Homeschool Friday

I had a big, long, elegant post ready for this morning.  However, I’m questioning what I said a bit, so I’ll just hang onto it until I can own my words fully.  So you’ll have to settle for last minute rambling.

I tried a new experiment this week in our little school.  To explain, we live in an old house with lots of little rooms.  Well, perhaps not little, but with a lack of the “great room” that is so popular with modern building.  Somedays I miss the old days at our old rental with just one living room.  The main floor consisted of a living room and kitchen.  My kids were always in one of those places.  It was very simple.  At this house, I have to track down the kids constantly, and see if they’re still remotely on task. 

What has been happening is I’ll work on school with Silje in the dining room, and everyone will be around us until Solveig is ready for her morning nap.  Things work really well when everyone is nearby because I don’t have to leave Silje often to deal with fights, etc.  When Solveig goes down for her nap, I try to get everyone to be relatively quiet because somehow she has managed to be a bit of a light napper.

So as soon as Solveig gets down for her nap, I come back downstairs to find the t.v. on.  So I turn the t.v. off, deal with the weeping and gnashing of teeth to follow, and try to continue on school.  This is where things get a bit crazy.

So I’ve tried unplugging the t.v.  I’ve even tried putting the wires all back in incorrectly so they can’t just plug it in.  David has a way of figuring it out.

So this week, I’ve changed things up by bringing our school down to the playroom in the finished basement.  Silje has a little play school desk down there anyway.  When I’m down there all the time, the boys don’t dare sneaking on the t.v. and there are plenty of toys for them to play with.

I’d like to say it was a raving success, but not so much.  We got some school done, but it was often too loud down there for Silje to concentrate, so I’d let her do her reading upstairs.  So when she would do reading upstairs, I would sneak upstairs too to do a bit of laundry or dishes.

Then for the last part of the week, David has had a bit of a fever and still won’t be still, so I’ve let the t.v. come back on in an effort to entice him to rest.  So there goes all the work of forbidding it in the beginning part of the week.

In the move someplace, I’ve completely fallen off my spreadsheet.  As in, I have no idea where it is.   School has become, “OK, Silje, I think you should read a few chapters from this reader.”  “OK, Silje, why don’t we read some of our read aloud.  How much?  Um…until we feel like stopping.”  “Silje, why don’t you do about this much of Latin.”

What has been lacking this week is our usual technical element of language arts.  Silje has been doing a TON of reading, so it’s not like we’ve been lacking it all together.  When the day has been crazy, she just goes to the library pile, sits herself down, and I don’t hear from her for 3 hours.

I was grateful for my homeschool mom’s night out last night.  I was discussing with another mom how Saxon math with David has been dragging and it’s been hard for either one of us to want to do it.  He hangs around me when I’m cooking, and I’ve been giving him a pile of pistachios and letting him use those to help him figure out math problems while I’m cooking.  “So David, if you have 5 dollars, and you want to buy a toy for 4 dollars, how many dollars will you have left.”  Then he fiddles with his pistachios, and triumphantly gives me the answer.

I told my friend that he’s been learning more math with me quizzing him with pistachios than our Saxon math level K program.  She said that she always skipped Saxon K with her kids, and went straight to 1st grade because she found it too slow and unnecessary.  I told her I liked that idea, but the 1st grade program uses workbooks, which the K level doesn’t have.  His writing is not at a 1st grade level, and I think having to write in a workbook would turn him off to math for a long time.  He just can’t write yet, so I don’t see how he could fill in the answers and would very quickly be frustrated.

“So, what if you use the 1st grade program, but you do the writing for him.  The K program doesn’t have a workbook because most kindergarteners can’t do that.  So if you did the writing for him, it would be on par with his abilities for writing, but at least give him a challenge in this subject.”

That thought had not occurred to me, but I kind of like it.  I could start out writing for him, and I’m pretty sure that eventually he’ll be asking to do it himself by the end of the year.  It’s so nice to have a group of moms who have been doing this longer to give me advice on ironing out the little problems.

Other moms in the group suggested that I just focus on “everyday” math that we’ve been doing with the pistachios.  This program covers calendars and a bit of time as well, but that would not be too hard to teach off curriculum.  Many homeschoolers skip kindergarten altogether, like suggested the Better Late Than Early approach (which is a book I’ve been meaning to check out). 

I arrived at Mom’s night last night feeling pretty lousy for falling off my spreadsheet.  I confided in another mom that I’ve been so out of it I had no idea if we were on track or not.  She asked me what we’ve been doing all day.  “Well, we’ve been reading a lot.  We’ve been talking and discussing a lot.  The kids draw.  David has been building a lot with junk in the recycling bin.  I cook, they ask questions about what they’re reading.”

“Do you have any idea how much your kids are learning!”  She exclaimed.  She told me about how many days were like that and now that her older ones are approaching high school and they’re having to take some serious subjects, they’re handling it like it was a piece of cake.

I left mom’s night feeling good about our days.  I would like to find the spreadsheet with our “schedule” and find where in the world we are.  I may just print off a new one.  I’m glad to know that if our days are filled with learning, we are on track.  The spreadsheet is just my made up security blanket, but not our success.