Well, what to say, what to say... The baby shower I was helping with went well and is over now. Last week I was pretty lazy. Only doing high priority stuff. I was pretty tired from several weeks of busyness. I thought I would share what we are doing in education right now as I am thinking on that and praying about what we will do for the summer. I am working on a schedule too but thinking maybe I will wait for it until summer. What we are doing now seems to be working. So in the morning after breakfast and brushing teeth and chores Wild Man and Hulk watch a short morning video with nursery rhymes and other preschool type learning songs while Bug goes down for a short morning nap and the three older kiddos do Math(The Boy does Teaching Textbooks and the girls mainly do Life of Fred, occasionally supplemented). More and more daddy is teaching Tender her Math when she needs help. Tender does Language Arts at this time a few days a week too. Then we play or run errands or go to the Y for me to work out. Then lunch and chores and play until about 1pm when I put both of the toddlers down for their nap and I'm able to give the four older ones more attention for our "group learning time"(which takes no more than 2 hours, usually much less). We are reading through Jeremiah right now for Bible and then we do our memorization. I use the Charlotte Mason method for memorization for our scriptures. At the moment we are working on Psalm 105:5. Then depending on the day of the week we either do Science or History. We use 1:1 and nature studies(Charlotte Mason) for Science. Beautiful Feet Books for History and we love it. Have been using it for 3 years, I think. I try not to spend more than 25 minutes on either of those subjects, usually just about 15. Then depending on the day we do a music study or art study, accompanied by a biography of the artist or composer we are studying (right now that is Beethoven and Norman Rockwell). I use Charlotte Mason methods with these two subjects as well except I don't buy anything special. We pick someone different every couple of months, grab some books at the library on them and read aloud about them and look at their artwork or listen to something by the composer (youtube makes that way too easy!). A different child does an online program for typing practice on a different day of the week. Except for Wild Man. He can sometimes play starfall.com or practice his index cards with simple two letter a- words on them. OR, more recently, I write some words out for him and he copies them. This is brand new and very exciting as Wild Man has horrendous fine motor skills! Like, astonishingly bad. He's barely been able to write a "D" for the last year and then all of the sudden he started writing more in the last couple of weeks and he is crazy proud of himself! Up until now I've just been doing stuff with him that didn't require writing. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we do map drills for Geography. This is where I set the timer for 2 minutes and then one child points to as many states as they can as I say them before the timer goes off. I have a shortened list of the states for the boys but the girls do all the states. So far they can find about 35-40 in two minutes. But I recently found a great website that we use sometimes instead. online.seterra.com/en/vgp/3003 It's pretty cool and works well for the girls to test themselves on a different level. Anyway, literally, 8 minutes twice a week and they know the states far better than I ever did and its far easier than I ever imagined. This is especially cool with Wild Man because he is only 5! Next we will start working on countries. I read literature aloud to them. We talk about what we are reading and learn from that. I think literature is one of their favorites. And I try to stick to living books, classics, or biographies. This is from Charlotte Mason too. Right now we are between books and I'm praying about what to read next. Haven't decided. All in all, counting Bible, History, Science, and literature we do a LOT of reading aloud. Occasionally I have Tender write up a paper on something we are learning and she reviews some Chinese but neither of those things are scheduled, just spontaneous. Recently she has been working for someone in our small group, cleaning and organizing. She opened her own bank account and is working on making decisions about managing money. She hasn't been home much and has also had to learn how to take the initiative to do her learning without me hovering over her and in her spare time. But that will probably be over this week. It was only short term. I recently set some new screen time rules for the girls because they have kindles and DS and now Tender has a phone. So we have a reading log and they earn screen time by reading the Word and other books and by playing outside. This is still in process because it takes time for me too, to get used to the rules and following them. It seems like a lot, but when you keep lessons short (10-20 minutes long) and hit several little things back to back, it's over quick but over time, those short lessons add up. This is Charlotte Mason method too. I don't follow her style 100% but I do a lot. It keeps me sane and not over achieving, instead enjoying learning and savoring my time with my kids. Okay, here are a lot of pictures! You will notice, Bug is walking now.
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Bug is all better from a nasty cold and goopy eyes and teething. He still has a bit of a cough but he's sleeping a lot better! We made grass heads (again, see here: coffmanfamily.weebly.com/family-updates/this-week-in-learning). So there are some pictures of that. I don't have much to share right now because I'm super busy. My last bible study on Tuesday nights is this week and I finished my reading for that but I have several assignments due for my SWI class this week as well. Also meeting with a young mama, hosting a couple of families this weekend for dinner, organizing a baby shower, and starting a new SWI class next week. So I knew I didn't have time to do a new post. So this time, it's just pictures! God bless, friends! |
LindseyI'm the mama and wife. Updating you on our life! Archives
January 2022
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