Homeschool Summer

What I Like About Homeschooling

I Will Survive

Patience my young Padawan

I think I may have survived my first week of homeschooling all three children, but I’m not quite sure yet. It’s all still a blur. I’ll really have to get back to you on that.

It didn’t help that we went to visit family out of state for over four weeks and didn’t return until days before we were to begin school. Thankfully, most every book, notebook, and pencil had already been purchased and was awaiting us all boxed up in a closet. The downside is that I hardly remembered what was in those boxes and had to scramble to get it all sorted out, reacquaint myself with the teacher’s manuals, and put together at least six weeks of study plans.

The funny thing is that as good as it feels to print up those handy six week planners I get from Donna Young, I always end up regretting working so far ahead. It never fails. I end up marking up the planners with all kinds of revisions within the very first days, only to go back multiple times during the six weeks and do it again and again.

The planner thing is absolute insanity this time around considering I now have three six week planners to coordinate. There are so many adjustments to make now that I know that my son needs MUCH more work, for example. He had finished a week’s worth of Singapore Math by Tuesday morning (we started school on Tuesday) including Test 1 in Saxon. It finally dawned on him that he didn't have to wait for anyone to be finished. This was a self-paced day in many regards, and he was off to the races indeed.

I'm having to reconsider his day to day schedule. I was only going to do the Story of the World for history with the two younger ones to streamline things a bit, but I realized this week that my son needs more stuff he do on his own than I had predicted. The best solution, I think, is to add History Odyssey to the mix. That way, we’ll still do Story of the World, but he’ll have more things that he can work on without my help. I've been very happy with the Level 2 material for my sixth grader, so I expect that the Level 1 study guide is what we're missing. I definitely don’t want to give him busy work just to fill the hours, but on the other hand, if he’s not focused on something constructive he’s a distraction to the other two, particularly his older sister. We just can’t have that. We just can’t.

I also came to the realization that my oldest daughter really needs to start doing more things on her own so that I have more time to work with the younger two. Since I do have a number of direct instruction type curricula in the mix for all three, I am facing a particularly interesting challenge when there is only one of me. Needless to say, the schedule needs some major tweaking. So, guess what I’ll be doing this very rainy weekend? Yep. Revising the six week planners, again.

We are also still recovering from a terrible case of jetlag. Not to make excuses, but that three hour time difference is a real bugger when waking up at 7 a.m. suddenly feels like 4 a.m. Ouch! Because I’m still figuring out this homeschooling multiples thing, I tried waking the kids up on a staggered schedule this week so that my sixth grader would have a jump start, followed by my third grader, with the first grader trailing right behind. I figured the differences in their workload justified trying it out.

I have to say it wasn’t as helpful as I’d hoped. We still ended up with some unfinished stuff to finish up over the weekend. Thanks to Hurricane Hanna, soccer is canceled so it will give my eldest something constructive to do. We have an art project we never got to, for one, which has turned out to be a mixed blessing considering we’ll be inside this weekend. I guess not getting through everything worked out for the best after all.

Much of the reason that we have uncompleted work is my own fault too. Not only did I over program by trying to cram five days of work into a shortened week (Labor Day holiday), but I definitely didn’t nail the daily schedule this first time around. I must improve the way I organize their day and remember to give myself a little down time too. I think I have some clear ideas about how to improve things, and I also know this is kind of like a new job for all of us. It’s just going to take some time to get into the flow of things.

Patience, my young Padawan. Patience.

Percy Jackson Day!

My fifth grader is only one review lesson away from finishing Singapore 5B. This is huge considering we were wrapping up 4B at the beginning of the school year AND she also does about one Saxon 8/7 lesson a day as well (including fact practice and tests).

She was about to turn the workbook page when the doorbell rang. It was UPS.

She asked if she could bring in the package and I'm certain she assumed it was yet another school book I'd ordered. They've been arriving pretty regularly now. Anyway, after making sure it was okay with me, she opened up the box. It wasn't in the excited way you tear open a birthday or Christmas present, either. Just slow and easy and without any kind of expectation at all.

She was beside herself when she realized it was the fourth book in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. I'm sure I've given her birthday and Christmas presents that didn't elicit that kind of response. It was pure joy.

We had almost forgotten. Today was the release date for The Battle of the Labyrinth by homeschooling dad, Rick Riordan.

Today she was supposed to be working on ancient history, grammar, spelling and more math. She's already finished up with science and classical roots for the year. I've been pushing her pretty consistently this first year of homeschooling. So I thought, "What the heck. Let's call it a Percy Jackson Day!" I told her to scrap the rest of today's schedule and get reading. "Really?" YES, really.

Sometimes it feels good to throw caution to the wind and do something that just feels right. Today was one of those days.

Percy Jackson Word Problems.

Myth & Mystery - The official blog for author Rick Riordan

rickriordan.com

Check out the trailer and this snippet from The Battle of the Labyrinth, I Battled the Cheerleading Squad read by author Rick Riordan:

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Dr. Seuss, aka Theodore Geisel, whose timeless best-sellers used a controlled "scientific" vocabulary supplied by the publisher, demonstrated his own awareness of the mindlessness of all this in an interview he gave in 1981:

I did it for a textbook house and they sent me a word list. That was due to the Dewey revolt in the twenties, in which they threw out phonics reading and went to a word recognition as if you’re reading a Chinese pictograph instead of blending sounds or different letters. I think killing phonics was one of the greatest causes of illiteracy in the country.

Anyway they had it all worked out that a healthy child at the age of four can only learn so many words in a week. So there were two hundred and twenty-three words to use in this book. I read the list three times and I almost went out of my head.

I said, “I’ll read it once more and if I can find two words that rhyme, that’ll be the title of my book.” I found "cat" and "hat" and said, the title of my book will be The Cat in the Hat.

Arizona magazine, 1981

Total Lunar Eclipse

Wednesday's total lunar eclipse promises to be quite a display and Sky and Telescope has all the interesting details here. If you're on the East Coast, like we are, you'll want to adjust the viewing times to begin at 8:43 p.m. and end shortly after midnight.

The full Moon is going to get totally eclipsed on the night of February 20–21, putting on a gorgeous show as it glides through Earth's shadow. Skywatchers in nearly the entire Western Hemisphere will get an excellent view.

In the Americas, the eclipse happens during convenient evening hours on Wednesday, the 20th, when people are up and about. In the time zones of Europe
and West Africa, the eclipse happens during the early-morning hours of Thursday,
the 21st.

Earth’s shadow will totally engulf the Moon from 10:00 to 10:52 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, or 7:00 to 7:52 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. The partial phases of the eclipse last for about an hour and a quarter before and after totality.

Mark your calendar! If you miss this one, you'll have to wait until 2010 for the next lunar eclipse.