Retreat to The Teacher’s Lounge!

It’s that kind of day.

It’s our first real day back at homeschool since before Christmas.  We started out with some review math worksheets.  Just about every answer on the page was wrong.  They couldn’t remember how to subtract or compare fractions.  They don’t remember how to divide fractions or solve for an unknown.  They added 8 and 7 and got 18.  They divided 15 by 3 and got 3.  How is this possible?

I suppose since our breaks are less ‘official’ I somehow expected we’d simply slide back into academic work without a hitch.  I couldn’t have been more wrong. 

I suspect they’re feeling the need for a bit more vacation…. and they’re not the only ones.

I gave the old “I can’t believe you guys don’t remember how to do these simple things!”  speech, packed up the math materials for the day and sent them off to read books on oceanography.   I’ve retreated to the teacher’s lounge to try to put everything in perspective. 

I’m frustrated with myself that my expectations were a bit unrealistic and disappointed that I let my frustration get the better of me.  I remember how it felt to slowly get those gears turning again after an extended break.   I should have been a bit more understanding. 

So where do I go from here?  I think we’ll spend our afternoon doing some art lessons and playing educational games.  I think I’ll make some fresh copies of the math worksheets for tomorrow – so we can do them together, reviewing how to do them all.  I think I’ll make a plan for the rest of the week that will ease them back into using all those brain cells at the same time. 

But right now, I’m going to go make them some hot chocolate and apologize for my part in this whole mess….

More Christmas

It’s that time of year again!  We love Christmas time around here.

As we jump into the season the thought occured to me that this is yet another perk of the homeschooling lifestyle.  For music today we broke out the Guitar Hero and the girls sang and played along to Christmas carols.  We’ve got a few Christmas art projects planned already and as part of our studies the girls are learning about how to put on a Christmas play.

Now I’m sure that they’d do similar stuff if they were in school.  But because they’re here with me I get to do it all with them.  It’s not just music time or art time or drama class or creative writing practice.  It’s all family time.  And that’s really the best part of Christmas.

Sure we could try to squeeze some of this in even if the kids were in school….  But this way, there’s more of it.  More Christmas.  More time to enjoy the season together as a family.

Success…. Before the End

When we started our unit on Germany I filled the table with library books on various aspects.  As I expected, Bee was drawn to the story of Anne Frank.  Gee was interested in learning more about WWII.

I asked them both for a report on the topic of their choice.  Gee tends to be stronger in writing factual reports, persuasive pieces and speeches.  Bee is our creative writer and tends to struggle with the organization of reports.

So I was shocked when her rough draft was the first to cross my desk.  Then I read it.  Wow.  Just WOW! It was the best first draft ever.  She did an awesome job.  She still is.  As her revisions go on I’m just astounded by the thought and effort she’s putting into it.  It seems just yesterday she was writing like a little girl.  Today a young woman emerges without warning.  How’d that happen?!

And then there’s Gee.  The one who normal spits out well organized reports faster than I can assign them has yet to give me a rough draft.  No, she’s not slacking.  She’s been so engrossed in all the information she just can’t seem to narrow herself down to one topic.  She started with all the wars Germany fought in.  She read several books about Germany’s history, took notes and made a go at an outline.  The topic was simply too big.  She would have had a book if she’d tried to cover everything she wanted to. 

So I suggested she try to write about only one war and choose one aspect of that war to write on.  Making the choice wasn’t easy.  She really did want to write about it all. LOL  Finally she narrowed it down to World War II.  But her outline for that alone was still too much.  I asked her to narrow it down again.  So now she’s writing about Hitler. She’s only written notes about his childhood so far ….. and she’s already got 3 pages of notes – typed!

I am encouraging her to move along and get that rough draft done.  But I’m also watching her read a biography of Hitler with interest and trying to remind myself that she’s learning… and you know, that’s really the point, isn’t it.

So here we are, a week or two before the end of our unit on Germany…. but as far as I’m concerned, it’s already been a success.

Did I Say Our Election Study Was Over?

One of the great things about homeschooling is the ability to continue on a topic even when we’ve covered all that was planned.  As soon as we ‘finished’ our election studies I found this great game on the Cable in the Classroom site.   I don’t know how long they’ll keep the site up, but for now if you want to know what my girls are doing when the ’school work’ is done for the day….you’ll find them running for President over and over and over…..

Election Study and Detours

We’ve been focusing most of our time and energy on election studies these past couple of weeks.  I’ve been using some of the materials from Lydia’s wonderful unit study over at Little Blue School.  Last year, when we began discussing the election, we found the girls were very interested in the subject.  They wanted to create their own campaigns and have our own family election.  As luck would have it, Lydia’s study walks through that process.  Thank you Little Blue School!

As we’ve explored various issues, detours of interest have presented themselves.  When talking about wars, the girls expressed interest in learning more about World War II.  We’ve also discussed and read about the different sides of the abortion issue.  Other topics we’ve touched on include the environment, education and health care.  The girls are quickly learning that these are all complicated issues with no one right answer.  We’ve got multiple political parties and many different opinions represented right here in our own family so the girls are getting different takes on all of them and forming their own opinions about the direction they think is best.

With all the great detours and information this study has brought us, I think I’m just going to ignore the dates on my homeschool plan and just let it continue till we’ve exhausted their enthusiasm.

Link Overload

I’ve just finished updating the kids private homepage… for the 5th time this week!

I created the webpage about a year ago to give the kids access to websites we approve of while minimizing the danger of them ending up somewhere they shouldn’t be.  The links are all graphics (most of them the actual logos from the sites) to make it easy for my two non-readers to find what their looking for and to increase interest in what otherwise might be dismissed as just a boring educational site.

Over the past year I’ve added a few sites here and there as I came across them but overall it’s remained pretty much the same.  More recently though, I’ve been finding awesome links everywhere!  Everytime I add a few, I turn around and find a few more.  There were so many new ones I had to start deleting some of the older, less used links to make room.

Even the kids are laughing at me, “Mom! There’s so many new links we can’t even keep up!”   There are now a total of 70+ links on the kids homepage – all ‘educational’ in one way or another.  Once again I’m reminded just how much information is out there (available free of charge) and how many ways there are to learn it all.  Who needs text books?!

Vacation Week

We all enjoy the flexibility of homeschooling.  Since we school year round, we can take days off here and there as we wish.  We’ve done a lot of that this summer.  The girls have taken whole days off to run errands with Grandma or go on field trips.  They’ve take a few half days so we can all play games together or help take Dad to the oral surgeon.  They’ve also occasionally volunteered to do double work one day so they could have the next day off.

But what they really want is a whole week off.  Last year I made a big deal out of the week long break between the end of one school year and the beginning of the other.  Turns out, that was a key thing to do.  Even though they had that same week off this year.  It seems that they didn’t ‘feel’ it so much.  We had visitors and things were busy.  I didn’t make a big announcement that there was no school and they didn’t wake everyday thinking, “No school!”  So in the end, they felt like they really didn’t get a vacation.

I could just give them another week off….but then I’d be throwing away perfectly good motivation! So we struck a deal.  They’d do next week’s work this week and earn a week of vacation next week.  So we’re doing all the boring stuff….a couple of language arts worksheets that target skills they needed some extra practice with, practice with doing basic arithmetic with mixed numbers and fractions and some spelling and vocabulary. 

For the most part, they’re eager to do it all looking forward to that vacation next week.  They’re working hard and long to finish it all before tomorrow.  It will work out for all of us nicely.  Dad will be gone next week so it’s the perfect time for all of us to kick back and relax and enjoy the last days of summer.

Yes, I guarantee they’ll enjoy their week of vacation…. so much so, that they won’t even notice it if I pop in a video on Egypt or suggest some Egyptian crafts or point them toward some cool websites that showcase Egyptian tourist attractions.  Chances are pretty good we’ll make significant progress on our Egypt unit study… all while they enjoy the vacation from ’school work.’ 

Savoring Summer

I can tell right now I’m going to have a hard time when September rolls back around.

We’ve been enjoying our summer here.  Grandma came to visit and stayed with the kids so that the hubby and I could do an overnight away.  It was our first night away alone in nearly a decade… and it was wonderful.  We drove a few hours, stayed at a fancy hotel, saw a concert, had dinner and room service and went swimming and just had the most wonderfully relaxing time.

But that was a week ago and I’m having a hard time getting out of lazy mode.  I’ve been relaxed about the school work and instead let the girls go hang out with Grandma.  I had the laundry all caught up before we left… but now everything we own is dirty.  The house could use a good cleaning, I’ve got paperwork that’s been sitting on my desk for weeks now, I’m way behind in my blogging and family webpage updates and though it seems impossible, I realize it’s been months since I’ve seen many of my friends. 

Still I sit here trying to figure out how I can justify putting it all off another day. 

The kids are playing happily in their jammies with Legos.  I should tell them to get dressed and take care of their chores and do the school work for today….

But then I’d have to get to work too.   And I’m busy savoring what’s left of summer.

Lazy Days of Summer

I’m just not ready to start 5th grade yet

I’ve got my general plan written up but it’s not typed and off to the school yet.  It’s easy enough to tell myself it’s not really ‘official’ so I don’t need to follow it.   So we haven’t started anything major yet and probably won’t till VBS is finished next week.

The one bit of planning I did finish was a schedule of work they need to complete each day and each week.  It’s mostly independent work in areas where they need regular practice to advance their skills.

Each day I’m asking them to type up definitions and write example sentences for one section of the Merriam-Webster’s Vocabulary Builder.    I love the way this book is organized.  Each section contains a root word and four example words.  There’s a little bit of history on words, example sentences for each and even quizzes throughout.  I know this vocabulary will probably be a bit more advanced but I don’t think it will be over their heads. 

Since math is one of those things that’s easily forgotten if not used, I’m requiring a math worksheet each day as well.  Some days it will be a new topic and others it will just be review. 

Each week I’m asking them to learn a section of the 5th grade list from the Natural Speller book (they get to choose what ever method they like), do two writing worksheets (since this is an area I’d like them to improve on) and write one post for our family webpage. Some weeks I’ll give them an assignment and others they’ll have complete freedom in choosing a topic and writing type.  For instance, last week I asked for short essays on their favorite parts of 4th grade.  This week Gee wrote a poem and Bee is writing about an art project she created recently.

Even with these requirements, the girls are finished in a couple of hours.  Then they’re off to enjoy the beautiful weather, the computer and video games and make up their own games and art projects.  Ah, the lazy days of summer

Report Card Time

It’s that time of year again.  Report card time has crept up on me and I’m trying to get all the paperwork finished for the school district so I can be free from stressing about it.

In addition to quarterly reports, my state requires me to submit an annual assessment for each child. You can choose testing but I find it expensive and stressful.  So I’ll be doing the alternative narrative assessment this year. 

On the one hand I resent having to sit down and write out what I think about my students’ progress.  After all, if I didn’t think they were doing well enough wouldn’t I be doing something to help them do better?   I’m using our school district’s grading system and marking each as having made ’satisfactory progress’.  Though it’s really more a grade for me.  ‘Unsatisfactory Progress’ would simply indicate my teaching wasn’t adequately.

But doing these assessments isn’t all bad.  It’s good to sit back and consider what they’ve learned, how they’ve learned it and look for ways I can improve our homeschooling in the future.  Since we school year round there’s no real start or end to our learning.  This is a chance for me to stop and see our progress over a finite amount of time and reassure myself that they really have grown and learned much over the past year.

By the end of next week the big yellow envelope will be in the mail.  Some person who’ll never meet my kids will read (maybe) the quarterly reports and annual assessments and check us off as having fulfilled our homeschooling obligations.  But I guarantee they still won’t have a clue what my girls have really learned this past year.  I couldn’t quantify it all if I tried.