Homeschooling Mom

Josh's big writing assignment for the year was to write a paper on Godly Manhood.  I am posting it here for those of you are interested in reading it. I am not sure why it is underlined.  It did that when I copied and pasted it over from Microsoft to Live Journal.  If you have any comments for Josh, feel free to post them here (I will show them to him) or send us an email.  No obligation to read it or to respond, of course. :-)  Kim

 

 I am just now posting the article for January.  In the original article the format was different.  I had the headings in bold.  But when I cut and pasted it over to here, I was not able to keep the bolds (nor reinsert it, for some reason).  Anyway, if you are interested in reading the article, click on the words that follow in parenthesis.

 I am taking a momentary break from my Internet haitus to post my latest article.  Hope all of you are doing well! :-)

This months article is on helping our fellow homeschoolers. To read, click on the words in the cut.

Wait!  That Wasn't on the Schedule!

This is our fifth week of school and we have yet to have a complete five day week of school. It is not that we have chosen to be lazy or decided that we just don’t feel like doing school but one thing after another has come up. The first week we had unexpected (though welcome) company. The second week we took care of Jeff’s elderly Grandma for a couple of days. Those two weeks were followed by three of sickness as we fought unsuccessfully to get rid of a particularly nasty virus. Since I was sick, too, that made it even harder to keep up with school. In all honesty, I have been fighting discouragement about the small amount of school we have accomplished so far this school year.

However, upon prayer, reflection and talking it over with other homeschooling moms, I am no longer discouraged. One of the beauties of homeschooling is that we are not tied into a traditional school year. If we have to homeschool through part of the summer or take a shorter Christmas break, we can do that. We can also double up on some subjects if we need to (my children have never been able to double up on math without getting a headache). Or we can even cut out lessons if the children have already mastered that particular skill.

Our five weeks were not wasted. During those five weeks they learned hospitality and to care for the elderly. They also learned to help and respect each other during sickness. They learned to play quietly when Mom and a brother had a splitting headache. They learned to bring a basin to a sister when she needed it.

Academics were not completely cast by the wayside even though the children were sick. At various times over the three weeks of illness, some of the children were feeling better than others, so the healthier children did a lot of learning on their own.

Joshua only missed one day of school in spite of feeling quite ill several of those days. Therefore, he learned perseverance through adversity. Joseph studied, designed and created several medieval weapons. Josiah did quite a bit of reading. Jessica did an in-depth study on butterflies. Jennifer, our little nature girl, gathered all kinds of rocks and leaves which she studied, traced and painted. The boys watched some World War II documentaries. They all played educational computer games. They also watched several Moody science videos.

This year we are working very hard at keeping our Bible hour top priority in our school. Even if we do not get anything else done that day, we do everything humanly possible to get that done. So, except on the days that Mom was the sickest, we did have our Bible time every day. Sometimes a very sick child or two was excused to stay in bed. Yet we did manage to have prayer, Scripture memory, and a Bible story nearly every day that we were sick. I hope this helped instill in the children the importance that we should place on God’s Word and prayer.

God is ultimately in control of our schedule. It is hard for me to remember that sometimes when our school days seem to be constantly interrupted. Everything that happens in our lives is allowed by God. He is ultimately in control of all aspects of our homeschool and I take great comfort in that fact. As it says in Isaiah, His ways are not our ways. Sometimes we do not understand why our school days keep getting interrupted but God knows why and we can rest in that knowledge as we continue to educate our little ones.

I saw this on a homeschool message board and thought it was cute.  I will put in bold the ones that I can relate to. Personal comments will be in parenthesis.


You Know You're a Homeschool Mom When...

You get to change more than diapers, you get to change their minds.

When a child busts a lip, and after seeing she's okay, you round up some scotch tape to capture some blood and look at it under the microscope!

You find dead animals and actually consider saving them to dissect later.  (no, I am not that dedicated of a homeschool Mom!)

Your children never ever leave the "why?" stage.

When your teenager decides to take one community college course, and comes home and asks you why the teacher wrote "At" on his paper. (A+)  (LOL.. I don't give my children grades until Junior High, when the state law requires it...so I doubt my younger children truly grasp the meaning of As or Fs etc)

You ask for, and get, a copier instead of a diamond tennis bracelet for your wedding anniversary. (actually it was a birthday, not an anniversary)

Your kids think reading history is best accomplished while lying on the floor with their head resting on the side of their patient dog.

Your husband can walk in at the end of a long day and tell how the science experiment went just by looking at the house.

You never have to drive your child's forgotten lunch to school.

Your child will never suffer the embarrassment of group showers after PE. (my most embarrasing memories of school)

The only debate about the school lunch program is whose turn it is to cook.

You never have to face the dilemna of whether to take your child's side or the teacher's side in a dispute at school.

If your child get's drugs at school, it's probably Tylenol.

Your neighbors think you are insane. (some of them do, most don't)

Your kids learn new vocabulary from their extensive collection of "Calvin & Hobbes" books.

Your formal dining room now has a computer, copy machine, and many book shelves and there are educational posters and maps all over the walls.  (not the dining room but all over the house)

You have meal worms growing in a container....on purpose.

If you get caught talking to yourself, you can claim you're having a PTA meeting.

Talking out loud to yourself is a parent/teacher conference.

You take off for a teacher in-service day because the principal needs clean underwear.

You can't make it through a movie without pointing out the historical inaccuracies.

You step on math manipulatives on your pre-dawn stumble to the bathroom.

The teacher gets to kiss the principal in the faculty lounge and no one gossips.

If your child claims that the dog ate his homework, you can ask the dog.  (our dog actually has eaten school work before *rolls eyes*

Some day your children will consider you to be a miracle-working expert and will turn to you for advice. (it would be nice...we will see)

You can't make it through the grocery produce department without asking your preschooler the name and color of every vegetable.

You can't put your produce in your cart without asking your older student to estimate it's weight and verify accuracy.

You live in a one-house schoolroom.

How do you turn a fifteen year old boy into a young man in a one month period? 

Well, first you send him on a Wilderness Trip to Canada with fifteen other men and teenage boys.  There he will canoe for hours and portage for long stretches (carrying a canoe and backpack that add up to only ten pounds less than he weighs). He will have rations so he can not eat the unlimited amount that teenage boys like to eat.  Each morning he will put on cold, wet socks.  He will feel cold for most of the day.  His muscles will ache.  He will spend time journaling and in God's Word every day. He will have special moments with his Dad, just the two of them.

When he comes home, give him a couple of days off and then send him to detassle corn. (On a side note: I am learning that one is not considered to be a true redblooded Iowan unless they have detassled corn or walked beans.)  He will have to get up at 4:30 every morning.  He will get wet and soggy in the early morning dew and by the end of the long day, he will be extremely hot with the high temperatures and humidity.  He will be sunburned and scratched up by the corn stalks.  He will work 60 hours in a week.

After that, you will have a young man who treats his siblings with extra patience.  He will be very tender and sweet toward his Mom and sisters.  He will desire to help around the house without being asked.  And most importantly to his Mom and Dad, he will want to make Bible reading and prayer his top priority.  Oh, he will still be fifteen in many ways.  He will still goof off with his brothers and put his socks in the dirty clothes hamper in little balls.  He will still tease his sisters (though he will seem to have a better idea of when to stop the teasing).  But you will see subtle changes that make you realize that your little boy is gone for ever and in his place will be a young man.  And it will be a very bittersweet feeling indeed.

I am JUST now sitting down at the computer.  It has been a hectic evening but I won't bore you with the details. I owe many emails, lj comments etc.  Hopefully I can respond over the next day or two. I thought you might be interested in some pictures of Jeff and Joshua on their wilderness trip.  Since I am using pictures, I am only sending this to my "exclusive" group. :-)

 

I read a book to my younger four children tonight (my oldest is in Canada with my husband, on a wilderness trip).  I was going to read it yesterday on July 4th but the day turned out to be busy so I read it to them today.  It is called "America, A Patriotic Primer."  It is a wonderful book and I read it to the children every year on July 4th (or around then).

It would have taken me only about 15 minutes to read the book to the children but it turned out to be a two hour American history lesson!  As we read the book, they began to ask one question after another, from simple informational questions to ones that required deep thought.

"How old is America?"

"How did George Washington become the first president?"

"How long have Native Americans lived here?"

"If America started out as a Godly nation, why did we have slaves?"

"Why did the Pilgrims go to Holland before they came to America?"

And those are only a few of the questions they asked.  Some of them I knew the answer to immediately, others we had to look up.  Others I had to think through to see what would be the Biblical and ethical answer to their question. Soon the table was full of other history books and encyclopedias.  Jennifer, age six, eventually wondered off to do something else, but, amazingly, Joseph (11), Josiah (9) and Jessica (8) stayed for the whole two hours it took to find all the answers to all their questions.  Sometimes an answer would spark another question and off we'd go, looking up the answer in yet another book.

I had big plans for the day.  I wanted to clean out a closet and finish cleaning out a drawer.  I wanted to vacuum the basement.  But I was not about to losing such a teaching opportunity.  They were interested and I wanted to take advantage of that interest.  If I said, "We will study that part of American history in November"...well, perhaps they would not have near the interest then that they have now.

So even though our impromptu history lesson did not really fit into my schedule today but I made it fit.  The closet, drawer and all my other plans can wait, but this could not.  And that is part of what homeschooling is all about!


Why is my little "emotion" bear crying?  There is a big difference between feeling sleepy and feeling sad. :-)

Side note before I begin:  One of the purposes of this LJ is to keep track of my plans for schooling.  As a result, some entries may be kind of dry or not very interesting to the rest of you.  Some, like this one, will be long, others will be short and more interesting to people besides the homeschooling mom involved. :-)  All that to say, those of you on my friend's list, please don't feel obligated to respond to every entry.  I understand completely!

This school year we will be doing a Unit Study on Sea Creatures with all the children except Joshua.  It will cover several subjects; Bible, science, writing, art and I am sure we will be talking about some grammar rules during the study. There will even be a bit of speech and acting involved. The goals is that they also learn some other things that are necessarily specific subjects like working together and organzing their work.  I orginally intended to do a Unit Study on New Zealand.   A year ago the children were fascinated with that country.  But I failed to "cease the moment" and now they have moved on to other interests.  Joseph, Josiah and Jessica all wanted Sea Creatures.  Jennifer prefered birds or butterflies so we compromised by adding sea gulls and pelicans to our list of sea animals.

I am not putting a time table on this Unit Study.   We may be done in two months or it may take us all year.  We may get to a certain topic, like whales, and decide we want to study many kinds of whales in an indepth manner.  I would also like to get a Unit Study on Anatomy in this year, but I won't rush this study if we are reallly into it.  Some sections, like the day we read about the leviathan, will probablly only take one day.  Other sections may take weeks or months.

How much work they do will depend on their age and ability.  For example, with the Jonah book, I will expect the older children to write several sentences on each page, but Jennifer will only have to write a short sentence.  My child who "learns differently" will have some things simplified for him.

Of course we will be doing other subjects as well (as you can see here http://momoffive.livejournal.com/1031.html?mode=reply) but this will be a huge part of our schooling this fall.

With input from Jeff and the children, I planned out our course of study.  As I said, I have no idea how long we will spend in each section, but we will follow this outline.  The will each have a 1 1/2 inch three ring binder to keep their work together, so by the end of the Unit Study, they will all have their own "book" on sea creatures.

The details of the Unit Study are under the cut.  

This morning an old fashioned locomotive was going through Des Moines.  Our family, along with Jeff's Dad, went down to try to see it.  To make a long story short, all of us except Jeff (we had take separate cars because Jeff had to go from their to work) missed it by about five minutes.  :-(  

But I could not be too upset about it because something wonderful happened while we were waiting for the train.  My child who "learns differently" (I heard that term recently and like it so much better than the term "learning disabled") had a breakthrough moment.  For the first time ever in his life, he read something because he wanted to.  Up until this point in his life he has only read what we as parents (or another adult such as a Sunday School teacher) requires him to read.  There was a sign by the railroad tracks.  My son turned to me and said, "Mom, why can't we dig here?"  He was pointing at a sign that said "Please do not dig here."  I thought perhaps one of his siblings had read it to him so I asked how he knew he was not supposed to dig.  He said, "I read the sign and that is what it says."  Even for him, with his learning struggles, that was an easy sign to read but the huge thing is that this particular sign caught his interest and he actually chose to read it!!!  I know this seems like a very small thing but to me it was huge.  The first baby step in reading out of desire instead of because he has to.

On another note, Jennifer is 1/3 of the way through her first grade math book.  She complained about being bored the other day so I jokingly said that I had her school books for this fall if she wanted to do one of them.  She took me seriously and so I dug out her math book.  She has been doing five or six lessons a day by choice.  I am not making her do them.  Her siblings keep checking her forehead to see if she has a fever. :-)

Part of homeschooling (and parenting in general) is to make the most of the teaching moments.  When a child is curious about something, that is the best time to learn about it.  Right now Jennifer is fascinated with butterflies.  I don't want to say to her, "Sorry, dear, we don't cover butterflies until you are in third grade."  By then she may not be interested in butterflies any more.  So we made her a notebook about butterflies and are looking up butterflies on the Internet and in the encyclopedia.  



Sometimes I miss those teaching moments.  A few days ago Josiah asked me how DVDs are made.  I honestly didn't know and don't care so I responded with "I don't know."  Later in the day my response bothered me.  I realized I had lost a teaching moment.  So this afternoon we will be taking a couple of hours to explore the Internet and try to learn how DVDs are made. :-)



I have a couple of friends that Unschool (basically it is a child interest driven education).  I, personally, would not feel comfortable unschooling because I know I would leave huge gaps in our children's education.   But one thing I do want to copy from my Unschooling friends is their desire to pursue their children's interests.   I remember in school when something would catch my eye and I wanted to pursue it further but we could not because we needed to move forward with the curriculum.  



For us, Unit Studies are that happy medium between a rigid curriculum and unschooling.  We still cover grammar, writing, science, history etc but we can do it in a more fun, interest driven fashion.  (We also cover history at lunch time when I read to the children). 

Each year I spend a lot of time praying about what to teach my children the coming year.   I want God to direct our homeschooling endeavor.  As I prayed about curriculum choices for this year, I have made the following schedule, although it is subject to change even after the school year begins.  

I am thankful that my Joshua, age 15, is able to work very independently.  I only meet with him about half an hour a day to go over his work and review any problem areas.   He likes to be able to work on his own and set his own schedule.  I told him that as long as he keeps making As and Bs on the tests, he can keep working on his own. So far he has managed to do this.

6:00-Get up, have private Bible reading and prayer time.
7:00-exercise, meet MIL to walk when she is in town, otherwise do aerobics tape or go on the treadmill.
7:30-Shower, eat breakfast
8:00-Meet with Joshua...who will be taking Algebra, geography, biology, Spanish, Grammar, Writing, Literature, Bible and Godly Manhood.  The last is an "elective" that Jeff and I chose for him.  Next year we will let him choose his own elective.
8:30-Opening with the younger four while Joshua goes off on his own.  "Opening" consists of praying, reciting the books of the Bible, the pledge to the American flag, scripture memory, Patch book and Sunday School papers.
9:30-Science with the younger four (from my Father's World)/Some days right into Unit Study
9:50-Unit Study with the younger four(which will be Sea Creatures...I am in the process of developing that right now)
10:30-Little Annie with the girls/Boys watch the Saxon math cd which teaches the lesson they will do later in the day.
10:40-My Father's World with Jennifer/ boys continue to watch math cd/Jessica practices the piano/ when the boys are done with the math cd, they practice the piano and Jessica does her times tables on the computer
11:40-Piano practices continues for those who haven't finished/chores
12:00-Lunch prep/chores continue/Jenny practices the piano
12:30-The children eat lunch while I read history to them.  We are doing ancient history this year from "The Story of the World."
1:30-Joseph and Josiah do phonics and spelling
2:00-Jessica reads, does phonics and math/Joseph and Josiah do their math problems for the day 
3:00-Joseph reads to me
3:30-Josiah reads to me
3:50-play/household cleaning/life skills
4:30-supper prep/household cleaning
5:30-supper (after supper baths and showers)
7:00-Family devotions
7:30-read Little House books
8:00-read Tolkien books
8:30-girls go to bed
9:00-Joseph and Josiah go to bed/Mom's computer time/folding laundry time/paying bills time
10:00-Joshua goes to bed/Mom goes to bed as soon as possible

I have a pretty strict criteria about what I read outloud to the children.  It not only has to be a good story, but also good literature.   They can read fun,fluffy books on their own time as they are able.  But there are so many good books out there that I want to read to the children before they grow up. Even though I spend an hour or so each day reading to them, I realized recently that there is no way I will get everything I want to get read to them  them finished before they are adults.  It takes us quite awhile to get through a book because we take it slowly, talking about it, delving into anything that catches our interest, and sometimes rereading parts we didn't quite understand.  

I recently made a decision of what we will read for probably the next two or three years. There are two "series" that I really want to read to my children before they grow up so I decided we would read both of them at the same time each evening, spending half an hour on each one.  If we are REALLY into one of them we may just read that one some evenings.  

One of them is the Little House on the Prairie series.  We have read two or three of those over the years but I want to start at the beginning and work our way through all of them.  The other books that I want to read to my children before they grow up are four of Tolkien's books so that will be the other "series" we are going through.  Those books would be "The Hobbit" followed by the three Lord of the Rings books.  I think they are old enough to understand most of those now, at least at some level.

So, as soon as we finish "Black Beauty" we will begin those two "series."  I am excited about it and the children were also when I told them about it tonight.  The girls are more excited about the Little House books and the boys are more excited about beginning The Hobbit, but hopefully both will enjoy both.

Our summer schedule is much more relaxed than our school year schedule.  I really enjoy having actual "Free" time under "Various Activities".

7:15- Get up and dressed
7:30-Meet MIL to walk
8:15-Personal Bible reading time/Shower
9:00-Listen to Jennifer read
9:15-Jessica reads to me, Josiah does math on computer, Joseph practices the piano
9:45-Josiah reads to me, Joseph does math on the computer, Jessica practices the piano
10:15-Joseph reads to me, Jessica does Math on the computer, Josiah practices the piano
10:45-Summer Goals *(list below)
12:45-make lunch while Jenny practices the piano
1:00-eat lunch/read to the children
2:00-Basic house work/laundry
3:00-Various activities (more on Summer Goals, play games with kids, go on walks, read etc)
4:30-Supper Prep
5:30 Supper
7:00-Family Devotions
7:30-Daddy leaves for work/ Mom reads to the children
8:30-Girls go to bed
9:00-Joseph and Josiah go to bed/Mom computer time
10:00 Joshua goes to bed, Mom folds laundry/pays bills
11:00 Mom goes to bed.

*Summer Goals
-Organize storage room
-clean out closet and drawers in guest room
-move our bedroom down to guest room
-hall closet
-children's closets
-kitchen cupboards
-organize basement
-wax wood floors (supposed to be done every three months...I do it about once a year)
-dejunk, dejunk, dejunk (I hope to have a lot less stuff in the house by the end fo the summer!!)