One Week Down and About 39 More to Go

We had a wonderful first week! I may sound overly positive, but I’ve never used the words “wonderful” and “first week” together before. Usually it’s “good,” “survived,” or “somewhat productive.” But we actually had a wonderful first week.

With the exception of Thursday, which in itself was a lesson learned, we accomplished everything we set out to accomplish each day. The first two days we the boys did half of their lessons, Meme did nearly a whole day of school, and we figured out what Jojo can and can’t do in the morning. She can’t read in bed, because she simply falls asleep, but she’s not yet awake enough to do math.

Wednesday and Friday we did even more. The boys completed a full day’s worth of lessons, and Meme started stepping up and getting more done.

Jojo is still finding her own pace. She hasn’t been feeling well for months and months, with non-specific symptoms. The doctors haven’t managed to find anything, although she’s had a great many tests run on her. She’s starting to feel better, but neither her appetite nor her energy level has returned to normal. She’s a hard worker, but during the last few months, she gets overwhelmed easily.

It was a big accomplishment for her that she stayed awake during school hours all week, eat something at each mealtime, and actually get some schoolwork done. It’s a start, and I’m confident that she’ll return back to her normal, energetic self.

Jojo is technically my only homeschooler. By using K12, the other three are technically public school students. Only technically though. Believe me when I say that I have more interaction in their day to day studies while on K12 than I did when they were “homeschoolers.” Especially with the younger grades, K12 is very parent involved.

Other people have said this about me, but I don’t see how some families with multiple young children can do it. Mine are spaced perfectly apart for using K12. Meme is pretty much self-directed.  The only thing I do is look over her progress and push her back on the path with the subjects she tries to avoid. With Bobo and Ebby, it’s all ME.

Bobo is not reading fluently enough to understand the directions, and Ebby doesn’t read. We’re working out a good system. Most of Ebby’s classes take a few minutes for him to do.  We alternate between a Bobo class and an Ebby class. Bobo will generally do his off-line worksheets while Ebby does his on-line classes.

Then in the late afternoon, when Ebby is done, I have Jojo read to him or sit with him, while Bobo and I get 45 minutes to an hour by ourselves to do language arts.  My hope is that by the time Ebby’s work is actually challenging to him, Bobo will be reading well enough to do some things without my direct help.

My biggest worry right now is that my enthusiasm and dedication will fail.  It’s not a worry ungrounded in reality. Most years start off great, and then I get frustrated at the stubbornness of the children to do their schoolwork, the time it takes and everything else.  Once I’m frustrated, it’s only a matter of time before I start slowing down and letting things slide.

I’m determined not to have this happen this year. Part of that plan is being realistic in what we can do during the day.  I need to remember that homeschooling my children is my job. It’s okay if I can’t clean house, do laundry or cook during school hours. And if something has to slide, those things should be first.

For class planning: Meme and the boys have their classes planned and laid out for them – that’s the benefit of using the system.

Jojo, however, we’re still working on this year’s “class schedule.” She gets the flexibility that a system like K12 or Connections Academy won’t have, but we have to do all the planning.

We sat down yesterday to look through the curricula I have for high school, and of course I’m like a kid in a candy store. “You should do this class.” “Oh and this class is really important.”

She just sits back quietly; after all she knows me well. After I’ve filled a page with a long list of classes I want her to work on, I turn to her and say, “I’ve gone overboard again, haven’t I?”

“Yes, Mom,” she replies in her patient tone, “you have.” We sat the project aside so that I can clear my head, and we’re working on it this weekend.

Literature she has in the bag. She is one of the most well read kids that I know for her age. Only Algernon had read more books by this time, and Algernon is a prodigy with literature and reading.

I have the writing program that I used. It’s old, but it’s good. She started it about a month ago, and it’s working really well. So we’ll stick with that.

For math, we have a good solid plan for. Our plan: do it everyday. It may not seem like much, but it should do the trick.

Now here’s where I get overly enthusiastic.

Social studies. She really should have civics; as an adult I see the importance of it. Then world geography is important. We are more global now than we have ever been, so it is more important for emerging adults to know about the world and cultures. And economics. Seriously, how many of us would have benefited greatly if we had gone into adulthood knowing a bit more about personal economics. Then I found this great curriculum that teaches basic life skills. It’s actually called Discovering Life Skills. It teaches all those little things that most of us had to learn the hard way.

You see why it is wonderful that Jojo is so patient with me. I get like this every year. She let it run its course, and that’s about when we put things away.

We settled on:

·         Finding a science curriculum that she can work with. She hates science, and I think it’s only because it’s never been presented to her in the right way.

·         Limit social studies to one at a time. She may be able to do multiple ones this year, but not all at once.

·         Start some sort of test prep. Her eligibility to get TOPS (Louisiana’s general scholarship) is based solely on her ACT scores. The better she does, the more she gets.

·         Pick a foreign language and find a systematic curriculum to use. I think we’re about settled on German.

 
I have my homework for this weekend laid out. By Monday, I’m hoping we have a solid plan of action and that I still have the enthusiasm to push through until it’s not as exhausting.

Errands? NO!

Errands are not feasible on school days! The morning started out very nice. We all woke up early. Since I had been putting off going to the grocery since last week, Meme informed me that we were out of cat food as of this morning.  That leads to the question of going now, this afternoon or sending my husband to do it.

My husband is a great shopper, but the last time I sent him to the store for milk, he came back with 6 half gallons of ice cream. So, I thought, “Let’s just get it out the way.” 

We made a quick stop at the thrift store near the shopping place. We were in and out in under 45 minutes, which for us is super speedy. Then there was Walmart. It was still fairly early when we started, so I was hopeful of getting home before lunch and diving in to lessons.

I guess local schools are starting within the next week, because it was jammed with people buying school supplies. Between the crowds, wrangling Ebby who wanted to look at and touch everything, and the lack of open cashiers, it was after 1pm when we finally got home.

Meme, thankfully and brightly, stayed home to get some schoolwork done – she had a wry grin on her face as we left. but Jojo and I were exhausted by the time we got home, the van unloaded and groceries put away. By the time we got lunch and a load of laundry started, it was almost 3:00.  I managed to work on phonics with Bobo, but that was it.

I did however find all I needed for school supplies. I admit, the trip would have been much faster if I had avoided those aisles, but I did that last year. By the time I got back to purchase my things, the shops were out of everything that was on sale. With homeschooling 4 children, we try to get everything on sale!

 
So, no more running errands during the school day for us.  I remember sometime last year when waking up at 6 am on a Saturday to do grocery shopping seemed like a good idea. And I did it for several months. Now I remember why it was so appealing even to me, who is not a morning person. You just have to do things when the need to get done.

Time Management? First I Need Time in Order to Manage It.

I sometimes find home-schooling advice in unlikely places.

Marion Zimmer Bradley is one of my favorite authors for light sci-fi reading, and I loved reading her editorials to new writers. One thing she said over and over that’s stuck with me for 20 years is that if you want to write, you have to do it despite constant interruptions from children, expectations of dinner and overwhelming piles of laundry. Using those as an excuse isn’t acceptable. If you can’t write while carrying on a conversation with a toddler, then you need to try harder.  I think the same goes for homeschooling.

5 monkeys and 1 one mom. You do the math. It’s true that not all of my monkeys are young children, but another gem of advice MZB said was that, yes, little kids can be constant interruptions, but their problems are usually along the lines of “I want a pb&j sandwich.” Whereas the problems pre-teen, teen and young adult monkeys bring to you are less often but so much more emotionally draining. Oh boy, was she right!

One more thing that Marion said which also applies to the home-school mom: make prolific use of your crock-pot.

Of all the things I do well, time management is not one of them. Not even close. I say this as I sit here writing rather than thinking of dinner, doing the dishes, getting dressed or a dozen other things that should be done by now.

I’ve tried several methods over the years to help be a more productive person. Lists. Schedules. Dry erase calendars. Computer programs that make awful noises to remind me of things.

I could argue that I have logged more hours creating the lists and schedules than using them, and my husband would agree. It’s not an onerous task; I love making lists and schedules. One might say that I love making lists and schedules a little too much, but I can’t deny their effectiveness – if followed, that is.

One book I am incredibly glad a fellow home-school mom recommended is Managers of Their Homes (MOTH) by Steve & Teri Maxwell (http://www.titus2.com/ecommerce/products/prod_listing.php/1100), who at the time that they wrote it home-schooled all 6, or was it 7, of their kids.

It has a strong religious bent (and yes, I am a secular homeschooler) that should be taken with a grain of salt, but I’ve never found a better book on making schedules for a homeschool family. Some of our parenting techniques clashed big time (she is not the attachment parent/extended breastfeeding/natural whole foods foodie that I attempt to be), but she gives advice that I still use.

 A few good kernels I learned from MOTH, other books and personal experience:

• Use MS Excel or another database program. It’s much easier to copy and paste when adjusting your schedule than erase and rewrite.
• Break the day up into 30 minute chunks, which are easier to handle and divvy out.
• Break your schedule up into days. I use a different page for each day of the week (no, I don’t make one for the weekends). Our Mondays look nothing like our Tuesdays. It was impossible to fit everything in at the same times everyday. So I prioritize and schedule the core elements in the most flexible time slots every day after I’ve plugged in our floating activities, such as co-op, scouts or park day.
• If possible, have at least one main schedule for each day that has everyone’s itinerary on it. That way I don’t schedule an intense math lesson with Meme at the same time as I’m reviewing reading with Bobo.
• With large families, kids must help. One of the most important lessons we can teach our monkeys is that we actually do have to work to be successful at anything. If your child does no chores, doesn’t help with his/her siblings and simply lounges around during all of their free time, the rude awakening they get when they step out of your house as an adult will be large indeed, and they may never recover.  Having your child do no chores does them a great disservice.

Here’s a sample schedule I made years ago when we only had 3 monkeys.

A pretty simple lay out. I love using colors to help read the columns more easily. 

Here’s another with more monkeys.

As the kids get older, I’ve tried both segmenting their days into half-hour chunks with different subjects and lumping them into 2 to 3 hour chunks of “school-work,” and I can’t tell you which method works best. It all depends on the child. Jojo does better with a whole list of things she should be doing, and then she one-by-one knocks them out. Meme likes knowing what she should be doing at what time. It’s 1:00 and you should be on your math work now, works best for her.

Most of all, be flexible. I can say that I spend all that time making a schedule and then never stick to it. It gives me a framework upon which to hang my day and something to refer back to when I can’t remember what we haven’t done, but I don’t have to stick to it no matter what.