Tag Archives: Homeschool

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, National Blog Posting Month

Maybe our homeschool needs more Selleck

NaBloPoMo 2010When I was in school, the days before a holiday break were not the most productive. I can’t remember how many teachers resorted to showing us “Quigley Down Under” in middle school. But I know I’ve seen it more times than I would’ve chosen to on my own.

We didn’t watch any Tom Selleck this week, but we did slack off quite a bit. I’d planned for next week to be a week off from school, but we took it so easy this week that I might have to change that. We didn’t have a “Five in a Row” book this week, and I didn’t have much planned beyond our regular stuff.

home/school

  • Poppy finished her handwriting book on Tuesday. I’m planning to start her on copywork using the poems she’s memorizing. But the printer’s out of ink, so I’m going to have to fix that before I can print the sheets to do that.
  • She’s still doing well with Rosetta Stone Spanish, but she asked this week if she could do it less frequently. She’s been doing a lesson every day. This week, she just did it on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We’ll probably stick to a schedule like that once we add our math and science curriculums.
  • We’re talking about Cheerfulness in our “Character Building for Families” study. I can’t say with 100 percent certainty that the lessons are helping all of Poppy’s character issues to fix themselves, but it has helped me to have something specific to say when she has a meltdown or is being generally rotten. Something other than “Stop that,” I mean.
  • Poppy memorized “We Thank Thee” by Ralph Waldo Emerson this week. This was the first poem that took her the full five days to memorize.
  • We finished “The Water Horse” this week. I finally looked up the summary of the movie, and it is so far removed from the book’s plot that I’m not going to put it on the Netflix list. I’m not sure what we’ll do for our next read-together.

    • Our next “Five in a Row” book is waiting at the library, but we won’t start on it next week. I’m guessing next week is going to look a lot like this week.

    What to know what other homeschoolers are doing? Here’s the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. I’m linking up there, and lots of other homeschoolers have, too.

    Homeschool

    A hectic start to a simple week

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    home/schoolThe kids and I were lounging on my bed reading this week’s Five in a Row title (“Gramma’s Walk”) on Monday when our once-leisurely morning took a turn for the chaotic. Rockford was leaving for a business trip, and we’d planned to drop him off at the airport in the afternoon. Except that once he checked his itinerary, he realized he’d been wrong about when his plane was leaving. A good deal of rushing around later, and we got him to the airport on time. Then we went home, made a picnic lunch, drove to the park, discovered there was some sort of festival going on at the park, tried to go to a different park, got lost, finally got there, had lunch, played, encountered a pack of wild rude girls, had tantrums and came back home. Phew.

    This, friends, is not my idea of a Good Way to Start One’s Week. Happily, things did improve and settle down a bit. My mom came over on Tuesday to stay for a few days, and that’s pretty much like having an in-house nanny. And that’s a big win in my book!

    Monday

    I’m trying to do some cooking lessons with Poppy, and this week we decided to talk about eggs. We talked about their nutritional value and all of the great things you can do with them, then we made some fried eggs for Poppy and omelets for me and Pete.

    Additional work: Handwriting, Spanish, “Doctor Dolittle.”

    Tuesday

    Health, handwriting, Spanish and “Doctor Dolittle.”

    Wednesday

    Handwriting, Spanish, ballet and “Doctor Dolittle.”

    Thursday

    Spanish, and we finished “Doctor Dolittle.” Poppy was pretty upset that the book had ended.

    Friday

    We talked about simplicity and realism in art, and I helped Poppy make a sketch of a rose in a vase to paint. And when I say “help,” I mean I flipped the paper over and sketched it for her after she’d drawn a giant black squiggle. I usually let her do her own interpretation of whatever we’re doing, art-wise, but I wanted to emphasize the “realism” part of the effort.

    Additional work: Spanish, handwriting and a new read-aloud: “My Father’s Dragon.”

    I’m experimenting with a nearly year-round schedule this year. We’re doing three weeks of school followed by a week off from August through June. Next week is our first break, during which I’m going to be gathering materials and putting things together for our second three-week session.