Year 4.5

We made some drastic changes since September both to our content and to our schedule. We are actually spending more time with schoolwork but enjoying our day much more. Sometime in the afternoon, it stops being schoolwork, and it becomes fun stuff that we do as a family.

We do our skill subjects separately and in the morning. This allows me the time to work with each child individually without feeling rushed. We have plenty of time for discussions, and I am able to add in a little extra to their day without overwhelming us.

Sam-age 9
All About Spelling 3
First Language Lessons3
Writing with Ease 3
Math-U-See Delta
Pathway Readers 3

Sam has expressed an interest in astronomy , so we are also doing Apologia Astronomy during this time.

Charlotte-age 6
100 EZ lessons for reading
Math-u-See Alpha
Handwriting without Tears

I also read a separate read aloud with her during this time to practice narrations.

After lunch we work on content subjects.

Story of the World book 1
Self designed science study
Art
Spanish
IEW Poetry Memorization
Literature
Hero Tales
Every Day with God
PE with Family Fitness

I have found that I am spending far more time reading aloud to the kids with this schedule. We now have time to read and discuss subjects at length. We can follow our own interest in subjects. I developed an open ended schedule so that we spend time on each subject but aren't limited on the topics or resource.

History with SOTW. We spend a week on each chapter, and we spend 2 days a week on history. The first day we read the chapter, narrate, work on the map and pictures. The second day we read another book or two on the subject, narrate and do a project. Super easy.

Science. I collected all our science books in one place, and we spend 2 days a week on science. The first day I read 2-4 pages of the book of the week/term, they narrate and list several facts that we learned. We follow up with another book on the topic or do an internet search. The second day we will read another 2-4 pages or another book on the topic. Narrate and list several facts. Do project or experiment. Since making this change, we have spent about several weeks on the human body and have started studying space exploration/astronomy.

Art. I gathered all my different art books. One day a week we pick a book and spend 20 min or so doing a art lesson. Currently we are using Draw Write Now book 1. The second day of art we do a picture study lesson.

Spanish. We are using Flip Flop Spanish in a very low key way. We review the vocabulary and spend a few moments each day using our spanish words. I keep the vocabulary list on the fridge and Big Sis' reviews the words with the kids when she gets home from college each afternoon. We have picked up quite a bit of Spanish in this easy low key way!

IEW Poetry Memorization. We have memorized 6 poems!

Hero Tales/Everyday with God. We read and narrate a story from each resource each day.

Literature. We read aloud during lunch, during our morning AND afternoon schooltime, and before bed. Our current read alouds are Squanto, Charlotte's Web, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Lemonade Trick. Lots of variety!

We gotta do school today?

That whiny voice isn't the children. It is me. I'm burned out!

I took most of the summer off by default; so, that isn't the problem.

I went to my local homeschooling conference, and I got refreshed and excited about this year; so, that isn't the problem.

My curriculum choices are working well for my kids; so, that isn't the problem.

So what is the problem?

It has been a really, really long time since I been in this state of burn out. In fact it has been a decade (!) since I've experienced this level of burnout.

I thought that part of the problem might be the fact that I returned to school to advance my degree. However, I'm on a break from my classes for 2 weeks, and I still have absolutely no desire to do school with the kids.

I spent part of this week re-reading some of my favorite homeschooling books and listening to some of the lectures from the homeschooling conferences in the past. I re-read The Whole Hearted Child by the Clarksons, and I'm starting to get a clearer picture of what is the problem. I've re-read portions of Charlotte Mason's Original Series and it becomes even clearer. I've listened to talks by A. Pudewa and the Clarksons from THSC conference, and it is now crystal clear.

I've become a check-the-box homeschooler. I have strayed so far from my vision for my home and homeschool that homeschooling is drudgery for me. I have so many boxes to check that I cannot do or add or experience anything remotely individualized or unique with my children without overwhelming my day.

Changes that I've made in the past have been done to find a solution that works for my children. I now find myself in the situation in which I need to make some changes so it works for me.

Despite that it is working to separate the children, I need to find a way to combine them.

Despite the curriculum options are working for the children, I need to find a way to change them.

I reviewed my curriculum options and resources, and I've decided to make a few changes to the flow of our day. I will keep the kids separate while working on our content subjects. I will combine them on our discussion and discovery subjects. I will stop viewing this year as "Sam's only year to work through ECC" and instead view ECC as a resource to pull our discussion and discovery subjects. This might mean that we do not do everything that is scheduled in ECC. This might also mean that we do other activities that are not scheduled in ECC.


Our discussion and discovery subjects schedule is going to be:

Day 1.
1. Bible reading( pulled from ECC) - narrate and discuss
2. Geography/atlas readings (pulled from ECC)- narrate and discuss
3. Memorization- Memory verses (ECC) and Poetry( IEW's Linguistic Develpment through Poetry Memorization)
4. Art Activity ( from a variety of sources)
5. Music (ECC or composer study)

Day 2.
1.Bible- narrate and discuss
2. Science readings (ECC)- narrate and discuss
3. Memorization
4. Geography game(ECC)
5. Picture Study (resources from MFW1 or study artist of quarter)

Day 3.
1. Bible
2. A-Z Geography activity (ECC)
3. Memorization
4. Music
5. Nature Study

Day 4.
1.Bible
2. Spanish-New lesson (reviewed throughout week)
3. Memorization
4. Geography game or puzzle
5. Science reading/experiments (ECC or other sources).

I need to return to my CM style of homeschooling. I'm not sure if these changes will help me get out of my funk. I hope so. I will give it a go for a month.

The disappearing classroom....

This summer we relocated our classroom from an upstairs spare room back down to the dining room. For years and years, we had school in the dining room and I used to say that our home was decorated in "Early American Homeschool". We were used to the homeschool clutter......bookshelves with crates and papers, stacks of books on the dining room table, maps and posters on the wall.

No more! I really liked having my dining room look like a dining room, and I have no real desire to return to "Early American Homeschool" decorating style.

So what to do? School must be relocated because the "spare" room is becoming a boys bedroom. So I converted an adjacent coat closet into a school closet and created the disappearing classroom.

Here is how it works. I pull out the supplies for the day. I have an organizer for all our pencils, pens, crayons, scissors, etc. I have a magazine holder to keep paper sized posters handy and visible. I put all the supplies needed for the day in a crate so it is all readily accessible. I place our AAS spelling board on the side table. All in all, takes me less than a minute.

After we are done with school, I do a quick view of the next days schedule. I place all books needed for the next day into the crates. Then I place everything back into the closet.

I still have our workboxes but I am using them differently. Each drawer has all the books for a specific subject on our MFW grid. There is a drawer for all the books used in the Bible grid, another for all the geography books, and another for each and every section. This makes it easy for me to get each specific book for each subject.

Here is our disappearing classroom....

Bummer Summer

We were off to such a great start! Big Bro' came in for a visit the first two weeks of May then the bummer summer started.

The rest of May and June were dominated by illness and family visits. Urgent care visits, weeks laying around on the couch with sick kids. It's all a blur. We had company the few weeks that everyone was feeling well. Very little school happened in May or June.

July started well and then I got sick. My second ER visit of the summer resulted in a 4 day hospital stay, a surgery, and a couple of follow up procedures. Bummer Summer!

We usually get quite a bit of school done and spend several days at the beach each week. This summer we watched way too much tv and got out of the habit of doing school.We only did 5 weeks of school since my last post.....actually 4 1/2 weeks since April 27 but who's counting.

During this little bummer summer season of our lives I made a few decisions and discoveries.

1. Charlotte really loves 100 Easy lessons. I had taught my older children to read with this resource but found that it interfered too much with Sam's Speech Therapy. Charlotte doesn't have any speech issues and 100 EZ lessons is a perfect little fit while she matures before using MFW 1st.

2. We are doing the parts of MFW K that we skipped this past year when Charlotte was tagging along with Adventures. This is providing us with enough activities to keep us going until April.

2. Sam's reading level advance 2 grade levels! I spent this past year slowing down reading intruction and much of what I wrote about was in regards to Sam's reading. I now have proof that it worked! We will continue our reading plan.

3. Sam has improved from struggling to write "He was a tall man." to doing all of his writing in school. This is so awesome. So we will continue our writing plan.

4. Sam enjoyed using Writing Strands but we will put this resource on the shelf for a year. I want him to be able to use WS independantly and he is almost ....but not quite ....there.

We have started the process of getting back into the habit of school. The bummer summer is behind us, and we are looking foward to cooler weather and a healthier family!

ECC-Week 3

This week we did our trial of separating the kids. Charlotte did K and then Sam did ECC. The plan was to start 30 minutes earlier which did not happen. I still want to get done by lunchtime but I had a hard time with breaking my usual morning routine.

Guess what happened? I still finished up about the same time! I can't really explain it. I guess I was really just spending that same amount of time trying to negotiate the needs of two kids who are completely different levels. It is the strangest thing. I'm still amazed!

So what did we do this week.....

Charlotte worked through her activities without distractions. When her brother is not in the room, she can be quite the little scholar! She read "The Sled" and "Sam's Pet" from MFW K. We enjoyed "The Story about Ping" and activities from FIAR. Good K week!

Sam is really taking off with ECC. One of the activities for this week was to review the 50 states. We did this by putting together this GeoPuzzle. It was easy to see the improvement over the week as we got faster as finding each individual state puzzle piece!



We went ahead and started FLL 3 instead of trying to finish up FLL 2. We did the first 3 lessons and Sam seems to enjoy having the lessons in a workbook format.

We did another 2 lessons in Writing Strands. His sentence was " The clown sees nine-year-old Lola flying a yellow kite on a beautiful spring day." Oh....happy mama! He has come a long way in the last 6 months. I am so glad that we stepped back and focused on copywork this past year.

We completed lesson 24 of AAS book 2. He was a little annoyed that there wasn't a hard and fast rule about using au or aw in the middle of the word. We will be reviewing this concept.

The only real glitch that came up this week was Global Art. The activity that I picked to do this week was Sand Drawing. I gathered our supplies and explained the activity. I really thought I chose an activity that was "boy-friendly".

Sam " You. want. me. to. craft?" ( Imagine him asking in a real, slow and quiet voice).

Me-"No, not really crafting....it's just an activity that corresponds to the area that we are studying. It'll be fun!"

Sam-" I'm a boy and I don't craft. Well, I only craft with scouts and it's real boy stuff and I have to do it to get the badge." (imagine a higher pitch voice and really,really fast)

Me- " Well let's just give this a go and see how it is. There are some really cool stuff in this book." ---by this time Charlotte is full fledge into the project. Sand is flying everywhere.

Sam thumbs through Global Art. " Looks like a craft book. A girl craft book. I don't like crafting."

At this point I have 2 options. Force the kid to do the craft which totally defeats the purpose of the project or find another art alternative. So we left Charlotte to her crafting and went to look at our art options.

He chose Artistic Pursuits. We used this resource years ago before we started MFW and I do remember him liking it. I have the book and supplies so we will try it and see how it works out. Sam has already done this particular book but we will work through it again before investing in another in the series.

So far we are 0-3 for Art and MFW. Drawing with Children was a bust but in all fairness it was a bust with the older kids too. I Can do All Things was a bust with ADV. Last year, we really just kind of skipped doing art lessons. Global Art appears to be a bust for it's intended purpose. Looking ahead at " God and the History of Art" and I suspect this will be a bust as well for Sam. Big Sis' used this resource as a teen! Big Sis' used about every art resource available because she is naturally artistic. Sam is not. If Artistic Pursuits is the resource he enjoys using then we will probably stick with Artistic Pursuits throughout the rest of his art career.

All is not lost. Global Art will go into Charlotte's Arts and Crafting basket and it will give her lots of new ideas of activities to fill up the afternoon.

Charlotte's Kindergarten

We've made a change to the flow of Charlotte's Kindergarten Year. We started out the year having her tag-a-long with Adventure but now that Sam is doing ECC it is harder to combine the kids. So we will finish up the year with....

100 Easy Lessons

MFW K- doing all the parts we missed during Kindergarten part 1.

MUS Primer

Handwriting without Tears

We may well continue with this plan until next Winter. Charlotte has an August birthday but should have been born well past the cut off for K. She would not be starting K until this upcoming August if she was PS! I want to give her as much time as she needs to mature before tackling 1st grade.

Week 2- ECC

We are getting into a good rhythm with ECC. I have been able to do each week in 4 days without any difficulty. Sam in enjoying himself!

The only downside is that I'm not going to be able to include Charlotte as much as we were with Adventures. I think it is just going to be easier to plan on doing K with her and plan on doing ECC separately with Sam. *big sigh* She is a distraction and the material is just a little over her head. I can read and summarize everything to keep her engaged or I can teach to him and lose her. Since this is going to be his only time working through ECC I need to teach to him so he can get the full benefit.

So far the biggest hits for Charlotte have been music, art, science projects (not the readings) and Kingdom Tales. We will keep her involved with these.

If I continue to summarize the science reading during our time outdoors then I will not need to plan on doing a separate science with her. This is easier than it sounds! I keep a running list of topics that Sam and I have read with Properties of Ecosystems, then in the afternoon I try to point out examples. The key is to make it seem natural and not like a lesson. So far she has added the words habitat and niche into her vocabulary and I didn't have to try to get a 5 yo to sit through Properties of Ecosystems.

This next week, I am going to try to get Charlotte started a little earlier and do all of her K stuff. Perhaps Sam can do bookbasket, math drill and math during this time. I will send her on her way and work through the main parts of ECC with Sam. We will try this a few weeks and make adjustments if needed.

I decided to go ahead and start Writing Strands 3 with Sam instead of waiting. He has been enjoying that as well. Ok....maybe enjoying writing is a bit of stretch..... he has been doing WS3 without complaint and impressed with his outcome. Yesterday, he had to write 5 sentences adding information each time. To make this process a little less painful, I wrote alternating sentences so he only had to write 3 of the 5 sentences. Lesson learned---he could write an interesting, long sentence with lots of information and it didn't hurt....too much. No more "He was a tall man." sentences!

We forgot to do the Nature Walk exercise from week 1 last week. I sent Sam outdoors to mark off our 1 foot square so we could check our Backyard Habitat and he included his favorite climbing tree in his square. Most kids probably do this experiment and look down...dig around in the ground....check out the little bugs. Sam did this experiment and looked UP! He spent an hour up in the tree keeping track of all the birds.

Of course, no blog account of week 2 of ECC would be complete without a picture of the World Cake. Big Sis' helped Sam and Charlotte with the decorating of the cake. Big Sis' wanted to know why I didn't use MFW ECC when she was 8 and she has insisted on being included in any future cooking plans that are included with our lessons. College students like to eat!

Year 4

Sam's Year 4- age 9


MFW's Exploring Countries and Cultures.



All About Spelling-currently on Level 3


Math-U-See Delta


First Language Lessons 3


Writing With Ease 3


Pathway Readers

Adventures is done!

Sam is super proud of his American History notebook! Adventures is an awesome year and this year has been one of our best homeschooling years. I've been homeschooling since 1994 so that's saying something!

To celebrate what do we do? Start Exploring Countries and Cultures of course! Here he is filling out his passport application.

We are already looking at ways to include Charlotte in ECC. While we were doing ADV, we followed the grid and called her back into the room to participate in the state sheets/history reading and science projects. I think this might have set up some bad habits for her. I don't really want her to get in the habit of ....do a little school, play toys, do a little school, watch tv, etc. I want her to get in the habit that she does school then plays.

So I have a preliminary rough draft of how I'm going to break up the grid.

Charlotte -----------------------Sam

phonics -----------------------Complete book of Animals or bookbasket

---------------------------Bible------------------------------------------

----------------------Geography (easier selections)-----------------

---------------------Science ( easier sections)------------------------

Math/Handwriting ------------------------------Math

She is now done and he completes the rest of the grid including the more difficult portions of Geography and Science.

I am having him do Math drill while I make lunch . I also plan to do the read-aloud portion during lunch. I want to save the art projects and science projects for the afternoon so we can spend more time working on these without feeling rushed to get done before lunch.

We are only on day 2 of ECC so it is a little early to state how well my plan is working. We are currently spending about 1 hour working together in the morning with another 1.5 hours with Sam finishing up his work. So far we have spent 30minutes in the afternoon with projects.

I still haven't decided what I'm going to do for Charlotte once she turns 6. Her birthday is mid-August but she was premature and her due date was late September. So if she were attending public school she would be going into K this year so I'm not in a huge rush to get her going with 1st grade. Letting her mature a bit seems to be the trick. My goal is to be getting into the stride with 1st grade when she is about 6.5 years old which will be next Feb/March. I have a little bit of time to decide on resources and get her in a better habit for school.

I did find a neat resource to make ECC a little more friendly for the 5/6yo crowd. Timberdoodle is selling Geopuzzles and I plan on having each corresponding puzzle available as we study a particular region.

We are looking for to this journey!

Reading.....again.

We did a little experimenting this week. What a difference 6 months can make! Charlotte really enjoyed using the AAS board and tiles to do her phonics lessons. I had attempted to do this last fall but it was a bit messy.

I've also found out that I should be able to purchase just the MFW 1 phonics portion when I go to our homeschool convention this summer. So instead of a $50 purchase it is substantially less.

So maybe I will be able to use MFW 1 phonics after all. So for now, we will continue to plug along with MFW K.

Where we are now...

We are having a great year! Adventures has been a lot of fun. We are in a good rhythm with Sam. Charlotte is adding to the mix well.

One of my goals this year was to get the kids working together side by side during school. Obviously, we have been successful!

This last quarter I was still searching for an English program that works for Sam. We had tried PLL with limited success and some frustration. LLATL with limited success and some frustration.

After a little deliberating I decided to go back and retry FLL and guess what....success. He is a very happy camper using FLL. He has memorized list of helping verbs and can easily pick out the helping verbs in a sentence. I'm not entirely sold that this is a necessary skill for a 8yo but after dealing with the frustrations of other programs, I am completely happy that he is frustration free! So we will stick with FLL.

So---finally----after several years we have finally found curricula that seems to be doing the trick for Sam! Yeah for us!

For anyone out there that follows this blog the winners are:

Math U See

All About Spelling

First Language Lessons

Writing with Ease

My Father's World

Whew. I sure was stubborn about using some of these products. Ultimately, you use what works and get over yourself! The general gameplan now for Sam is to work through these individual product's sequence over the next few years.

So now what do we do? Well, we might start Latin next year so I get to do a little research about Latin curriculum. It's exciting that there is more out there than Latina Christina.

I also have this 5yo girl who is coming up in the school ranks and we get to do the whole process over again. buwahahhaha! Actually, no we aren't. I'll just stick with the MUS/AAS/WWE/FLL/MFW line up with her since I already own the products and just start folding her into the rhythm of our day.

Currently for Charlotte her day goes something like this....

---- work through the phonics portion of MFW K.

---- do a calendar activity and a MUS page.

---- do a page in Handwriting without Tears.

----hang out in the school room and participate as able with Sam's studies.

This has worked pretty well. She typically does the Bible portion, state study or history reading, science and listens to the read aloud of Adventures. When Sam is working on LA or Math she works at the little table doing crafts or painting. Sometimes she gets bored or makes too much noise and I send her into another room to have a tea party with her stuff animals. As the year has progressed, she has gradually spent more time participating and less time in the other room with her toys. Her Kindegarten year is a little different than Sam's even though we still do many of the same types of activities. We still go outdoors, do nature study and have a lot of free time for imaginative play. All in all, it has been a good year for her.

She doesn't have Sam's speech motor problem so we don't have that particular issue to work around. She is ACTIVE. I have put the big exercise ball to use with her when she is especially active. This usually gets us a few more minutes of attention and quiet if she is bouncing or rolling around on the ball.

She enjoys the phonics portion of MFW K. There is a lot of cutting and glueing which seems to be her specialty. We did have to slow down the phonics for her because she was getting frustrated when the lessons started getting longer. She is just now 5 1/2 years old so this isn't a great concern. Day 4 seemed to be especially long and we had to break that day's lesson into 2 days. So, here we are with a 5 1/2 year old on lesson 15 of MFW K and wondering where do we want to be when she is 6.

I already know that I plan on using the AAS/FLL/WWE combo that works well for Sam. It seems logical to just start her out with these products this next year. So I only need a phonics program.

Do I spend the $50 on MFW 1 student pages when I only need a phonics program? hmmmm.

So I break out MFW 1 and take a good look at it. I didn't teach Sam to read with MFW 1, we used it to re-inforce phonics. MFW 1 worked great for this purpose. So I took a good hard look at it, thinking about Charlotte. I came to the conclusion that there was no possible way I could make this work for her next year. That's probably too harsh....I could make it work if I was willing to spend a great deal of time tweaking and adjusting it. Do I really want to spend $50 knowing I'm going to really have to tweak it significantly and omit large portions of it?

Bottom line, I don't feel confident that I can teach my active child to read with the phonics of MFW 1. I do think that I can use it to re-inforce phonics but not as a stand alone program.

So the question becomes....what do I use? and do I go ahead and make the switch now?