Home Schooling After a Major Holiday
January 4, 2010
There are certainly a lot of joys that I have experienced as a home schooling mother of two fabulous kidlets: Watching the light go on when they realized they could read; great field trips to near empty museums & exhibits; blowing stuff up in the name of science. Coming back from three weeks off for Christmas break? Not so much.
I’ve always been a little regimented about our school. I like to start by 8:30 am and get the three “R’s” outta the way and save the afternoon for latin, history and the aforementioned science experiments. This morning started with me waking the kidlets (daughter is usually up–she’s a morning person like her mother) at the ungodly hour of 7:30 am. And then again at 7:45. And then again at 7:55. Daughter finally drug herself outta bed and asked for coffee. She’s nine. Son needed one more waking and finally showed up in the kitchen around 8:10.
Over homemade chocolate/peanutbutter muffins (they were as awesome as they sound), I layed out the plan for the day: school work, room cleaning, and NO tv or computer until they were both done. My kids are too smart to openly disobey me….they like a more passive/aggressive approach. Like, it took my daughter 57 minutes to do her handwriting practice (it should take 10). Or my son got lost for almost 2 hours somewhere in our 1600 square foot house to avoid grammar (”I was reading, mom”).
It took 8 hours of constant pressure by me to finish the school day, and another 1.5 hours to get the rooms cleaned. I’m freakin’ exhausted. History has taught me that it will get better tomorrow. By the end of the week it will be back to norm.
Think I’ll go watch Myth Buster’s with the kidlets. I hear they’re making ear wax candles. Sweet.
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January 4th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Do you use a particular curriculum? If so which one?
January 4th, 2010 at 7:42 pm
I use “The Well-Trained Mind” by Susan Wise Bauer as a curriculum guide. But I’m very poor at doing things the way your supposed to, so I end up making a lot of it up as I go along.
January 4th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
I loved that book!
I also like what I read from Linda Schrock Taylor–if you haven’t heard of her, she writes extensively on the topic. Very persuasive articles. And since she’s a teacher, they carry more weight with those still stuck in the government fool system or those who don’t think they could ever do it.
I have friends that used Seton, and other friends that used Our Lady of Victory, but they found they had to do a little improvising too.
January 5th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Is there a recipe for those muffins (or a store where I can buy them)? In my opinion, there was never a better invention than that of the peanut butter/chocolate combination. Brilliant!
And I’m looking to start homeschooling my four-year-old daughter and wondering what you’ve used or done to help your kids learn to read. She’s interested in numbers (counting, adding, and learning the symbols), but she’s resistant to learning the names and sounds of letters. I think I need good games for her, but I’m lacking creativity and wondering if there’s just a fun workbook I could buy, or website we could play with. Do you have suggestions?
January 5th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Just offering my two cents…the program Wendy mentioned is highly recommended.
But just to get your feet wet, here are a couple articles by a writer that I admire–she’s a teacher who pro-homeschooling and knows her stuff.
Ready..set..Homeschool: http://www.lewrockwell.com/taylor/taylor37.html
She recommends the Spalding method to teach kids to read: http://www.lewrockwell.com/taylor/taylor146.html
The workbook she is referring to is The Writing Road to Reading, and there is a copy on ebay for around ten bucks!
I hope that helps!
January 5th, 2010 at 8:52 pm
Master recipe comes from “Complete Tightwad Gazzette”–brilliant book by the way–then I modify it to make it semi-healthy (whole wheat pastry flour & a little ground flax seed–shhh, don’t tell the kids). Num.
January 6th, 2010 at 9:57 am
I truly treasure my years of being home schooled by my mother. She was pretty regimented in my schooling as well, which was good for me. I found that I needed that I needed that structure. My favorite memories of all were the field trips to museums and the like. She even allowed me to work as a volunteer at a zoo and a science museum as part of my schooling (both were great learning opportunities and taught me a lot about responsibility). I think it’s great that you are teaching your kids at home. They will treasure this experience later, and they’ll be ahead of their traditionally schooled peers in college (this has been my experience at least, and was the same for my other college friends who were home schooled).