Homeschool Friday

(picture used with permission from The Family Man.)

I love Fridays.  You’d think that if we make our own schedule, one day would be the same as the next.  There’s just something about Fridays that still make me smile.  It’s like we’re nearing completion.

Speaking of near completion, it’s that time of year when people have begun to ask when our Summer break starts.  I’ve been planning on “doing school” through the end of May.  Since every long break that we’ve done so far has been very taxing on me, I’m hoping to keep it on the shorter end.  It would not surprise me if we started up again in August.  The garden will hopefully be enough of a diversion to maintain some order to our day.  You would think that it would be easier on me to not do school, but the open days seem to get wild so quickly.  If I have no school planned, it’s almost like I need to have some plan for them for the day so they don’t just sit there picking on each other. 

I’m also setting up the expectation for Silje that we will be doing school at least once a week during the summer.  Her handwriting is really coming along, and I don’t want to her to lose any of the Chinese either that is so fresh in her brain.  So those 2 subjects for sure will be touched on at least once a week throughout the summer.  I’ve also postponed our astronomy course for this summer as many families do science over the summer and that idea seemed to fit well with me too. I also plan on continuing our library days with the variety of books that we bring home.  So whether or not we’re technically stopping for the summer is up for debate.  She’ll be learning how to garden, just before our botany course starts next year.  She’ll be helping me store up food for the next winter, which is a bit of home economics.  If we completely cast aside her cross stitch for the summer she’ll be heartbroken, so “sewing lessons” will continue. 

Maybe it would be more beneficial if I just said what we won’t be formally studying during this summer: grammar, history/geography, and math…unless any of those subjects happens to come home with us from the library.  And I’ll probably give her a math worksheet from time to time to freshen up her memory.  So yeah, “we’re not doing school this summer” is a pretty loose declaration.

Here’s where we stand as far as finishing our curriculum:

Shurley English-  1^st grade course will be finished next week.

Saxon Math- 1^st grade course was completed awhile ago, and we’ll be nearly 1/3 the way through 2^nd grade by the end of May.

Sonlight Core “B” (history/geography/reading) –everything will be completed by the end of the month except for 2 read aloud books that we didn’t get to.  Silje wants to read them over the summer, and I may read them out loud to her, or just let her enjoy them as casual summer reading.

Chinese- I was confused before thinking that she was half way through level 1, and was going to nearly finish level one by the end of the month.  Upon looking further, she’ll actually only finish Unit 1 in Level 1.  There are 4 units in the level.  I’m very pleased with her progress.  (Although she accidently broke the cord to her microphone this last week so we have to wait for a new one to come…so she has a few days off.  She likes to spin in the office chair a bit too much and forgot she had the headphones on and they snapped.)  I think finishing a Unit a year is amazing progress for a 1^st grader, as all 4 units is about equal to one high school course.  The fact that there’s more work for her to finish than I thought only makes me happy because that means she has more content to work with and buying a continuing Chinese program is pushed back a very long time.  Yeah for not having to buy more!

Writing/Reading Works- the new program that I just started…I have no goals set out besides go through it.  Ha!  We just finished going through all of the single letter phonograms, and will start next week the multiple letter phonograms.  By the end of the summer I hope that she has mastered writing and saying both sets of phonograms.  If not, we’ll just start where’s she’s at and see how far we go.  I’m not going to stress over moving forward.  My only goal is to have her practice a little over the summer so we don’t go backward and forget the ground we’ve covered.  If we move forward I’ll consider it a bonus.

Bible- We will finish the devotional for this year by the end of the month, and have gotten the one for next year which doesn’t look nearly as cool to me, but I’m sure the kids will like it.  I’ve recently been wanting to teach her to spend time with God on a more regular basis with just Him and her.  I’m not quite sure how to teach that as I’m not that great at it myself, but we’ve started by just talking about it, and making it part of our day.  Even if she’s just reading her Bible by herself, at least it’s something.  I also picked her up a Girl’s devotional book at a local bookstore that walks her through some passages, and has her write out thoughts or prayers.  I know modeling this behavior will benefit the most, and so I’ve been trying to be better about making it a routine in my day more often.  I don’t know why it’s so hard to make it a priority, and as a mother, I don’t want my daughter to struggle with the same things I struggle with.  I don’t want her to struggle to make time for God.  I think that honestly, most people struggle with that, and it’s a human problem, not a Gretchen problem.  Silje will probably always struggle with it because she’s human like me.  However, if there’s even a chance I can influence how often she meets with God, I’m going to try with everything I have.  I have to believe that there’s a promise in the command to “train up a child in the way he should go” otherwise God would not have said it.  My rabbit trail thoughts on that verse are for a whole other post, though.