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Tag Archives: Homeschool Confessional

The Homeschool Review: A Fall Confessional, 2018

07 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by Lauren Scott in Home Education

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Books, Home Education, Homeschool Confessional, Homeschool Review

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Get this. Our homeschool life isn’t all sunshine and roses. Nor is it always a grand adventure.

Especially when in the midst of a busy season (is there any other kind of season?) I tell myself that we’re doing great (which was true) and that we can just roll with sickness and projects taking up break week and move into a new term without resting on the pillars of review–weekly or otherwise (all of which was not true).

Spurn the rhythms of life and you will find them scowling back at you–or in less personified and more metaphorical terms: you might just regret your choice to skip all the rests in the score of life when you find you have rushed ahead and are now out of step with the music, not knowing where to jump back in again.

Those are my melodramatic thoughts for you anyway.

At any rate, here I am on the other side of that break week that didn’t happen, crashing and burning after an insanely busy weekend where my weekly review didn’t happen.

Lessons are being learned, friends. And not just by the kids.

My body can’t really handle running hard two days in a row without a break in between. I could attempt to will through it, but I might just land myself in bed for a week.

Neither can I power through two terms without a real break in between.

On the plus side, I’m recovering now from that crash-and-burn. And fall is here for real, which makes me happy.  🙂

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See? FALL!!!!!!!!!  😀

And, as it turns out, we have had a pretty good past few months of school (there has been some sunshine and roses even if they haven’t been all over the place). Here are the highlights (or perhaps I could say rose petals):

My firstborn turned 9 and my baby turned 7. We enjoyed celebrating them on their special days: my husband took off work for each and we enjoyed one day at home playing Legos and another trapsing around Little Rock. Nope, no school on birthdays around here. Since there are only two of them, we can get away with this without our attendance record suffering.

We continued schooling through the summer following an interval schedule. For our family that looks like schooling six weeks out of an eight week period year-round (with a four-week term for Advent). I try to allow five of our days off to float on the calendar (to be used where needed) and keep the other five reserved for “Break Week” at the end of the term. That has worked pretty well, though the reason “Break Week” didn’t really happen last term is because it coincided with sickness and me preparing for my first-ever three-hour presentation.

Yeah, I should time those kinds of things better.

Math and Language

C-age-9 continued working through Right Start Math Level D (finishing up with a lot of fun drawing lessons!) and has recently begun Level E.

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We’ve switched to the second edition for this level, and I’m quite pleased with the new layout and organization! It’s also gradually working toward more independence for the student, so our lessons are consistently shorter than in past levels, making it easy to just jump right into them without balking at how long it might take (an issue I had previously).

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D-age-7 is making his way through Level C. He thoroughly enjoyed the drawing section (where the T-square and traingle tools were giddily introduced to him for the first time), and now we are getting into the section of the book that I found the toughest for my oldest son. I’m prepared to supplement if necessary as we tackle adding SEVERAL three- and four-digit numbers and then move into mentally subtracting two-digit numbers (with borrowing, no less).

It’s agressive, but I’m going to let D-age-7 attempt these “jumps” and see how he does. This second time around I’m just better armed with the expectation that it is difficult and meant to stretch him. My expectation is that he won’t master it right away. It’s taken some time to realize that trying and failing is ok in the learning process. The goal isn’t to get a good grade on every worksheet. Our goal is to learn. So in these difficult lessons, our focus is on trying, correcting, and practicing some more.

Math is character-building for sure.

UPDATE: Adding several numbers has been a successful learning process spread over about three days (kind of like my writing this post is getting spread out over about three weeks). Not without struggle, mind you, but with much more patience from me as a teacher than the first time around. Win!

We recently took a break from our First Language Lessons to prepare for the local spelling bee. D-age-7 won third place in his age group!

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In other language news, we’ve been working through Foreign Languages for Kids‘ Spanish courses online. The videos are fun and the quizzes are a great way to review. We paid for a one-year subscription last year on Black Friday, so we’re working to get the most out of it before it expires. This program is quite expensive if you want to purchase it complete with DVDs, workbooks, and all. So subscribing to it for a year has been a great, affordable option for us (though I have looked longingly at the printed workbooks–they’d be much easier to work with than the online version!).

Books, Books, Books

What have we been reading lately? Well, in Morning Time we recently finished Story of the World Volume 2 (covering the Middle Ages) and have just begun Volume 3. We’ve also enjoyed Archimedes and the Door of Science (just finished it today!) and Trial and Triumph (so far a great read on church history).

In the evenings, my husband has read aloud The Bronze Bow (a story taking place in the time of Christ), which we finished last month, and most recently On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness by Andrew Peterson (the first book in his Wingfeather Saga). I can’t express how much our family has enjoyed both of these books. Check them out, though be aware they each contain some scary or violent elements that very young children (younger than 6, perhaps) might not be ready for.

The boys are each doing some of their own bible reading, and we go over the Proverbs of the day at breakfast (my husband usually shares a couple verses and thoughts related to them before he goes to his office/room for work). When we can, my husband also reads the bible to us after dinner.

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C-age-9 is a voratious reader–hard to keep in books! Some of what he’s read lately includes: By the Shores of Silver Lake, Heidi, Treasure Island, The Long Winter, The Story of Dr. Doolittle, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle, This Country of Ours, Our Island Story, Otto of the Silver Hand, The Sugar Creek Gang series, The New Way Things Work (a big one to slow him down a bit! muahahaha!), and a book on Marco Polo. Whew!

D-age-7 has happily read through Sammy and His Shepherd (a story book study of Psalm 23) as well as some Boxcar Children books. He’s currently in Paddle to the Sea, Our Island Story, Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The House and Pooh Corner, and James Harriot’s Treasury for Children. Most of these selections come from Ambleside Online’s Year One curriculum. I have found Year One to be a great starting point for my boys once they are pretty solid readers, though I am by no means following it in its entirety or even as scheduled. I did this with C when he was 7 and found he could do the readings independently, and they were the right length for training his narration skills (which were non-existent if I let him just sit and read a whole book in a day).

We of course read many things from AO’s list (among others) out loud to our children, but in terms of things assigned particularly for them, I prefer to have them read independently as soon as able. After Year One, we kind of spring into our own book list which we are building as we go with my oldest and in reference to several lists out there: AO, Robinson (which my husband grew up with), Honey for a Child’s Heart, and the Clarkson’s Whole-Hearted book list (which we are referencing here), to name a few.

My husband likes the boys to write reports on the books they finish, so that is a part of our routine as well. Having narrated to me orally about the smaller sections of the book over the course of several days or weeks, and seeing as how we do their first book reports orally with my writing out their narrations, the boys are doing pretty well with the process of learning to summarize a story at the meta-level. C-age-9 has now graduated from using a book report form to simply writing his thoughts out on blank lined paper (complete with fancy lettering for the book titles!).

All the Other Stuff (Including some Adventures)

We’ve also dabbled more in playing our bells, poetry, composer study, hymns, folk songs, geography, health, nature study (our luna moth finally hatched! and observing and drawing changes in the trees), art study, scripture memorization, US presidents, science experiments, etc. I say “dabbled” because we haven’t been particularly consistent with any of these, but they HAVE been happening. Exposure breeds taste, right? So this is at least accomplishing something even if it’s not all I have idealized in my head. 😉

Our Archeology and Plant Use History Class continued to meet once a month through the summer and we enjoyed our last day on the mountain in September. My favorite moment from that last day was getting to throw atlatls.

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You better believe this mama got in on the action! Even if there isn’t any photo evidence…

The boys have also taken a cooking and culture class with our local co-op. They aren’t meeting more than once a month, but it’s still been fun to make Ratatouille while learning about France and then lasagna in a class dedicated to Italy.

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Socialization is totally a thing among homeschoolers (just in case anyone needed a reminder). We’ve attended park days, skate days, gymnastics, and birthday parties.

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And a lovely fall nature hike.

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In my homeschool-mom world, I had the pleasure of giving an intensive on Homeschooling the Early Years (yep, that three-hour thing I mentioned above), and our local Schole Sisters group has recently begun reading through Charlotte Mason’s Volume 6: Toward a Philosophy of Education, gathering at a coffee shop to discuss. Both of these have been fun oportunities for me to dig deeper in study and produce more in writing–with the amazing blessing of getting to hash-out ideas among sharp, godly mommy-friends.

Really, that’s the best part.

I can’t emphasize enough how wonderful it is to connect with other ladies in your area. Meet in person. It doesn’t have to be very often–for us it’s once a month with kids in tow and once a month with books and no kids. 🙂 It’s such a blessing to have this fellowship–around homeschooling/education, yes, but also in the Lord.

Heart = Full

Now that fall weather has pretty well settled in and the amazing colors along with it, our family is venturing out a bit more to enjoy it. We’ve done a bit of hiking already and hope to do some backpacking in the near future. You know I’ll report on that next time.  😉

I’ll sign off with a scenic view we enjoyed at the end of October (fall colors just setting in).

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And since we’re a week into November now when I’m actually publishing this, here’s an updated picture from that same location (and at a way more interesting angle, right?).

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What’s going on in your homeschool world? Enjoying the colors? Gearing up for the holidays?

 

 

First Day Confessional

15 Tuesday Aug 2017

Posted by Lauren Scott in Home Education, Living Faith

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

back to school, Bullet Journal, first day of school, God's patience, Homeschool Confessional, homeschool encouragement, homeschooling, INTJ Homeschool Mom, motherhood, Planning

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Many of the public schools in our area started back yesterday, and so did we.

If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you might be a little confused since I posted about our “First Day” back in July.

That would be the first of my confessions.

I thought that in the middle of all of our remodeling craziness it would be a good idea to re-institute some order by starting back to school.  We made it a whopping four days before a trip and life in general took over again.

So yesterday was technically something like day five (or six if we’re counting the immersive day of water color painting last week–hey, I’m counting it!).

I’m just thankful that my husband encouraged me not to worry about it.  Now that the living room is, well, livable again, we can start to throw some school into the mix.

His support has been invaluable since we would, in theory, like to have our kids keep going with at least math and reading through the summer months.  I planned to just take June off, and keep a bit of review going even on break, but it stretched into an extra month-and-a-half and our review became non-existent.

And it’s ok.  Really, Lauren, it’s ok.

But those scheduled intentions are just surface-level.  I’ve got some deeper issues to confess, as well.

This is our fourth year of officially homeschooling and yet I have felt less prepared than ever.  I gave up on a traditional homeschool planner this year, opting to build my own system for planning and record keeping (a combination of Plan Your Year, a bullet journal, and clipboards for the kids).  I hope to share some reviews, articles, and videos about it sometime soon once the dust clears and the wires are all rigged up in our remodeled office/studio.  But the process has been like stepping out on an invisible floor, hoping there is something to stand on when you land.

Unlike Indiana Jones, however, on our first day of school yesterday, instead of finding a firm footing, I literally slipped on the slick, wet front steps, finding that gravity still works and that landing your rear on the corner of the step an entire foot lower than your feet began makes for a very purple derriere and quite a stiff and sore neck.

This didn’t exactly quell my fear of more figurative slips.  Again I’m reminded of the only truly firm footing I have in the first place–and that gives me strength to press on.

I know that the end result will be a good one–having a completely customized system that meets our needs better than any pre-fab planner ever could.  But with a new arrangement on paper comes a new arrangement of habits–both mental and physical–and building those habits takes time.  I need to have patience with the process, trust that it will be worth it, and simply recognize the little adjustments that have to be made along the way as a part of what makes it better.

All of that said, our first day went wonderfully well!  My well-laid plans did pay off!

At least, before lunch.

Our first day of school started well but ended woefully.

In my planning I took into consideration the longer-than-ever-time-off from which we would be recovering, and I tweaked our curriculum accordingly–especially math.  My big boy would do only half of the worksheet.  My youngest would copy numbers, do some basic math facts, and then we’d play a math game.  The almost-six-year old finished his work in no time, blazing through math, reading, and copy work so he could go to town with his beloved watercolors the rest of the morning.

I was thrilled.  This was easy.

The just-turned-eight-year-old, however, struggled to focus.  His work certainly should have taken longer than his little brother’s, but it drug on and on and on needlessly.  I told him time didn’t matter, that he didn’t need to set a timer, just work diligently.  But he set the timer anyway and then stressed himself out with it.  Long story short, he was anything but diligent, even when I gave him breaks to go outside or read and then come back to it with a fresh mind.  His score in the end was near perfect, but it was well into the afternoon before he finished and then there was language arts to do.

I was patient for the morning.  But eventually my patience ran out.

I had planned fun activities for our afternoon.  A game, read-alouds over Afternoon Tea.  Things my children LOVE.

But a dawdler was messing up my plans to do him good.

I escaped into my own projects and spent some time online to boot.

“I’ve tried to help you.  You won’t be helped.  I’m done.”

Signing off.  Checking out.  On day one.

Bravo, Lauren.

Over dinner my husband asked us each how our day had gone and how we felt about it.  There was good, there was bad, and there was ugly.  But it was good to get it out in front of us as a family.

He sweetly encouraged me not to base the success of my day on other people’s performance–especially little people.  Control what I can control–my own responses.

That’s hard, isn’t it?  But it’s exactly what I needed.

After further consideration and prayer last night, I realized that I had judged my children worthy of my time and patience during the morning hours–I had even decided this long in advance.  It’s my job, after all, as their mom and teacher.  But with one child dragging his half-sheet of math work beyond any reasonable time frame, and with the other testing my patience at lunch time, I came to judge my children as unworthy of my time and patience for the rest of the day.

Forget my God-given role as their mother and teacher, I measured them against my plans and expectations, found them wanting even after patient instruction and care, and since I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted, I decided they didn’t deserve my effort–I decided I needed a break.

There is wisdom, at times, in walking away from a situation so that both parties can get fresh air, deal with what’s in their hearts, and come back in much better spirits.  But I can’t say that was what was going on this time.  I was resentful.  And it took ME “beyond a reasonable time frame” to get my heart right.

Math work or heart work, my son and I were both taking too long to learn our lessons.

I suppose I could steal a quote from my reflections on planning above since it seems to fit this character-growing, relationship-building process, as well:

“…building those habits takes time.  I need to have patience with the process, trust that it will be worth it, and simply recognize the little adjustments that have to be made along the way as a part of what makes it better.”

The goal of education isn’t ultimately results or getting things done anyway.

As I wrestled with my own bad response–with my sin–the Lord kindly reminded me of His love and patience toward me as His child.  I cowered at the thought of His great love and my great lack.

Father, You chose to love me while I was yet a sinner when You sent Jesus to die for me.  And You choose to love me still even when it takes me years to learn a lesson, even when my attitude and actions are quite like a distracted and unruly child.  

Because You have chosen to love me, because You have made me Your child, Your patience and Your love never wane…like mine so often do for my own children.  

Forgive me, Father.  I repent.

Thank You for being a GOOD Father.  My need for Your love and patient correction is ongoing.  And the work You’ve called me to do for my children is ongoing.  Oh, please produce in me the same patient, diligent love with which You parent me.  

I saw yesterday morning that I could choose to be patient with my children.  But O how I need Your Spirit, Lord, to choose to be patient even beyond my good intentions!  When my planned patience wears out, show me Your patient love, and please help me to then pass it on to them.  

Amen.  

For those of you who also started school recently, I hope your first day fared better than mine (and you should read that as “I hope that your patience lasted more than four hours”).

But it’s just the first day.  And it’s now behind us.  Sins repented of, mercies new this morning …and every morning hereafter.  We’re in this for the long haul, aren’t we?  Let’s do it with patient love, remembering the One who continues to lavish us with it.

Happy New School Year.

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Lauren Scott

Lauren Scott

Christian. Wife. Mother. Homemaker. Home Educator. Blogger. Book Addict. Outdoorist.

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