I'm Going To Need Another Floor In My House

The key to our homeschooling success (success = 1/2 peace + 1/2 learning) has been separation. The separation is radical. Things work best when one is working on a computer game on one floor, and I am working one on one with the other on the ground floor. Two neighboring rooms does not work, as the children have highly sensitive sonar systems and still find themselves wanting to do whatever the other child is working on.

I am finding that homeschooling is really a ballet of sorts in slow motion, with entrances and exits carefully choreographed. We also work on activities together, but the basics and the reading I reserve for "special time".

A small panic is growing in the pit of my stomach. What am I going to do when Faith arrives??? How will I juggle three? I'm going to need another floor in my house. And perhaps a 4th floor so I can run and hide.

Gearing Up Early For Our Next Term

In a determined effort to stay organized, and knowing that baby Faith will be arriving in January, I sat down last night and laid out Grace's schedule from January to June 2006. There are still a number of books from Ambleside's Year 1 that I would like to postpone, but I looked over the Year 2 schedule, and decided to pull from there. Our homeschooling is all year round, and we tend to have three terms, but the shortest term falls in the summer months.

Here's what we will be working on for the first six months of 2006:

Nature Study: Rodentia
Artist Study: Monet
Composer: To Be Determined

American History: Unit Studies to include Vikings and Columbus
* Lucky Lief and Columbus books by the D'Aulaires
* Viking Tales by Jennie Hall
* This Country of Ours (Chapters 1-5) by H.E. Marshall

World History: Unit Study of Marco Polo - Part I
* Completing 50 Famous Stories
* Marco Polo for Kids (Chapters 1-3) by Janice Herbert

Science: Rodentia Nature Study
* Burgess Animal Book (Chapters 1-20)

Literature:
* Understood Betsy by Dorothy Fisher
* The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Poetry:
* The Oxford Book of Verse (Grace will read the poem)

The books have been ordered this morning as well as ordering a large number of coloring books from Dover Publications to cover these topics. (I'd like to ditch the plethora of Princess coloring books in the room).

Creating A School Schedule

The last few days I have spent all of my free time hammering away in Excel on a schedule for this term. Ambleside Online, Year 1 predominantly for Grace, and Montessori heavy activities with number recognition, handwriting mastery and read-a-louds for Jack. I had a teacher's record book I had been using for a few weeks, but there weren't enough slots to add all of the Montessori and AO items, and I wasn't happy with the results.

My hope was that once the schedule layout was complete, it could be cleared and used for every term to keep track of where we are, and what we have done. Now that it is complete, I can say that it was well worth the work! After two days, it has been very helpful, especially since I wanted to revise some of Grace's Year 1 reading.

If anyone is looking for a homeschool schedule layout in Excel, I'm happy to provide a copy for you to use.

Preparing for our 3rd Term

XThis week we have taken a break from "school" year round, as happens when I need to go through the entire room and start packing up our term's nature study, composer, and artist items. It also includes dusting down all of the shelves. And somehow, as the kids get excited with the changes coming, the entire room becomes a hazard zone.

This term we are adding handicrafts for the kids including: stuffed animal making (from patterns), yarn stitching and putting wood models together with screws. The last two weeks we have spent getting a jump start on all of these, and I am impressed with how enthusiastic the kids have been and how quickly they can pick these things up.

I just spent the last two days ordering for our newest term, trying hard to merge CM and Montessori concepts to keep both Grace and Jack fully emerged and interested. Term 3 includes:

Nature Study: Fish and Aquatic Life
Composer: Beethoven
Artist: Renoir

I wasn't too sure how the kids would respond to fish, but a promising sign was given yesterday and today. In an effort to find sand for our Mantis bug box (I know they don't need sand), I pulled out an OLD fish bowl filled with sand and shells from our honeymoon on Sanibel Island. Instantly, the mantis were put on the back burner and the kids took to soaking, cleaning and drying the shells for further inspection inserting Ooos and Aaahs with this pretty one, and that neat one.

Sigh of relief...this should be fun. Especially when we bring our four gigantic pond fish in from the pond in the front yard to observe over the winter.