9th August, 2008

Highlights and Lowlights: Week 1

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.

Posted at 9:29 am |

2 Comments

On August 10, 2008 at 7:33 am tribeofautodidacts said:

August 10, 2008 at 7:33 am

Your kids really seem to thrive on this structure. I’m sorry about the planner (and poor Stella’s intestines).
On August 10, 2008 at 8:52 pm mrsdawneshelton said:

August 10, 2008 at 8:52 pm

Oh I loved reading about your first week! Now your getting me excited about starting mine next week.