Tag Archives: homeschooling

Homeschool

We do not homeschool our cat. (Or do we?)

We homeschool our cat.

Our homeschool co-op starts back up in a few weeks, and we registered for classes this week. Pete is signed up to take a science-experiments class and a gardening class, and Poppy is registered for bookmaking and a DIY toy-making class. As of yesterday evening the science class had too many kids signed up, which could mean that Pete will get bumped from it. I signed up to teach an art class based on Mary Ann Kohl’s “Great American Artists.” We have to have at least four students for the class to “make,” though, and so far I only have two students. We’ll see if that changes after the overloaded classes bump some kids.

Here’s a little of what Pete and Poppy worked on this week:

Spelling

Amazon Prime has completely ruined me for normal shipping. It took about 12 days for Pete’s All About Spelling to arrive, so we weren’t able to start it until Wednesday afternoon — and only after I spent a good long while punching out cards and setting up the system. We’ve just been reviewing letter sounds, but he’s been enjoying it so far.

History

This week we read about inventors and innovators like Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and Henry Ford. There were several projects that we could’ve done, but I’ve been sick all week so we didn’t get them done. The kids have enjoyed the books, though, so we might stick with the inventors next week, too.

Extracurricular

Poppy will be testing for her yellow-green belt today at tae kwon do. She didn’t have quite enough classes to test as of Tuesday afternoon, so we knew that she’d have to take two classes yesterday. Apparently we’d counted wrong, though, because we found out after her first class yesterday that she was still two classes short. So she ended up taking three classes yesterday! That’s nearly three hours of exercise, which is more than I’ve gotten in the last three weeks, probably.

Et cetera
  • Et claude osmium, we finally started Latin again.

  • Poppy has been diagramming sentences and learning about direct and indirect quotations, and today she will take her very first grammar test. (We aren’t big on tests around here, but the tests came with the book so we’re going to give it a shot.)

  • We’ve been reading “The Penderwicks at Point Mouette” aloud, and yesterday Pete guessed the Big Reveal a few chapters before we reached it. The expression of dawning realization on his face was priceless.

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

    Bandwagons, Homeschool

    A week of varied levels of productivity on the homeschooling front

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    Instead of doing our homeschooling roundup by subject, I’m going to do it by day. Viva la revolución, and so forth.

    Monday

    Homeschool at ButterscotchSundae.comThe kids started their day doing some coloring while I read to them about Walter Raleigh and the Lost Colony. That’s always been one of my favorite history stories, and I was pleased that the kids were just as fascinated by it as I am.

    We finished that up and then got ready for co-op. Monday was — cue the fireworks and trumpets — our last day of homeschool co-op for this semester. It was a good semester, class-wise, but it’s always nice to have a break. Poppy decorating cookies and cupcakes in her baking class (of which I was one of the teachers), and Pete made an illustrated book in art class. Then we had lunch and the kids played on the playground for an hour. And then we had our last class of the day. Poppy and I made snowglobes in “My Little Pony” class, and Pete made a sweet PacMan ghost patch for his torn khaki pants in PacMan class.

    After class the kids played for awhile, and then we came home. And the 15 minutes I gave them to play on their various electronic equipment swiftly turned into an hour, but that’s OK because we all needed to decompress a little. The kids love co-op, but it is a crazy-high-energy muddle of chaos and it saps all of our energy.

    After we’d recharged, we did the rest of the day’s work:

  • A Teaching Textbooks quiz; the intro to this week’s spelling list; and some work on contractions in grammar for Poppy.
  • And for Pete: The intro to his spelling list; a discussion about nouns and verbs; a math worksheet; a skip-counting game with his sister and me; and a little art time with some paint and a stuffed robot.
    Tuesday

    A couple of the kids’ friends were going to spend most of the day with us on Tuesday, so Poppy and Pete got off to a great start so they could finish early. They finished their handwriting while I read a chapter of “The Penderwicks” to them, they did their spelling, they knocked out their grammar — and then their friends’ mom called to say they’d changed their plans.

    Cue the massive disappointment. We were derailed for a little while, but we got back on track after watching a little TV. The kids did their math — Teaching Textbooks for Poppy and McRuffy math for Pete — and practiced their tae kwon do forms in the living room, and then we loaded into the car to go to Poppy’s dentist appointment.

    Wednesday

    We started Wednesday just like we start most other day: Breakfast, handwriting and a chapter of our read-aloud book. Next we talked about Walter Raleigh and the Lost Colony a little more while the kids did some related map work, and then we read a chapter of our US history book. It was about women’s education, and how once upon a time some people didn’t believe women were capable of learning. Poppy was shocked and offended.

    Wednesday is a big running-around day for us, because Poppy has her piano lesson, ballet class and modern dance. She doesn’t like ballet anymore, but she wanted to take one last class so she could be in “The Nutcracker” one more time. And like a big softie, I acquiesced. So we’re spending a lot of time running to and from the dance studio these days. Between piano and the dance classes, though, the kids did their math, spelling and grammar.

    Thursday

    Thursday is normally a tae kwon do day, but the kids had haircuts scheduled in the middle of TKD time this week. (Tuesday’s dentist appointment was at the same time, which meant no TKD at all this week. Pete was thrilled; Poppy less so.) We somehow managed to get all of the schoolwork* done beforehand, though, so it was a smooth and peaceful day.

    * handwriting; chapter book; spelling; grammar; geography; math; piano practice for P; Rosetta Stone Spanish

    Friday

    Oh, Friday.

    I overslept (after a rather long period of not sleeping last night), so our day didn’t get off to a productive start. Once we finally did get started on school, Poppy announced that she wasn’t feeling well. And clearly she wasn’t (I’ll spare you the details). So today we’ve spent a liiiiittle time doing school — reading a few chapters of “The Penderwicks,” working on their handwriting, doing a spelling test — interspersed with time cozied up on the couch watching “Littlest Pet Shop.”

    It’s possible that we’ll do math later. But not probable.

    • 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!