Change is a'comin.

 So, I realize it's been ages since I posted. We basically took the whole summer off because of morning sickness and I was slow to pick back up. Mostly we're only doing school 2-3 days/week right now, because change has come our way. Adam has opened his new Physical Therapy Clinic! I am working in the clinic three days a week until business picks up enough to hire a full time receptionist. It makes it a little hard to homeschool. ;) My Mom is watching the kids while I'm working and she does plenty of homeschool-y things with them, just not the set curriculum. I'm not too worried about it. So there's a picture of the waiting room area at the clinic. I basically have been put in charge of decorating/furnishing the place, which was pretty crazy for a little while. I think it came out okay, although we still have a few more things to set up.

L is still an art fanatic. She's taking swim at the Y still (she's an Eel, now). I also signed her up for an art class at the Y that is taught by one of my friends from church. This bird picture is from that class. I think she really likes it. She also learned to draw dinosaurs from watching youtube videos and copying some flashcards that we have. Then we've got a few random pictures just for fun. A giraffe and a sunshine. She drew a giraffe a while ago and Grandma wanted to have it so she had to draw herself a new one before she'd let Grandma have the old one. Apparently she must always have a giraffe picture. Then we have H's whale that he did while L was doing her ARTistic pursuits lesson. He started out with just two lines and L and I helped him turn it into a whale since he was using watercolor crayons and it wouldn't have been very fun to watercolor over just two lines.

I found this poem that I liked in a children's poetry book and drew the picture. L liked it so she went through trying to find poems that she could draw pictures for. It was pretty cute.










 The Bird Picture and Poem











L and P working on Art















L playing piano with P







I still struggle with getting L to do her math and with getting her to write (or to dictate descriptions for me to write). On the writing front, I decided to try a message book. I'll write her a message and leave it for her, and she can write something back to me. I'm sure it'll start out very simple but I'm hopeful that it will help her gain confidence. She's really taken off with reading. She now reads in her room at bedtime (and has her own room... P got moved out of the crib and into H's room, and L is in the office by herself now).

Uncluttering with Joshua Becker

I have been slowly, slowly, starting to try to pare down our possessions. I started last year with my closet, trying out the capsule wardrobe idea from project 333. I didn't quite make it to 33 items but I really liked it and want to redo it now that summer is coming. It's harder because I am continually changing sizes (I just finished losing the baby weight from P and am now 5 weeks pregnant so...). I know that I'm more motivated because our garage is chock full of Adam's physical therapy equipment for his new clinic which just points out how much other stuff we have. It's frustrating because I can't very effectively go through the kid clothes we have - we (thankfully) get lots of hand me downs but I KNOW we have too much of several sizes, I just can't access all the bags of clothes easily. Anyway, I'm rambling. The point was that I just bought Joshua Becker's book The More of Less because it got me free admission into a 12 week "uncluttered" course. My friend was doing it and told me about it. The book was pretty good and a quick read. It provided lots of the "why" and a few of the "how"s but hopefully the course itself will provide even more.

I find myself more deliberately thinking about how much stuff we actually need. How many towels per person? 2? One to use and one to wash? What about beach/swim towels? How many cups should we have? How many pots and pans do we actually need? I also want to start a list of things I want to or need to replace in the semi-near future. Among the things on that list - the blender, the vacuum cleaner, our mattress in the master bedroom, my purse.

The first assignment for the course was to come up with my own "why" of why I want to declutter/minimize. My reasons:

• Less Cleaning 
• Clear Space = Clear Mind (super true for me!)
• Not feel weighed down by STUFF
• Teach my kids that we don't need to own everything
• Waste less
• Save money
• Create a healthy learning environment
• Be more deliberate (in our choices for family activities, in our purchases, etc)

Two days ago I spent a good amount of time decluttering our downstairs bookshelf and little 9-cube storage thing. It's hard because we don't have many places downstairs to keep things but we spend by far the bulk of our time down here. Nonetheless, I managed to get a bag of garbage and a few small bags to give away, plus several stacks of stuff to take upstairs and find a new home for. Now I don't have stuff stacked on top of each other. No more moving my scriptures to get out my recipe box. No more moving my laptop to get Lydia's Math U See manipulatives off the shelf. It doesn't really look too different yet, but it's much more functional. Okay, well some things look nicer, like on top of the 9-cube storage I cleared off a lot of clutter, but for the most part the bookshelves and cubes are still full, they just have less on them so they're not as tightly packed and therefore they're easier to use. We still have a long way to go (don't get me started on Adam's papers... lots of papers...)

Push Back

This past week I got a fair amount of push back from L so I backed off a little bit. L is very bright but she tends to get frustrated very easily. I can always tell when her brain shuts off and she gets into "I can't do it" mode. It can be very challenging to pull her out of that funk, and one of my major goals with her is to teach her to persevere in spite of frustration and difficulty because she CAN do it, most of the time, even if she needs to try more than once, try different things, or ask for help.

Anyway, she's been pushing back particularly about math lately. She's still working through Math U See alpha. We were doing +2's and she has trouble if she starts with the smaller number (2+7 instead of 7+2). If she starts with 7, she easily adds two more to get 9, but if she starts with 2, she keeps counting from 2 up to 7 and stops there. She tends to forget that she can turn it around if she needs to, and she doesn't usually get the blocks herself. If I pull the blocks out and direct her she can do it just fine, but I have to be vigilant to make sure she doesn't flip the "turn off brain" switch before I can help her because if she does, it's hopeless for now (and the worst is that, even if she's beyond frustrated and won't try at all she FREAKS OUT if I put it away for a few minutes and take a break!). We pushed through the +2's and are almost done with the first solving for unknown - again she does really well with the blocks, or if I make it into a story problem, but she struggles a little when it's abstract - just numbers. I know she'll get there and I'm not in a rush so we are taking it pretty easy.

We've also been doing classes at the Y. L, H, and P are all in swim, H does tumbling, and L is taking a sports class. I'm also taking swim lessons and adult beginner rock climbing, which have both been super fun. :) All the classes do take up some time, but I think it's worth it. I'm determined that my kids will be comfortable in the water and proficient swimmers BEFORE they're teenagers! This session is just ending and it's almost time to sign up again. I'm going to try to keep the same classes.

Today I pulled out the acrylic craft paints and let the kids go wild with paper for a little while. L really loves to paint, and I think H does too, though he doesn't try to paint specific figures yet, he makes very nice lines :) L is learning to use a compass to make circles to paint in because she saw me do that with a painting one day.

We finished the Boxcar Children (she wants to read ALL the boxcar children books now!) and this week Sonlight sent out a letter with the missing schedule for the two books that we got that weren't included in the IG, The Llama Who Had No Pajama (which we already read... twice... since it got here a few weeks ago), and Least of All. I'm glad they send out corrections, but it is a little annoying to write the info into the IG myself.

Playing Boxcar Children in the yard. L is behind the boys, and the pool is the Boxcar.

Art and the Boxcar Children

Our ARTistic Pursuits book came in the mail and I quickly made a trip up to the craft store to get the rest of the things we'll need for the year. The book has 36 lessons, so if we do one a week it corresponds well to the Sonlight layout, which also has 36 weeks. A side note here - I plan on schooling year-round with occasional breaks for holidays and vacations. In the off-times from Sonlight we'll keep up with lots of reading and writing stuff on our own, since we were doing that anyway, and I plan to focus more on science, hikes, etc. As the kids get older I plan to let them have more time in the summers to pursue their own interests, but of course, this is all going to change as we go. :)

So I managed to find everything we need, with the exception of watercolor crayons. They had watercolor pencils so I picked up a pack of those to try for our first lesson. The book gives a brief lesson about what artists do, has the kids look at a famous piece of art and think about it, and then create something themselves. It's pretty quick and easy but good and so far she really likes it. The first week had the kids using watercolor crayons (or in our case, pencils) to draw something they see around them.

 L drew her purple watering can hanging from our fence, with green grass and blue sky and the black grill sitting on our blue deck. I drew the couch in our living room (I will be posting my stuff too, but goodness, I am about the farthest thing from an artist so please don't judge!). H's is.... yellow. The watercolor pencils were interesting. The colors didn't spread very well but they did make a sort of washy background behind the pencil lines.

The next lesson was drawing something from their imagination, which was fun. Our watercolor crayons finally arrived... I ordered a 15-pack from Amazon but they were mislabeled with the tag for water-resistant crayons so I had them send me another one, same problem, so I cancelled that order and ordered a 10-pack instead of the 15-pack of Caran D'Ache Neocolor II and they finally arrived... took long enough! They work waaaaay better than the pencils for spreading color! We drew the pictures with the pencils then colored them in with the crayons, and finished by spreading water with a watercolor paintbrush. L went a little heavy on the water, but still fun.

 L's is a radish king and radish queen in their growing box (she's currently growing radishes on our back deck), a butterfly, an angel with a trumpet, a fairy, some clouds and stars, and L in a fun dress.

 I drew a fairy watering a buttercup (needed more shading on the flower, it just looks like a yellow blob now)

H made these fun lines. Most of the time we do school when H is napping but sometimes he joins in. He likes listening to the stories and doing the art. He also works on learning his letters by using the starfall app on our phones.

Here's L working on practicing piano. I have started to teach her a little bit, but we don't do regular lesson time right now. I think she's still a little young, and I'm trying to capitalize on her self-motivation to let her learn as much as she wants to for now. I do expect each of the kids to develop at least a basic level of ability at the piano.

The first read-aloud for Sonlight is The Boxcar Children. I think the hardest thing has been not sitting down and reading it all in one day! The kids have been enjoying it, and L has been getting H to play boxcar children out in the yard. She pretends to be Watch, the dog, and H is Henry from the book. They found empty gardening pots to be dishes and grass for food and they've been having a ball. :)

Box Day!

On Wednesday we got a very exciting package... our Sonlight box! Hooray!

I don't recall if I mentioned it earlier, but I decided to order Sonlight Core A for L (who is five... she would be starting kindergarten in the Fall if I was putting her in traditional school). I also bought both LA1 and LA2. She's reading at a second grade level so I plan on using LA1, but adding in some readers from LA2 (because let's face it, the readers for LA1 start off VERY basic).

After pulling out all of the books and double checking our packing slip (everything arrived and was in excellent condition), I pulled out my new binder and all my instructors guides and got everything organized. Of course, after I had put everything in by week (core, LA1, readers2), I started L on her LA course because she was excited. We got through a week's worth in one day so I quickly realized that I needed to pull the LA Instructors Guide back out and keep it separate from Core A. I also found a smaller binder to use as my working binder, holding a couple of weeks worth of material at a time.

Next up, I sorted through all the books and put them in order by what week we start using them. Anything we use in week 1 I put on a shelf downstairs, everything else I put on a shelf in my room. Super simple!

I admit that it doesn't really seem like "enough" stuff to warrant the price tag, but I'm a big fan of simplicity, and a big fan of books, and I realize that the bulk of the price tag is allllll the books!

Now we're almost a week in and so far I like it, and so does she. :) She's blazed through 2.5 weeks of LA1 (like I said, the actual readers and the word lists are way below her level... the writing, however, is spot on for her). We've doubled up some things on some days and not done them at all on others, and it doesn't really seem to matter. I like the structured flexibility. I just write a little "L" on each part of the IG when she's finished it for Core A so I know what's done (then, in 2 and 4 years when my other kids get there I'll have an H and a P for them when they finish).

We're also still working away at math. She's having a little trouble with counting to 100 (she forgets the name for each new group of ten (twenty, thirty, forty, etc)), but is doing well with addition. She loves story problems, and sometimes wants us to make the regular problems into stories for her as well. :)

For the most part, except when L gets really into drawing or is super distracted, we are done in an hour a day. At some point I'll add in more structured science but probably not until the Fall. I also want to organize some more art projects. This girl LOVES art, but it's hard to motivate myself to get out the art supplies when it usually means trying to keep a 1-year-old AWAY from the art supplies. For her sake, I'm going to try to figure that out. I just got an awesome Usborne book called the Complete Book of Art Ideas that is fun. We also have the Usborne Art Treasury and several other art books from them that are all really fantastic. I also ordered the Sonlight Artistic Pursuits Book for grades K-3, but I didn't order the $100+ dollar supplies kit. It's probably worth it, but I likely have several of the supplies already at home.

Here's L being goofy and coloring the calendar that came with the curriculum.

Artistic Math

A reason to love homeschool... I doubt a kindergarten or first grade teacher would appreciate it if a kid turned in an assignment that looked like these. :) I, however, love them. I have her write the answer first and make sure she understands what she's doing but then she's free to doodle or turn her math problems into animals or whatever she'd like to do. She loves art - drawing, painting, etc, and I'm happy to let her enjoy her math as well.

I'm too lazy to rotate this in a separate program and can't see where blogger lets me do that, so you'll just have to deal with it. In case you can't tell, at the top there's a mouse and a fox, then a big beasty thing and a little animal with an extraordinarily long tail. :)

She hates writing numbers so I let her do them all crazy. Cool by me, though I think this was the slowest writing 0-20 I've ever experienced.

Homeschooling - It's About TIME

Obviously I'm no expert, with my less than a month of part-time homeschooling under my belt, but I've been thinking about time. One of the reasons I am choosing to homeschool is because I think that public schools take way longer than is necessary for the amount that a child learns on any given day. Especially for young children, I think an hour or two of "formal" learning is more than enough (maybe too much). My kids do the rest of their learning through play, cooking, books, and yes, the occasional TV show (I love Curious George, BTW). As my kids get older I want them to have some dedicated time each day to pursue whatever topic interests them most. I'm not an unschooler, but I love the flexibility to have some kid-directed learning. Public school kids can do it too, but it seems much more difficult when you're at school for 7 hours and then have to do homework. If my kid is into robotics, dinosaurs, music, whatever, I want him to have time to pursue that interest.

So, I keep my kids home to save them from hours sitting at a desk. I also think there's a good chance that we'll end up with stronger familial bonds, because we'll be spending so much time together, learning together, discussing together, etc. Although, there's a chance the opposite could happen if I totally lose my mind. ;)

I plan to school year-round, as summer break is an antiquated, ridiculous idea. Our format might change over the summer, and we'll certainly take some breaks here and there for vacations and holidays, but there's no way we're going to take a break on learning for a quarter of each year.

All that being said though, it is HARD to squeeze out a dedicated hour to work on school stuff, when you've got a family's-worth of obligations, classes, and chores. You'd think, oh sure, an hour, that's easy peasy, but it is not as easy as it sounds. For now I've been doing it while my 1 and 3 year old are napping in the afternoon. This setup works really well for my 5 year old, but I don't love that I don't have any time with my 3 year old to play around on starfall or read books. Plus, I'm an introvert, and I REALLY appreciate my afternoon nap time break to read, work on something, sleep, or do whatever else I want. Me time is being sacrificed, which I hopefully won't end up regretting.

Anyway, so I have really been thinking that homeschooling is about TIME. Time spent with our kids, time saved from having our kids in a desk, time spent learning and growing together, and somehow finding the time to do it all joyfully. This is going to be an adventure.

A New Beginning

I had kind of given up on this blog because I was forcing myself to post something I learned Every. Day. That was kind of awesome, and I still think that most people do or should learn something every day (even if it's something they've learned before), but it got tedious. However, I'm bringing the blog back to life because I'm officially starting homeschool with my 5-year-old. She would start kindergarten in the Fall (she's old for her grade) and I'm not shipping her off to school.

I've been devouring homeschool books, blogs, and articles lately (and yes, I'm a fan of the oxford comma), and found myself wishing that I was journaling about all the things I've learned and the thoughts I've had about the different philosophies, learning styles, teaching materials, etc. I'm not going to go back in time to give details on everything but I'll give a brief summary of where I'm at right now.

First off all, Lydia is reading at a 1st to 2nd grade level, though she still needs help, of course. She likes to draw pictures and she will write on her own for little storybooks and whatnot. To this point I've used Usborne's Very First Reading Set, First Reading Set, and Phonics Readers with her (which we've loved), as well as the Hooked on Phonics App on the iPad (all of this is rather expensive, but worth it, IMO). We also read a LOT of books, we're currently working through the Oz books by L. Frank Baum. She's also gradually worked her way through big Preschool and Kindergarten workbooks and is partway through a big First Grade workbook. I don't force her to do these, especially in the preschool stages, but I would often ask her if she wanted to or pull it out, and if she didn't want to or got bored I let it go. She likes them pretty well at this point. And of course, Adam and I are science nerds so we talk about random scientific topics a LOT. Just last month she started showing an interest in piano so I've started to teach her (again, very laid back at this point... I want her to WANT to play, and she's only 5) and she's mastered a few simple songs.

Last week I added in our first "homeschool curriculum" piece (as if all that other stuff doesn't count). She started using Math-U-See Alpha, mostly because my sister gave us a few years worth of Math-U-See materials and she will like the hands-on aspect of the manipulatives. We've only done one lesson so far but she likes it. I'm also planning on purchasing Core A from Sonlight (or whatever name they change it to on April 1st.... I think they're trying to make sure they don't get confused with Common Core Curriculum because THAT would cost them some business from the homeschool community!). I like that Sonlight is literature-based, and though it is expensive, I like that I can re-use it with my other kids (the question of ending up doing 3 or 4 cores at once as my kids get older is a question for another day!) For now we're just going to do some nature walks and gardening for science, and will add a science curriculum maybe in the fall or winter (I'm leaning toward Apologia based on reviews, but I'm not convinced yet). For writing/language arts, I think she'll just do some copywork and I'll let her keep improving there on her own.

I am leaning a little toward the Charlotte Mason philosophy and she doesn't start teaching grammar formally until age 9! No composition until 14! I'm not sure if I'll wait quite that long, but I do think that Lydia will continue to advance well based on all the books we read, copywork, and talking to me when she has questions. She is figuring out apostrophes and things on her own so I'm not worried about it for now.

Speaking of Charlotte Mason, I just finished reading When Children Love to Learn by Elaine Cooper, which is a condensed, edited book about Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy. I'd like to do more research and reading about it but so far I like what I've read. It's very natural, structured but not forced, and seems developmentally appropriate for different ages and skills of children. I think I will have some trouble getting Lydia to do narration, but I think it is important for children (and adults) to be able to talk about what they've heard and learned, and to pay attention well enough to narrate effectively.

So, that's where I'm at! Hopefully I'll keep this blog active, with updates about how homeschool is going with the kids, and with things that I learn along the way. Happy Learning!