First Month of the School Year

Well, for our first month we got off to a slow start but things have picked up. I am actually happy to hear a comment from our daughter, "But mommy we really didn't do anything." Then we talked about all the work book pages, reading, discussions, adventures and so on we have had so far. Light bulb went off. We found the happy medium between her desire for more structure and learning on an everyday basis through simply living life.

Our son wants more book work now. So we are giving it to him and he is eating everything up. His handwriting wouldn't pass in a public school but for us the fact that he can write his own name is a huge step. He is picking up more words here and there. Number facts continue to hold his attention more than anything else. So all in all we have done so much. I have a loose schedule for covering stuff written down so when it comes time for mid and end of year progress reports they can be done up in education speak.

I have acquired a 35 mm camera, it had been my mom's, so I will start buying film and snapping away at all of our interesting adventures. I am not going to develop pictures just get them put on CD so I can quickly and easily upload them. I am also planning on doing our school pictures since we have been asked by family members. I am thinking of finding a nice blue background to use for different poses and then photoshopping in a variety of backgrounds.

The kids have this week off, so to speak. They are still continuing on their adventures but a nice break from our so called structured learning will be awesome for everyone.

Carl the Cricket and other updates...

We have a pet cricket, Carl, who lives in the walls of our house. The kids weren't too sure about letting a "bug" live in the house. Then we did some research and found out that mommy was right, not only do crickets bring good luck but they tend to eat the really icky bugs. Now, a praying mantis would be more than welcome as well and they have spent time searching for those elusive creatures.

The kids have spent time creating a frog paradise to attract frogs to live in our driveway. They have spent a great deal of time doing this with friends. They have also been learning about horses and gaining some hands on experience when we visit the local stable.

As for "real school" work, we have been using Core Knowledge Sequences K-8 as a guideline. Lesson plans, I decided, would be done daily. We pick one or two subjects to cover the kids spend the time that they feel they need to on their class work. Relaxed, no pressure, and lots of absorption going on.

Currently we are covering geography and studying maps. The discovery of North America and South America beginning with the vikings and we will be moving to Columbus and other explorers. Plants, animals, and ecosystems for science. DS is learning to write his name and improving his reading skills, working on letters. DD is reading Little Women and writing various stories, that one day she hopes to finish. Math we are back tracking a bit for DD, we did some review and she is having trouble with rounding and estimating. DS is working patterns, adding, and subtracting.

Who says kids don't use their imagination anymore?

We had a power outage do to a huge thunder storm going through the area. Oh my what are the kids to do? They read, played games, played with blocks and generally loved and annoyed one another.

If there was any concern as to their dependency on electronic products it is pretty well gone. Though DS took a little to understand that many of the things he had planned in his mind to do he was not able to do.

It didn't take much prompting but all is good. The power is obviously back on and they are getting their "show" watching fix at this very moment.

Pokemon and Go Fish and Cooking

Well, as always I picked DH from work early this morning. Then I got BIL off to his job. I came home to a still sleeping home. I actually felt pretty well rested this morning so instead of dreading cleaning the house and doing laundry I got right to it. I even got to take a shower all by myself.

I was posting my accomplishments on facebook and thinking of chilling out when a little voice from the other side of the parental bed calls out softly..."Good morning mommy. May I have some apple juice please?" Eyes are still closed but he digs out a sippy cup from last night. Eeewww..ok..so I go and put the icky sippy cup in the sink (knowing there will be another sink load once the household completely wakes up) and grabs a clean one and fills it with apple juice. The next thing I hear is, "Mommy I gotta pee". This is a necessary announcement at every occurrence of this bodily function. We meet up in the living room. Naked boy crawls into my lap, grabs his sippy cup and snuggles give me my morning love while sucking down juice at what could be an alarming rate.

"Can we watch Dinosquad and play Pokemon? I have some pretend Pokemon you can battle with." Sure why not. This goes on for about 15 minutes. We tire quickly of Pokemon and grab a deck of playing cards. Three rounds later of Go Fish and we are bored. TV is nothing but backgroud noise at this point.

"Hey Bubby, want to help mommy cook?" "Yeah! Yeah!" So we venture into the kitchen he grabs his chair and drags it across the tile floor. Oh yeah, can we say fingernails on the chalk board? He is in position and I start grabbing all the ingredients for tonights dinner, home made cream of chicken soup and sandwiches are the plan. We peel, cut, dice, pour, etc. Once everything is in the crock pot to simmer all day, we clean up.

DD wakes up and drags herself down the hallway. This creates much excitement as the little guy just loves his "sissy". He attacks her and hugs her despite the protests. Normally DS wakes up cheerful and ready to start the day bouncing and chipper. DD is very much like her mommy, grumpy until the blood starts flowing. DS recounts his morning so far and then asks for left over noodles from last night for dinner. With some assistance he "cooks" them himself. DD has her bowl of cereal, she has said that she cannot start her day without a bowl of cereal. Fruit is passed out, strawberries and bananas.

They have settled on the couch for now to watch one of DD's shows on netflix. They will snuggle and sit quietly through one maybe two episodes. Then the bickering will begin. I am trying to think of a lovely outdoor activity for us all to do. DH wants me to wake him up in the early afternoon so that we can do something as a family. BIL gets off work at 330 so I may just let him sleep until then and we will go to the park later this afternoon or maybe just chill outside by the wading pool.

For now, I am going to blog a bit more and then perhaps relax and read a book.

Lesson Planning and organizing

It is tax free weekend and while public school parents are scurrying around trying to fill those lovely supply lists. The cashier was a bit surprised when I showed up with an armful of 15 cent spiral bound notebooks, pencils, and pens. The arts and crafts stuff we had just replenished a couple of weeks ago. "Honey, didn't you find your school's supply list?" I told her I had it in my head what my kids needed and that their school didn't do a supply list. "Even the private schools have supply lists. Did you not find what you needed?" Oh I found everything that was needed, we home school, so I am just taking advantage of the sale to keep my supplies up. "Oh, I see." I ignored the tone in her voice that really said, "Oh you are one of those people." I just smiled and got my debit card ready for swiping. Trying to encourage her politely to just scan my items and let me go.

Well, we are pretty well supplied for things now, or at least I hope so. The next step is taking all those lovely lesson plans I have been looking at, gathering up free resources and setting about planning our school year. It almost feels like we have come full circle, though I now know we can change, adapt, and be creative in our approach. If this whole routine/structure thing doesn't work out well we will go back to a much more relaxed approached.

Bodies are stirring, breakfast is being desire, and I am still not done writing. Hopefully, I will get a chance later on. I think we will spend the morning finishing house work and then go to the park, come home, have lunch and then jump into the wading pool.

Everyone wanted to start "school" next week, but I am no where near ready yet. I did have to wipe a tear from my eye last night. My darling son got excited about school but then looked at me with terror in his eyes. "Mommy, I don't want to go away to school, I want to stay home with you!" I smiled and explained to him that he didn't have to go away all day to do school things. He did lose the desire to ride the school bus the end of the public school term this past year when he saw a bunch of kids fighting on the bus and continuing to fight as they got off the bus. Not that he can't or won't defend himself. Not that he isn't into playing kicking evil bad guy butt, but generally speaking he is a lover not a fighter. I am so glad we will be able to ensure that he is learning in an environment of his own choosing where he feels safe.

Well, off to get breakfast done and a few other household chores.

The Beauty of Homeschooling

The beauty of homeschooling is that you can adjust what you are doing for your kids. My daughter has wanted to give structured learning a try. So we are off to the library today to check out some Core Knowledge books and look for other learning resources. We have struggled with when to start all of this. Well, no reason to wait so as of Monday we will be starting our curriculum as it will be put together this weekend.

I had originally collected a whole lot of information on creating your own curriculum and had even started putting my own together. So I am going to go with a lot of information I have already collected. I am looking for totally free resources and such. One of the best resources that I have is Clickschooling. So we will be pulling from all of that. I am going to use the free version of homeschool tracker for tracking and grading. It should be interesting after a year of deschooling/unschooling.

As for our son he has such a strong desire to really learn to read that we are going to focus on that for now. Along with some other projects and studies for him. He wanted to go to school but really likes mommy being his teacher.

I still consider us unschoolers, we are just adjusting to our children's requests.

Well, off to the library and then grocery store. I will give little examples of curriculum that I create as I get them done.

What we have been doing this summer.

We have done a lot of simple things, just living life day to day. We have spent time at the park, on the beach and down on the marsh in Murrell's Inlet. The kids have been discovering various and sundry talents, passions, and interests.

Claire has rediscovered books other than graphic novels, she is currently enjoying Wind in the Willows which I read to her sitting under a willow tree last year. She is seeing it in a different light. She is very interested in learning more about fashion and becoming a make up artist. She has also spent time developing her own story and writing a bit here and there.

Morgan has been learning to read, count, build, and play cards. He has developed a passion for photography that just doesn't seem to want to quit. He photographs everything with an old cell phone. I think for his birthday he will get a kid's digital camera. He is also dictating short stories.