Home School Mom

1. Use the five finger reading check to determine a comfortable reader for independent reading. If a child cannot read or pronounce five words on a full page of reading, chose a different book. Children’s independent reading level, that is them reading alone, should be easy for them to read (decode) and understand.

2. Make your own white board cleaner. Use one part rubbing alcohol, with two parts water and two drops of hand dish washing soap.

3. Do less dishes. Label, with finger nail polish, the names of each family member on a glass or cup. Red nail polish works well. Use a clear coat of nail polish over the name. Names will not come off in the dishwasher.

4. Blank unlined index cards can be folded to make simple mini-books to glue on file folders or notebooking pages.

5. Children can make their own time line pieces on blank index cards. The designing, drawing and labeling of the time line pieces helps students remember better.

We always have fresh salsa in our refrigerator. It’s a staple condiment around here for snacks and even breakfast !

Salsa

2 large cans or jars of petite diced tomatoes,with juice. For a smoother sauce chop the tomatoes even smaller in your food processor or by hand

6 green onions sliced thin and including some of the green stems

2 tablespoons of minced garlic

1 tablespoon of salt

1 half bunch of cilantro, chopped very fine, not including stems

2 serano peppers, diced small, including seeds

1 large jalapeno pepper, diced small, including seeds

The juice of two limes

Combine all ingredients, cover and refrigerate.

We find this just hot enough. If you like your salsa even hotter or less hot, add more or less peppers.

My problems

1. I cannot get to French and Art because I am trying to do to much in a day, to much in a week.

2. My children are not learning from their Language books easily because it is difficult for me to teach all three of them at three different levels, at the same time, in not only Language but Spelling, Math and Handwriting. Religion was in that line up but after just one week, I remedied that with family religion.

3. I am behind on the housework and cooking ( my Mom baked for us this week and on one night Dh brought home restaurant bought pizza) because I do not have enough hours in the day to do chores, cooking and lessons.

My Remedies

1. Set aside a day a week for French and Art and catch up on things not learned or not done.

2. Do Language as a family. Use the Language Lessons already written for you, for 4th through 8th grade in the Into a New Land Unit Study.

3. Do the Into a New Land Unit study for three days a week. Yes, it will take longer to complete. Clean clothes and food made at home matter.

My Promises

1. I will not tell myself, even in my mind, that I am a not a success in home teaching because I cannot keep up with instructing all three of my children using grade level workbooks for most subjects.

2. I will not care that I didn’t do history chronologically, starting at the beginning.

3. I will continue to plan out my days because planning helps keep my garden growing.

4. I will not plan only lessons in that garden, fun, chores and meals have to grow too.

Highlights
1. Ds11 learned about compond verbs and compound subjects. He seems to understand it.

2. Dd8 learned how to add long columns of two digit numbers by grouping numbers that added together, equal ten, adding more numbers easily, and then carrying.

3. Dd10 decided to test “drag” a scientific term she learned this week, which is the wind’s pressure on bird’s wings. One night we had a monsoon storm, one without lightening or thunder, but a lot of wind. She ran outside and of course urged the other children to follow. “I’m testing drag!”, she told dh and I.

4. My Mom’s advice to do less subjects each day really works, we are all finishing lessons in four hours.

5. St. Patrick’s Summer is a nice read aloud for CCD for all of us. I like how we can do this together.

Lowlights

1. I still have not started French or Art.

2. We will finish our Ancient Egypt Unit in two weeks and I have to figure out what to do for the next unit, the details of it all. I know the books I want to read and have the children read, but still have to pull it together.

1. You plan on teaching the children a new swimming stroke at the pool on Saturday, and you briefly think, I can make that P.E. for the week.

2. You consider taking next year’s curriculum on vacation because you hope you might have time to read it then.

3. You want to join Netflix because you won’t have to wait for interlibrary loan to get the movies you need for your next history and science topic.

4. You tell your children, cleaning your room, taking out the garbage and scrubbing the tub are Home Economics. Making dinner counts.

5. Your Christmas wish list starts with Math Stories and also includes A Family Guide to Narnia.

6. Instead of slamming the door and running inside, you call the kids outside to see the large ugly bug on the front porch. You suggest they capture it in the bug container, you have three of these on hand, and you get one of the at least four field guides you own, to help the children identify it. The kids all think this is really fun and one suggests they nature journal the bug. You agree.

I was talking on the phone to my Mom the other night. She lives across the street, but I still call her on the phone a couple of times a day. I was telling her, I’m just not happy with how long it is taking us to do lessons each day. None of the kids have complained, they seem okay with it, but I sure do feel like six hours is too much.

“What is taking so long?” asks Mom. She is forever interested in Home School and asks all the right questions. It’s a mom thing I’m sure.

I give her the rundown on “the list” that includes oh eleven subjects, two of which, French and Art, I still have not begun. Even though, I didn’t realize this before I spoke, I began telling her how I thought Language, which includes Grammar and Writing, was particularly time consuming this year.

I seem to always have a problem with Language, I guess it’s the English teacher in me being critical.

“I never needed to know (she means in her adult life) how to diagram sentences,” says Mom. And she goes on to tell me how the Nuns ( she went to Catholic School all twelve years) taught Grammar. It seems Sister Mary Ellen broke her nose the year my Mom learned diagramming sentences. Sister did not want anyone to look at her face so she stood behind her students, teaching the back of their heads. Dad, who went to the same school as Mom, knocked over the Infant of Prague Statue and was kicked out of school that year. I digress, though love these stories and thought you might too.

I surprise myself and go into this kind of “in Defense of Grammar” speech.

“Oh, I know,” I say, “but it’s so much more than, can you identify the helping verb and the state of being verb from the real verb. They are learning how to put more interesting sentences together. They are seeing that you can put the verb phrase first in the sentence and you can have compound verb phrases separated by commas or connected with the word “and”. They are learning how to follow directions and … ” I go on and on.

In reflection I think are the children really learning all that? or am I ?

You see I have to diagram all their sentences to grade their work since I didn’t want to spend twenty-five dollars a teacher’s manual.

What can Mom say? I mean here I was, making a case for all this studying of Language. She suggested I alternate subjects, you know don’t do every subject on my eleven point list each day. Good advice Mom.

Of course I have a come back.

“We won’t finish the book !” Horrors. I know I sounded indignant and not rightfully so. Since when did I care if we finished the book? That’s not what came out of my mouth though, what came out sounded more like I am intent on finishing the book, have to finish the book or my children won’t learn all those interesting things about how to put sentences together.

I must be suffering from some home school Mom syndrome that’s yet to be named. I thought my middle name had been changed from Marie to flexible, guess not.

1. In Science - which handmade glider will go farther?

The prediction: the long wing glider will go farther because it is slimmer. The result: And it did !

The question of the day- does that mean that birds with short stubby wings can’t fly far?

2. In History - A note, Mama, written in Hieroglyphics was sitting on my planner this morning. It was a little book, orange, folded carefully. Noticed near, the book Egyptology.

3. In Grammar - Did he do it right? is not an inverted verb sentence. Did is a helping verb and do is the verb.

4. More Grammar. “What is an interrogative sentence?”

Dd8 has been studying this for almost two weeks.

“I know, I know !”, she says it’s Int. No one ever needs to know this, I’m not concerned.

5. In Math - The area of a trapezoid is base one plus base two divided by 2. Yep, it’s that easy. I can’t say I’ve every used this formula in adult life either, but then again, I’m not a Mathematician.

6. In Read Aloud - Will the Fathers put the wheel on the school even though it’s storming? Comment. Wasn’t that something, Janus in Church after all these years.

7. Independent Reading - dd8 drew a very detailed picture of her chamber. I came to find out, it is her bedroom !

Dd10 drew two thieves and wrote: The thieves stole jewelry. They used bags.

Ds10 designed an Egyptian Lunch Menu: Dates, figs, cheese, honey cakes and Nile River water. They had to drink something !

8. Religion - St.Patrick never expected everyone to use the Shamrock to explain the Trinity. No, it appears he didn’t, but he showed Cecilia and Michael just how it all came to be.

9. I lost the top to the kitchen trash can. What you say? How in the world. I really don’t know. I guess it’s better than ants in the sugar, that was last week’s kitchen nightmare.

10. Shock. I skipped spelling today. I  just wanted a break.

How is your week going so far?

Week one of the school year is over. It feels good to have a system in place and running. The real challenge for me in home school is always to keep that ball rolling. It’s like the office executive who suddenly finds himself working from home, the lawn needs mowed, the truck could use an oil change and though he knows he should be working on his laptop, chores can be a distraction.

Highlights of Week One

1. The agenda’s are a huge hit. The children are turning to that first page in their notebooks frequently throughout the day to see what has yet to be done. I didn’t intend for them to write their grades in the boxes, just checks, but all three of them are keeping track of their grades in the boxes too.

2. Averaging grades has become a skill all three kiddo’s are interested in learning how to do and they are becoming darn good at it.

3. Everyone is enjoying their novels for the study of Ancient Egypt. That is truly a high point especially for dd10 who often started novels last year and then grew bored with them after only a few days.

4. The Sum it Up page in their History Pockets asked them all to write a paragraph about what they learned this week about Ancient Egypt. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was for them all to write their paragraphs. Earlier in the week, I was feeling like I hadn’t enough for history, you see they are just using the History Pockets and reading novels.

5. They love having their lunch packed in little lunch bags, with tiny puddings and fruit with pull off tops.

Lowlights of Week One 

1. Stella, my 15 year old cat with a short intestine, pooped all over the side of my planner. It was the runny kind. I hadn’t time to print out and reorganize all those pages, so I grabbed a never used teacher planner off my shelves and used it to record the grades. It’ll have to do.

2. Some days the children are doing lessons for near six hours. That is too long for me, though they said it went quickly. I would like to see us only spending four hours a day on this kind of sit down work.

3. I have not started French or Art yet. I’m thinking of doing History or Science and French or Art each day, and in that way continuing to work at a consistent four hour day.

4. I’m behind on the laundry and house work. Enough said.

5. I decided to do CCD at home this year and purchased these workbooks by grade level to do that. Too much. I pulled St. Patrick’s Summer off my shelves and will go with a family CCD, instead. I’m working up a Novel Guide to go with it.

I use spelling lists each year for my kids. Yes, I have tried copy work and dictation and making lists from words misspelled in their writing, I like spelling lists better. The books we use are from Abeka and they are by grade and include poetry for the children to memorize.

Each Spelling and Poetry Book contains 34 lists of words for the kids to learn to spell and monthly poems for the children to memorize. The spelling lists have things to do with the words so that on each two page spread are not only the words but activities.

I divide the spelling lists into five words a day and do the same for the activities. So that by the time my child has learned to spell all 30 to 40 words on the list he/she has also completed all the activities. This sometimes takes more than a week, but we school 40 weeks so 34 weeks of lists is just fine. I go ahead and use dictation for the other weeks if we run out of word lists before our year is over.

All this translates into my children studying and spelling only five words a day and doing one to five activities with the word list each day. The whole process takes about 20 minutes or less. On Friday I have a spelling bee for our school where I use words from each child’s list and just play can you spell this word. It’s fun. We do it after they do spelling for Friday and no one yet finds it tiresome, they all love spelling bee day.

For the daily spelling test I use a form I made. I put a bunch of these forms printed front and back in a section in their notebooks called spelling and poetry. The spelling and poetry section has the spelling forms first and lined paper second. For poetry each day the children read through the poem they are to memorize first silently, then to me and write one sentence from the poem on the lined paper in their notebook. By the end of the month or sooner they can recite the poem. Amazing. And the poems are good choices for kids. I really like this approach to spelling and poetry, it works for us.

Here is the form I use for testing in Spelling. There are two columns, one for spelling the word in writing and the other for making a correction, if needed. I just hand the kids the spelling book after I test them, they check with the list in the book to see if they spelled the word correctly and they write out the correct spelling on the form if they need to.

Spelling form in pdf.

Spelling Form

Look for coming posts about teaching reading, reading comprehension and highlights and lowlights of the first week of school.

Go on over to Peggy’s for more information about

The Simple Woman’s Day Book meme.

Outside My Window… bird seed is growing, it looks a lot like corn.

I am thinking… about cleaning the carpets after lessons are finished.

I am thankful for… another normal day, my dh was on call all last week working day and night, this week we are back to our normal routine.

From the kitchen…dinner tonight, pancakes and bacon, I love breakfast for dinner.

I am wearing…a Supergirl tee shirt, jean shorts, bright pink flip flops.

I am creating… a novel guide and a patchwork purse and a crochet blanket for dd10.

I am going… to fold three loads of laundry.

I am reading. . . Wheel on the School out loud to the children.

I am hoping… to work on my patchwork purse today.

I am hearing…the ceiling fan whirl.

Around the house… the dish washer needs emptied and the beds need made.

One of my favorite things…home.

A Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week: swimming on Sunday afternoon.