw in a field trip or two to places that will help cement the ideas we'll be learning. We'll still do math and some basic language, spelling and other fundamentals separately, and Punky will be listening to some Story of the World CD's to follow along in history at his own pace without my having to pour as much into teaching history as I have been (which is hard with so many littler ones who really can't participate in something that became the bulk of our learning). But I think that at least for this first part of the year this unit idea will be the bulk of where our time and interest are invested.

So without further ado, I give you my basic plan for what topics we'll be covering for the first 4 months of our 09/10 school year.

September:

• Study on caves, caverns, etc.
  o Possibly can lead to study of rock, sand, salt, etc formation.. just see where it takes us
  o A topic I know nothing about, so I have no idea where it could lead! Maybe even a local trip to some caves to explore?
  o Found a cool diorama idea that makes real mini stalactites. How cool is that!?
• Study on the history of WEAPONS (of all things. I must really love my sons…)
  o Boys wanted to know how boomerangs and bows & arrows worked
  o Seems a good time to learn about all things weaponish.
  o If nothing else Punky will want to do school every. single. day.
  o Hubby can cover my behind on the physics behind how they all actually work. I have no clue. ;o)
  o Make a few homemade weapons
  o Maybe a nice time to go over some of the Story of the World CD's Punky will be listening to in more detail
  o Could buy one of those little wooden siege tower or catapult kits… fun stuff!
  

October:

• Fire preparedness
  o Tour local fire dept
  o Go over the some emergency sheets in the October section of The Old Schoolhouse's planner (good ideas for home safety and preparedness)
  o Make and practice new fire escape plans with the kids
• Planet/star study
  o Good time of year with time change to get out in the dark and actually see stuff without keeping the kids up until 11pm!
  o Will need a good friend with a telescope we can borrow…
  o Lots of potential here, will need to work to pull together stuff I will really do
  
  November:
• Little House in the Big Woods unit study (Nice to follow weapons with Little House, huh? We want to be well rounded around here, after all!)
  o Using some resources from a friend with lots of Prairie Primer goodies, Little House recipes and crafts, plus even some fun folk music
  o Lots of opportunity for crafts and holiday coziness
  o Fun recipes to try
  o Make some homemade Christmas gifts for people
  o Listen to the music from the time period during craft and baking times, and for fun
  o Possibly learn some music with recorders or some other intro instrument
  
  December:
  
• Time for our annual Advent month
  o Jesse Tree again (my boys love it every year, and I’m sure Goose will want to do one this year too)
  o Crafts, cooking, all that
  o Possibly find a different theme for Advent readings… I’ve never gone "out of the box" here, so we’ll see

So that's it for now. I have done no real planning on the individual topics, but I am excited to have the ground work laid for what we'll be studying for a few months. I think that leaves me plenty of room to explore, but not so open ended that I fall into my trap of doing nothing due to the overwhelming pressure of a completely blank slate. I think the topics are perfectly age appropriate, and that my kids will really be interested in all of them, but that I can still find information to stretch them to learn outside of their complete realm of current interest. Plus, I can easily pull fun books for the little guys on the topics, so that everyone can do something topic-related.

So has anyone else out there done much in the way of homemade unit studies? Any helpful suggestions or advice on pitfalls to avoid? I'd love to hear ideas from fellow unit study families.

Time to get busy

Ok. I admit it. I've let my "maternity leave" go on a little bit longer than is probably necessary... after all, my baby will be a year old next week, and really, I still find myself using the new baby excuse when it comes to doing things I need to do but just don't feel like doing.

The house is still in less order than I'd like. I've never gotten much of the planning done that I had hoped to do to stay on top of life with four small children (such as schedules, meal plans and consistent housekeeping on more than just "the basics"). Quite a few projects have fallen by the wayside. The list goes on...

And I have the feeling that much of it is just that adjustment to priorities. I may not have a newborn, but I do have one more child than I did last year, so there is just that little bit less of me to go around. So I give what I have to the things that really matter. First my husband and kids, next the feeding and house stuff. School and projects trickle back at the end of that list of priorities. I mean, we of course do school (almost) every day. But the amount of planning and forethought that I have put into anything I've taught my children is pathetic, really. It's been just the basics.

But not all of it is priority adjustment. I know that some of it is just plain lack of diligence and self discipline.

So as we near Girly Pie's first birthday (less than 3 weeks away!) I am feeling the tug to get a little more diligent in my other non-Mommy duties. I still plan to put time with my kiddos way at the top of the priority list, but I need to set aside a lot more time for planning and keeping up with other jobs, too.

In particular, I need to work harder to make school a top priority, not just something I whip together last minute.

I’ve been super lax with school stuff this year. I want to get in gear and work towards more fun projects and outings this spring. We mostly do math and language arts, plus reading and a very small bit of spelling. That's the daily stuff. We have hardly done any of the real Sonlight this year, though we’ve enjoyed all the read alouds and have followed loosely and done a bare bones overview of history up through Greece. Rome is next, so I just need to put together a reading plan with all of the great books from our library plus throw in some videos and crafts. Then I think I’ll call history done for the year and we’ll focus on spring stuff. We’re all very excited to be finishing up the garden boxes that we started last spring. But last year it snowed in late April and then I went and had a baby, so we just never got around to finishing the beds. But that’s OK. I probably wouldn’t have planted anything anyway. I was too busy loving on my new baby girl and playing with my boys when I could! But this year we really want to plant some veggies and flowers. I also envision a couple of zoo trips and maybe some field trips to nature parks or something. So that’s the spring school plan. I just find it impossible to sit around in the house doing book work when the sun comes out. I hope I’m not forming bad habits for life in my kids. But really, when in their lives will the ever again have the freedom to really enjoy this beautiful world God created with such consistency? They’re young, it’s sunny, and there’s a whole lot to be learned out in the sunshine!

So there you go. A little glimpse into the chaos that is my brain. Lots to do. Not a whole lot of self discipline currently to get it all done. But I'm working on that. And praying on it. ;o)

And hey, my kids really are learning a lot and they really are growing and loving and living. So I can't be doing all bad. It's just that I think I can really do better...

But I have to go now. I have a super adorable 2 1/2 year old sitting here waiting for me to go out back with him and push him in the swings. How can I resist?

Working out the kinks

Any suggestions from folks out there on how they keep on top of all that they need to do to keep a large family with small children running smoothly? Oh, and get them educated, too?

I can tell that some of my recent feelings of floundering are coming from a decided lack of organization. I have made efforts to do a few little schedules up this evening, though I admit I am terrible at following a moment by moment daily schedule. I am terrible at follow-through on many things in my life, and that is a personal weakness that I am working on and will continue to work on as long as I live here on earth, no doubt. But I would like to get a better handle on things around here.

I have mastered the laundry schedule, finally (which is no small task... so I'm really quite pleased with that one!). But I am really woefully inept at meal planning and chore scheduling. I am pretty good at getting my kids interested and learning each day, but I can't say it's because of my great school planning skills. I think much of my daily energy goes into figuring out things to do on the fly, especially with the younger set. I just put most of my thought into the first grade stuff for Punky, and the little guys just kind of float, or I pull out a quiet activity like play dough or diggers and rice. I do follow Sonlight for much of what we learn, but I still just pull stuff as we go through the day.

I dream of setting aside an evening each week and really planning out what we do for the week, so I have activities for all four of my children at any given point in the school week. Is that a reasonable goal?

But, for tonight, I feel pretty accomplished after having made a weekly schedule for Finny's occupational therapy activities. I'm supposed to have him doing some sort of sensory activity every two hours or so every day. And I have failed at that daily since we started it all before the holidays. So I hope that I can at least stick to this and maybe our days will feel a bit more smooth. I also got a little chart of an extra daily chore for myself. I do the daily stuff - kitchen cleaning, picking up, laundry, meals, all that stuff. But the bigger things like bathrooms and keeping our master bedroom clean tend to fall by the wayside. So we'll see if one bigger chore each day is doable.

It must be something about my baby getting closer to a year. I seem to recall getting back on schedule when Goose was closing in on one, too. Girly Pie is still not even nine months old, so she's not coming right up on her birthday, but as this second half of her first year of life winds down, I realize how much grace I have given myself over the past year (because of course I was less diligent as my pregnancy came to an end, too). Now, I can honestly say that I do not regret a moment of the "slack" time I've had. All that slacking in schedules and chores went mostly to welcoming our newest family member and spending as much time as possible with each of my children as we grew accustomed to that one new little soul in the house. I made a conscious effort to spend time daily just staring at her new little face, memorizing her features and soaking up all those fleeting but precious little newborn moments. I really tried to make time for Goose even though it was easier many days to just let him do his own thing. I put in the time to read the really memorable books with Punky and Finny, even if they were happy to play off together without me - I didn't want to lose touch with them.

So no, I did not get as much done this past year as I might have planned. But I got a ton of things done that really, in the long run, were much more important and worthwhile.

But still, this first year of life as a family of six is winding down, and I realize that it is indeed time to get in gear and step up my expectations of myself. I have memorized Girly Pie's features by now, and she's crawling and into everything, so I do not need to set aside so much time in the day to just sit and stare at her. She's going to bed at a very reasonable hour so I have free hands every evening now, so there is no excuse to just waste away all my evenings puttering and relaxing. I really can get practical things accomplished in the few hours between the kids' bedtime and my own. I can still get the fun stuff done, as well as push myself just a bit more in the down moments to get something useful done.

So, off I go to wrap up an evening of planning and plotting. Any suggestions for nice daily home managing techniques would be greatly appreciated. I love seeing how others do things and finding ways to tweak them to fit my own needs.

Catching up

We had a wonderful Christmas. Happy kids. A wonderful husband leading our family in a prayer of thanks before a single gift was opened. Lots of gorgeous white snow all around us. No packing up and heading out. Great friends for a lovely evening of food, food, games, gifts, more food, pies, and a rousing game of Life. Happy sighs as delighted and exhausted children fell into bed. Four little ones to share the day with this year for the first time. Really a wonderful day.



And now I'm ready to get back into the swing of things. Our first birthday of the year is in a week and I've gotten ALMOST all of the Christmas decor down. I'll hopefully get the rest out tonight or tomorrow. I like to have it as clear as possible so my boy feels a little more special for his day and it's not so cluttered with Christmas stuff still around. And my poor husband is helping drag furniture all around. I'm just ready for a clean house and a new arrangement of stuff. It'll be good to get back to normal(-ish).



The holidays are so fun. It's so nice to spend the month anticipating the celebration of our Lord's birth. I even like a lot of the plain old fun stuff that is not particularly Holy. It's nice to have a change of pace and some fun events, activities and outings.



But it's also really nice to put all that away and just get back to life as we know it. School each day. A more open, clutter free house. A husband back to work for the most part (I love him being around, but is it just me or does having your man home for much longer than a weekend just make everything a little bit crazy and chaotic?) and four kids ready to have back their routine.



So that was all. A little update. Now if I can just clear this room out to move the dog's kennel in here so I can feel like our family room isn't such a zoo... then I can plan out a bit of school for this week. My oh my. I am so terribly disorganized this year! I didn't even attempt to make a resolution to reorganize. I'm just doomed to fail again, after all.



But I digress.



So Happy New Year! I'm off to tidy, move, clean and plan.

Adventing, Benny-style

Last year I decided it would be fun to just skip “school” for the whole Advent season and just do Advent activities instead. I’d never celebrated Advent before myself, but was very excited to start this new tradition with our family and try and really bring the meaning of Christmas back to Jesus and the gift of His birth (and life and death).

So I put in a few hours at the computer Googling Christmas crafts, baking and activities. I put holds on a bunch of Christmas classics on video from our library’s great hold system (after all, what Christmas is complete without watching the stop animation version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer a few dozen times?). I ordered a Jesse Tree book and cut out the ornament circles for the season. I also found a whole Bible reading calendar for Advent online.

And then – and this is the key thing here – I used a small three ring binder and some plastic dividers with pockets in them labeled one for each week of Advent and printed out some weekly schedules from Donna Young. Then I just sat down and plugged the stuff into the weekly schedules. I left a column for each activity and filled something in for each day. We had movies planned in, a Christmas song to learn each week, baking days, ornaments to make, gifts to make, outings to go on, and days like St. Nicholas Day marked with an appropriate book ready from the library and the right items set aside to celebrate the day in a fun way.

And all this I had done long before Thanksgiving rolled around.

And do you know what? It was GREAT!!! The boys were thrilled with the crafts and the baking. We had so much fun! I loved having everything all laid out ahead of time so I wasn’t trying to think of something in a pinch. The recipes, craft directions, coloring pages and advent and Jesse tree readings were all right there in my little book, even down the which movie was up for the day and what song we were learning for the week. (By the way, there is nothing cuter than three little boys banging on upside down jars and singing The Little Drummer Boy. I’ll always remember the endless rounds of, “Puh-rum-pum-pum-pum… rum-pum-pum-pum… rum-pum-pum-puuuuhhhmmmm.” It was pretty stinking cute.)

We made our annual salt dough Christmas tree ornaments. We made caramel corn (yum!) and home made gum drops (not so yum...) for the first time. We cut out gingerbread people and decorated them and made a garland of them to hang in our dining room. We made handprint Jesse trees and the boys colored the Jesse Tree ornaments and glued them up their each morning after our Bible reading. We made Fruit Loop garlands to hang on the tree. And the cutest little craft ever was this little wreath shaped frame made from puzzle pieces painted green with little red holly berries dotted on them, and then used as picture frames for my kids and hung on the Christmas tree. So cute! We learned at least three Christmas carols that we had not yet memorized before.

The list goes on and on. I have so many fun memories from last year’s Advent season. Yes, our house was a wreck for most of the month. Sure, I was just barely finished cleaning up one project before the boys were digging into the next one. Yeah, we had so much paper lying around it was undoubtedly a fire hazard. And of course we did not do every single activity I had planned out on my handy-dandy weekly schedules. But we did most of them, and we had a blast doing it all. This year my boys started asking about Advent and when we would start it up again around, oh, late September.

This year things are a little different. This year I have a six month old (almost seven months… Ack!) Girly Pie in tow and I am much less organized. This year Thanksgiving just came later than it seems like it should, so it snuck up on me that Advent was starting YESTERDAY!!! This year, I still have a handy little notebook, but I did steal much of what’s in the new one from what I had planned out last year. But I guess that’s kind of the point. I took the stuff we really enjoyed, I dropped the stuff that was less fun or just not worth doing every single year, and I added in a few new ideas that were better for my kids being a year older (or just easier for a Mommy with one more little one to juggle in the mix) or that just looked like fun.

So we’ll see how it goes this year. Today was Day One of the full crafting schedule. And it was a little hectic, I admit. We made the handprint trees and some popsicle stick angels, and did our Bible readings. But Goose didn’t nap, Punky has been sliding into disrespect lately so we had some teachable moments that interrupted the flow of the day, and Finny is in need of some sensory activated every 2-3 hours so I need to keep on top of our schedule more than I did last year (I’ll write more on the sensory stuff another time…).

And, much to my great dismay, sweet Girly Pie is starting to look like she’s got an ear infection. I know an ear infection does not sound like the end of the world to most people… but to a mom who has watched one baby boy go through years of chronic ear infections and fluid and has fought off ear tubes for four years with her darling Sunshine Boy only to be told by a new Ear, Nose, Throat doc that he needs to have tubes NOW, oh, and a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy, too… just weeks after his fourth birthday and that he might have suffered some slight permanent hearing loss due to all those years of yuck… well, let me just say that I am not looking forward to going down that road again. It’s a little off topic, I know… but prayers are appreciated for anyone with room left on their prayer list that my Girly Pie does not share the same faulty genetics that her big brother Finny and her Daddy (and her paternal Grandma… the list goes on…) have with a really bad ear history. I just don’t know if I can take walking down that scary, pain-filled road again with another of my babies. But God’s will be done.. not mine.

Ok. Moving on. It might not even be an infection, after all. ;o)

So back to the point. The point is… Advent. It’s fun. It surely has brought us closer together as a family and made for some really great memories for us all. We made more time to study God’s word and really got a lot out of that part of the season… but we also just enjoyed the family tradition side of Christmas, too. And as much as I want my children to know the true meaning of Christmas, I do want them to really have a lot of memories of family time and fun, too. So we may not be the biggest shoppers this time of year, and we may also not be completely focused on Jesus’ birth in every activity that we do, either… but on the whole, it has been a really wonderful thing for our family.

And if you haven’t done something like this before, maybe you can give it a try this year. I don’t have time tonight to hyperlink all the resources I have used, but I’ll gladly pass along links that anyone requests in the comments area.

So Merry Christmas to all… and Happy Adventing, too.