A homeschooling plus

I'm sitting here this morning listening to Peanut Pie eat her frosted flakes; the only child currently in my house.  I almost don't know what to do with this stillness and silence in my household; it's so weird!  Miss A and daddy went flying this morning (he's got his private pilot's license), and I can't help but imagine what the sunrise must look like where Wiggly's waking up this morning.  He's in one of the most beautiful places in existence (or at least to our family)... Ontario, Canada.

He left this weekend with my parents to spend the week at our family cabin in the Ontario wilderness.  My husband is flying up to meet them later this week, but I figured Wiggly could spend the entire week up there since he loves the wilderness and fishing so much.  I bet he'd make a great ranger someday.  And what has made it possible for him to enjoy this experience during the second week of public school??? Why, it's the beauty of homeschooling, of course!

I was really struggling as school started around here last week.  I got choked up giving box tops to a mom of a former student because I specifically wanted Wiggly's public school class to reap the benefits.  (good thing I had my sun glasses on.) I tried to avoid taking Wiggly to the grocery store during the month of August lest he see all the back-to-school hype that he was no longer a part of.  And in all this crazy, sometimes irrational behavior (pregnancy hormones), I wasn't at all doubting that our decision to homeschool was the wrong choice for Wiggly, but I felt like he was going to miss out on so many of the experiences of going to public school.  Mostly the social aspects; recess, eating lunch with friends, the excitement of the first day, new school supplies, new teachers, school sponsored events like the Costume party for Halloween... I had officially and single-handedly eliminated him from those events he'd found so much fun in the past, and replaced it with what? Playing with/ picking on his sisters everyday and 4+ hours in our homeschool room upstairs with just his mom and sister? Great choice, Mom... A couple of times this week, Wiggly looked at the clock, asking what his friends at school were doing right then and if they were still in school at the same time he was.  And I tried to put a positive spin on it. "This morning at 6:30, all of your friends were getting on the bus, and do you know what you were doing? Sleeping in." And "At 11, when your friends were eating lunch and doing school work, we were playing at the park." (their reward for good behavior at my doctor appointment) "And ALL next week, when all of your friends are in school, where are you going to be???" He smiles now.  "Canada," he answers.  Point made. 

Canada.  Had I not been pregnant this summer, my husband and I would have made the trip together as a family, but it just wasn't in the cards this year.  Wiggly made his first trip to camp last year, and Wiggly LOVED it.  He caught a smallmouth bass all by himself off the dock one morning and was so proud that he had contributed to dinner that night. We picked blueberries, went exploring, swimming, and he learned how to play war.  (I suspect this week, he may learn how to play Eurchre.  With limited electricity and no modern conveniences, we play LOTS of cards in the evenings.) I did send some books with him so he could read everyday, and I made up a science lesson plan involving the ecosystem created by a beaver dam that my mom is going to work with him on, so he is getting some schooling in while away from home.  But he's learning so much more this week than what he would in a public school classroom. I mean, what would be better: watching a video in school about a beaver's habitat or actually getting out and exploring one? Point made.  It's for this that makes homeschooling so awesome.  Some days I just have to remind myself that he's not missing out on experiences by not being in public school; we're simply exchanging them for DIFFERENT experiences.  And just because it's different doesn't make it a bad thing. 

This beautiful picture was taken from http://killarneyoutfitters.com/.  Love that place.  I'll be sure to post pictures of Wiggly and his fish when he gets back :0)

A few things I learned on our first day of homeschooling

As I began writing this post, our first day of homeschooling wasn't even over yet and I could the reflections and observations piling up in my mind. Here are the things I noticed to change in the future; like, tomorrow. 

1. 10 work boxes is WAY too many for a preschooler on the first day and too much to get through even for a seven year old without a solid break...oops. By the 9th box, Wiggly was in tears after I told him that he'd have to redo his writing assignment after rushing sloppily through it the first time.  I felt for him though; we'd all had enough by that point.   

2. A distractible child is a distractible child, no matter the environment.  As I typed this, I was witnessing Wiggly watch his sister and sing the words of the video she was watching on her leapster instead of doing his spelling. She even had headphones on to limit the distraction! 

3. For some reason, I was expecting eager learners... And I had eager learners... For about 20 minutes. In the remaining two hours, eagerness was wholeheartedly replaced by whininess. 

4. Once the daily routine of things has been established, things will go more smoothly, right???

5. I am only one teacher/mom with two arms, not the super-mom octopus teacher I thought I was.

6. We all deserve milkshakes after this. We ended up getting frosties and fishing at a friend's pond as an afternoon treat. 

7. I am doing the right thing. While it wasn't exactly all roses like I'd hoped it might be, we'll figure it out together.  We're all a bit new at this... :0) 

 

 

The Waiting Game

I haven't had much to blog about lately as I am waiting on two things to come around so we can begin this homeschooling adventure...

1.) Wiggly needs to be finished with public school! Only two and a half weeks left and I can hardly wait! Wiggly went to a birthday party this weekend and when talking to the mother, I mentioned that I was going to homeschool my older two next year.  She said, "You've just about made it through Mrs. O and now you're going to pull him out?" (She's had to deal with this particular teacher a couple times since she has foster children and a few older children of her own.) I know it might seem backwards that we stayed through a horrible teacher only to withdraw afterwards, but we still feel it's the right decision for our son. The field trips and the personalized lessons that are going to keep him engaged and that he's passionate about? I'm so excited!
Recently, our Lutheran church in town put together an enrichment program for the month of April where kids grades K-5 could choose two classes to take on saturday mornings.  There were over 30 different classes to choose from including cooking, photography, guitar lessons, watercolors, gym class, robotics, etc.  They had over 250 kids sign up, which was huge for our little community.  Wiggly got into the Crazy Science class and just LOVED it.  Since then, I've been busy looking up lots of science activities to do this school year.  I also looked up the STEM program, but they don't have anything available in our area, which is too bad because I really think Wiggly would enjoy such a program.  And then the other thing I'm waiting on is:

2.) Are we having a boy or a girl?  I'm currently pregnant with our fourth child, and this little one is holding up the whole homeschool classroom process! It's amazing that he/she holds so much power already! :0) Since we already have two girls and a boy, if it's a boy, then there's no problem and I can go on with removing the guest bed from our current classroom and start hanging stuff up. Classroom ready to go.  Super exciting! However, if it's a girl, Wiggly will be moving into the classroom as his littlest sister will be taking up his old room.  So where will the classroom go?  Good question.  I'm guessing it'll go something like this: Baby moves into Wiggly's room, Wiggly moves into classroom, classroom moves into playroom, toys move into bedrooms/basement/garage sale? And then since our playroom is actually a larger space than we really need for a classroom, can I partition it off so it can serve both purposes? These questions and my hormones keep me up at night... I'm not sure if seeing everyone else's cute classrooms is hurting or helping my sleepless nights; there are so many cute organizational ideas out there! Curse you, Pinterest!

Our Evolving Classroom

Hello!  I thought I'd share with you our classroom as it stands now. I've been collecting odds and ends for storage, but after doing a little bit of bloggy browsing, hopefully our classroom will be a little more organized in the near future.  A little back story about our classroom... Husband and I originally finished our attic space above our garage with a guest bedroom in mind. But since the room is so long, I decided that it could be a sewing/scrapbookig room also.  Well, crafting for me turned into a mutual room for crafting with the kids too, and has since slowly evolved into a classroom.  Not a guest bedroom or even Mommy's crafty room...The kids' classroom.  (Yet another room in the house the kids have taken over.  Guess I'll have to move my crafty stuff to the man cave in the basement... sorry honey.) I will apologize up front for the pictures being of poor quality; I'm still trying to figure out how this blogging thing works... bear with me.

And yes, the bed is still in our classroom at the moment.  But here's a look at the "classroom" portion of the room.

 Storage is a problem right now, but I ordered some shelving on sale from Target.  I'm pretty excited about having some actual organized shelves with bins.

Because of the roof line, I'm facing the challenge of wall space to hang maps, a white board, and other teaching materials... It's only about 48" on the sides, although there's plenty of space in the center of the room to go vertical. I've thought about getting one of those office dividers to create more wall space... except for the part that they're ugly...not that the kids will really care.

 This is Wiggly's work station.  I've adopted the workbox station from Confessions of a Homeschooler, although I've seen quite a few other homeschool blogs using the same/similar system.

And this lovely machine is my printer/scanner/copier.  It's an HP Laser Jet Pro 200.  I love that it's super easy to use, and I can print from my iPad and iPhone.









Sorry again for the bad pictures;  I'll get the hang of this blogging thing eventually... Update: The bookshelves from Target came in the other day, so I'll try and get (better) pictures of the more organized classroom soon :0)