Category Archives: Homeschool

Learning at home with a second-grader and a fifth-grader.

Homeschool

You’d think I’d have learned this by now

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Some days we get to bedtime and I realize that the kids didn’t finish all of their schoolwork. Then I spend a few days (or weeks) feeling overwhelmed and stressed about it before I realize that the problem is obvious — and it really should be, considering how often this cycle repeats itself — and the solution is simple:

No electronics before school.

Duh, right?

I finally reached that conclusion again yesterday, after a week and a half of pulling my hair out over our lack of progress. I slip into the problem innocently enough. Pete wakes up pretty early, so sure why not he can have his Kindle FreeTime while I get ready & dressed. Except then Poppy wakes up and lolls about with her iPod for good long while because it’s not fair, and Pete has a bad attitude because his time ran out, and then nobody wants to do school. And really, why would they want to practice cursive when their little brains are coming fresh off of that Angry Birds overstimulation?

So today I’m kicking myself for falling into that pattern yet again, and yet again I’m going to try to change things up next week. And I’m hoping this time I’ll learn the lesson for keeps.

Math

Yesterday Poppy called me over while she was working on her Teaching Textbooks lesson and asking for help with a problem.

“It wants me to add fractions,” she said, “and I’ve never done that!”

Turns out she’d somehow skipped two lessons and started straight in on the quiz. Something tells me she’ll be getting an introduction to fractions when she goes back to do Lesson 104 next week.

Extracurricular

It’s a big day for Poppy: She’s going to be testing for her white-yellow belt at tae kwon do! She’s been working really hard toward this, and she’s excited and nervous.

Reading

We finished “Farmer Boy” by Laura Ingalls Wilder yesterday, and the whole time we were reading it I was struck by how much more abundant Almanzo’s childhood was than his future wife’s. And also by how much pie the Wilders consumed.

Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!

Homeschool

This is where we do school

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Twice now we’ve had a designated schoolroom — the first was when I tried to get the kids to share a room, and the second was when we moved into a house with a basement — but we always end up doing most of our schoolwork at the dining room table or on the couch.

Last year I set what I think was meant to be a linen closet in our bedroom up as my “office,” and now I just grab the day’s work from there and (when I’m being a responsible adult) reshelve it when the kids are finished. The only thing I’ve changed there from last year — aside from switching out some of our books — is the printer. It’s supposed to be a wireless printer, so I had it set up in the basement with the modem. But the wireless aspect stopped working about six months ago, and I’ve yet to figure out why. So now the printer has joined the rest of the supplies in the office-closet. Maybe it was just lonesome.

Of course, sometimes we do school other places, too, like hotel rooms or at homeschool co-op, museums or aquariums, the backyard, the zoo or the library. And sometimes our reading lessons take place in the coziest place of all:

Homeschool

Our school year started a few weeks early

Homeschool at ButterscotchSundae.comThis time last week I wasn’t planning to start our school year until the 19th. Last weekend, though, I reorganized the homeschool-stuff closet so I’d be ready when the time came, and then on Monday one of the kids experienced a moment of Boredom.

And so we started Homeschooling Year 2013-14!

We had a number of pre-planned activities this week — a pool party with Poppy’s AHG friends, an informational park playdate for potential new co-op members and mid-afternoon dentist appointments — so we didn’t get everything on our schedules done every day. The kids did get the majority of their work done, though, and most of it was done cheerfully.

Extracurricular

The kids are doing a weekly LEGO-building challenge based on the LEGO Quest Kids blog. They did the second challenge this week, which was to create a monochromatic design. The both made vehicles, which as it happens was also the first challenge!

Pete’s design “has a button that makes the wheels pop off. It can transform into anything” the LEGO guy “needs. It has a little gun, and that’s it.”

Poppy’s creation “has a driver’s seat and a little place where you can put Lego luggage in the back. And it has 4 extra seats on the side, and it has a little window so if he needs a window when it’s raining he can use his windshield wipers to clean the window. (I didn’t actually put windshield wipers on it. They’re pretend.) The four extra seats can transform into wings. The wheels pop off when he goes to the airport.”

History

This year Pete is a full participant in our “Story of the World” studies. He did a great job remembering details of the story of Indian ruler Akbar, and he seemed to enjoy doing the map work.

In US history we read about John Fremont, about whom Poppy was quite interested because the book said he was handsome. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Reading

  • We started “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” this week, and the kids are full of ideas about what might happen in the book.

  • I’ve suggested to Poppy at least 10 times that she might enjoy “Ivy and Bean” by Annie Barrows, but she expressed zero interest until this week, when she “discovered” it at the library. She then proceeded to read the entire book in about 40 minutes. I really need to create something like a notebooking routine for her free reading.

    Spelling

  • Poppy started SpellWell B this week, and she aced the preview with such alacrity that it made me wonder if I might ought to move her straight to SpellWell Bb. If she keeps spelling every single word on her spelling lists correctly on the first try, I’ll probably start skipping them until we get to something more challenging for her.

  • Pete is doing McRuffy’s Spelling & Word Study. It starts with a simple spelling list — cat, pat, bat, etc. — and I think it’s just exactly challenging enough for him.

    Latin

    We started “Song School Latin” this week, and so far we’ve learned how to introduce ourselves and engage in a very limited amount of small talk. I only bought one workbook, but I think that’s going to work out fine because the amount of writing required is a little beyond Pete’s patience level at this point. So I’ve been talking over the questions with him while Poppy does the written work.

    Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!