Hiatus

I know there has been a lack of posting lately. Truth is, after writing up a summer schedule we decided it would be best to take the summer off. Lately it had seemed like things were just pilling up too much and trying to stay on top of it was just too hard. In the end we figured a summer off wouldn't hurt the boys so we took it. Optimus Prime & Bumblebee still had to do their reading and spelling, while Scooby-Doo got the whole summer off.

We've started school work again. Actually, we started it last month. I'll fix the post about our summer schedule and post our new one in a few days here. And I'll get around to updating all of our pages and posting what is going on as well. It's just going to take a bit of time to get the blog back on schedule!

As for Scooby-Doo's therapy, I have no idea what is going on there. We somehow seemed to have gotten into a fight with the elementary school because we are choosing to homeschool instead of sending him there. They are now denying us services. I'm a bit confused. All along they knew we were homeschooling and they said it was no issue. Now all the sudden it is. Wednesday when my husband picked him up from therapy he was given an ultimatum about enrolling Scooby-Doo in Pre-K (which, Scooby-Doo is currently homeschooling in Kindergarten). He opted not to enroll our son. Later that day I received an email from them saying our son now no longer qualifies for therapy. I'm a bit confused, and I'm not entirely sure if it is legal. However, all of this is for another post after I get everything with them straightened out. 

So, we have quite a bit going on in our lives right now so posting will be a bit spotty for this quarter. However, I will try to get everything up and get this blog back on track by the end of October.

Long Break = Big Changes

So, I know I've been pretty absent for these past two months. The reason why was a lot of big changes going on in our house and in our homeschooling that kept me from blogging. I've been pretty busy, busy, busy.

These changes are going to be reflected on this blog pretty soon.

Optimus Prime & Bumblebee are at the point in their homeschooling that they are ready to move on and do different things. Even though they are in the same grade they are at different levels in some subjects and they have different interests in general. I've been trying to keep them on the same schedule, but that is starting to hold them back in areas where they are ready and eager to excel. It's time to let them move on into new territories on their own. This has effectively doubled my workload as I now have to write up two different curriculum's for them in some subjects!

Scooby-Doo is going to be preschool age in August. He still goes to therapy, and the school district is willing to let him sit in at preschool for an hour a couple of days a week, so his schedule is going to be VERY busy outside of our home. Likewise, he'll be officially starting pre-k here at home, so my workload just doubled! I wanted him to t-ball this year, but he is STILL too young according to the slip. They probably would have made an exception if I had asked them too, but with us packing and getting ready to move I had to make the tough choice to not sign him up.

So, changes in the blog and curriculum. What are they? I'm beginning to combine subjects for Optimus Prime & Bumblebee. Geography will be combined with History, Mythology, and Religion. These subjects really overlap so much already, and there was some overlap in our curriculum as it was, so now these subjects will be completely combined. Likewise, Reading will be combined with English, and after our summer quarter so will Spelling. This will help me to make Spelling and English units based on books we are reading.

Optimus Prime will be moving ahead in English/Spelling/Reading. I've been holding him back for too long waiting for his brother to catch up. He needs to start moving on to chapter books. Likewise, Bumblebee will be moving ahead in Math. He's been held back too long waiting for his brother to catch up. He needs to start multiplication.

Concept Weeks are going to be retired for Optimus Prime & Bumblebee. Or, I guess, it would be more accurate to say that they are going to be assimilated into History/Geography/Mythology/Religion and Science. All of our previous Concept Weeks have been based on these subjects, so from now on units in these subjects will be weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. For example, this summer in Science we'll be covering weather and the earth for a month and a half, followed by birds, fish, and water mammals for a month and a half. In History we'll cover ancient Egypt for a month, followed by ancient Greece and ancient Rome for a month each. When we cover these History units we will also go over the geography of the region as well as the religious beliefs and myths of those regions.

Another big change is retiring our workbooks for Optimus Prime & Bumblebee. This isn't to say we'll never do workbooks any more, but for most subjects they are going to disappear. Math will still be largely workbook based, but Science and History will largely be reading and lapbook based and English will be based entirely around books we are reading.

Everything is getting combined and shaken up.

Scooby-Doo's workload is going to change too. We'll start covering more things than the basics. Counting, the alphabet, colors, shapes, same or different, mazes, dot-to-dots, picture finds, etc are all important but it's time to start expanding his horizon in his schoolwork. Yes, I do read to him a lot (when he's in the mood for it, which is NOT everyday) but he really loves worksheets, so I'm going to take advantage of that and start introducing other subjects into our curriculum. I haven't planned out all the details yet, but I've begun playing with some ideas (like giving him Concept Weeks) and should know what I'm looking to do by the end of next week.

Lastly, our Two Week Review post is getting retired. I'm still going to give updates on how they are doing, but it'll be a monthly post instead of every two weeks. Also, this will retroactively start this current quarter! In the next few days I'll try to get our February and March post up so you know what we've been doing.

Like I said, big changes!

Lack of Posts

I'm sorry about the lack of posts, it's not intentional. My doctor put me on a new medication that is currently, MAJORLY, kicking my butt. I'm sleeping 12 hours a day and I spend the other 12 hours a day wishing I could sleep some more. I'm exhausted all the time & I've dropped over 13 lbs from it - 10 of those pounds were in the first week! I'm very tired and it's bleeding over into other aspects of my life. Like blogging. I'm just too tired to blog or to do more than the basics as far as homeschooling goes. I'm hoping my body will adjust to the medication soon here, it's been almost a month now. My appetite is back so I'm not dropping weight like crazy anymore (though the scale is still moving downwards) so I'm hoping that the exhaustion will go away soon as well. So, for the rest of the month I'll try to catch up on posting but I'm not making any promises!

Questions: Homeschooling & Scheduling

Okay, as promised here is a "Part 2" to yesterday's post.  Yesterday I talked about time - making time for homeschooling, how much time we homeschool, etc.  Today I'm going to talk about scheduling.  These two topics always seem to go hand-in-hand so I hope this helps any questions you have.  Any more, feel free to ask.

Do you have a set schedule?

Yes... and no.  We have a set schedule for the six subjects a day that Optimus Prime & Bumblebee do, but that's it.  Scooby-Doo is isn't even preschool age yet, if he doesn't want to do his worksheets he doesn't have to.  We don't have a set "story time" or anything like that.  We read what we want, when we want.

What is your schedule?

(You can always find Optimus Prime & Bumblebee's current schedule on their page and Scooby-Doo's current schedule on his.)

We have two schedules, the morning schedule and the afternoon/evening schedule.

In the morning we do all of our schoolwork and chores.  We have breakfast and get dressed, then Optimus Prime & Bumblebee will do three subjects, usually followed by Scooby-Doo doing his schoolwork, followed by most of our chores for the day, followed by Optimus Prime & Bumblebee's other three subjects, followed by lunch, followed by cleaning up all the schoolwork supplies and dishes.

In the afternoon we read books, play games, do puzzles, watch a documentary, practice reading with Optimus Prime & Bumblebee, Scooby-Doo will sometimes takes a nap, things like that.  The morning rush is followed by an easy day with a lot of relaxing, goofing off, and very few chores.

Right now our morning schedule is abridged because Scooby-Doo's speech therapy was more than we though it was going to be, and our afternoon schedule does not have any tv right now and not as much playtime, but it's still essentially the same.

Do you have to write up a schedule?

This really depends on the state where you live.  We live in Texas, so the answer is no.  If you live in New York, then the answer is yes, you legally have to have a schedule in case the state decides to stop by your house to make sure you're actually homeschooling your kids.

Now, if we take the legality aspect of the answer away (because it varies state-by-state) then my answer to you would be do what works best for you & your family.  In the case of my family, my kids like a set schedule in the morning for their schoolwork and chores, followed by an unstructured day of playing and reading with very few chores.  In the afternoon if I need their help with a chore, or decide it's time to read a book then I'll give them a 5 or 10 minute warning so there are no meltdowns or freakouts when they have to stop and come over to do something else.

Do you recommend writing a schedule?

Yes, yes I do.  Even if it is just a rough out line for the day/week/month you want to make sure you are covering your bases and not shortchanging your kids.  Your kid needs to learn addition, subtraction, how to read, etc. and personally I really think you should have a plan to meet those goals.  Now, do you need to write up a super detailed lesson plan for the day/week/month?  No.  Unless, of course, you want to.  A rough outline will work beautifully, trust me.  Just so long as you know your goals and can see them on paper it will help you to meet your goals.

Do you like having a set schedule?

No, I actually hate it.  I'm lazy and just want to lay in bed all day and read books (by myself or with my kids).  But life doesn't work that way, and stuff needs to get done.  Everyone likes the morning schedule routine, and everyone likes like afternoon free-for-all, so we go with that.

Do you ever change your schedule?

Dear god, yes!  Every three months.  We don't want things to get boring here!  I change what subjects we cover, the order we cover them in, the number of pages we do, the number of subjects a day, etc.  By the time we get halfway through month three of our schedule everyone's ready for a change.  So I change it.  Homeschooling shouldn't be monotonous.

Also, sometimes plans change and schedules need to be adjusted.  It's all swell and fine to write up an entire school years schedule (and in some states you legally have to) but if you plan for one month of number order in September, followed by one month of addition in October, followed by one month of subtraction in November, followed by one month of fractions in December, followed by one month of counting by fives in January, followed by one month of counting by tens in February, followed by one month of telling time in March, followed by a month of money in April, what happens when it's week three of March and you never want to look at a clock again in your life and you start getting bitchy during math lessons?  Or your kid still needs help with subtraction in January?

It's currently March.  Optimus Prime still needs to draw circles and x them out when doing subtraction problems, and half the time he still gets the answers wrong.  If I had a schedule like the one I just mentioned I'd be pulling my hair out right now.  I'd be freaking out saying, "How can he still not get it?!?  We're supposed to be on telling time right now!"  Instead I'm not worried about it.  Our current schedule just says "4 pages of math."  Right now we are reviewing number order, to make sure they still have it down.  We'll come back to subtraction after we've all had a nice break from it.

What do you do when your schedule changes/is disrupted?

Okay, I hope you have a couple of hours to read about my personal life.

Kids get sick, you get sick, relatives from across the country come to visit, you relocate to a new town halfway across the country, your youngest has to go to speech therapy, your oldest two have to play t-ball, etc.  These are all scenarios that we have faced, and I've probably left out a few.  When Optimus Prime & Bumblebee were in kindergarten the whole family was so sick for two months straight we didn't do a single bit of schoolwork.  We got the worst flu I've ever seen.  Everyone was piled in bed watching movies on the computer or sleeping because there was nothing else we could do.  Except for my poor husband, who actually went to work each day.  We made up all that schoolwork over the next month.  Everyday we did three day's worth of schoolwork, so we didn't fall behind.  I was determined, and they were good sports about it.  I think they were just relieved to be better again and back onto our regular schedule.

When they were in pre-k Scooby-Doo was so sick for four months straight that we just stopped homeschooling.  This was also coupled with a move from Alaska to Texas.  I was running on less than four hours of sleep a day, worried sick about my newborn.  I was in no position to homeschool anyone.  It was no big deal because they were in pre-k, and had been doing pre-k since they were 3.  If it was another grade we would of made up the schoolwork, but at that time we weren't doing a set schedule.  Everyday for pre-k we were just doing whatever we wanted, so we shelved the workbooks until Scooby-Doo got better.

These were major disruptions, and we bounced back.  And it made us love homeschooling even more.  Could you imagine pulling your kids out of school for two months straight because they couldn't seen to stop catching the flu?  The back log of homework would of been hell, and my kids would of been so far behind.  Instead, there was no stress, no worry.  We caught up, we moved on.

If you can get over a major disruption like that, then small ones are no biggie.  We have shitty days.  Days when the kids are sick, days when they can't seem to focus, days when they just need a day off.  I just swap our schedules a bit.  Take off an extra day and make it up later on in the week.  Do a little extra work each day or skip one of our normal days off.  Just this week, actually, I let my kids take Thursday off and we did Thursday's schoolwork on Saturday.  They were feeling burned out and wanted a day off so I let them.

Now, if a planned short-term disruption is coming up than you can just adjust your schedule accordingly.  My grandmother is coming to visit in April.  Every time she comes, no matter how hard I try, we do not stay on schedule.  So, the week before she comes we always double up on our schoolwork.  If we do schoolwork when she's here then we are doing it ahead of schedule.  If we do none, then we're just fine when she leaves and my kids just got a week off.  It's win-win as far as I'm concerned.

If a planned long-term disruption is coming up then just fix your schedule.  Our schedule is not set in stone.  Once I write it I try to do everything in my power to stick to it for the next three months but sometimes it just doesn't work and you have to start from scratch.  Take this quarter.  I knew Scooby-Doo had to do speech therapy, but I thought it was just going to be for two days a week, half an hour a day.  "No biggie," I thought.  "We can keep our schedule and just tweak it a bit.  We can still do our six subjects a day for Optimus Prime & Bumblebee.  We'll play Scooby-Doo's schoolwork by ear.  Yes it will suck for those two days that we have to be out of town for 1 1/2 hours, but I can just make those our days off, or make one of them our day off to help lighten the load."

Then came the reality check.  It was speech therapy everyday for two hours a day (plus an hour in the car).  Our schedule lasted one week, and let me tell you it was a stressful week.  So I tossed it and wrote a new one.  I'm not happy with our current schedule, but it'll have to do for something written on the spur of the moment, and we're committed by this point in time.

The good thing about homeschooling is your ability to adapt to any situation and still come out ahead.  I wish our current schedule looks different, but the major focus on reading has helped Optimus Prime & Bumblebee make huge leaps in that area in just the past few weeks.  The other day Optimus Prime read a page in Fancy Nancy almost completely by himself.  He didn't know two of the words (and they were big words) and he needed prompting with two other words.  It was a huge breakthrough moment for him that made him (and me) realize that all his hard work was starting to pay off.

Sometimes our schedule gets disrupted beyond repair, but we just bounce back with a new set of goals, and we meet them.

I hope all of this helps!

Questions: Homeschooling & Time

People ask me a lot of questions about homeschooling, and you know what?  That's fine.  I homeschool, I love homeschooling, and I love talking about homeschooling.  A lot.

Seriously, I could talk about it all day, and some days I do.

I get asked so many questions about it that I decided I need to start writing posts about them to help everyone out.  So here's my first one.

The biggest one (at least lately) is the time factor question, and the questions that always seem to overlap with it.  So, here are the questions I've been asked (and asked, and asked) along with my responses.  Hopefully they will help.  Tomorrow I'll put a sort of "Part 2" of this post that tackles the question of scheduling, since those two questions always seem to go hand and hand.

Also, please don't think that just because I wrote this post I don't want people asking me about homeschooling.  I don't mind getting asked questions about it.  Seriously, I don't.  This post is more for people who haven't emailed me yet, or who are too afraid to.  Any questions you have just ask away and I will gladly answer.

How many hours a day do you homeschool?

It varies day by day.  By our old/usual schedule we spend at least 1 1/2 hours and at most 3 hours.  It depends on everyone's mood, how well everyone is able to focus, and what our workload looks like.  On a perfect day, Optimus Prime & Bumblebee do three subjects in the morning for 30 minutes, 3 subjects right before lunch for 30 minutes, and Scooby-Doo does his schoolwork for 30 minutes somewhere in there.  Spread throughout the day we read board books, storybooks, and chapter books.  Optimus Prime & Bumblebee will practice their reading, or counting by 5's or 10's, or work on puzzles.  Some days they play school with their dinosaurs or stuffed animals teaching them the same things they or their baby brother are learning.

Right now our schedule is a bit disrupted because Scooby-Doo goes to speech therapy everyday for 2 hours, and we have an hour round trip to get him to and from there.  So, right now we only do schoolwork for about 1-1 1/2 hours each day.  Optimus Prime & Bumblebee, on a perfect day, will do 3 subjects for 30 minutes in the morning followed immediately by Scooby-Doo doing his for 30 minutes.  We then clean up, have lunch, load up the car, and take Scooby-Doo to speech therapy.  While he's there we go off to the library to practice their reading and I'll read them some storybooks or a chapter book.  We do this for about 1 1/2 hours everyday.

Is homeschooling your kids hard to do/lots of work?

Ummmm, no.  Actually, it's really easy and loads of fun.  Like I said, we don't have to spend much time on it each day so it's easy in that sense.  Also, it's fun to plan schoolwork lessons around things like Batman.  Or Halloween.  Or Vikings.  Or whatever strikes your (and your kids) fancy.

As far as lots of work, it can feel that way when you start out and you're a bit lost and confused and you're worried about doing it wrong, but give it a couple of weeks (or even months) and you'll find your stride and the work will just kind of disappear.  It's only as hard and complex as you make it.

Where do you find the time?

We have a set schedule in the morning and that really helps (more on that tomorrow).  Otherwise it only takes a few minutes here, a few minutes there.  Plus, you can incorporate homeschooling into any activity.  Baking a cake uses fractions & math, if you have dvd's some movies have a Spanish (or French) language option, you can read signs as you walk your kids to the park or have them read labels in the grocery store.  These are just a few ideas.  You don't have to sit at the table and do worksheet after worksheet and lesson plan after lesson plan.  You can use anything to homeschool your kids (especially with the internet at your fingertips).

Why do you spend so little time on homeschooling each day?  If your kids were in school then they would be learning for six hours or so, not the little time you say.

Every time I get asked this I get amused.  Don't get me wrong, it's a legitimate question, but stop and think back to your days in school.  High school was almost 15 years ago for me, but I can still remember it, and how some days it would take teachers 15 minutes to get the class to settle down and pay attention.  I also remember starting to pack my bag 10 minutes before the bell rang because I just wanted to get away from whatever boring class I was in and go hang out in the hallways with my friends.  I also remember substitute teachers, and how no one would listen to them and just spend the whole class acting like it was a free period.
Elementary school (where we are at right now) is no different.  Scooby-Doo does his speech therapy at the elementary school in our area, so I'm there everyday, and honestly teachers only spend about 15 minutes or so on their lessons for each subject.  A lot of time is spent trying to get hyper kids to settle down and stop talking.  Kids ask for bathroom breaks or disrupt the class in other unintentional ways.  It must be frustrating to try and get 20-30 kids who have a short attention span to settle down and pay attention for a few minutes.
So, when classes are only 45-60 minutes long and half of that is spent on settling down the class, how much are your kids really getting out of school?  I'm not saying don't send your kids to school, I'm just saying be practical here.  In elementary school you are there for 6 hours.  Two hours of that (at least) are lunch, recess, and gym class (need to burn off all that extra energy!) each day.  That leaves 4 hours for class, half of which is spent on bathroom breaks, settling kids down, and shuffling them room to room.  That leaves 2 hours for class, which is pretty much how much time we spend.

Now, my kids don't have extra homework to take home, but they do have unlimited one-on-one time with me to help them get a concept down, no matter how long it takes.  Kids don't get that in school.

I remember 5th grade, and learning about nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.  I also remember the unit test and how I was supposed to underline the verbs, circle the nouns, etc. in each sentence.  I remember looking down at that page and not having a clue, so I just started circling random stuff.  I remember handing in my test, and the teacher calling me back to her desk five minutes later.  I remember her saying "I won't accept this.  Take it back and redo it.  Did you even try to answer the questions?"  I remember feeling so embarrassed and humiliated as I walked back to my desk with my test.  I remember moving around some of my circles and lines, and handing the test back in at the last minute so I didn't get called out again.  I don't remember what my grade was, but do you know what else I do remember?  I remember that unit was over, and we never went over it again even though I clearly did not understand it.  My teacher couldn't hold up the whole class because of one kid.  And I also remember not understanding those concepts until high school, when I had to teach them to myself because no one ever took the time to make sure I knew.

Again, I'm not saying you shouldn't send your kids to school.  But while my kids might only spend a couple of hours each day on actual work, we work on something until they understand it.  We don't just wash our hands of the unit and say, "Too bad, he/she had his/her chance and they missed it."

How do you know what your child's time limits are?

Trust me, they'll tell you.  My kids can only sit still for three subjects at once.  Any more than that and I'm pushing it and they are tuning me out.

Thoughts On Unschooling

I just found this blog today, by following a link on facebook, and on it I found this very interesting post about unschooling and this (also interesting) post about unschooling (same blog, a very good blog too from my glance, I want to add).  After reading these posts it got me thinking about the schedule that I just wrote up for next quarter (and haven't gotten around to posting yet because it's still a bit too early, start looking in a week) and some of the big changes I had made to it - and it also got me thinking about unschooling in general.

For those of you who don't know unschooling is one of the most controversial, misrepresented, and misunderstood (by both the pubic and, oddly, unschoolers) form of homeschooling that there is.  Essentially what unschooling is, is homeschooling by following your child's interests.  There really is no structure, you just let your child play, learn, and explore largely on their own but with you there every step of the way to guide them, support them, and nudge them if you have to.  You don't force, you don't threaten, you don't write up lesson plans, and you don't quiz or test.

I say that it is misunderstood because a lot of people - unschoolers included - believe it means a completely hands-off approach to homeschooling your child.  You don't do anything with them, they have to figure out everything on their own or you only teach them when they ask, you never check on their progress, you never make sure they are actually learning anything, etc.  Some unschoolers don't even read books to their babies because they argue that they are waiting for their child to show an interest in reading and books.

This could not be further from the truth.  True unschoolers may not buy textbooks and force their kids to sit at the table for six hours a day with a lunch and recess break, but they are VERY involved in their child's learning process.  They go out of their way to provide their kids with the resources and tools that they need to learn, they step back and watch, and step in to help when needed.

With all that said, while we have a semi-structured schedule and workbooks I actually do consider myself an unschooler.  Some unschoolers probably would not consider me one, and that's fine, everyone does have their own opinion about what unschooling is or means and even though I just wrote a couple of paragraphs about "real unschoolers"  there are some unschoolers out there that stand by their refusal to read to their kids so that their kids can figure it out on their own.

Just like with everything else there is a right, a left, and a middle ground.  There is no one right definition for every single person, and what it ultimately comes down to is unschooling is about doing what works best for you and your family even if it's the exact opposite of what other unschoolers do.

Which is why I consider myself an unschooler even though we have a schedule, workbooks, and quizzes.

We do this because, as I've explained to my kids before, I want them to have a good foundation for when they play, learn, and explore.  When we did our Dinosaur Concept Week Bumblebee learned even more about dinosaurs then he already knew.  Optimus Prime is always picking up new Spanish words and he uses them around the house in place of the English ones.  We just finished up our Seasons Concept Week and my kids learned about Kwanzaa and Hanukkah because of it, holidays that I didn't even think to mention to them because we know no one who celebrates them.  As a matter of fact, they decided to make Hanukkah cards to mail to Santa!  In our Science book we learn about animals from all over the world, animals that I had never even heard of before we started.  Geography taught them how to read maps, something that they had asked me multiple times to show them how to do.

All of their structured schoolwork is based on their desire to learn these topics - even the dreaded Spelling lessons!  They might hate Spelling, but they are desperate to learn how to read, they are so eager and impatient, so while they might hate writing out their spelling words they are so proud of themselves when they get them down and are able to pick the word out of a book all on their own.

My kids LOVE workbooks.  They love getting reward stickers on the pages they do really good on.  They love when I ask them questions about what we just learned and they get to show off how smart they are.  They love discussing a topic (sometimes to death!) after we've just learned about it.  They love debating, forming opinions, thinking things through that weren't mentioned in the books, and making (quasi-educated) guesses.

One day we will drop the workbooks because we won't need them anymore.  One day they will be able to completely read on their own, figure out math problems on their own, etc and sitting at the table to fill in workbook pages about addition, handwriting, dinosaurs or lemurs will just seem silly.  Yes, we'll still have some sort of basic structure to our homeschooling, but they will have the basic foundation that they need to go new places without me holding their hand anymore.  Workbooks?  Nope.  Quizzes?  Nope.  Book goals?  Maybe.  Book reports?  Maybe.  Zoo and museum trips?  Yes.  Discussing and debating books we have read?  Yes.  Discussing and debating current news stories?  Yes.  Discussing and debating every other new thing we learned?  Yes!

So while we can debate til the cows come home just how far you should take unschooling one way or the other, what it is really about is teaching your child all of the topics that they yearn to learn in the way that works best for you and your child.