Roll Call

Aside from the coop, this week was the Back to School week. I have to be absolutely honest here. There was no mega planning ritual, no thumbing through piles of juicy homeschooling supply magazines (ok...maybe a little thumbing), and only a few purchases of some Audubon field guides we didn't have in the library. I was starting to feel a little bad, like the children were being cheated out of the "Back in School" hype that we used to do. But then I remembered that technically for The Queen's Grace she is in the middle of AO's curriculum for Year 2, and I spent Christmas break entering in the first half of that year on my handy dandy monster Excel spreadsheet. Jack is also in the middle of his books, which was easy to pick back up. And, being that my computer holding my ENTIRE UNBACKED UP LIFE was still in the shop, I had no schedule to tinker around with anyway.

So people, we winged it. And gosh darn, if we didn't do great. Nothing a little white board, some colored dry erase markers, and a small amount of planning can't take care of. We even managed to start Spanish (which the entire family will be trying to learn including Tom Builder). Jack doesn't know it, but we are slowly entering into the 1 1/2 year AO Year 1 program that I created for Grace when she started Ambleside. When I asked him for his first narration, he froze, going through all of the motions Grace first went through when we started narrations. But today when I asked Grace for a narration, and she actually froze, he chimed in, "I know!" and off he went.

So we didn't have much fanfare, but it has been a crazy summer, and it all just seems to fit with how life has gone for the last six months. Everything is exciting these days, which perhaps dulls the excitement of what we used to get excited over in the past. I can tell you that there is one change in our schedule, that has me very happy -- The Princess of Wails will start a two-day half-day program at our church beginning mid-August. WAAA-HOOOO!


A large part of me, longs to put her in our Montessori school's half day program, because of the benefits both of the older ones received from such an awesome program. But really, this is less about my already smart-as-a-whip girl's education at this point in her itty bitty life, and more about me trying to homeschool the older ones with a new baby also on the scene soon.

I have no idea what I am up against. I admit it. I'm pretty sure though, that I'm going to need two days of cushion in the mix to get the schooling accomplished. Two days of running around with other little ones is heaven to Faith, and what she loves most. What she doesn't love, is Mom sitting at the table trying to school her siblings when Mom should have her attention on either her or the dishes (what is with that??? I can do dishes or laundry, but sit down with the older ones, and she's a bull in a china shop!). And she has made that loudly clear this week, in addition to zapping her morning nap and saving it for late afternoon!

I'll have just enough time to catch my breath between August and October, and then the rubber will hit the pavement again in full force. But if my sweet Hope turns out to be a floor potato, well then maybe we'll only have to worry about a little wibble wobble here and there.

Floor potato...floor potato...floor potato...

We Survived The Week - A Recap

I'm really proud of that. Despite being ill, all of us were able to pull it off and stay on schedule. The kids were very patient with my barely audible voice as we tackled the readings for the day. And just as important, they were pleasant and positive. Here is a look back:

Now in his second week, Jack has an even stronger desire to read after creating Starfall books from a free Starfall workbook we obtained. They are actually the same early reader books you find on their site, but I chose to go with a hands on approach for him as it tackled two things: fine motor skills using his scissors to cut and create the book, and he's able to pull out his handmade readers any time for practice. By the end of this week he was wanting to tackle the harder words that had "tricks" to them. So I introduced the first book with the rules for the silent E. Now when Grace sits down to read to herself, he feels less frustrated in that he can pull out one of his readers and read with confidence alongside her.

Grace is really enjoying the addition of music lessons two to three times a week. We've learned how to hold and strum the guitar, we've learned notes A and B on the recorder, and she's been making up her own songs on the keyboard. I just received the piano book so we'll begin that this week. I've found that I have the best one on one time with her when Ken takes Jack to Tae-kwon-do on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So those 50 minutes are spent helping me prepare dinner (which she loves) and then we do a Monet activity, Puccini activity, or a music lesson together.

I've mentioned it before, but I can't say enough how much Grace's reading has blown my expectations out of the water. The words she can figure out, have me second guessing if she has somehow read the material before. I am glad that we are using the poetry of La Mare for her reading at the beginning of this term as it is enough to challenge her. As an exercise I will have her look over two of the assigned poems and go over it on her own. She is to circle any words that she doesn't know, we review them first, and then she reads the poem. This has given me some time to work with Jack while she reads, and it makes her reading go quicker once she has gone through it silently herself.

The children are taking to our rodent studies well. Despite the bad name rodents get in the adult world, they are pretty irresistable to the children. I've had little trouble keeping their interest during our introduction and time spent on squirrels these first two weeks.

So despite a bumpy beginning, we are off to a great positive start. And I'm happy to see that the pretend play has still been wonderful since starting school back up. Despite the messy playroom...this is a good season.

A Return to Education

At long last, after a TWO week vacation, we have hit the books again. The children were very excited to have the opportunity to tackle some of the new items in the room. It was a little humorous for myself, as I wanted to use that motivation for my advantage in getting some of less glamourous tasks out of the way.

Grace and I got started first while Jack was still in major pretend play mode in the office with Dad. When she discovered that she would not be able to grab a new item off the shelf until she had practiced her memory verse and done her copywork work, she was deflated. After three words into her copywork, she began to feel dizzy and tired, and I had to smile as I recalled how two weeks ago they were begging for school work, and now I was dealing with a child who seemed a bit more "normal". After a few more reaffirmations that this is how it was going to be done, she quickly moved on and finished her copywork. Her reward, working with small tacks and a hammer to create this:

Grace smiling a little oddly because of her loose tooth.
The rest of her day went very smoothly. Her reading went very well, as this term, rather than focusing our reading on "I Can Read" books (which she does anyway on her own), it will be a little meater. Today's reading consisted of the first two poem selections from Walter de la Mare that AO has listed in their Year 2 area.

We are concentrating on geometry this term, specifically polyhedra and other 3D shapes, so today Grace decorated and cut out a template for a cube and we put it together. The fun part, however, was she was unable to guess what it would turn out to be as she colored it before cutting it out. She was surprised to see that it was going to be something 3D. Grace also began working on cutting out a number of different types of squirrels and squirrel tracks for us to begin putting together on a giant yellow board for our nature study.

Jack was happy to be back into the routine of things. He also was required to do some of his usual tasks first, but there was little complaint. He's weak in the area of the order of the days of the week and calendar months, so we'll be focusing on that, as well as progressing through his strong desire to read like his sister. Jack's favorite subject is Bible reading, and with two new children's Bibles (in addition to 4 others) he is loving the new fodder for this term. It is my sweetest time with Jack.


Lastly, in the late afternoon, we had our very first music lesson for guitar. Thankfully Daddy was around to help me out (who knows a fair amount of guitar) as I was actually a little nervous about teaching guitar. I will be learning with them as we go, and I feel very ill prepared in the area of music lessons. Grace was into the lesson, Jack was a little less patient with the idea.

I played our new Puccini CD for the children as they had some free time, and it went over very well. Tomorrow...Monet! :)

The School Doors Are Locked Again

The children endured a day of locked doors to the school room today, as I prepared for our next term. Locking the doors has proved to be a great way to instantly kick up the anticipation for a new term. They were finding every excuse in the book to find things that needed to get put away in the playroom, just for a quick glimpse of changes to the room. Unfortunately, I am SO TIRED from all of our other preparations around the house, that the playroom will not be the beautiful spick and span it was at the beginning of our last term. I warned the children tonight that I probably wouldn't get it all done. Ken teased that they might not be able to do school until later in the afternoon. This was met with instant protests, and thoughtful words to Mom that they wouldn't care if it was still a little messy.

This term I am trying to add a little more to our load (CM style), but still maintaining short lessons. We are diving head first into Grace's 4th term of Year 1/2 AO requirements, and Jack has made it clear that he would like to dive into reading this term. Plus our new nature study (rodents), Claude Monet, and the wonderful music of Puccini. We will be adding music to our load with an introduction to guitar, piano and recorder lessons.

I placed an order through Montessori-n-Such and Amazon earlier in the week, and the children were able to peek (but not touch) at a few of the hands on activities they'll have available. I'm equally as giddy with the beginning of a new term. There is something about a fresh start, and new material, that is re-energizing. I wish the schoolroom was cleaner, but Baby Faith and my aching pelvis will have no more of it tonight.

Turning Dependence Into Independence

Our Holidays were consumed with family in town, and it has left me quite exhausted; I have had very little Will to blog in the last few days. My eyes are quite tired, so hopefully this post will make sense.

Over the course of this week, Ken and I decided that we needed to have the kids withdraw from the many electronic screens in our house: Computer, TV shows, Monkey Ball. The time in front of each of these items per week day was not excessive (each usually limited to an hour or less), however, when added up...it was becoming way too much screen time. The kids had recently seemed to forget how to play without a virtual world in front of them.

So starting this week, the children were given a choice. They could only have one hour of electronic screen time a day, however they did get to pick what they would do in that hour. In just a few days, I am beginning to see their dependence wane. They still look forward to that hour as the biggest highlight of the day, but at least we have a better balance on it.

This has also caused me to rearrange my school schedule with the children, as I myself had a dependence on the computer screen to entertain and educate one child with Jumpstart CDs, while I worked one on one with the other child on school. On an entirely different tangent, my lovely children have been waking up at 6:00 in the morning, and without a morning TV show(s) before breakfast, they now are dealing with another rule of staying in their room until 7:00am. This is all going somewhere...

The children don't have many toys in their room so I promised them yesterday evening that I would supply them each with a small basket of toys to entertain them during that morning hour. On a whim, I told Grace that I would also give her math and copywork on a clipboard, and if she wished to knock it out early, this would allow for more special time in the afternoon together. I honestly thought she might start it, but would soon be distracted by whatever Jack started playing with.

This morning she came to me with the school work completely finished! What a small blessing to our morning that finished work was. Knocking out the worksheet material, then allowed me to better juggle our Ambleside reading, and Jack's work. Jack was also strangely independent. I had given him copywork and some math to work on while I read to Grace (3 sheets), however, he independently decided to do both the front and back of all three pages (6 sheets total). I made sure to reward them both for an excellent school day with that extra special time in the afternoon. We played a butterfly identification board game (by their request) that we hadn't played since our butterfly study in the summer, and I have to say, I really enjoyed it. With fingers crossed, I am hoping that this new effort to knock out school work while Mom is still snoozing or showering continues!

I think Grace is enjoying a feeling of independence too. I had already put together Grace's clipboard for tomorrow, but left it on the kitchen table. Without telling me, she set to work on the math sheet leaving only 4 problems left for tomorrow.

Egg On My Face Again

Jack has reminded me again that I am coddling his capabilities. He has become very strong with his printing of letters, and in the last two months we have been working on practicing over the dashed lines of letter strokes, and then doing only two attempts at capital and lowercase letters completely free handed. Two months ago, this was a very daunting task for Jack, but with continued encouragement from Mama he's gaining ground and confidence.

Today after working on a worksheet with dashed out words, he decided to go above and beyond the call of duty and select another worksheet. When he picked out the worksheet (writing the words for numbers 1-5 completely freehand), I found myself actually saying to him, "That's a pretty hard worksheet Jack. Are you sure?" He gladly took the challenge and aced the strokes. I'm still trying to get all of the egg off my face.

Maybe I'm in denial. My little "Bubba" is growing up, and it is becoming clear to me this week that somewhere deep down, I'm fighting that.

Fall 2005 School Pictures

There is one small disadvantage to homeschooling...no school pictures. I always enjoyed getting that thick packet of school pictures back and gazing into the blue eyes of my children all pretty and prepped for photo shoots.

I thought I would take advantage of our fall theme on our porch and get a few pictures this morning while everyone was decked in their "Happy Birthday Jack!" attire.

Finally School! Yippee!

Visit our Fish, Renoir & Beethoven blogs for more details about today.

Today was the day. I knew I would be awakened early:

"Mom. The playroom door is still locked."
"Eat your breakfast kids, it is laid out for you. We'll do school in a couple of hours."

An hour more of sleep, and I joined them with my coffee and glazed Krispy Kreme. I peeked out at the group of children and parents waiting a few doors down for the bus to take them to their first day of school. Almost 8:00, all of us still in our PJs enjoying the slow pace of the morning (dad still snoozing). Zero stress. That golden bit alone, is reason enough to homeschool.

I glanced at Grace kicked back on the floor watching the end of Swiss Family Robinson on video. She showed no interest in the school buses passing by. Jack and I, watched as the kids shuffled onto the bus, and drove past the house. They looked so young!

After coffee and a doughnut, it was off to the treadmill for the two mile walk and Bible Study on my iPod. Dad joined us down in the office, and kids played puzzles quietly. Still no rush. I'm sure the ease of our mornings will disappear again with the arrival of baby #3, but I've learned to enjoy it when you have it.

By 11:00am, we were all ready for school, and Dad joined us, as the kids finally got to break out the tuning forks and the scale/weight set.



The rest of the next couple of hours was filled with paper cutting and gluing, time puzzles, flower arranging, shoe lace tying, and shell identification, Renoir's memory game, and the completion of Holling's Seabird...(of which I had to choke back my own tears).

As I write, the kids are up from their weekly nap, and back at it with the activities. That's the other nice thing about homeschooling: while the kids never have homework, they have the option to return to their work whenever they please. Now if I could just locate me a janitor for after school.