Last year was our....my worst year of homeschooling to date. The first year was pretty horrible too, but I think that is allowed. I was still learning a lot, Robert was deployed, we were living in a new state and I had no friends and I didn't know any homeschool moms to learn from. But last year 2018-19 it was more, just me. I struggled all year emotionally. It was the longest I had gone without being pregnant in 14 years. Bug crossed the threshold of being the oldest child we have ever had without a new baby following up and I couldn't find a rhythm. I didn't know how to do this new normal. Granted, an easier, more freeing "normal", but still new. I think I struggled with despair a lot in parenting last year and when you homeschool, that is the brunt of parenting, so homeschooling took a nose dive. Every action regarding teaching my kids was like walking uphill with a boulder on my back. I did not want to do it, not even a little bit. I wanted to be selfish and do what I wanted to do. I continually repented of that longing and kept fighting against my desires and praying continually so that I could serve my family and be faithful, but it never got better. I hated last year, I hated homeschooling, and I dread this year because of that.
I continue to pray for the Lord to give me a heart for educating my children. To give me a desire to have only older children who I can really invest in because there is no baby to distract me. I remind myself of all of the benefits of our youngest being potty trained and almost not needing a nap time. I am just trudging on, knowing that the Lord is faithful. I will wait on Him and keep asking for His help. Meanwhile, we have started our school year despite my fears of it being a repeat of last year. So far, (just a couple of weeks in) it is better. I am thinking about trying to update the blog every week to share what our week of learning looked like. I used to do that and maybe it would help me. Plus, it would help me to remember to share pictures more often for our family far off. Tender: Tender is a Sophomore this year! She is taking English at Ivy Tech this fall. It is her second dual enrollment class and she is very excited. I am too, because it means that she is getting an English credit for high school and college and so I don't have to oversee her learning English this semester! I am waiting to see what that teacher assigns as reading before I determine what I will assign. I bought her a curriculum for Economics and Government. She will be doing those alone, as they are a high school level. I will only be checking in with her and grading her on those subjects. She continues to study Chinese as her foreign language. We have been taking her on Fridays for her lessons but that may change this fall, we are still working out that schedule. She will continue her Biology curriculum too. Her Math curriculum is still Life of Fred. Hurricane: Hurricane is in 7th grade this year! She is officially starting formal English using Analytical Grammar. And her, The Boy, and Wild Man will be working through Beautiful Feet Books' Modern America and World History. We will probably be working through that for this year and next, as I typically set he pace slower on that curriculum. She also continues to work on her penmanship and has a flare for creative writing that you may see the fruit of here on the blog. She will have books to read that I assign her. We switched Hurricane over to Teaching Textbooks last year because she wasn't crazy about Life of Fred, so she will continue with Teaching Textbooks for Math. The Boy: The Boy is in 5th grade this year! I am trying him on a Rod and Staff English curriculum to help him with writing a little. He is doing the same History as Hurricane. And will be reading a list of books that I prepare for him(its not finished yet). For now, The Boy is using Life of Fred for Math but I'm considering doing Teaching Textbooks for him when he finishes the elementary series of books. Wild Man: Wild Man is in 3rd grade this year! He may repeat this grade. I find that 3rd grade is quite a speed bump for kiddos and if it is for Wild Man (since I started him a little early), we will just repeat it. I will likely face the same decision with Hulk, as they have the same birthday. He is really behind in penmanship, so he will continue to work on that. I switched him over to cursive last year and that has seemed to help so we are continuing that. His reading is going well! I wouldn't say he is totally done with reading lessons, but he is very close. He reads his bible every night in his bed before going to sleep. He just skips the big words. I believe that he will be an independent reader by the end of the first semester this year. In Math, he is mastering his multiplication tables for the first few months of 3rd grade and then he will go back to Teaching Textbooks. Hulk: Hulk wants to be in Kindergarten! My last blog post was about him and Bug so I won't repeat all of that. Since Hulk has a little brother right behind him, I am most likely going to just "do kindergarten" with him two years in a row, that way him and Bug are back to back in grades. It will make it REALLY easy to homeschool them that way. They will just do everything together right up until, just about, high school. ALL: Here are the things that I do with all of the children, what we call "Group learning". We do Bible lessons and memorization together first thing in the morning. Right now we are reading through A.W. Pink's Attributes of God. I read it aloud to them and assign bible passages to the four older children. They have to look up the passage on their own and read it aloud when we get to it in the book. We are doing the same kind of memorization that we have been doing for years (I think that I've talked about that before). At this moment we almost have 2 Corinthians 9:8 memorized. We study different composers, artists, and poets together as well. We are starting our year off studying Domineco Scarlatti, Grandma Moses, and Robert Browning. We are working on memorizing and better understanding the Periodic Table this semester. I bought a poster and a game and I'm having the kids do the memorization game on sheppardsoftware.com, which is the same website we use for geography(I highly recommend it).
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I get asked this question a lot and so it will be helpful to type it all out and have a quick reference for the future. What do I do for preschool and kindergarten in homeschooling? My friends who have already heard the answer probably snicker because I would say "I don't do anything!" I would urge you, "Don't do anything!" Now, by saying that, I don't literally mean don't do anything. Especially if your oldest is this age. If this is your first year with a preschooler or kindergartner you will need to put thought into these things where as, I'm many years past that stage and don't think about it anymore. Which means that I have to remind myself of what I do without thought anymore. First, here are some links of where I get my philosophy in education for these years: simplycharlottemason.com/planning/preschool-guide/ AND mylittlerobins.com/2017/03/charlotte-mason-preschool/ The first link has a video that will give you a good summarization of Charlotte Mason's theory on educating littles. The second link offers great practical ideas on the outworking of that theory. Its a LOT of info in those links. I really like Charlotte Mason, but we aren't religious about her. I would say of all of the homeschool methods we most closely resemble her, but we do other things that work better for us. So, that's the philosophy, now how we work that out practically. 1. As much outdoor, unorganized play as possible. Exploring, getting dirty, and barefoot when possible. When they bring you something that they found, ask open-ended observation questions about it to help teach them the habit of focus and communication but don’t turn it into a lecture. “Tell me about the flower!” “Where did you find it?” “What does it feel like?” “How do you think it grew?” etc. 2. Keep lots of open-ended craft objects around and plenty of manipulatives for counting and sorting. They will sort anything and everything at this age! We never child proofed the kitchen, we just hovered and taught them to leave the cabinets and drawers alone until they got it. But I always kept a drawer, tall enough for a crawler to open, filled with safe kitchen stuff for them to play with while I cooked. Plastic bowls, wooden spoons, measuring cups, etc. Occasionally I would give them a cup of flour and a cup of water and let them pour those together and stir on the floor near me. (that is messy, but SO fun!) As they get older they will learn to add a little at a time to see the different consistency change. Ideas: craft puff balls, popsicle sticks, egg cartons, tweezers, yarn, cotton balls, toilet paper rolls, cardboard box, and so on. Along with basic craft stuff like crayons and paper. I will share one fun activity that I bought in 2012 that is still used constantly in our home, though. We call it the shape game and I bought it at Oriental Trading company. HUGE hit in our home. 3. During bad weather times a sensory bin can be very helpful. If you train them well to keep the sensory objects in the bin (takes longer for some kids but does require intense training for a few weeks) it is great educational fun while you are busy with older children or housework. Always put a time limit so that they look forward to getting it out again. Some things we have put into our sensory bin: sawdust, water, slime, shaving cream, water beads, sand, beans, rice, and (most famously with our boys) lots of small rocks with toy construction trucks. I always try to keep measuring cups and funnels in there for scooping. 4. Hulk just turned 5 and wants to say that he is in Kindergarten, and so that is what I do. But he does nothing more than Bug at this point. I have a scheduled time for “preschool/kindergarten work”. I really only want them to do that if they are bored or desire to, so it’s not something I force at all. If they want to then for about 10-15 minutes they practice tracing letters or numbers or writing their name. They feel very big sitting at their little table and working like their older siblings. They also are expected to sit with us for Bible lessons. They both have picture bibles that they have open and look at. This is a good time for teaching them the habit of sitting still and listening. And they contribute to our bible memorization as well. 5. Right now, I am allowing for up to 30 minutes of Starfall.com a day. Its typically less than that but they do love it and I limit what all they can do on the website to what they are working on learning. All of my kids have played this website at some point. It's been around for a long time.
6. Most importantly, read to them. Take them to the library, let them pick out books that interest them, and read to them every day. If you have older children, schedule times in the day where they read to their little siblings. It's good for both of them. Some of our favorites: AA Milne, Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, Frog and Toad, Peter Rabbit, Mother West Wind stories, Aesop's Fables and so on. We also love some popular books like anything by Mo Willems and Mercer Meyer, which Charlotte Mason would've labeled as twaddle. But we still love them, we just try to discipline ourselves by reading some more challenging books too. Recently I was reminded of these sermon notes for non-readers that I found ages ago. www.mamaslearningcorner.com/listening-pages-for-non-readers/ Most sermon notes that you find are for older kids. So these are a great find for the Littles in your life that are learning to sit through church service. One of the reasons I like these particular print offs is because of their size. They are half a page, so I get twice as many per printout and they are better sized for little laps. I found small red three ring binders for free and bought some half size notebook paper for them as well and a pocket for their writing utensils. Both Hulk and Bug have one. With these sermon notes they listen for key words and when they hear the word they trace the shapes. For my early readers I have sermon note print offs that have key words but they make a tally mark every time that they hear the word. And then my oldest kids just write their own sermon notes. And I was blessed so much this year to get a laminator from my man! I was able to make these schedules for my Littles for the new school year. Their heads are backed with velcro so that they can move themselves to the next thing on the schedule. Also, each item does not take a full half hour, that is a little long for their age. It just stands for a starting time and I wanted to keep it simple for learning to read a clock. I might try to do a post of what my philosophy for homeschooling preschool/kindergarten is, because I get asked that a lot. And I would like to post about what we are doing this school year for all of the kids. Those are my goals! In the month of July we traveled twice. Once up to the Madison, WI area and then two weeks later to Arkansas for my parent's 40th wedding anniversary party. Traveling is hard for our family, we are very glad to have completed those trips. The last couple of weeks have been very relaxing. Without many scheduled events aside from the weekly playdate and Tender's class. Today is the last day of Tender's class. So then we will have even less to do. I love it! It is perfect timing for me to start prepping for the new school year. Which we will need to start soon. That is what our days look like right now. Playing, reading, audio books, me reorganizing all of our books and homeschool supplies, ordering new curriculum, typing up plans and schedules, and watching movies as a family. I need to set a date in our schedule to start formal learning. It will likely be mid August. There is nothing to update as far as Robert's search for a pastor position. He is still applying, still doing phone interviews, filling out questionnaires. This is what it looks like and in our experience of watching others' experience it usually takes a year or two. He has been off of steroids for a month now and is still slowly getting better. His eyes are still dry and burning and if he spends too much time in the sun his skin shows how sensitive it still is. |
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