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August 31, 2015 Schedules and Routines Post a Comment

Homeschooling with a Baby: 5 Steps to a Daily Schedule that Works

Remember last year when I went crazy with the Managers of Their Homes schedule planning system? I was high on pregnancy hormones and ready to take on the world. And I did. And it was awesome. And if you don’t have a baby or toddler to add spice to your life, I still highly recommend the exercise.

I knew even as I was doing it that it wouldn’t last. A tiny part of me dared to dream that this baby would be different, this baby would be predictable, this baby would take two predictable naps a day alone in her crib allowing us to keep a tidy little schedule where we do math at 10:05 every morning. But most of me knew better.

I thought about repeating the scheduling exercise this year because it really was so helpful last year. But I know myself well enough to know that it would only serve to discourage me. And so this year I’ve taken a different approach to planning our days.

Baby number four is just as predictably unpredictable as her three older siblings. But I have changed. I have embraced the flexibility afforded by a baby that doesn’t take a two hour nap at 1pm every day. She goes with the flow and so we can continue to flow – fieldtrips and playdates and visits to Grandmother’s house can continue without fear of upsetting the baby’s schedule.

But how in the world do I teach the other three when I never know when or if the baby will sleep for more than 20 minutes?

We have a system.

It’s a flexible system. It’s a system that requires everyone else to be flexible. But it’s working.

So what is it?

I teach when I can.

What? You wanted something more revolutionary? More helpful? Let me elaborate and see if it helps.

Here are the 5 steps I follow to “schedule” our days in order to make sure we do everything we need to do.

1) Plan lessons

Each week I create a weekly plan for assignments. I know that I want to read and when and I plan which pages I will read on which days. I am super realistic about this. I know that 2-3 pages is ideal and that 4 pages is the maximum number of pages we will realistically get through of any book. I’m okay with this because my goal is not to read words in a book while in the presence of my children – my goal is to help my children make a connection with interesting and important stories and information.

I write out which songs we will sing, which math facts we will drill, which math lessons will be taught and on which days. I look at the whole picture so that I’m not trying to do a long reading, teach a difficult math lesson, set up a difficult science experiment all on the same day.

2) Plan and write out individual assignments

This starts the night before, or, if I’m really on top of things, the weekend before. Each of my kids has a number of subjects that they can do independently. I make a list each day to remind them what they need to do on their own that day. It’s pretty much the same every day, but the checklist helps keep them on track and accountable. “

This checklist is available to them so that they can get up in the morning and get right to work without me. When I need to go attend to the baby, they can do their independent work.

3) Begin my daily teaching with Morning Time

When school starts for the day, we start with Morning Time. This is the work we all do together. You can see what’s in our Morning Basket here.

This is where things get flexible. Sometimes Morning Time is right after breakfast and the baby joins us. Sometimes, the baby needs to go down for a nap right after breakfast and the kids start their individual assignments while I nurse the baby down for a nap. Sometimes the baby plays on the floor while I teach. Sometimes she nurses. Sometimes she hangs out in the Ergo. Sometimes Morning Time is split into two parts because baby gets fussy in the middle of it. And sometimes we enjoy a nice leisurely morning time with extra read-alouds because she sleeps quietly upstairs for three hours.

I’ve given up trying to make my babies do anything like sleep on a regular schedule. If you’ve accomplished that, I applaud and envy you! But if your baby is like all of mine have been, just work around it. They’ll eventually move into a new phase that complicates your life in a different way.

4) Teach individual lessons when I can

This requires all of us to be flexible. I might call a child from his individual work to teach him a math lesson. Someone might have to step away from the Legos for a phonics lesson. It might be before lunch. It might be after lunch. My only rule about this is that mommy is done teaching school at 2pm. My kids have to have all of their school work done before they can have screen time at 4 o’clock, so if they’ve messed around and been uncooperative and need me to give them a spelling quiz at 3:45 so they can have screen time at 4pm, they’re out of luck.

5) Stick to the plan

This is really the meat of it. I made a plan. I was very realistic about it, so it should be doable. I left room for life with a baby. So long as nothing out of the ordinary happens, I should be able to check off everything on my list. This is where my discipline comes in. It’s hard to pull the kids away from an elaborate game they got going with while I was busy with the baby, but I made the plan for a reason. I went through a super involved, very intentional, prayer-led planning process to select the material I want to teach to my children. I need to stay true to that plan in order to stay true to my vocation. So even if the kids are all playing nicely and I could be free to read or blog, if the school work isn’t done for the day, I need to teach.

We’re three weeks in and this system is working quite well for us. It gives me the flexibility I need to take care of the baby, and it also allows me the freedom to hit Jazzercise a couple of mornings a week, to invite a surprise visitor in for a few minutes, or to allow a leisurely breakfast. It takes advantage of the benefits of homeschooling without devolving into habit of never quite making it to that school stuff we meant to do.

So what’s working for you regarding schedules/routines right now? Are you finding you seek more or less structure than you did a year ago? What are the keys to making your day feel good? I love to hear from you!

August 29, 2015 Curriculum Reviews, Morning Basket 1 Comment

Our Homeschool Curriculum for 2015-2016: Morning Basket

Finally! I’m ready to share the curriculum and resources we are using this year with our 5th grader, 2nd grader, and preschooler. In this post I’ll share what’s in our Morning Basket.

Morning Basket Resources

As far as I know, Jennifer Mackintosh over at Wildflowers and Marbles invented the brilliant idea of Morning Baskets. If you’re not already familiar with the idea, head over to her blog and check it out. You’ll also want to spend time just combing through the hundreds of pages of amazing resources she has there. She’s a genius.

The quick version is this. A Morning Basket is literally a basket filled with good things to share with your children. It’s a place to put all of those delicious subjects you never seem to fit into your day – poetry, Shakespeare, composer study, etc. On a “bad day” your Morning Basket can stand alone as school for the day.

There’s no end goal for these books. The idea is to savor each one and have it be as enjoyable as possible. So if people start to get fidgety, we just stop and pick it up again the next day. We’re not doing everything every day but rather plan to work through these by the end of the year. For example we’re starting with The Song of Hiawatha and when we finish it we’ll move to the Oxford poetry book. The Shakespeare is worked on for a couple of weeks at a time, and then set aside for a week or so.

Here’s what’s queued up right now, but it could easily change with my fancy. Clicking on the book image for most of these will take you to amazon.com, but there are no affiliate links on this page.

How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig

This is on recommendation from a friend who always recommends the most wonderful resources. If she says a book is good, I just get it. This one is fabulous. It teaches you to help your children memorize carefully selected passages from Shakespeare. And Mr. Ludwig’s website has a bunch of fun extras to help you out as well. My kids (and I!) have already memorized this passage from a speech by Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows. Where oxlips and nodding violet grows, quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine. with sweet muskroses and with eglantine. There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, lulled in these flowers with dances and delight. And there the snake throws her enameled skin – weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in. And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes and make her full of hateful fantasies!”

I typed that from memory! Even my 4-year-old has memorized the first half of it. And it was painless. And fun!

The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Illustrated by Margaret Early

I wish that picture was bigger. I picked up this book at our local Goodwill without realizing how amazing it really is. Having read Paul Revere’s Ride last year, I was eager to share some more Longfellow with the kids. Ms. Early’s illustrations are a perfect complement to Longfellow’s beautiful words. We read just a page or two a day, studying the pictures, reading the poetry, and then narrating the story together. It took the kids a few days to get into it, but then they couldn’t get enough.

Wee Sing America

This is part of the Book Shark curriculum. Because it only takes a few minutes a day and it’s fun for everyone, I’ve put it into our Morning Basket. We’re learning a song a week. I love that we’re expanding our repertoire of singable songs.

The Oxford Illustrated Book of American Children’s Poems Edited by Donald Hall

This is also from the Book Shark curriculum. We’ll select a poem a week to enjoy and maybe memorize. I’ll probably follow the suggested schedule in the Book Shark curriculum guide.

My Path to Heaven: A Young Person’s Guide to the Faith by Geoffrey Bliss, S.J. and Caryll Houselander

A dear friend brought this one to my attention and I picked it up at the Rocky Mountain Home Educators Conference a few months ago. I cannot wait to share this one with my kids. It’s a guide to Ignatian Spirtuality for young people. Each section has an elaborate line drawing with hundreds of little details and one simple thought to ponder. This is followed by a couple of pages of simple text to help one reflect on the idea. For example, the first idea is that everything in your life was placed there by God to help you to better love Him. I have been pondering this for weeks after reading it in this book. I plan to read a passage a day, or maybe just one a week, while the kids look at their own photocopy of the image. They’ll be invited to color it if they like.

American Tall Tales by Mary Pope Osborne wood engravings by Michael McCurdy

This is another Goodwill steal. It will be a perfect complement to our American History studies this year.

Praying the Rosary with Mary by Angela Burrin, illustrated by Maria Cristian lo Cascio

We’re not one of those families that prays the rosary together every day. We do that in my fantasy family, but in my real family, it just never happens. But I do want my kids to have some familiarity with the rosary. This is a nicely illustrated book in which each of the mysteries is explained through the voice of Mary. Each mystery ends with a short prayer asking for Mary’s help with a particular virtue. We’ve been reading one mystery a day and saying one Hail Mary. It’s been a gentle introduction to the devotion of the rosary.

Memory Work

Latin responses for the Mass. We attend a New Order Mass done in Latin and so I’d like to work through memorizing the plain chant version of the Latin responses for the Mass. I found a little booklet to help us with this. It’s a little slow going.

Math Fact Memory Work. My oldest is dismally behind on math fact memorization. I don’t want to make the same mistake with the other kids, so we’re adding this to our morning basket routine. We went way back and started with the “plus 1” facts. I’m following the order recommended at Mrs. Houlin’s eSchool Class blog. I really like what she has to say about memorizing math facts.

Although this seems like a lot, it actually takes very little time and I’m looking to add to this part of our day because everyone really enjoys it. I’ve decided I’m going to add in some basic grammar instruction and I’m looking for some appropriate Saint study resources. I need to shop my shelves for those. It’s also a great time to share favorite picture books because we normally do this work all snuggled up on the couch together.

It’s taken me awhile to implement Morning Basket time for our homeschool, but I am so glad we’re doing it because it really is the best part of our homeschool day.

August 5, 2015 Schedules and Routines Post a Comment

Homeschool Planning Series: Choosing Curriculum and Materials

So now that I know what I want to teach and how I’m going to structure my year. It’s time for me to choose the curriculum, books, and other materials I will use to facilitate our learning this year.

For a detailed list of the subjects and goals I’ve identified for each of my kids, see this post.

A detailed list of the books and curriculum I’m using will be in a future post.

This post is about the process I use to decide what materials I will use to teach the subjects and meet the goals I have planned for the year.

I will admit that I got stuck here for awhile. I am a big picture kind of girl. I love dreaming and I hate implementing. Because, as I mentioned before, I want to do it all. It is in this step that I start to face the reality of having to say no to some awesome things. I hate that.

As you know, there are an overwhelming number of curriculum options available to homeschoolers these days. Catalogs, websites, blogs, Pinterest, curriculum fairs, friend’s recommendations. They can leave me feeling like I’ll never find the perfect curriculum. Like I’m missing out on all kinds of great things. Like I’ll never teach everything I want to teach. Guess what? I won’t. There’s no such thing as the perfect curriculum, and I can’t possibly teach my kids everything I want to teach them. I don’t know if that makes you feel better or worse, but it’s the truth. And it’s true for you too.

So how do I narrow down the limitless possibilities to the few things I can realistically use?

Consider what I find appealing

When I start looking for resources to teach something, the first question I ask is “what appeals to me?” That’s right, me. I don’t first consider my kids’ preferences or learning styles or anything like that. I’ve learned that if I don’t like using the material, I won’t. If the curriculum never comes off the shelf, it’s not helping anyone learn anything.

Being able to identify material that is definitely not my style has been a huge help in getting clear about what will work best for me and my kids.

Consider what has (and hasn’t) worked in the past

Some of the best homeschooling advice I’ve received is this: When you find something that works, don’t change it! Every time a friend or a blogger or, yes, even an advertisement raves about how incredible a curriculum is I’m tempted to scrap what I’m doing and try something new. But each time I try something new I begin a new learning curve – for me and the kids. I’ve found that if something is working well enough, it’s best to just keep going with it. Again, there’s no such thing as perfect and I’ll make myself (and my kids) crazy looking for it. So I’ve learned to stick with what has worked well in the past.

By the same token, if something really was a bad fit for us, I will abandon it with no qualms.

Consider what is available for free or cheap

I start with my own bookshelves. I’m a homeschooler. I have loads of cool books and games and kits and manipulatives that I’ve collected at garage sales and thrift stores and used book sales over the years in the hopes that someday they’ll be just what I need to teach somebody something. I go through all of these resources and pull out the things that will meet the goals and subjects I’ve planned for this year. I also use this time to clean out stuff I’ve learned will most likely never get used.

Another source of free curriculum for us is our public school enrichment program. We are allowed (but not required) to borrow curriculum to use with our children each year. They have a wide variety of material to choose from. This is how I found Book Shark. This has been a huge blessing for us. I have always been drawn to a “living books” curriculum, and the folks at Book Shark have done a really good job of choosing great books and providing a schedule and format that feels really good to me.

I will add one caveat here. Sometimes it’s worth spending money on quality curricula and materials. I won’t use something just because it’s free or cheap. But I do consider those free and cheap resources before I shell out money for something I think I have to have. I’ve wasted a lot of money on curriculum that now gathers dust on my shelves.

Find out what others like

Once I’ve gotten clear about what I like, identified what’s worked in the past, and gone through what’s available free or cheap, I figure out what I still need to buy. This is when I start googling, searching blogs, and asking friends both online and “in real life.”

I have to be very careful here, because I can get sent back to Teach All The Things mode if I don’t practice extreme self control. I can easily get sidetracked by all of the wonderful things other people are doing. I have to work super hard to stay focused at this point. I remind myself that I’ve followed a solid process to select our goals for this year, and there’s always next year.

When it comes to choosing material, I’ve found that going with what’s popular is often a good choice. If it seems everyone is using it, it’s often because it’s high quality and user friendly. Not always, but often. If there seem to be a lot of good choices, I try to choose one that someone like me loves. So even if someone is absolutely raving about program, if it’s a curriculum that requires a ton of hands-on time or prep time or craft time I know it’s not the program for us.

Buy what I need

Once I’ve gone through the above process, I make a good list of what I need. I try to have this done before the annual conference I attend with an amazing used curriculum sale. What I can’t get there, I generally buy on Amazon or straight from the publisher. I also fill in with picture books from the library.

Whew. Once I finish this step I am finally ready to start planning lessons. I’ll talk about how I do that in an upcoming post. But first, I’m going to share the curriculum we’ll be using this year. I’m getting pretty excited about it!

July 23, 2015 Homeschool Science 2 Comments

11 Ways to Study Nature that aren’t Nature Study

Nothing strikes more anxiety into my heart as a homeschooler than the words “Nature Study.” That might be a bit hyperbolic, but seriously, hearing those words makes me feel like a big failure as a homeschooler.

You see, real homeschoolers do Nature Study. Real homeschoolers go on nature walks, keep elaborate nature journals with gorgeous drawings and water color paintings of leaves and trees and flowers. And what’s more, you have a Christian duty to do Nature Study. I’m not kidding. Read it. She makes a really compelling point.

So as I plan another homeschool year, I think of all of the ways I’m going to fail at doing Nature Study. Because I know I will. I know I will want to plan beautiful, Charlotte Mason inspired nature lessons, and I know I won’t make time for it, and I know I’ll feel like an utter failure.

Apparently, I don’t really want to sit and draw flowers with my children. I want to want to. But I don’t actually want to. You know how I know? Because I never do it. And not wanting to do it makes me feel like a loser.

My poor mother tried so hard to teach me to love birds and flowers and bugs the way she does. But I just don’t. I mean I don’t hate them. I really do want to love them. I’ve tried learning the names of wild flowers and trees, but it never sticks. My mom can rattle off the scientific name of every plant in her garden. A garden she planted herself. Because her friends the birds and the bees come to play there. I like to sit on her front porch and look at it when I’m there. But I’m more likely to pick up my laptop and start surfing than to pick up a sketchbook and start drawing.

So as I’ve been doing my planning for next year and thinking about how to do nature study so I don’t totally fail at it, I decided to start by setting a really low bar. Like, if I do Nature Study once a season, I’m going to call it a win. Yes, 4 times a year. That’s my goal.

In one of my great attempts to inspire myself toward nature study I schlepped Anna Comstock’s book, The Nature Study Handbook, up to the mountains on a family camping trip. It’s been sitting on my shelf for a few years now doing nothing but making me feel guilty for never opening. This time I did manage to read about 5 pages of it. And one of the sections I read was was on what to do with a kid who isn’t interested in Nature Study. This is what Ms. Comstock had to say:

“Usually the reason for this lack of interest is the limited range of subjects used for nature-study lessons. Often the teacher insists upon flowers as the lesson subject, when toads or snakes would prove the key to the door of the child’s interest.” (emphasis mine)

Huh. You mean you don’t have to start by sketching a leaf? I like watching things that move. Squirrels positively delight me. Actually, maybe I do like Nature Study. Or at least I like studying nature. I’m just maybe a little intimidated by the nature journal process. I always just feel like I’m doing it wrong, and I have zero confidence in my drawing ability. But maybe just because I don’t want to sketch flowers doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy studying nature.

Upon further reflection, I realize that we do in fact do Nature Study around here. It just looks a little different than all the pictures on the Charlotte Mason blogs. After just a few minutes I was able to come up with a pretty decent list of nature study-ish things we do around here just because we enjoy doing them.

Here are 11 things we do for fun that could be considered Nature Study.

1) Going to the Zoo

I love the zoo. Every time I walk past the strange and wonderful diversity of creatures, I am struck by the astounding imagination of our Creator. When I was nursing my first baby, there were quite a few animal nurslings at the zoo and I would sit forever and watch them nurse and watch the interaction between mom and baby. I took pictures and put them in an album for my own little nursling. Oh hey! I could put those pictures in a nature journal! Lazy mom’s Nature Study.

2) Helping Dad in the Garden

I am so glad I married someone who likes to grow things. Because I like it when things grow around me even though I’m really terrible at growing things. I’ve killed lots of house plants. I can keep kids alive because they tell you when they’re hungry. Loudly. Plants just quietly whither and die. But my husband keeps them alive and then my kids get to eat carrots and tomatoes and zucchini and peas straight out of the garden. Nutritious Nature Study.

3) Walking by the Creek

We are blessed to live just two blocks from a bike path that runs along a creek. We often (ok, not super often, but often enough I can remember the last time it happened) pop over and just stroll along the creek. We look for critters – we’ve seen crawdads, bugs, birds, leeches. . . We notice how high or low the water is. We visit the waterfall and either stand back in fear or climb over the rocks, depending on the water level. We pretend we’re on a jungle adventure or that we’re pioneers. We have picnics on the sandy shores. Low key Nature Study disguised as fun

4) Watching a Thunderstorm

A couple of nights after watching 4th of July fireworks my 4-year-old was scared by the noise and the flashing lights of a huge thunderstorm. When I climbed into bed with him I realized he had a great view of the storm through the skylight in the bathroom across the hall. As we sat and watched the storm together, I told him it was like God’s fireworks – a beautiful light show with powerful sound effects. We watched together and talked about thunderstorms and God. Cozy, late-night Nature Study.

5) Watching the Dog in the Backyard

We have this crazy little corgi named Penny that is an absolute riot to watch run around in the yard. She runs manic circles around the chickens. She’s a herder by nature and because her chickens never escape (because they’re in a pen) she thinks she’s really good at her job. She also trees squirrels, chases bunnies, and will spend hours every day hunting mice in the wood pile. I never thought of watching all of this as more than a source of amusement until I was flipping through The Handbook of Nature Study and saw the section on observing dogs. House pet Nature Study.

6) Watching the Chickens in the Backyard

Ok, I’ll be honest. I’m not one of those people who can spend hours watching “chicken TV.” But they’re there, and people in my family can watch them. So Nature Study.

7) Watching the Baby

One of my favorite creatures to observe is the human child. Babies especially fascinate me. I could watch my baby for hours. And I do. Nature Study – with a bonus hit of oxytocin.

8) Collecting Roly Polies

I’m not one to complain about the absence of insects in our dry Rocky Mountain climate, but one of the great sadnesses of my life is that my kids can’t chase fireflies on a warm summer night. Mother nature has, however, proviced an abundance of roly polies and a fair number of lady bugs that they do collect and observe. Creepy crawly Nature Study.

9) Going on a Farm Field Trip

Every year we go on a produce harvesting farm field trip with our bffs. It’s a pretty rugged experience where we go out on an actual farm and harvest actual crops from actual fields and haul them back to our cars in an actual farm tractor. We get covered in dirt, bit by mosquitos, and burned by the sun. It is a lot of work and a lot of fun and the tractor driver always teaches us so much about farming and growing things. Plus they have chickens and goats and things to pet. Super fun, super exhausting Nature Study.

10) Fishing with Dad

My husband loves to take the kids fishing and the kids love to go with him. They drive up to a mountain lake and spend the day catching fish with worms. Then they come home and gut the fish and feed the worms to the chickens. So much Nature Study.

11) Cross Country Skiing

This is a favorite of the whole family. We once saw a couple of moose from the deck outside of the ski lodge. They’re amazingly huge, beautiful creatures. It was a real treat. Then I went out on the trail by myself, turned a corner, and came face to butt with a giant moose. It scared the moose out of me. Nature Study.

So see, we do study nature. It just doesn’t look like Nature Study.

And that’s ok. Remember all the crazy animals at the zoo? God created so much beautiful diversity. There’s no reason there shouldn’t be a diversity of approaches in studying it.

July 17, 2015 Curriculum Reviews, Schedules and Routines Post a Comment

Homeschool Planning Series: What I’ll be Teaching This Year

I promised I would share the subjects I’ve chosen for my homeschool curriculum this year. I will be teaching a 5th grader, a 2nd grader, and a 4-year-old preschooler. I want to offer the disclaimer that this is in no way what I think you should be teaching your homeschooled 5th grader, 2nd grader, or 4-year-old preschooler. Your kids are not my kids. They know different things. They have different strengths and weaknesses and different interests. And you have different strengths, weaknesses, and talents than I do!

I’m sharing this because I always find it interesting, inspiring, and informative to know what others are doing. When I read or hear about a bunch of different people doing a bunch of different things, it helps me realize there’s no one right way and I feel a little less anxious about what I’m doing. If reading what I’m planning to teach is going to make you all angsty, skip it.

When I completed the process I described in this post I had the following list:

Henry (Grade 5)

Improve spelling
Write a solid paragraph
Complete Singapore 4A
Memorize all math facts
Improve handwriting
Work more independently
German (with dad)

Helen (Grade 2)

Sacramental preparation
Phonics
Addition/Subtraction fact memorization
Character virtues: responsibility and humility

Thomas (Age 4)

Become more “regular” with eating, sleeping, and daily rest periods
Improve mental flexibility, be less bratty and demanding
Learn to ride his bike
Scale back on screen time, limit exposure to Henry’s screen time
Share good picture books – including alphabet books
Expose to preschool fine motor opportunities such as playdough and drawing
Preschool field trips with mom and buddies on Fridays

All Children (Stuff we’ll do as a family)

Note: This is a sort of “inspire don’t require” time of our day. I’m hoping the content and material will excite and delight my kids. I’m going to try really hard not to force anyone to participate in this part of our day but rather to make it something they don’t want to miss out on.

Participate in daily family prayer time and catechesis
Gain an age appropriate understand of US History from Civil War to Present Day
Gain an age appropriate understanding of electricity and astronomy
Memorize some Shakespeare
Share good literature (favorite picture books and novels, history related literature)
Nature Study
Poetry
Folk Songs
Memorize Parts of the Mass in English and Latin

This comes pretty close to being All The Things. But there are some things I did leave out rather intentionally. For example, I won’t be studying grammar as a stand alone subject with any of my kids. I’m not adding handicrafts to the list of things I feel required to do. We’re not studying Latin as a stand alone subject this year. Picture Study didn’t make the final cut, though I long to make that happen at some point. I don’t have any specific, do-or-die reading or writing or math goals for my 4-year-old. (If you haven’t read my posts on a relaxed approach to the early years, check them out here.) There are times when I get all heart-poundy about leaving out these things. That’s why I’m being very intentional about setting my goals this year. It doesn’t mean we’ll never study grammar or Latin or handicrafts. It just means that this year, I’m not holding myself accountable for these things.

Also, there are a few things on this list that are a little aspirational. I really would like to do some sort of nature study this year, but I’ve never managed to make it happen in the past. I’m hoping to figure out a way to make it less overwhelming and more fun. I’ll share more thoughts on that later. Also, memorizing the parts of the Mass is something I see going out the window on all but the most perfect days. I’m hoping to figure out a schedule that makes sure that doesn’t happen.

In the next post, I’ll talk about my process for pulling together all the curriculum, books, and other resources I’ll use to teach these subjects.

So what are you excited about teaching this year? Anything you’re intentionally letting yourself off the hook for?

July 16, 2015 Schedules and Routines 1 Comment

Homeschool Planning Series: Planning the Calendar

As homeschoolers, we have the freedom of structuring our year and planning our homeschool calendar any way we want to. In my state, so long as I provide 172 days of instruction, I am free to choose any 172 days I wish. Which means if I want to take a whole month off at Christmas I can. It’s totally up to me.

For the last several years, I’ve simply followed the local public school calendar. I didn’t do this blindly, but rather because my kids are good friends with the neighbor kids and I wanted them to have freedom when their friends were free. Also, having lived according to the traditional school calendar for much of the first two decades of my life, thinking in terms of two semesters felt natural to me.

The fly in the ointment for me was that it seems that public school kids around here have a lot of random days off – especially in the first half of the year. I found it really hard to get into a rhythm and to get my kids on board with a regular routine. Also, I hated letting someone else dictate my family’s schedule.

More recently, I’ve been noticing how other homeschoolers, mostly bloggers I respect, plan their homeschool calendar. This brought to my attention a number of intriguing possibilities for organizing our school year.

Sarah Mackenzie (I know, I I’m always talking about Sarah, but she really is that great) at Amongst Lovely Things organizes her year into two month terms. Her goal is to school for six weeks out of every two months leaving 2-3 weeks of break every term. She can take these breaks in a chunk, or simply take days off as wanted or needed.

Mystie Winckler at Simply Convivial does something similar using six-week terms. She schools for six weeks and then takes a week off. She takes longer breaks at Christmas and in February (because February blues) and takes off the entire month of June. This differs from Sarah’s approach because Mystie pre-plans the weeks she will take off rather than using the days as she needs/wants them.

I know others who are less formal in their approach and just school year round without any need to break up the year into any official terms. These people tend to create their own curriculum or maybe lean toward unschooling, but for these families a school day is not all that different from a “day off.” They are always schooling and never schooling and truly integrate living with learning in a seamless sort of way. These people are probably not reading my planning posts. 🙂

Then there’s Melissa Wiley who coined the term “Tidal Home Schooling” to describe how her family tends “to ebb and flow between periods of ‘high tide’ times of structured learning . . . and ‘low tide,’ which looks a lot like unschooling.” Her words are beautiful and inspiring and worth a read.

Personally, I’m loving the idea of two-month terms with a focus for each term. We’ll start in August. August/September will be our easing in back-to-school term. October/November is our fall term with a full week off for Thanksgiving. December/January is our Advent/Christmas term. February/March is our Lent term with a full week off for Holy Week. April/May is our Easter/Spring term. June/July will be our summer term.

I’ll keep a simple calendar to mark off the days we do school and make sure we get in 6 weeks every two months. Our kids do an enrichment program one day a week making me responsible for 4 days a week of homeschooling. So I’ll need to make sure we do 24 days of school every two months. There are 43 weekdays in August/September. Taking out the Fridays (when the kids are in the enrichment program) leaves me with 35 days. Schooling for 24 out of 35 days. That seems doable.

Thinking of things this way gives me a lot of freedom to CHILL OUT when thinking of planning. Most homeschool curricula are based on a 36 week calendar. Many are based on 4 days a week leaving day 5 for co-ops and such. So this schedule allows me to finish any curriculum should I choose that route, while also allowing lots of freedom for field trips, play dates, movie days, sick days, snow days, and I-was-up-all-night-with-a-teething-baby days.

I’m the kind of person that functions best within a well-defined structure. But I also need lots of margin or I feel like I’m always behind, always failing. I am hoping that this approach to planning our year will help me feel simultaneously organized and relaxed.

So tell me. How do you organize your year?

July 14, 2015 Schedules and Routines Post a Comment

Homeschool Planning Series: Choosing the Subjects

In this installment of the planning series I discuss how I choose the subjects I will teach this year.

Is there anything more exciting than looking at all of the pretty curriculum catalogs and homeschool blogs and Pinterest boards and curriculum fair materials and thinking about all of the wonderful joyous time you’re going to spend with your cherubic children teaching them all the things?

That is, for the few brief moments before full blown panic sets in and you think “how in the world am I going to teach my little monsters anything at all let alone All The Things?”

Experiencing the bi-polar emotions of homeschool planning is one of the most challenging parts of homeschooling for me. I want to do it all. And I want to do it all in picture-perfect blog-worthy style filled with hot chocolate and hand-crafts and great living books while snuggled up with my precious children on the couch.

Sigh.

It is in my personal nature to have the above picture-perfect homeschool fantasy, realize that that’s never going to happen (at least not on any sort of consistent basis), and decide if it can’t be perfect than I might as well not even try.

That’s not the holiest part of my personal nature.

Over the years I have learned from some wonderful homeschooling moms, both online and in-real-life, that doing a little every day, even if it’s not perfect and even if it’s not “all the things,” can build something truly wonderful in you homeschool and in your family.

We have had our moments through the years.

And so, as I enter the phase of my yearly planning where I choose the subjects, I take the advice I learned from the great Sarah Mackenzie in her book “Teaching from a State of Rest.”

Namely: Major on the Majors and Simplify the Curriculum.

It’s hard, oh so hard, to take that advice. Because I want to do picture study and composer study and nature study and Shakespeare and a rich science curriculum filled with hands-on projects and all the language arts – grammar, spelling, mechanics, essay composition, dictation, copywork – all of it! I want to fill the days with handcrafts and fine art and rich, deep history unit studies and amazing field trips and music lessons and daily mass and service projects. I want to do it all!

My husband is an economist so he’s always telling me that choosing one thing necessarily means not choosing something else that may be equally good. For him, this is simply applied logic. But to me it is THE great unfairness of the universe that makes me cry out to heaven, “But I want to do it all!!!!!”

Unfortunately, God in His wisdom has not seen fit to provide me with more than the 24 hours a day he has allotted to everyone else, and so I must learn to spend these precious hours wisely. I should not try to cram them with all the things. Nor should I allow them to simply fill up with crap because I failed to plan to fill them with Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

And so, as I plan this year, I am prayerfully discerning what Major on the Majors means for each of my children. I decided to ask the Holy Spirit to guide me in making a list for each of my kiddos for the next year. I didn’t get all fancy about it, I just opened a google doc for each kid and started typing.

I was surprised at how quickly this distilled and clarified things for me. (Not sure why I am always surprised by the good things that come when I ask the Holy Spirit for guidance. I really should call on him more often!)

I have a second grader who will be preparing for her first reconciliation and first holy communion this year. So that’s of prime importance. She also needs to continue to strengthen her reading skills – that’s goal number 2. For math, I want her to memorize all of the addition and subtraction facts. Sure, we’ll work on other stuff, but if she knows those facts cold by the end of the year, I’ll call it a success. Finally, I asked what character traits this child needs to concentrate on at this time. I didn’t think long. The answers were fairly clear to me – responsibility and humility.

So boom. There I have it. Four Majors for my second grader. Could I fill up our schedule and stress myself out over at least a dozen other subjects? Yes. And honestly, I probably will. But at least I have this list to come back to and say “if you’re doing this, you’re doing enough. Everything else is gravy.”

Also, now I know that even if I teach her how to knit a sweater and she memorizes all of the presidents in order and she learns to speak fluent Swahili, if I haven’t helped her to improve her reading or helped to teach her responsibility and humility, I haven’t done what the Holy Spirit asked me to do for her this year.

Once I’ve clarified the fundamental goals for each kid, I make a list of all of the subjects I want to teach or feel like I should teach. This includes stuff like science, history, Shakespeare, poetry. This list can end up being All The Things. At this stage of the game, I’m not ready to completely give up on that fantasy. But that’s ok. I’ll get more realistic in the next couple of steps, and I have my list of Majors to guide me.

If you’re interested in what this process yielded for me for this year, stay tuned! These first posts will talk about my process – then I’ll share with you the results.

In the next post I’ll share the process I use to decide how I will plan my year once I’ve decided the subjects I will teach.

In the mean time, tell me, how do you decide which subjects to teach each year?

List Links to other useful posts on this subject:
If you haven’t read Sarah Mackenzie’s posts on Simplifying the Curriculum or Planning to Teach from Rest go ahead and click on those right now. They’ll open in a new window and you can read them now or save them for later. They’re very good and they’ve inspired a lot of my thinking about this.

July 13, 2015 Schedules and Routines Post a Comment

Homeschool Planning Series

It’s July and my thoughts are deep in planning mode for our next school year. This is my favorite part of homeschooling because I get to reimagine a flawless future in which I teach All The Things and my appreciative, well-behaved children dutifully and joyfully soak up the amazing lessons I’ve prepared for them before heading off to spend the afternoon designing a device to help blind kids learn braille.

What? That’s not your favorite part of homeschooling?

I think of planning in three steps. First, is the research and discovery phase. That’s where I comb blogs, read books, search pinterest, visit curriculum vendors online, and add 203 books to my Amazon wishlist. At the end of this phase I want to know two things:

1) What subjects I want to teach and

2) How I want to organize my year.

The second phase is where I narrow down the curriculum/resources I want to use and map out my year according to the organizational structure I chose in Phase 1.

The third phase is where I get down to the nitty gritty of planning our weeks and days. It’s my least favorite phase because my fantasies of teaching All The Things to appreciative well-behaved children is replaced by the reality of needing to feed people, take care of the house, nurse a baby and still teach my sometimes reluctant, sometimes bratty children.

But I’m still in Phase 1. Hooray! And here I will share some of the thoughts and resources I’m finding useful in case you want to fantasize – um, plan – along with me

I’m going to break Phase 1 into two posts – Choosing Subjects and Organizing the Year. Sit tight. There’s more to come!

April 14, 2015 Book Reviews: Books for Children, Media Reviews, Morning Basket, Our Faith, Preschoolers Post a Comment

Tell Me about the Catholic Faith for Small Children {Book Review}

This year, along with the usual assortment of crazy making candy and that magical substance that removes newspaper ink from paper and holds tight to the fibers of my couch and the seat of my pants, the Easter Bunny delivered new books for each of the children. They each received a book about the faith and a fun book. The Easter Bunny had a blast picking them out and in the process began quite a long Amazon.com wishlist of other good books for Catholic children. The Easter Bunny will now be asking Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy to help him complete his wishlist.

I told the Easter Bunny I would submit a formal review of each of the books he delivered so that he will know whether to deliver these books to other children in the future.

Tell Me about the Catholic Faith for Small Children by Christine Pedotti looked like the perfect book for a 4 year old. I was super excited when I flipped through it. It walks you through salvation history beginning with the creation story, through Noah, Abraham, the escape from Egypt, David and the Prophets. Then it takes you through the New Testament hitting all the highlights. But there are plenty of children’s Bibles that also do this and, honestly, do a better job of it.

The best part of the book, the part I was most excited about, are the last two sections titled “The Christian Faithful” and “The Catholic Faith.” “The Christian Faithful” section speaks about the early church from the first Christians through Saints from our time. It highlights missionaries, monks, and “super Saints” like John Bosco and Therese of Lisieux.

The final section, “The Catholic Faith,” is a sort of mini catechism. It talks about prayer, the sacraments, death, Christmas, Easter and the Church. It speaks to children at their level and encourages virtues such as forgiving, sharing, and welcoming.

So here’s what I like about the book. The illustrations are nice. They appeal to children without being childish. They are simple and colorful and add a lot to the text. I also really like the scope of the book. It touches on all the major topics you would want to cover with a young child. Everything is in here from creation to St. John Paul II, Christian living, the Church and the Sacraments. It makes a really great starting point for conversation.

The book’s weakness is in it’s breadth. In trying to cover all of salvation history in 93 pages with illustrations and at a level appropriate for a 3-7 year old, well, I’m not sure it can be done well. Some parts are great. The two page spread on baptism does a great job of communicating the basic form of the sacrament and the joy involved. But the one sentence summary of baptism on the sacraments’ page is pretty weak: “Through baptism, we are bathed in the love of God.” Nothing about being cleansed or purified or our need for God’s love.

There are many places in the book where it simply doesn’t make sense if you don’t have any background knowledge of the faith. Imagine you know nothing of Christianity or the Saints and that you’re 4 years old and someone reads this to you: “Clare asked Francis to cut off her long hair. She wanted to love Jesus more than anything else.” Ummm. Okay. What in the world does cutting off long hair have to do with loving Jesus? This one sentence just isn’t sufficient to properly communicate what is happening here. Also, is this the one most important thing about Saint Clare?

I was actually planning to return the book, but then I saw my 9 year old snuggled up in our rocking chair reading it to himself. He has much more context for the book than my younger children, and he really enjoys it.

In my final assessment, I would say that this book is great as a conversation starter. It might prompt you to tell your child more about St. Clare, for example. The pictures are really nice, and it brings up a lot of important stories and ideas. But it is so incomplete in it’s explanations. I would have much preferred if the author had either limited her scope or had expanded the book into a four book series going a bit more in depth into each of the four sections of this book.

I would love suggestions for a first catechism type book for 3-7 year olds with beautiful illustrations and age-appropriate explanations of our faith. And stay tuned for more reviews of the Easter Bunny’s books. There are a few I really love!

October 7, 2014 Encouragement, Our Homeschool, Parenting 1 Comment

Clash of Desires: Follow the schedule or go to the farm?

When I began this little project of getting more organized, more intentional, and more disciplined in my homeschooling vocation, one of the things that concerned me was how this would interplay with the freedom I have as a homeschooler to do the fun stuff. In the past, we have spent a lot of time going on field trips, and the fall, in particular, is a time when I like to literally “head for the hills” with my children to soak in the glory that is October in Colorado.

But this year we have a schedule. And not just a schedule. We have a Classical Conversations co-op. With assignments. And teachers. And due dates.

And it’s a lot.

A couple of weeks ago I had a slight breakdown about the new character of our homeschool. It’s harvest festival time, and every year for the last four years we have gone to the farm with friends to harvest a car load of vegetables, ride on tractors, climb into broken old cars and fire trucks and amusement park rides, and slide down an enormous dirt hill on Tonka trucks. (If you are in Colorado and you haven’t been to the Miller Farms harvest festival, you are missing out. Go.)

As I cried to my husband about how we don’t have time to do the fun stuff anymore and it’s not fair to my littler ones and maybe this whole thing isn’t working out after all, he looked at me and said, “You know, going to the farm is just as important to their education as the book work you’re doing.” And he’s right. And I know he’s right. And that’s my dilemma. Because we still have a Classical Conversations co-op. With assignments. And teachers. And due dates.

But I decided to rage against the machine and get the gang together for a trip to the farm. We picked our day (yesterday) and as I put it on the calendar I realized that I have another big field trip scheduled this week. On Wednesday we’re going to a glorious Colorado nature park to have a park ranger teach us about bugs and the riparian eco-system.

No trouble, I thought. We’ll work ahead this weekend to get the co-op assignments ready. It will be fine. But Saturday we went to the Harvest Festival at the historic park near our house. (No actual harvesting happens here, but there are stagecoach rides. And apple cider doughnuts. I go for the doughnuts.) Saturday afternoon Helen and I went to see the Midsummer Night’s Dream ballet with my lovely and generous sister-in-law and my niece.

Sunday morning was church and hanging out afterwards with friends. Sunday afternoon was taken up with “daddy time” for each of the kids. (Our lives are not usually this jam-packed with fun stuff, it’s just a good week!)

So here it is Tuesday morning and we have basically one day to do all of the assignments we normally spread out over 5 or 6 days.

And I just don’t know if it’s going to happen. And I don’t know what I’m going to do if it doesn’t.

The consequences won’t be dire. Henry won’t get his stickers toward his end of the year prize. He won’t have a stellar presentation for class. He may not have a final draft (or even a rough draft, honestly) to share in his writing class and won’t receive tickets for the end of the year carnival.

I’m stuck with this internal struggle to conform to someone else’s standard. I feel resentful of having my child manipulated by peer pressure and token systems. I feel torn between appreciating the structure and accountability this co-op offers as I endeavor to improve the academic part of our homeschool, and resenting the loss of freedom to take things at our own pace.

I don’t know how this all will shake out. When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

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