The chaos that has become my everyday

Sitting here this morning after preparing the school week until 10:00 last night, and I'm still a bit tired.  This homeschooling adventure, while is going to be great for the whole family, has taken a little bit of freedom from my previously SAHM "only" status. (I put that in quotes because as if being a SAHM in itself isn't enough of a job, I've also just volunteered to become a full time, year around educator as well...what was I thinking?!?) 

Anyways, here is my reflection on the past two weeks since we started school.  First of all, I chose to start our school year the same week as our community swimming lessons everyday for two weeks, and Wiggly's had five baseball games in the evenings that had brought us to what felt like rushing from one activity to another for quite a few days in a row... But now swimming and baseball is done with for the summer, so hopefully our schooling schedule will feel a little more relaxed and less "crammed" into the section of time we have to work with that particular day. 

I think Sunday is going to be my major school planning day for the week.  It's one of the few days that hubby is home and I get to share the responsibility of putting out fires between my kiddoes.  It's so nice not having to drag my feet to the scene of the crime whenever someone yells "MOM!?!" in that unique yell only reserved for tattling.  (Or does anyone ever feel like just turning out the lights and locking yourself in whatever room you happen to be in whenever that particular tone rings through the house?  Is that just me?)

I will say that I do like that when it IS time for school, my kids don't groan and whine.  They genuinely don't seem to mind it, and my guess is that Wiggly enjoys the one on one time.  Right now, it takes him about 2 1/2 hours to complete his 10 boxes if we don't have any science or craft projects going on.  This week, I've decided to reserve his daily box 10 for practicing his piano.  Since we've begun this endeavor, he's maybe practiced twice, and it's usually the night before his lessons.  I know we're supposed to have MORE time for things like this, but it just hasn't made it in to our new routine yet. I'd like to make a cute little card to put in his workbox for practicing piano, but I'm relatively inexperienced with the new word programs. If I make one that's worth while though, I'll be sure to share! 

Although I had planned on starting school in the morning, taking a break for lunch, and then finishing after, it is working to knock out the hours while Peanut is napping after lunch.  Love her to death and her enthusiasm for wanting to do school along with her siblings is great, but chasing her down every 5 minutes because she's running around with markers isn't my idea of fun when we're trying to accomplish something.  And like Wiggly needs any additional distractions... he's a distraction all to himself.  I totally get why he and his teacher had had enough of each other by the end of the school year.  His wiggliness is fine at home; if he wants to roll around on the floor while spelling his words that's fine by me, but man, does he move. I saw these on pinterest and thought of him.  I may have to get one for home just because... I'd probably use it too! :0)

The only major adjustment for me is putting MYSELF on more of a schedule.  I can't just go to Target (it's a 40 minute drive) whenever I feel the need or grocery shop (all the decent stores are at least 25 minutes away) on a whim because I now have a new responsibility to provide an education on a regular basis to my children.  Oh the days when I could drop off 2/3 of my children for hours on end to be educated by someone else... But the easiest way isn't always the best way, so I will suck it up and figure out the balance. 

For those of you who giggled over my attempt at a housekeeping schedule, for the record, that has been blown to smithereens for the time being.   The only thing I've maintained on that list is sweeping the living room on Monday, grocery shopping on Friday, and laundry on Saturday. And that's only because I set up a chore chart for the kids to coincide with my master housekeeping schedule. And it works...when I enforce it.  But if I'm not reminding them, it doesn't get done.  (As I'm attempting to finish this post, I'm trying to manage the kids with their chores; the chart is not four feet from this computer.  Now what was I about to say? Oh, yeah...) I really like Erica's Chore chart from Confessions of a Homeschooler, but I need to add the chores that are specific to our house. Like, organizing the shoe rack in the garage. 

It's in a constant state of disarray, and do you notice how many pairs of shoes are actually ON the rack???

Gah! I need to go.  I have to manage the new crisis in the living room.  Wiggly is threatening to sweep up Miss A's American girl stuff without giving her time to ACTUALLY pick it up before he plows her over with his "chore".  And of course, she's screaming like someone is trying to stab her...

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) 

 

 

(FINALLY!) We are Ready to Begin!

Hello! I'm so excited that Monday will be our first day of homeschooling! FINALLY! It seems like I've been waiting for this day forever! (or at least a few months) :0) The classroom is (mostly) set up and all of my curriculum materials have been collected.  We are ready.  I was a little concerned about Wiggly's attitude toward the homeschool idea now that the public school year is over and he knows he's not going back (at least of a few years).  But last week he asked me, "When are we going to start homeschooling? I want to start." YAY! At least he doesn't hold too many bad feelings about the new change.  I've been keeping him up on the different materials and curriculum I've been gathering for him so he's at least informed about what he's going to be learning.  I also make sure to keep the kids out of the classroom and the materials "sacred" to only classroom use.  I think that's made them both more curious about all the building blocks and manipulatives I've been collecting because NO ONE is allowed to just "play" with them. 

I know I haven't blogged in awhile, so I'll update you on what's been going on this last month.  My blogging absence has been due to some major room shuffling once we found our that baby #4 is going to be a GIRL! Yes, that makes one boy and three girls to complete our family... having two daughters makes me uneasy some days, so the idea of having THREE girls has been a bit of a shock for the whole family! I can hear them now; "so-and-so stole my favorite shirt and RUINED it!", or "so-and-so has been in the bathroom for an HOUR!"... and all of this is screamed through my entire house at a high pitched, panicked level... Wiggly will thank me someday for moving him into the upstairs space above our garage, trust me. 

So recently, the rooms in our house are currently being shifted from one purpose to another.  The classroom is being shifted into Wiggly's new room, and the playroom has now become the classroom.  Since our playroom space has been dissolved, the toys will be going back into the rooms of our children (dread).  Hopefully our unfinished basement space will be on its way to serving as the new playroom soon, but in the meantime... toys in the kids' rooms.  Blech.  Am I the only one who hates having the kids' toys in their rooms??? I definitely have been spoiled to have the playroom upstairs and off the main living area of our home.  It could be messy and I didn't have to see the mess unless I was brave enough to actually go up there.  Now, all the toys will slowly trickle out of the bedrooms into the main part of the house constantly.  Like I said, blech. 

Anyways, since we no longer have a playroom and the kids will have to store their toys in their bedrooms, Miss A will be getting Wiggly's old room and have a room to herself with all of the girl toys (since she's the oldest girl after all).   She and Peanut Pie have always shared a room, so it'll be interesting to see how Miss A adjusts to being by herself once her room is finished.  The two littlest girls will share Peanut's room; Peanut's not going to minds since she's already used to sharing a room.  I think it'll all work out. 

So, the part I feel guilty about is moving Wiggly from the only bedroom he remembers.  My mother painted clouds and an awesome fighter plane on his walls when we first moved in.  It is HIS room.  And his sisters are forcing him into a faraway wing of the house that isn't nearly as close to the bathroom.  (Ok, it's not THAT far away, but still...)  So I've been spending quite a bit of time on Pinterest finding some pretty cool "bigger" boys rooms to make the move a little easier.   I bought some paint, and today I'm going to paint his dressers.  I'm pretty excited about it.  Here's the before picture of the dresser and night stand.  I'm going to paint them a deep navy blue, possibly with a red stripe... but we'll see.  I'll be sure to post a pic of the finished products too!

And here are two pictures of our classroom in its current state.  I'm guessing once we start using the space and find out what works and what doesn't it'll change again.  Thank you to my hubby for ordering and installing our awesome whiteboard this week! I can already imagine complex mathematical problems just like in Good Will Hunting scrawled across it on a daily basis from my prodigy seven year old child... ok, definitely not, but it made me smile. :0) Wish us luck!!!

 

 

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)

Getting Started: Gathering Materials

    I'm sitting here this morning sipping my tea, cutting out little apples for Miss A's letter of the week lessons, and thought I'd share how thankful I am for the Internet and blogs and the homeschooling community I've found since deciding to go down this very unfamiliar homeschooling path. Before, I felt like I was on my own little island in this, but now I see this island is full of others just like me!

    Yesterday morning, I stumbled across The Ultimate Homeschool Blogroll by Hip Homeschool Moms.  I was pleasantly surprised to find so many homeschool moms and even a list of "first years"!  I have to admit, I spend more than my share of "mommy's morning time" looking at other experienced and first year blogs, and I got to peak at what other homeschool moms are doing in their classrooms.  It really got me motivated to continue planning what our own homeschool year is going to contain.

    I've spent the last three days researching and creating plans for Wiggly's 2nd grade curriculum.  Since my idea is that he will rejoin public school in 5th-6th grade, I'm keeping with our state's content standards so he's learning the same concepts as his peers in public school.  However, it's just like being a first year teacher again; I'm gathering information and materials for his entire school year without using any text books or pre-made lesson plans. I'm starting from scratch.  So far, I've decided to use Everyday Math after talking to a few teachers who are both familiar with this set and the Saxon Math program.  Also, since we're not using a combined spelling/reading text book set, I've been reading up on how to teach spelling and word work.  My sister-in-law taught talented and gifted for a couple years in the elementary grades and recommended Word Journeys: Assessment-guided Phonics, Spelling, and Vocabulary Instruction by Kathy Ganske.  It's not a riveting read by any means, but it does explain the different stages of spelling and how to choose spelling lists based on the student's ability.  It also gives lots of ideas and activities for students to do other than just 'worksheets'.  It's been very helpful for a former middle school teacher; although I had one phonics class in college, my students came to me already knowing how to read.  The mechanics that go behind teaching a child to read is completely unfamiliar territory. 

    Another resource that has been wonderful to have was finding Erica at http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/.  It was her blog that I found when I first started researching this whole homeschooling business.  Prior to discovering her blog, I was really unsure if I could do this at all; how was I going to organize everything and run my school day?  I was overwhelmed at just the thought of homeschooling. After spending a few mornings searching around and reading up on her blog, I realized that this (hopefully) won't be so bad after all. I'm adopting the Workbox System, and I have since seen many other homeschoolers use this or a similar concept in their classrooms as well.
   
I've just recently downloaded Erica's Letter of the Week Program for Miss A.  Since I've been spending most of my energy compiling lessons for Wiggly's curriculum, it's so nice to have a preschool program all ready to go!  She's included everything you can think of that you'll need short of the yarn for the lacing cards and the Velcro dots for the lessons themselves. I'm so excited to get started and I know Miss A is too.  As I was cutting out the apples for the letter "A" lesson, Miss A asked if she could play with them.  I told her not until we have them laminated... So off to Walmart we go: our shopping list includes milk, eggs, and a laminator.  :0)