An Update On School

Well, we have played around with some morning school, which we attempted to keep up, but it only lasted a couple of weeks.

But I used the time afterwards to do a little research and formulate plans in my own mind on what we want to do this school year. I am very happy with all of my plans. I have also made goals, but intend to look them over and go a little more in-depth on specifics, etc. I won't write all of my plans down here, but I'll list a couple of them.

• My Man & I have discussed several times, how we like the idea of year-round homeschool. However, I keep coming back to the conclusion that I just KNOW I will burn out, even if I were only doing 4-day weeks. I have come up with a plan that might work: Do school for 3 months, then have a free month, and repeat. I can reevaluate, rejuvenate, and revamp (if needed), during the in-between times. I especially like this idea because it's been a longstanding goal of mine to take the month of December off each year, and just focus on the Christmas spirit and our family Christmas traditions.
• I still like the idea of a 4-day school week, but my Man surprised me by saying he thought we should do 6-day school weeks. Yikes! But then I realized that we could do our Morning Time 6 days per week, and do the rest of our school work only 4 of those days. If we are ambitious and do more, that works for me. But I don't have to have feelings of failure if we don't. :-)
• We will be trying to make it to Storytime at the library each week. We can pick up some history and science books every time, as I intend to use living literature books this year for science and history.
• We have both Primer & Alpha materials for Math-U-See, so after this coming week, I am thinking to add a math lesson 4 days each week.
• I have some awesome ideas for our binders. I know I can't hold myself back from the details, so I'll write more about that some other time. :-)

I am changing my method very slightly, in how to continue Son's reading lessons from here on out. I also have a pretty vastly changed method I am going to try with Sissy, and see how it works. She has pretty much nothing to go on at the moment, so it's a completely fresh start. LOL. Son does fine, but I still feel like I've learned some things through the process, and I also think that Sissy wouldn't do as well with the same system. I don't know, maybe it's just me. :-) But what the teacher thinks makes a big difference, so there you go! :-)

I have already taught Son how to write print letters, but he and I are going to practice cursive this year. After doing practice for a while, we are going to start some copywork exercises. That will probably constitute most of his writing for this year, since he's not very interested in writing for very long. However, I still intend to write from his dictation. I haven't decided how frequently I will require the copywork or dictation sessions, but I intend to do them, and we'll figure out how it works best for us as we go.

Also, I have done some reading and thinking, that brings me to the conclusion that I ought to try teaching my kids cursive first, from now on. So I intend to write big cursive words on pages, put them in page protectors, and have Sissy trace over them with dry-erase markers for her "copywork" exercises. If Honey wants to be involved, we'll probably work on shapes, color matching, and maybe letters. Maybe.

I intend to keep a "Blessings Book" for each of the kids. It will be more of a list, with just a sentence or two per kid, per day.

And finally, I plan to do lots of reading. We already like to read together, but don't do it as often as we should. The kids are always asking, but I'm always busy. However, I am having the kids start helping me out a little more, which should leave a little more time in the day for reading.

So here is a possible school day goal:

8:00am - Morning Time begins
Family prayers
Fix & eat breakfast
Family dressed, hair fixed, faces washed, teeth brushed
Read from the Bible, and choose a verse for our chalkboard
Rhyme Time (poem, fingerplay, song, or suchlike)
Memorizing of emergency info (parents names, phone numbers, address)
Copywork (still not sure how frequently this will be done)

and then, a flow for the day
Morning Chore
Walk (beginning in a couple weeks or so)
Lunch
Afternoon Chore
Quiet Time (kids sit still and quiet for an hour and a half)
Reading
Projects
Baths/Showers
Supper
Evening Chore
Free Time
7:30pm - Bedtime Routine
8:00pm - Bedtime

This looks more rigid than how it has been working in real life. We also have been reading throughout the day. Son's reading time has been divided into a morning session right after Morning Time, and an afternoon session around Quiet Time. There has been a lot of time for the kids to play and Mommy to do things like... make lists.... write a blog... talk on the phone... :-)

So that covers my plans for this next couple of months, and generalized plans for the course of the whole year.

Because of the busyness that has been going on in our life, we didn't begin this stuff in earnest until Wednesday. We did things a little differently that day, since it was "the first day". We read the Bible, practiced a new poem, and made up a "first day page" for each child. It included the date, along with their name & age, height, weight, favorite colors, favorite stories/books, goal to reach by their next birthday, a tracing of their hand, a photo of themselves, and a small picture they each drew in the corner. Then we went to Storytime at the library.

Later in the day, I asked them to tell me what to write about Storytime. I wrote everything in their own words. I was very impressed with their dictation.

First 2016 Storytime, September 28, by Son
    I only know one song. It's the song that we had to get bean bags for. We had to throw and catch. We had to put it on our head and walk around the room. We had to put it on our shoulders, and elbows, and knees, and toes.
    I know two songs now; it's about leaves. We had to put the leaves on our hands, and sing the leaf song. We had to make our hands up high in a tree. I had six. I dropped one before it started, because I wanted to only have five. That's 'cause I am five.
    The lady in the room had to take off the leaf with her other hand and drop it. With the hand that didn't have leaves on it. With the hand that she had the singing words with.
    We had to get rattles for another song.

This filled up one notebook page. I was impressed with his details about what he remembered. After his was done, I had Sissy tell me her version:

First 2016 Storytime, September 28, by Sissy
    I only know zero songs right now, so don't write about any songs.
    I only know one song, that we had to throw beans up.
    Now I know two songs. The song is about when we had to do the rattles.
    We did the Hokey-Pokey!
    We got to color with those markers. We put a umbrella on our papers. We took them home, and we goed home.
    We got books.
    We got to play with toys. The toys were fun, so we started doing the Hokey-Pokey.
    We goed home after all those fun things, and I got tired! We goed home and we put the purple papers on our furnace.

(Mom Note: The papers were dark blue, not purple. Also, they didn't do the Hokey-Pokey when they played with the toys.)

I was impressed with Sissy mentioning as many things as she could, although there wasn't much detail to it. She tried not to leave anything out. And then:

First 2016 Storytime, September 28, by Honey
We got a story. That lady read the story to us. Draw on paper? YAY!

(Mom Note: When I reminded her that they colored on paper at Storytime, she got so excited. :-))
Her baby talk was SUPER CUTE!!!!!

We have had a lot of fun the last couple days. Yesterday, we followed the "schedule" I laid out above, a little closer, and the kids helped me make no-bake cookies for after-church snacks. Son also emailed a few emails back and forth with Grandpa (he was sure that his cousin needed Grandpa to sing him happy birthday, even though it wasn't Grandpa's grandkid. Since Grandpa said he wouldn't be able to, Son said that "we REELEE need to sege to him win he trns 4." :-) I need to show him Grandpa's reply: "Yes and maybe just maybe, we will forget that it really needs done so bad." LOL. Nice, Dad.) :-)

Well, so far, I am super happy with my plans/intentions, and where we are in the implementation stage. :-) You will be hearing more on this subject, mark my words. :-)