The Yearly Life Crisis

So...

Do ya'll have a yearly crisis about this time of year? I do.

It's this time of year that all the failures of the year really hit me hard. The unmet expectations have been building since September, and now comes decision time.

Are the benefits worth the cost?

We'll have to re-join our cover school by the first part of June, and since I stress at the thought of procrastination, I like to know where I'm going well before sign-ups come due.

So the last month or two, I've been mulling it over... talking with my husband, calling up friends for encouragement, whining to Misty over e-mail, looking at curriculum, applying for my child to attend a magnet school.... all the stuff I do every year.

And now... well, I'm kinda actually looking forward to starting the new year.

Here's where we're going:

Science

This year has been rough. I just spent $55 on a 12-week chemistry curriculum to try to make it less rough. I'm really excited to get that by Media mail in 5-9 days.

Next year, we'll be moving up to the Level 1 series of this same curriculum. I will probably just use the Biology segment as a supplement for the core curriculum that we do.

Core Work

The jury's still out on whether we do Sonlight Core 2 or My Father's World Year 1. We started out our home educating adventure with Sonlight, so I have lots of positive emotional ties to them, but I also veered away from them for some pretty important reasons, mainly dealing with the secular and false viewpoint that a lot of their books come from. I mean, I appreciate exposing our children to other viewpoints, but I'd rather my curriculum not be saturated with it. I can go to the library any day of the week and get books the mis-represent Christianity and tell the lies of evolution to my children. I'd rather our books at home present the truth.

So, I'm leaning toward My Father's World. I just don't know much about it, though. So, I'm a little hesitant to spend the money (much less money than Sonlight, though, which is another strike again Sonlight).

Has anyone used My Father's World, or had any kind of exposure to it?

Math

I think we'll stick with Horizons Math from Alpha Omega. We've used it from the start, and it seems to be working. We do about half the book (odd lessons or even lessons, whatever) and try to supplement in manipulative work, or logic problems, word problems, games that need math, etc. on the other days.

Language

Still not sure here. As a former English teacher, I'm pretty picky about this subject. Most of the books I've looked at are not up to my standard. I finally settled a couple years ago on Bob Jones.

Unfortunately, we got tired of Bob Jones books, even though I really loved them. We just needed a change.

Right now, we're using Learning Language Arts through Literature, orange book. It's okay. I like that the lessons are short, and my daughter likes that they are tied to books that she's read/reading. So, that's fun. This will take us about 1/2 way into next year. Then we'll see where we go from there.


I think that's it for us. We have a couple of small supplements... typing, piano, maybe some art classes at local galleries.

What are you planning for next year?

March, around our house...

March is:
- American Red Cross Month
- Irish-American Heritage Month
- National Craft Month
- National Frozen Food Month
- National Noodle Month
- National Nutrition Month
- Woman's History Month
- Youth Art Month

Weeks:

- Week Two: Bubble Gum Week
- Week Two: Crochet Week

Days:

1- National Pig Day {upon which we watched Babe}
- Peanut Butter Lovers Day {Which included Peanut Butter ice cream}
- Share a Smile Day {Which should be every day.}
2- Dr. Suess's Birthday {Green Eggs and Ham and writing our own Suessical Rhymes.}
- Read Across America Day
3- National Anthem Day
4- National Poundcake Day
5- Multiple Personalities Day
- The anniversary of the parachute invention by Da Vinci.
6- Dentist Day
8- Buzzard Day
- Daylight Savings Day
- Working Woman's Day
9- Barbie's Birthday
- Commonwealth Day
- No Smoking Day
- Panic Day
12- Girl Scout Day
13- Good Samaritan Day
14- Albert Einstein's Birthday
- Pi Day
- Potato Chip Day
16- Everything you do is Right Day
- Freedom of Information Day
17- St. Patrick's Day
- Submarine Day
18- First Walk in Space {1965}
- Johnny Appleseed Day
20- Big Bird's Birthday
- First Day of Spring
- National Quilting Day
21- Children's Poetry Day
- National Teen-Agers Day
- National Single Parents Day
22- National Goof Off Day
- National Sing Out Loud Day
23- Toast Day {as in "toast" of the bread variety}
24- Chocolate covered raisin day
- Harry Houdini's Birthday {1874}
25- Pancakes first made {NYC 1882}
26- National Make up your own holiday {We made the most out of this day last year!}
27- National "Joe" Day {If your name IS Joe, or you want it to be, this is your day!}
- (This is also Genny's tenth birthday.)
28- Something on a stick day. {And also, MY Birthday. nice, eh?}
29- Coca- Cola was invented {1886}
30- Alaska purchased from Russia {1867}
- Dr. Day
31- First Map of the U.S. published.
- Tater day


Home:
- Wash all winter throws and quilts. Air Dry.
- Break out all outdoor toys.
- Tune up lawn mower and make sure weed eater has string.
- Paint living room and kitchen.
- Paint Gen's bathroom.
- Scrub down grill and clean it.
- Continue with spring cleaning and decluttering.

Food:
- homemade pizzas every week, working our food pyramid study into it. Allowing Gen to create dough flavors and topping combination and making the weekly event math worthy.
- homemade lemon poundcake.
- homemade potato chips.
- Corned Beef and Cabbage
- toasted homemade bread in honor of toast day.
- home dipped chocolate covered raisins.
- Pancake Bar with Genny's friends.
- lots of birthday cake.
- grilled Turkey burgers, grilled salmon and grilled chicken and mushroom kabobs! yum...


Art/Craft:
- Party favors for Gen's birthday.
- Gen design a messenger bag.
- Camera bag {hopefully}
- Camera strap, for sure.
- Begin spring seedlings to study.
- Oceanography diagram.
- water painting.
- Maps.


Out of home Activities:
- swimming at the Y.
- bowling on Fridays.
- mystery scavenger hunt birthday party.
- movie date with cousins.
- first girl spa day on Gen's birthday.
- trip to the aquarium for observations.
- Discovery Center.
- Park and Feeding the ducks, once a week.

Reading/Studying:
- wrapping up our oceanography study.
- finish oceanography lapbook.
- begin dissecting poetry, and writing our own.
- study Emily Dickinson.
- paralleling the relationships between multiplication, division and fractions using foods and legos.
- continue our study of maps and mapping.
- Read The Wind in the Willows and Christy together.
- Continue Creative Writing curriculum.
- begin our spring study on light. (which will eventually lead into photography. Thanks, Sarah!)

What are you ladies up to, this month?

Indecision

First let me say I've missed the past couple of posts here. Snake math... how fun! And unschooling vs. structure... classic! I shoulda been here. But I was elsewhere, stressing out about items other than school.

My children are 10, 8, 4 and 1. My 10- and 8-year-old girls attend electives at a homeschool co-op charter school. We do all of their core curriculum at home, and I L.O.V.E. it. More importantly, my girls love learning (again). They also love their archaeology class. Last semester the love affair was with chess. Ah, the joys of strategy games. But I digress.

The co-op allows the girls to spend time with other children regularly. Since we live in the country, this is important to us. I think. The running around and schedule juggling is not my favorite. Okay, so I H.A.T.E. it. As I told one of the co-op staff yesterday, it's just too expensive for me. And I'm not talking about the gasoline.

The time it takes to refocus on HOMEschooling when we spend so much time running in the CAR... well, it makes me want to be as exciting as their (wonderful) archaeology teacher. She inspires them in their love of learning, of history and detective work, of digging in the dirt. These are so important. I just don't want to take it away from my kids.

But today? Today we spent a couple of hours at the farm of a neighbor whose homeschooled children are 20, 18, 15 and 13. The two eldest are in college already, so technically not homeschooled any longer. She encouraged me that there will be plenty of time for exciting academic classes and enrichment classes. She told me about how she built a six-foot-tall replica of the Statue of Liberty and a Fort Sumpter out of clay... and on and on.

I'm that kind of mom too. That's part of why I'm so thrilled with homeschooling. We love getting creative and getting our hands messy. We love being in the garden and out with the animals. We love working on art projects and science experiments long past the 20 minutes a public school would allot.

We do so many fun things with our children. Do we need to drive somewhere to do that? Am I depriving my kids of something if I say no to the co-op?

Victory...

I seem to be the last person, on the planet, to come across this amazing book...
It has really burst my bubble to shout it's name from the rooftops only to have everyone shout back "duh... I read that forever ago." So I'll shut up about it.
Suffice it to say though, I learned a lot. A LOT.
It has completely changed how I homeschool and our week has been different.
VERY different.

And, although we've struggled with math for pretty much ever- today something changed.
Pretty much, Genny hates math. She gets really lazy about it. She doesn't want the challenge. My friend Becki encouraged me to try just five problems a day. The "schooled" part of me, (old habits die hard) believes she is already so far behind, so five problems seems silly.
And yet...
Today I sat her down and we did "snake math." (essentially I wrote out problems that were similar to: 1+12= +22= +17= ....) then had her "correct" the snake, backwards using the opposite math form. I gave her a tray of cheerios to aid her in figuring it out- and for the first time E-V-E-R, she had fun. She did addition, subtraction, multiplication AND division. She was so impressed with herself. I loved it. She went through her entire afternoon saying "I just feel so good, like I really did something." And I kept celebrating her, and that she truly did!

It was cute, we get together with friends on Wednesdays for LOST. Everyone she encountered she told them about her "snake math" and how she even did division! :)

Intelligence and Creativity

Can we foster one without killing the other? (This is a long video - 20 min - but entertaining. You don't need to watch it to get my point in the post, but if you have time, I'd love to see what you think.)



Okay... here's my promised post on my ongoing battle with finding a balance between un-schooling and home-schooling.

I "homeschool" because I used to be a teacher, and I have seen the institution fail. I truly believe that any successful public school students are successful IN SPITE of the school and rarely BECAUSE of the school. I know that a caring, attentive parent is the biggest factor in early school success. So, if I am the reason for my child's success in school, why in the world wouldn't I just keep her home? So, I do.

But there's more to the problems at schools than just being in oversized classes. There's also the limited scope of learning. "Learning" becomes something that is attached to a space and time. It becomes a segregated section of the child's life. It's work, not play. It's there, not here. It's sitting still at a desk, not discovering how her body moves. It's worksheets, not life.

Enter un-schooling. Ah, the glory of the idealism that is un-schooling. Let's create environments not to teach our children how to learn, but to encourage them in the natural bent toward learning that they have already. Let's do hands-on. Let's keep these kids creative and let them learn naturally.

Uh... okay. Yeah. Let's do that, and then when exactly does my kid learn about chemistry and how her eyes work? I mean... in "real life" do you ever really need to know how your eyes work?

So, I know that I have to have some kind of structure on what my child will learn. I have to be responsible to expose her to things that we won't just happen to encounter in life. If I limit her to what naturally comes up, then she's going to be really incredibly creative, but ultimately not that intelligent.

But if I plan too much, then where's the room for her exploration and her own creativity? She can get really "smart" by reading all the books I chose from the library and filling out worksheets. But I always feel like that route limits her to traditional "school" stuff, and she draws a distinction between "life" and "school."

So, my questions:

How do you foster creativity and love for learning in your child while still making sure they are learning things that will give them the best chances to be whatever they want to be when they grow up?

How much do you plan vs. let things be spontaneous?

How much do you do games to learn compared to worksheets?

And finally, are you pleased with where you are, or are you hoping to change?

(Don't feel like you have to answer ALL those in order comment... I know I just threw down a tall order there!)

Great free resource

Before I give you a link to one of the best free resources I've found for history (and the reason why I am posting now), let me introduce myself. My name is Sarah and I am a homeschooling mother of four beautiful children, Torrey-10, Kylie-9, Leah-6 and John-5. This is our fourth year of homeschooling and we like it more and more all the time. What better way to get to know your children than to have so much time to spend with them. Some days are CRAZY, as Katie said in a previous post. But, for the most part, I still have a majority of my hair and I look back on what we've done with the satisfaction that whether or not they know their times tables in under 2 minutes, can name all of the Presidents, or describe the process of nuclear fusion, they are becoming truly beautiful people that will bless others in their lives now and always. To me, that is the most rewarding gift of homeschooling!

Now, on to other things.....I must admit, history is an area that is my weakness in homeschooling. I absolutely hated the subject all through my school years. I found it very dry and boring and therefore it lost my interest quickly. Names and dates were all history meant to me and a HUGE test at the end of every year where I had to correctly match a zillion of them up (talk about a heart attack for kids....why do they ever think that is a good way to assess history knowledge??). Anyway, I have been trying and trying to find a good curriculum that was NOT texbook style and would engage my children so that they would be excited about history. Other than your typical textbook, we have most recently done Story of the World, which is not too bad, but a little on the shallow side unless you are able to dig deeper. We have Usborne Internet-linked Encyclopedias we use with it which are invaluable!! We have also heard that Tapestry of Grace is a great curriculum and are considering it seriously (they also have free trials on their website). But here in the interim, I found a terrific free resource on American History that has so far been a wonderful unit for us. The link is www.americanheritage.org. They have a complete curriculum for K-12 that is free for educators (including homeschoolers). We have only done a couple of lessons, but already love how engaging we have been able to make it. If you have a chance, you should hop over to their website and order your free copy. Just the fact that it is FREE makes it worth your while. I know that I am really glad I have had the opportunity to try it.

In the classroom:

Just thought I would post a little update as to how we're doing over here in "sorta homeschool" land.

So, we secured an amazing tutor for our 13 yr old. By amazing I mean, the best possible tutor for our son, EVER. He is bringing the joy of learning to our son in ways that stun me to no end. Frankly, most of the time I sit through the sessions thinking: Why didn't I think of that? But that is beside the point. The kid is re-energized and excited to learn and that is what matters.

I am still struggling to inspire the reader in my nine year old daughter. She just hasn't found "that book". You know, the book that drives you to read more and more? I need suggestions, got any?

The two youngest are learning to read with the help of phonograms and spelling rules. This is done with flash cards and chanting. Quite droll for me, great fun for them. I am using: The Writing Road to Reading by Romalda Spalding.

As the older kids are studying Chemistry at the Charter we have been incorporating lots of Chemistry into our everyday goings on. At the dinner table we discussed the use of acids and bases in the very food they were eating. It was great fun!



What has been going on in your classroom?