Our first week back homeschooling

Not at all surprised by how the week went. Started out on a high note and then reality set in. We started Tuesday and enjoyed the day by going to one of the local 'not back to school' picnics. We had a blast, saw lots of friends, had good food and the kids go some special treats - one family brought a slip-n-slide, a sprinkler, and a pinata. Oh the fun!

Wednesday through Friday saw us working on some basics (reading, writing, LA, and math). Friday had a bit of history thrown in as well. Like I imagined, my son jumped right in and is excited to learn new things while my daughter drags her feet and is afraid. This year I'm much less unschooling than I have been in the past. In the past my kids were given more free time and they chose more electronic time than I can deal with. This year is going to be different and my daughter doesn't deal well with change. She never has. But I know she can do this so I'm going to challenge her to rise to the occasion.

We managed to get to two park days this week and the kids and I had a great time. Today's (Friday) park was a new one for us and only about 10 minutes from our house. How did we manage to totally miss this wonderful park all these years? I just wish it had a bathroom. The kids so need to the time to run around outside and hang out with kids during the day. It's good and necessary to blow off steam.

Next week we're adding in more history/geography, science, art, cooking. I know the kids will enjoy the subjects, it's just fitting them in with how our mornings are going. Some will be in the afternoon, but I still don't want to feel like a dictator and be grumpy and burnt out by the time we get to lunch. I want to enjoy our time together. I guess it will just take time to get to that point.

This coming Monday will be our first history crafting with my daughter's friend. We're sliding into history this year through the historical American Girl stories. We're starting with Kaya and I think Monday will include making a dress for their American Girl dolls and doing some string games. Depending on time we might make a period snack (or I'll have one made). This two person crafting club is sometime I came up with in the hopes that it keeps my daughter interested in reading the books and learning more of the history of the time periods.

As you can see I'm using this blog as a way of keeping track of some of the activities we're doing along with how our homeschooling is going. At some point I hope to post some pictures of things we're doing or places we've been.

Anyway, that's all for now.

Look, another year gone by...

Seems that I only post at the beginning of a new school year. Here I go again. I'm going to try and keep an account of at least some of our homeschooling activities for the year here. I've had those plans before but I'll give it a go again. My two children are going into second grade and kindergarten this year. Those grades are only for the kids to be able to tell people what grade they are in, not their ability or what we are doing for the year. I'm not keen on labels of any kind. though it's impossible for me to not use them from time to time. My artistic daughter is just about to turn 8 in a little over a week. She's so excited to be getting a year older. She's chosen to not take any official classes this year, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have activities planned. The artist has signed up for the local American Girl book club that another homeschooling mom is leading. She participated in it last year and is looking forward to doing it again. I've set up our history this year using the historical American Girl books as our spine and am having a 'club' meet every other week to do crafts based on the time period. My athletic son is going to unofficially start kindergarten this year. He'll be doing actual kindergarten/1st grade work, but the county thinks he's staying home for another year before starting kindy. That is an option here in Virginia. I did that with my daughter as well. It gives the kids an extra year before testing and the big leap expected for the first grade testing. The athlete has been busy this summer with hopping on a two wheel bike and taking off with help of all of 20 minutes before he did it on his own. He's also enjoyed a two wheel scooter instead of his beloved Mini Kick scooter he's had since his second birthday. The athlete still is not interested in taking any official classes, not even sports. He wants to play the sports and enjoy them without structure. I'm fine with that. He'll get there when he's ready. Both kids are in 4H this year. It's a total change from 4H last year. Last year this 4H group was much more structured and met inside. My kids didn't like it and we only lasted a couple of weeks. This year all the meetings are outdoors, even in the winter. It meets two times a month with one day as an exploration day at various parks/outdoor areas. The other day is a park day at a nature center. The kids will have a playground but also a great area to explore including a pond. Besides those activities we have two possible park days to attend every week. So even though we don't have official classes the kids will be busy and I hope have a lot of fun this year with their friends. I know that eventually my kids will want to participate in larger groups and when they are ready I'll be there to support that decision. Some activities I can see my kids loving if it was at a different venue or not as many people, but they are just not a good fit for my kids at this point in time. They may never be a good fit and that's ok. I'm happy to let my kids be kids and not force them into activities they don't want to attend. This weekend I'm on my own with the animals and I'm busy planning out the next few weeks of the beginning of our school year. I seem to be making my own curriculum for everything this year. I hope what I plan is a decent fit for my kiddos. More on plans to come.

Upcoming School Year

I have done some major soul searching on how to proceed with this coming school year with my daughter. DQ is technically going to be in first grade and AM is going to be preschool age. I am not really worried about AM since he's coming along for the ride and I have plenty of preschool ideas in my head. I haven't been successful in the past with any formal learning so this year is going to be interesting. I have made some decisions on curriculum for the upcoming year and I'm hoping that it will work out for the most part.

I am still working out a general weekly schedule. I know we wouldn't be able to follow a daily schedule so I'm going to come up with activities/topics that I hope to accomplish each week and we can see where they fit in to the week as we go along. That way I hope to stay on top of most if not all subjects. I know I have a lot planned, and I know we haven't been successful with plans in the past. I'd love to just say screw it and unschool, but right now my kids aren't very self directed. I'm hoping to unschool at some point so I can be the facilitator and help them find the tools they need.

So here is what I envision. At least to start with.

First grade will start out with:

-Handwriting - working on it while writing out stories she wants to write, letters to friends and family, etc. Nothing formal since she didn't like Handwriting Without Tears.

-Reading - we'll possibly give Phonics Pathways a try, but I have lots of other things in mind. I have bought Systematic Sequential Phonics They Use and with laminated letters I'm hoping to make this hands on to help phonics and whole words stick. It seems she is more a whole word learner so I'm going to be working both angles; phonics and whole word.

-Math - I have both Family Math books to help with fun games. We're also going to give Miquon math a try. I like the look of it but if it doesn't go over well I can always switch to MEP. Plus I like using living books to get the point across.

-History/Geography - Here's what I'm hoping will go over reasonably well. I've picked up Story of the World 1 (the Ancients) along with the workbook. I'm hoping that if I lean heavily on activities and find other interesting books on the topics that this will work. Chose not to join a co-op for this since I'm sure certain periods we will take more time than just a chapter a week. I didn't want to feel the push to keep plugging along if a break is needed or more time.

-Science - I picked up a book called Ancient Science that looks like it will dovetail nicely with SOTW. We'll also hop around to 'modern' topics that the kids want to add on. Both my kids love science experiments so this should be a breeze to present.

-Nature Study - most likely this will be on weekends since dad wants to be involved and go on hikes with us anyway. The Handbook of Nature Study is already in our house and I want to follow (not necessarily in order) the activities I've found online that go with the book.

-Physical exercise - DQ is going to try gymnastics this fall. She tried ballet last year for a half the year and had a falling out with teacher. She's decided to try something new instead of find a new teacher for ballet. Between that and park days and playing with friends and family she'll get adequate exercise. :)

-Cooking/baking/art/etc - we've got lots of things planned that fits this catch all category including learning how to clean parts of the house. The kids love to bake so I'm going to work on getting them baking at least once a week where they do most of the work and get them to fix lunch/dinner with me as well. This has already been approved by the kids. I'm going to institute a 15 minute clean in the morning and afternoon/evening of either the main room or their bedrooms so that the house stays neater. Kitchen duty will also happen more often, hey DQ likes to do dishes.

I'm not worried about AM and preschool. I never did anything formal with DQ for preschool. But knowing AM he's going to want to get in on the action so I'll come up with activities that will be fun and DQ will get reinforcement. Who knows? DQ might help teach some things and get better at them herself.

In other news I'm going to work on learning some new things myself. I'm going to sign up for a knitting class and work on belly dancing with some videos a friend is going to send me. I'm hoping that after the knitting class I will be able to get into a local belly dancing class. I might be able to continue my Saturday yoga classes as well.

Surprise writing by DQ!

DQ has always been resistant to handwriting. She is terrified of making mistakes in almost all aspects of her life. And I thought I was a perfectionist. Oi. But in the past couple of weeks she has been making 'gifts' for a friend of hers. Last night she wrote out her friend's name on an envelope all on her own with her coming to me to find out how to spell her name. She had already written the first 2 letters. I was shocked! And then when I named the next 2 letter she disappeared and wrote them. Then when she came back she realized she had run out of space for the last letter but was OK with making it a smaller letter to fit in the tiny space that was left. Wow. I'm impressed. The letters were totally correct too.

And besides that she made a wonderful drawing of a tree with roots and then dictated the story for me to write.

It's amazing what can happen when you don't push and just try to live your life. I'm working on making a rhythm for our days. So far it's mostly in my head, but I'm making progress.

Well, we're supposed to be following Enki kindy

And that isn't flying. Granted I haven't given it a decent try yet. But DQ has resisted the stories the couple of times I've tried them. I'm afraid to try a circle since I can imagine she'll just go upstairs again. But I need to do them and at least I might have the boy to hang with. I have to get the guts up to just do it and be damned.

But part of me really wants to switch to Waldorf in some form. I like that Enki has the sensory integration part. It's one of the main reasons I bought it. But other parts I'm not too keen on. I know that I can definitely use the crafts and such. But the more I look into Waldorf the more it is speaking to me. So I'm thinking of using parts of both.

Course I'm feeling guilt in that we aren't already into 'school' like I had hoped. DQ is so resistant to anything that she might possibly think is 'school' in my mind. Sigh.

So this is me panicking and me trying to breathe and not stress. This is kindy and for Enki and Waldorf it's all about the rhythm and once that's in place it's just fun stuff that does have a purpose, but it doesn't look like it unless you are in the know. :)

I'll try and keep you updated as I go.

second stages

Well Drama Queen had her second gymnastics class this week. Drew takes her and this time she seemed to have a bit of an issue of him leaving so he ended up sitting in on the class. DQ hid a bit, hung out with dad a bit, but in the end she tried all the activities. I think this class is a challenge for her since she sees other kids who are much better at gymnastics than she is. This is the first time that she isn't on equal footing and feels the lack. DQ usually quits if it's not easy, but gymnastics so far is something that she wants to do bad enough to actually work on it. She's been doing some jumps around the house that she learned this week. I'm hopeful that she will keep it up at least til the end of the session.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was finished and now we are awaiting Charlie and the Glass Elevator from the library. I've requested it so it should be to us early next week. I'm wondering if we're going to go through a lot of Roald Dahl books in the near future. :)

Action Man has been active and also loving LEGO Indiana Jones on the Xbox 360 this week. He's all about being an airplane these last couple of days with arms and sounds. Very fun.

DQ's co-op was today. AM once again had no interest going downstairs with the rest of the kids and their moms for the planned activity. We stayed upstairs while he had a snack and walked around looking and playing with some toys. Both DQ and AM enjoyed the drum making activity. The class downstairs was starting to learn the beat to Hand Hand Fingers Thumb by Dr. Seuss. The children are going to drum and some will recite the words at the co-op's talent show.

We're going down to the grandparents' for the weekend since Drew and I will be attneding a homeschooling conference. The kids are looking forward to seeing their grandparents and going to the children's musuem in Richmond. Shhh, they don't know Cliffor the Big Red Dog will be at the children's musuem this Saturday. That's going to be a surprise for them!

Week in review

Drama Queen enjoyed her first gymnastics class. Game day with a new homeschool group was a success. I'm glad Action Man hung out with Drew (daddy) so I was able to chat with some of the other moms and help out with a game. Now I have the names of some fun looking games to add to our selection!

I was astonished when I saw DQ write her brother's and her names down one day. She is not one to want to write except the occasional single letter. I can already see that she is one to not practice something in front of others until she feels a certain mastery. This was a nice window into how she is doing/feeling with writing.

Last week DQ 'read' a book multiple times to Drew and I on separate occasions. It's her first foray into reading on her own. Granted it was verbatim but it was nice to see her want to read to us and not hear 'but I can't read'.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the current chapter book and Drama Queen is really enjoying it.

Action Man is lovin' on the puzzles this week. I brought home some puzzles from the library and we have added some to our home library as well. DQ is quite happy to help him with them. AM is getting much more insistent in picking out a book instead of just listening to what his sister has chosen for books before bed. I'm enjoying watching him as he finds a love of books.

The week concluded with attendance at a birthday party for a new friend.

It was a good week.

I love homeschooling.