Weekly Update - Midpoint of Winter

We are halfway through our winter session and for the most part things are going smoothly for KM. She is really enjoying the choices that she has made in her lessons. Her skype poetry class is finishing up next week and although she is really anxious about her critical analysis essay, she is fully enjoying the class. She is working hard to complete her French by the end of the session, as she would like to move on to Japanese, but wants to finish this book first. She has also started researching cosmetology schools and what it will take to become a cosmetologist. We have started in on the "animal" section in biology and have started our ant observations - check out the page where we are chronicling our discoveries! She is also practicing for the World Education Games and can't wait until the Science practice opens next week.

DN on the other hand - not quite so smooth. He is fully and completely compliant, but I am having a very difficult time getting him to truly understand that learning is part of life. Not something that you just "get done." That is what school is about right - but that is NOT what education is. I am trying to be patient and keep things in perspective as I know that it has only been a few months, but it gets really difficult when I am bending and twisting and feeling like there is no appreciation of the lengths that I am going to. I have to remind myself that hindsight is most effective and the fruits of my labor might just take a bit longer to ripen than I would like.

For a sneak peek of our first day with the ants check out our montage ---

Oh and KM's room makeover is complete ---- 

The green looks a bit more yellow in the pics, but you get the gist of it and KM LOVES IT!!! She was so over all the pink! 

Winter Session Outlined and Ready to Go

I have the majority of our lesson plans ready and outlined for the winter session - PPPHHEEWWWW!!!! As always there is room for change, but I need the guidelines so that I can feel comfortable and ready to go. With DN being here and learning with us now, it really is essential as he wants to know what is going on and when it is going to happen. As I have seen with many deschooling teens, he needs room to find his interests, but if left completely to his own devices I truly believe - and have seen - he would flounder. He has been so set in the path of following orders and completing tasks that are given, that he truly has no idea what to do when he is told he can do whatever he wants. I have heard it said time and time again that they will eventually snap out of it, but I don't always think that is true. I feel it is very dependent on the child and would rather ease him into it, allowing more and more choices as we go rather than to just pitch him into the pool and hope he figures out how to swim.

So anyway....they are covering almost all the same subjects, just at different levels. I have an outline of all our curriculum choices on this page along with our weekly schedule. These are just guidelines and we often swap things around, but again having a plan helps. We will continue to tweak and monitor, especially with DN as he progresses to ensure the proper fit in all areas.  In addition to the outlines and basic curriculum choices, I picked up a few extras to make things fun and fresh!   

AHHHH...sometimes she surprises me!

It was a really good weekend! Saturday morning early call for bowling league is getting a bit easier, KM had a friend over who she doesn't get to see as often as she would like and Sunday CJ got home after being gone since Tuesday. After her friend was picked up, I thought she was going to be quite tired and need to just veg, so when CJ and I ran to the store to pick up a few things I thought she would be out cold on the couch when we came back. However, this is what we saw when we returned she was ---

DOING HER BIOLOGY!!! I nearly fell over! 

My anxieties over this new routine have been lifted for the moment! Ahhhh...I love when I am proved wrong!

Fall Session Began

We started our fall session this week and things have been smoothly sailing along. KM really seems to like the choices that we made this time around and she is feeling confident that she is doing just the right amount. In another attempt to build some time management responsibilities, I have tweaked her assignments a bit for Biology and U.S. History so that she is given the assignment a week before it is due. She can either complete parts of it over the course of the week or she can do it all on the day it is due, that is up to her. I have struggled with feeling like a nag in the past when she has assignments are that are due and she doesn't touch them, but I am trying really hard to let this go and not mention it to her. So far I have only had one slip up, this afternoon, when she asked if she was done with everything and I simply said "if you aren't going to work on your other assignments, then yup that is all." This wasn't so bad, but I really want to just let it go. There is no need for me to say anything, it won't effect me if she doesn't get it done on time. She will have the natural consequences of having to do it all that day - simple as that.

Wish us luck on my control issues and her procrastination issues!!!

Summer/Fall Book Break

We will be on our 3 week book break from now til the last week in September. In case you are new here, our 10 week on 2-3 week off schedule allows us breaks at key times in the year - like our birthday month - when we don't have any lesson plans or book work, so that we can take full advantage of the season! We take one now because the schools are back in session and our birthdays are this month, one in Dec to get through the Holidays, one in March to get our yard ready and take advantage of field trips etc that start up again when everyone is ready to burst from cabin fever, and then one in June to be able to enjoy our local museums, libraries etc. before school kids are back out for the summer. Generally we have activities and projects planned, but KM just wants to do NOTHING and it will be interesting to see how long that lasts. It might be quiet here for a bit, but on the other hand this nothing time, might give me some time to write, so it might not!

If at first you don't succeed....

try, try again - so they say.

So we have tried in the past for KM to set her own schedule and it really didn't work out all that well past the first day or two. She did get the swing of getting her things done daily when I gave her a list and the freedom to complete things as she wanted, but it seemed like everytime we tried for more than that it just wouldn't work. She would become overwhelmed and feel like she needed more structure.

Our summer session begins next week and we are trying it again . This time, after some simple instruction and guidance on how to use the Homeschool Tracker, KM has set her own schedule up. We both agreed that this would be the perfect time to try it out because we have far fewer pressing time constraints, places to be at specific times, a lighter lesson load and we are already adjusting to changes in the house, so this can just be another one of those adjustments that should hopefully be all worked out by the fall.

She is very excited about the programs that she will be doing over the summer and feels that she has set things up in a way that makes sense and won't be overwhelming for her to handle in her own way. Here is the schedule that she came up with.

There are no actual guidelines for "timing" other than getting things done on those days and/or within reason. Like if she knows that she wants to go to the beach on Tues, she may want to do a little extra math on Monday so that she can have less to do that day. 

Here is an example of one weeks assignments -

Her assignments are quite short so she can easily bump them around here and there with little problem. I really think this will be helpful in her managing her time in a constructive way so that she feels as though things are flowing.

Her program choices for the summer include

• beginning a year long Shakespeare Study
• Math & The Cosmos - a Duke Tip program
• an overview of U.S. Government, Economics and Citizenship
• Keyboard Level 2B
• Beginning French with some online and computer games
• CNN Student News for Current Events
• Some more advanced Nutrition study - including cooking and baking
• Bowling Camp, Swimming, Basketball and Dance for P.E. 

Finishing up Spring Session

Although this week is our last for lessons in our spring session, KM has had a pretty light month as she finished up most of her programs - formal math, science, house building elective, environmental issues elective, etc. - in April. She will have Story of the World Volume 4 completed by the end of the week and this will give us a full month free from "book work" before we begin our summer session the first week of July. KM does have some programs finishing up during June, -  she will have her performance of Much Ado About Nothing in just under two weeks and has two more sailing classes -  but after that the last three weeks of June are WIDE OPEN!!!

I have been writing more and doing reviews for UnpluggedMom.com, so if it is quiet around here for a bit, you should totally check out all that is going on over there!!!

Stay Day System

I have been asked many questions about stay days since I posted our spring session plans, so while I was reseting our white board calendar for the month I thought I would take a few seconds to explain this simple process that we use.

I require that we stay home for three days each week, no ways around this. There are so many activities and things to do that if I don't we would be out every day, my house and work become neglected and KM becomes exhausted, cranky and CRASHES! So I took a tip from a fantastic homeschool guru and I created a Stay Day System of our own.

Here is what are calendar looks like at the beginning of the month. I list all the things that we already have scheduled or planned and then I choose 3 days a week that we stay home, I mean I don't leave the house. Each of the three days gets designated a number 1, 2, or 3 because different chores need to be completed on those days. The three days can fall in any combination during a 7 day period. I try to space them out if possible, but sometimes it just isn't. On these days KM can have people over once she has gotten her assigned chores done for that day, but I will not take her anywhere or pick anyone up as I need to be able to get my household chores and work completed. This system works so well and each time I have allowed us to slip out of it, it has backfired and the house and the families attitudes fall to pieces.

Now I was also asked what sorts of things get completed on these stay days and this is going to be something that if you decide to implement you would need to decide for yourself. For us the days look like this -

• Stay Day #1
• Weekly baking - deserts, breads etc.
• Meal Plans for the Week
• Bathrooms thoroughly cleaned
• Full Kitchen Clean Up
• Laundry - Linens
• Vacuuming
• Stay Day #2
• Project - art, household, yard ~depends on what is needed~
• Vacuuming
• Clean Bedrooms
• ALL trash barrels emptied
• Laundry - K
• Stay Day #3
• Laundry - M & D
• Vacuuming
• Floors
• Fully Clean Dining Room & TV Room

Having this routine and schedule allows us to not get overwhelmed with the household chores. We do pick up things as we go along and there are other daily things - compost, feeding animals, recycling bins, etc - that are done, but those things take little to no time and allow us to be able to the "Full Cleans" in a much quicker way because things aren't left to get out of hand. 

This also allows KM to quickly be able to answer her friends when asked to setup an activity. If the day is blank or only lists library or something then she knows she can go ahead and say yes, if there is a number in the block she knows that the friend can come here or if she can get a ride from someone else - even CJ - she can go, but that I can't take her. There are of course ALWAYS exceptions to these rules - like birthday parties etc. but in general we have those things on the schedule in advance and I work the stay days around them. 

As always this is something that needs to be tweaked for each family - it will not work the same for yours as it does for ours - but it is a great place to start from! It also gives the kids a sense of knowing what is coming and if they want to spend the day in their PJs they can because they know they aren't going anywhere! 

I hope that clears up the questions that I received! Please let me know if there are any others. 

Another Busy Week Gone By

We got back to book work over this last week and all went well for the most part, although we have decided to do away with the Music Alive Classical Connections to U.S. History, as she thinks it is rather dry and I can't disagree with her on that one. Instead she will be using the Annenberg Media lectures Exploring the World of Music and selecting a composer, musician or group to do a biography on each month. I think this will be much more suited to her interests and style.

Other than that everything else went smoothly... Mon KM got the rest of her top wire on her braces attached and we got some shopping done. Tues KM went skating, visited with a good friend, and in the evening we went to see Gulliver's Travels - CJ even came along! Wed was ice skating again. Thur SC came to visit, as she wasn't feeling up to daycare that day and the afternoon was taken up by Theater. Fri we finished up the bookwork and KM got a LOT of reading done! Saturday KM had bowling, we had to pick up the truck from the shop, and DN got to visit AG's reptiles. Then Sunday was CJ's birthday party- He will be 36 on Wed!!!

As we come off of another super busy week it seems we are all paying for it -

• KM has a wretched cough and I am worried that her asthma might be rearing its' head again, so we will be off to the doctor's first thing in the morning
• CJ is stressed and exhausted from regular work slowing down, the weird hours plowing and the anxiety over his truck being fixed - which has went much better than we expected!
• I just can't get rid of this weird postnasal cough thing and I have begun having some sleep issues because of it.

I feel the need to remind myself that we do truly NEED more rest in the winter and that we NEED to recognize the body's signals to nature's cues. Here is a really good article on some reasons why we need more sleep in winter. So this week I am cutting back A TON and listening to our bodies. For real! I swear we are going to!!!

Here are some pics from the week -

Just what we needed!

Sometimes when you send something out into the universe, the universe sends you back EXACTLY what you needed. We had planned on running a few errands and maybe getting some tennis in today, but the weather decided that we needed to stay inside....and I chose to listen! We got lots of lessons done, pumpkin cookies and pineapple upside down cake baked, laundry and cleaning down!

It was such a restful, relaxing day. KM had a friend over in the afternoon and they had a great time playing Wii Sports Resort and making a Reese's Cake! CJ had the day off and finished some random projects around the house. I even got some fabulous rain shots, you can check out on our 365 Photo Project and our Nature Photo Blog. I don't know what it is about rainy days that sets that nesting instinct in to gear and makes me feel revived, but I am sure glad that it did!

Busy STILL

I really don't know how this keeps happening, we have been so BUSY lately! What have we been doing you may ask? Well there has been lots of fun stuff, lessons, tennis, hiking, web classes, parties, field trips, birthdays, fall activities, theater, volunteering, errands, and the list goes on....who has time to be home when you are "homeschooling"?

I am trying to slow things down, but it looks like at least the next two weeks are going to be the same. Once Thanksgiving week rolls on through, we should be good to be SLOOOOOWWW!

I just have to keep my fingers crossed, there has to be end somewhere....Right?

What do you do when things seem to be getting too overscheduled?

Building Time Management Skills

We have been discussing time management skills lately and being in the right mindset to learn. It is rather difficult to truly retain and learn information if you are tired, stressed, or just not interested! We have been going through and streamlining some of the things that she is working on and KM has decided that she would like to try to work on her time management abilities.

There are often mornings were she feels as though she is just going through the motions and not really sure that she is truly learning what she is feeding into her brain. As we have done away with all forms of "busy" work, I was a bit surprised that she came to that realization on her own, but I am learning to trust her and her instincts. I am willing to give anything a try as long as I see that she is putting forth effort in her endeavors.

KM really enjoys doing her lesson work and is often inspired by the programs that she is working on to delve far deeper into areas than I ever thought she would want to. So I am going ahead with her request with all the hopes that she will succeed.

She has asked to be allowed more freedom in the scheduling of our days. Now I must say that I have never been extremely strict with our schedule in any manner. I do request that the work be completed on the day it is assigned, unless we decide to bump one or two things, but have always been more than willing to allow bumping to happen. I am not the mom that says, "No, you can't go to the - fill in the blank - because you have to finish your school work."  I feel like learning should be intertwined with life and not be the be all that ends all of our day to day life. So KM would like to have her assignments given to her all at once at the beginning of the week, rather than daily, so that she can work on them and have them completed by Sunday. CJ and I were a bit hesitant at first, but she has been showing a lot more responsibility lately and decided that if this was truly going to work, we would need to have some sort of consequence set up in the event of a crash and burn situation. We decided to compromise with her and have the assignments due on Saturday, so that if they are not done there will be no social engagements on Saturday evening and ALL work will be completed on Sunday.

I have no problem admitting that I am a bit of a control freak and I will not allow things to get pushed and pushed and pushed to the next week so that then the list of uncompleted tasks is so long that I cannot bring myself to look at it without feeling like I will throw up. I will be having enough trouble allowing the work to possibly pile up even until Saturday, but I am going to force myself to be okay with this. It is not the end of the world, it is only 8th grade!

I think that if this project is successful, she will be a much stronger independent person. I will keep you all updated on our progress. Time management skills are important at all ages and stages of life. How are you helping your child develop stronger skills in this area?

Favorite Spot to Plan

With the close of summer session approaching quickly, it is time to get the fall session plans locked in - hahaha cause you know I NEVER change them - and what better place than out under the stars near a cozy fire?

Where is your favorite spot to plan?

For some interesting fire shots take a peek at our nature blog - HERE

It's August ALREADY!

I just set up our white board calendar for the month and I CAN'T BELIEVE IT IS AUGUST!

We are midway through our summer session and things are going really well though I can't believe that I already wrote down "Not Back To School Day"- the day our local PS kids go back to school and the day we celebrate not! You can see previous posts about that here and here. I am also being bombarded with calls and questions about Not Back to School events and field trip planning from local homeschoolers.

I have all our lesson plans set for the rest of this session and all of next, so it should be pretty smooth sailing in that department. We have a lot going on this month and I anticipate that my posts may be slow or become more pics and less chatter...hmmm that might be a good thing for some!

How are you spending the rest of you summer? Any good plans, events, activities? Feel free to share....

Why such short breaks?

I am on a national homeschool yahoo list and when I responded to a scheduling question I got an email asking why I felt we needed only 2 or 3 week breaks. I have been asked this in the past and thought since the year round schooling and amount of "vacation time" is always such a big topic of debate amongst homeschoolers I would post my response here as well.

We do 10 week sessions that correlate with the seasons and have two or three week breaks in between them and a week off at Thanksgiving. Whenever we are out of our routine for more than two weeks and are at home, it is HORRIBLE! KM will do nothing but watch TV, she is not terribly restricted from television the rest of the time, it is just all that she will do unless she has someone over or I suggest something else. She has no issue doing something else but won't take the initiative herself and it drives me BANANAS!!! She also starts to get really cranky and easily irritable. There are plenty of things for her to do, but again she just loses all motivation.

During our spring session which should have ended 6/11 and we would have had a 3 week break til 7/5, my dd decided to work hard and get her lessons completed two weeks early, so we have been off since 5/28 and it is getting to me at this point. We have been doing a lot of things, we spent the first two weeks of the month getting in all the field trip locations that we don't like to go during the summer because of the crowds, have spent time at the beach and with family, this week her PS friends have all been out of school so they have been doing things, but the days that we are just home "not doing anything" - cause you know there aren't any chores or projects or gardening or anything else to do around house on a regular basis - it is TV, ROKU, TV, ON Demand, TV....I think you get it.

But as far as our schedule we do the 10 weeks because we also only do lessons 4 days a week, it was 3 days last year because she was doing co-op and theater group on Mondays. We leave Fridays open as field trip day or as a catch up day if we decide to do something in the middle of the week. This ensures that our weekends stay as down days. This coming year I am doubling our ELA days to pick up some of the slack that we have had in this area to prep for High School level work next year (2011-2012).

I have also found that homeschooling year round significantly reduces review time! This allows for us to get more done as we can often skip a far amount of the repetitive work in Math and can stay on track with the flow for history and science.

Hope that clears up why we homeschool year round and take such short breaks! Every family is different, but that is one of the greatest gifts of homeschooling, customization to whatever fits your family!

How do you get it all done?

I have gotten quite a few emails over the last few days asking this very question.

I just wanted to preface with my strong belief in that all children are different, so though I can let you know what we do here, it may not work for your family.

With that being said here is what we do...

Our general schedule that we have done for the past 6 mo can be seen HERE - this has totally changed the length and flow of our day. KM gets up some time around 9, eats, gets herself ready and does her chores before starting her lessons. I hope to start each day by 10, but it tends to be closer to 10:30. We work on the main subject area for the day first, unless she is really running behind ~~~ I will not just hang around and wait for her since I work from home, help moderate several lists, am secretary and membership coordinator for our local homeschool group and am on the board of directors for our state homeschool organization, so I have far too many things to get done in the day - as every homeschool mom I know does - to just wait for her ~~~ so if I am in the midst of something when she is ready to start then she will do Math, Spanish, Reading or Piano as these are her daily independent study assignments. Her work is usually completed by about 1. Sometimes it is later in the day, but that is usually only if she is really into a project or experiment. If she started on time in the morning and only did her main subject for the day, then sometimes she will work on her independent things in the evening.

It wasn't always this smooth, mind you. It has taken us the better part of the past 2.5 years to figure this all out. One of the biggest things that we have changed is that I have done away with all the "busy work." If something doesn't seem like it is productive, is just a battle to get her to do it or just seems like a disconnected subject that doesn't need to be done right now or would be better if we waited to do it when it connects with something else, then we do away with it - either for the moment or permanently.

One of KM's biggest problems when she was in PS was always dealing with the repetition of things so now I really think "Is this necessary?" before I plug an assignment in. I also tend to look at things that she takes a long time to complete and see if it is because she is not understanding it, doesn't really want to do it, or if it is just not of any interest to her. This is not to say that I don't assign her anything that she doesn't LIKE to do, because I do, I just really think about why I am having her do certain things.

I know what her likes and dislikes are and how she learns the best in each subject, so I try to tailor things to that and don't really bother with the excess. I really try to allow her to make as many of the choices as I can. There are some things that do just need to be covered and I don't budge, but we might just glaze over it rather than force her to spend a ton of time on things that she has either already covered or is just not interested in.

We also do a lot of things like Health, Economics, and any other elective type things on Brain Pop or other computer games. We LOVE LOVE LOVE the wii and use it for as many educational areas as possible. We have things like My Word Coach, Deep Blue Ocean, and Wii Music. We also have lots of educational games for the DS- Spanish for Everyone, Future U, and so on. Basically I am very flexible in what I see as educational and have tried to think outside the box as much as I can. This has lead KM to be able to do the same.

My daughter isn't fully self-motivated, as some have suggested, but has begun to understand that I am only trying to help her and that her education is her choice. I can't FORCE her to learn anything, I can only expose her to things and hope that it sticks or sparks an interest for her to want to delve deeper.

I really love getting questions and they tend to inspire my postings, so please feel free to ask or even just let everyone know what the best way is for your family to get things done.

Final Push...

I tend to schedule the last few weeks of a session a bit lighter than the rest so that we can have time to make things up that may have gotten pushed to the side earlier on. This time however, we are right on track and I think that I have managed to convince KM to push a little bit harder to get some extra weeks off! I printed out all the assignments for the remainder of the session and she couldn't believe how little there was. If you don't hear much in the next week or so, please no we are still here, but are just finishing up to have a nice LONG break at HOME this time!!!

Don't forget to enter the giveaway, it will be closing out tomorrow!!!

Winter Session - Coming to a Close

We are finishing up our winter session over the next week and a half, so I am looking towards the spring session to get it in order before we head off to Florida for a well earned and much NEEDED vacation.

We have been going pretty hard core for the last 2 years since we started homeschooling. I can't believe how much she has gotten done and after looking at some of the state and national framework outlines she is a good bit ahead of schedule at this point. We also have A LOT of things going on with our local group over the next few months that will be taking up most of the Mondays and Fridays with some great extra trips and events!

So for the spring we are going to be doing a lighter approach to things. We are sticking with our new schedule, but of course we are tweaking it just a bit!!!


We will be doing this great 3 day a week schedule. KM will be working on her Math daily, but otherwise we are sticking with the one a day core subject schedule. This has made such a HUGE difference in the amount of work that we can get done and the depth of information that we can get covered in one day. With her new sleeping schedule on top of this, we have been doing more electives in the evenings and she is really able to focus and enjoy what she is learning.

For the Spring session we will be moving on to some different resources and I will be sure to post those over the next week as I finish collecting them.

New Routine -

--- things are really feeling good around here. I had briefly mentioned that we were trying a new routine in a previous post and have gotten TONS of questions about it! I am glad to say that it is working out nicely and I now feel rather comfortable disclosing it.

It really isn't that big of a deal, but has made a HUGE difference around here. Instead of switching gears CONSTANTLY through out the day as we go from subject to subject - we have decided to do one subject each day. As of right now it looks something like this:

We are finishing up our math program which is mostly review, so it really isn't anything that needs to be done daily. The next math that she will be doing in our spring session is a new program that I think will also work well with this system. However once she gets back into Teaching Textbook for Algebra 1 in the summer we will tweak it so that she does Math everyday and electives on Mondays so that we will have a four day week - leaving Fridays open for field trips.

So far it has been really productive and gives a good flow to the material! It seems like it was just the right time to switch things up!

almost back...

We will be back to lessons starting Sunday. I am trying to take the rest of this week to get myself, my house and my coop responsibilities under control before we delve into lessons here. I am waiting to see what happens with the Littles. I am having some anxiety over it, but I know that it will all work out in the end. We have decided to do a few things on Sundays, as they are generally slow get things done and ready for the next week days around here. KM agreed and thinks that if it will make me feel less pressure with the Littles during the week she is all for it, so we have picked Health and Cultural Studies to do on Sundays. We will wait and see how things really turn out with the kids and how much we can get done before we decide to switch things out anymore. There has been some talk of making the days that we have them more like weekend days, but I really need time that is neither lesson or daycare time - wow what a CONCEPT! Does such time actually exist?
I am bound and determined to find it! Anyway we will be back in full force next week and I am working on coming up with some sort of themes like Science Thursdays that we did during the Summer, but I will have to keep everyone posted on that one!