I cannot do it all

There is so much to do and so little time.  I've heard it said often and I have said it myself.  Some days, I wonder how I would have done all the extra things if I were a working parent and my kids went to school outside my home.  Well that's not a fair comparison because those who work outside the home do not have all of their daily activities happening and making messes in their homes.  This past Monday is a prime example.  I cleaned the kitchen and swept the floor while the kids were working on their school work.  We had choir practice and a volleyball game and were away from the house for 5-6 hours.  We got home and I made supper, frozen pizza for the kids and homemade low carb pizza for myself.  I cleaned up after myself, but the kitchen was a disaster.  My kids make their own meals for lunch and with the hurried nature of getting out the door, the bread wasn't wrapped tightly, there was a cheese wrapper on the counter.  Spills and crumbs on another counter.  Dishes were not put in the dishwasher and the pizza boxes never made it farther than the dining room table.  There were chunks of mud on the kitchen floor.

One could talk about how my kid should be more disciplined at cleaning up after themselves.  I have a secret for you... home schooled kids are kids too.  Some are clean and some are sloppy.  Some are careful and some are eccentric.  I have walked with my kids as toddlers and used their hand to pick up trash on the floor and helped them throw it away.  I have taught them repeatedly that the table needs wiped off if you clear it.  I have taught them to clean the stove top after a spill and close the bread wrapper.  My kids are still normal kids with attention spans of toddlers and they don't automatically do what is right.  I really don't think they see the mess sometimes.  

I'm not the perfect parent either.  I am not a naturally t
idy person.  I fall more into the eccentric category than disciplined and orderly.  I really like some of my life to be very organized and planned, but other areas are fly by the seat of my pants.  For me to establish a good habit I really have to work on it.  I have this problem, though.  I can't do good at everything at the same time.  I am very good about paying bills and balancing my checkbook.  That is, until I'm very good at keeping my kitchen clean.  I'm great at that until I'm good at getting dressed nicely every day and keeping myself looking good.  I think you get the picture. For every good habit I've formed, it seems I have an equal and opposite bad habit.  There was a time I thought maybe I was bipolar, but now I realize that I'm just a normal person trying to do it all at once or give up on all of it because I can't be do everything well.  I want to be the crafty homeschool mom who does neato things with the kids all the time while keeping an immaculate house and takes them to all their activities while being an active volunteer at church and keeping my spiritual habits in check and keeping tabs on the news and making time for myself and my husband with the clever date nights and being the encourager and volunteer when things need done and make beautiful menus and and and and.  Woah!  I'm just one person and I can't do it all!

As I've matured, ok aged, I have truly developed some good healthy habits.  I found a good time for myself to read the Bible every day.  I make my bed in the mornings and take care of the animals.  I take my morning vitamins and am following a healthy eating plan.  I'm trying to find time to make priority out of the important things.  I fail with my husband and my kids and correspondence and communication more often than not, but I think I need to give myself credit for the good habits I DO have.  And the good habits I do have came over time.  They came through trial and error, and they also came one at a time.  Baby steps.  Whenever I try to start on Monday and do all that I aspire toward, I fall flat on my face!  

Another thing I am recognizing is that I DO have time when I think I don't.  Yesterday, I made granola.  You have to stir it every 15 minutes.  Normally I would put it in the oven and sit on Facebook or some computer game while I wait for each timer.  Today, I had some tasks I wanted to complete.  I cleaned and swept our guest bathroom in 8 minutes.  I then put away the dirty rag and got a new one and went in to the master bath.  I didn't finish it when the first 15 minute timer went off.  I washed my hands, stirred the granola and set out to scrub the tub.  I ran our of cleaner, so I had to reconstitute more, so I wasn't finished at the second timer.  I washed my hands, stirred the granola and then went back to work.  I finished the master bath and swept the kitchen again and put all my supplies away before the 3rd timer went off.  This really was a big deal for me to start to recognize that while I can't do it all, I can do more than I have been doing.  

Just as I had to limit my kids' electronics including listening to music until they met certain goals, I need to ground myself from media that takes my attention completely.  So I guess I'm just saying that if I and if you as a homeschool parent has aspirations to do better, we need to try and pace ourselves.  Also, I need to give myself grace when I can't complete everything I had planned.  Balance is key!  I need to prioritize which habits are eternal, which are meaningful and which need to go.  I would rather be proud of balance than busyness.

To grade or not to grade? That is the question!

People outside the homeschool world may not realize that this is even a thing, but it really is something that we ask ourselves as homeschool parents, especially in elementary years.  Do I grade, or do I not grade?  Letter grades are given in multi-student classrooms as an objective way to monitor student performance.  One could argue that it should be a must for any student as it is concrete, but I'm not sold on that for the younger student.  In fact, I even look back on my own report cards from public school and see that early on I was given some pass/fails and some Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory/Needs Improvement type grades.

Some opt for a all-in-one school program where a transcript is provided by the curriculum company.  I just am not satisfied with the price or the product of all-in-one high school programs.  Let me clarify, I think many companies do a great job with one or two subjects, but I haven't loved a package deal enough that I'm willing to pay the price to try it out.  AND I love a few of the companies that I've chosen through the years.  I can't say enough about Apologia Science!  My kids and I have enjoyed that through elementary and the kids loved it less in middle and high school as they're expected to do lab reports and hypotheses.  Teacher Momma loves that they are required to do that!  Since I use a different company for almost every subject, I find myself in need of a way to keep good records, grade reports, and now a high school transcript.

I have aligned our curriculum schedule with our state's Board of Regents guidelines so that a college transition and possibility for scholarships improves.  I know there are many ways to do grading and high school.  This is just our way at LSA.  All high school courses are getting a letter grade and we are using the 4 point grading system that many high schools across the USA use as well.  I could figure out the algorithm, it's  not that hard, but I have an app for that!  One of the best investments I've made in record keeping for homeschool is Homeschool Helper.  According to AppBrain.com it hasn't been updated since 2014, but is available for Apple and Android and is still $4.99.  I've been using it for several years and it still has previous years' information on it, but that is mostly hidden.

Homeschool Helper Start-up screen

Homeschool Helper is great as I input my grading scale, all the classes with resources and my student names.  It keeps track of attendance, has a reading log, a fieldtrip log and grade book.  It also has a planner which directly translates to the gradebook by clicking, "create grade for this lesson," button.  The attendance record is by the day or half-day.  In Kansas, we have to have days that are an approximate equivalent to a 6 hour school day, so if we do 5-8 hours (yes we do long days sometimes) I select full day.  If we do 2-4 hours, I click half day.  If we only do one hour, I don't generally count the day at all.  I may record it in the field trip area, but not count it in my days.  The reality is that we really need the book days to complete our work, so I don't over-do the field trip or extra-curricular activities counting as school days.

The open book of Homeschool Helper.  Each subject has a tab.  You can calculate the grade right there and plug it in.

I had chosen a grading scale that had 69% as failing.  The reason being I don't want a care giver or even someone doing any service for me that is only 62% competent, but they passed.  In high school, I did relax my standard a bit and made it as 65% is still passing.  My reason for this decision is that most schools in our area have a 60-70-80-90 grading scale.  My kids are both interested in college and their GPA will compete with the GPAs of other smart kids who are rated on an easier scale.  Until high school, I still expect the 70-78-86-93 work.  High school's change is slight, but 65-74-83-92.  I have no ill feelings for anyone who chooses any grading scale.  I just love that we can choose those details about our home schools!  I think sometimes that I do want to prove naysayers wrong that homeschooling is not slacking.  We don't raise incompetent learners.

THE SUBJECTIVE

Here is the rough part about grading.  I'm their mom!  Everything they do is wonderful, right?  Well it's not.  I do think my children are bright.  I have high standards for them, but there are places I push them and places I don't.  My husband pushes them in places that I don't and that is a great balance for them.  We support each other as a team!  Here are subjects that really mess with me, though.  Physical Education, Art, Music, Projects, Speeches, Creative Writing.  I know that if they say 8x7 is 49, they are wrong.  One child had a 5-day project to tell how other nations influence our culture today.  They had to make a visual representation.  I gave them input that they could draw arrows on a map that are color coded to imports and exports, etc. and they ran with it.  I received a printout of a world map.  There were 4 colors of ink used and a scribbled key and a bunch of curved lines that look like a sloppy airline map of where this and that airline flies to.  5 days to make this???  So I shared that I will try to rate these projects as if they were submitted to the fair.  "What color ribbon would this get?  It looks like you only spent 15 minutes on it!"  The response I got from the child was, "I did only spend 15 minutes on it."  As a parent/teacher I don't even know what to do with that!!!  I have nothing to compare it to with other students.  What should I expect of a child that age?  It hasn't been graded at the time of this post.  I'm searching the curriculum company for advise on objective ways to grade this type of project.

You choose whether you want percentages or the E, S, NI, U grading systems.

Art, Music and Physical Education are graded mostly by effort applied.  That is changing in high school.  So far, I have nothing to grade, but I'm looking on how to navigate that.  I really prefer the younger grades with a pass/fail.  I have a page that I've developed for writing criteria.  It includes whether or not the subject is covered, grammar, sentence structure, use of a variety of adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and descriptive nouns.  How many paragraphs are in there and what the topic sentence and closing sentence looks like.  I have a speech grading criteria as well.  I'm looking forward to forensics, though and I will grade by the rating they receive.  Someone who doesn't love them and think they're adorable can give them a score for those things.  I am likely to find a grading criteria for the other subjective subjects so that I can be confident that I'm grading as an unbiased teacher would grade.

ELEMENTARY YEARS

I started homeschool as many homeschool parents and tried to format it like a public school, but after experiencing it for a while, I relaxed my approach.  It adapted to where during the elementary years, I hardly graded anything.  A handwriting grade just killed my little girl!  I switched to putting a heart around the letters or words that looked really good and making a mark by those I could not read.  Homeschool Helper App has an option to give grades of Excellent, Satisfactory, Needs Improvement, and unsatisfactory.  They don't have a pass/fail option, but I would appreciate that.  I understand why a teacher of 20 would need the NI option so the parent can see it.  Personally, I know when my child is not doing well and help them before moving on.  I have been guilty of not grading something for a few weeks and not realize that they need improvement until they've moved on.  I feel terrible as they are circling the verb, too, when they were supposed to circle the complete subject.  Things like that do happen and we review instead of grade.  Coming up to middle school, I began to grade the concrete things and I guess I always graded math.  I do give 1/2 credit for answers that are close, but incorrect.  I would much rather see a try than a skip.  For instance I recently received an answer that was correct in some instances, but not in what the text just explained.  I gave half credit.  The next question asked something specific and the answer written was not remotely about the content in any setting.  They got no credit for that answer.  I do want my kids to thrive outside the walls of my home.

Would you fail your own child in a subject?  Yes.  I have done it and will do it again if I need to.  Now there is a math concept that one of my children could get correct for the tests last year, but in review, it was like they were never taught how to do it.  I will just say it.  Fractions!  We could do great with adding, we could do great with subtracting, we did great with multiplying, but then forgot how to add and subtract.  Once we got to dividing, we forgot how to do all of the others.  Conversion factors make sense while in the unit where we do them every day, but get past it and come back to it and its gone.  I have a rough time with explaining them, because I do all of it in my head and have to step back and slow down to explain it again each time.  We are redoing 2 whole math books.  No shame!  We use Life of Fred math and supplement with YouTube o
n occasion.  The program is fantastic and has brought us back around from hating math to somewhat enjoying it again.  There is no rush to complete everything, and by high school the concepts should be solid.  I would rather that than try to push through just to say we did.  Why push through something that isn't understood?

I'm just beginning in high school so I found a credit planner that I really like so far.  You can find it here.  They have many more printables and template downloads, so you might want to check out their whole site! 

I'm not paid to advertise for the people I promote, I just want to share things that work for me!

Getting into the swing of things

I suppose most families that home school have gotten into a great routine by now.  Our school has an expected pattern, but most days we fall short!  Today is our 50th day of school and we still are a bit off course much of the time.  Now to clarify, we have not done book school all 50 days.  We've gone on several educational field trips and have included sports in our physical education program starting in July.
I don't have a structured schedule as in we do math at this time and language at this time, but I do have a schedule where we start school at 8:30 AM and take scheduled breaks.  I let the kids decide which subject to start with.  Today, I started with history because we do it together on activity days and read aloud days and I like to get that over with.  Last week, we had 3 days of field trips or living education and 2 days of school.  Needless to say, yesterday was miserable getting back to the swing of things.  Its not like they have just started school and don't know what the expectations are.
We started the school year off with yet another new curriculum choice.  We are still using Story of the World and Apologia and Spelling Power, but for the rest of our subjects, we've made the switch to Easy Peasy All-In-One Homeschool .  We really do enjoy this and it requires a lot less planning for me!
I have made the mistake of letting a few days go and just trusting the kids to do their work while I do other things.  I then go to my gradebook to log assignments to find that they have only played the games on the site and not followed instructions to do the paper work required.  I quickly learned to have their assignment pages pulled up on my computer and ask them, "Where is that poem in ABCB format?" or "Did you write out definitions for these words?"  Usually my questions are met with a sigh of exasperation or a dumfounded look as if they didn't think they were really going to have to do that particular portion of the assignment.  Recently, I've not met as much unfinished work.  The part I don't understand is the fact that if the kids really focus on school, they could be done with book work in 3 hours or less each day and have time for documentaries or art studio or what I call living education.
One thing I've had to let go of is the idea that each subject needs a numerical and letter grade.  I see the point in high school for transcripts, but right now, I would rather see them learn and they are.  My gradebook app has 2 options.  One is grading scale and another is basically pass/fail.  How do you put a letter grade on someone working through a grammar game until they get 100% correct?  I really appreciate that my kids want to "win the game."  If I were to give a worksheet to them with the types of verbs and they got 50% correct on it and then we touched it again and then took a test where they got 70% correct and then move on, I don't think they would retain as much.  This personalization is something I love about home education!  I still give a numerical grade in language on some assignments, science on the vocabulary and review questions, history on the review questions if applicable and math on worksheets and online quizzes.  Typing, Bible, Spelling, Life Skills, Computer, Music, Art, and Physical Education are all given pass/fail in this school.  I was always graded with a letter grade in PE.  So subjective!  Most of our assignments are graded on a, you did it, or you didn't basis.  How can one grade a child with no artistic or athletic ability beside one who excels and not be swayed?  Life is not going to down grade an accountant who can only draw stick men.
Living Education to me is the time where you skip math class and go to the kitchen and make a recipe.  You ask the child to double the recipe and cook.  If the cake doesn't turn out on a recipe that you know is good, then math must not have been good or reading as they may have put baking powder in instead of baking soda.  Or we are studying Rosh Hashanah and make Challah, blow a shofar, read a story about it, go to the pond to cast our bread crumbs out on it.  Return to eat your bread and apples and honey.  Those things are great and some homeschools are solely living education.  I'm impressed with those who are able to do that, but for us I like the mixture. 
I'm not going to end with a promise to blog more often because every time I do, it takes me months to get another one typed out.  School is still happening and we are doing more than sleeping in and watching movies.

Oh yeah!  I made a new logo for our school and put it on the bottom of the blog. :)

Towels and Shirts

So by homeschool mom standards I may be behind the times, but maybe in general mom terms I'm on target or ahead of the game.  Or maybe it really isn't worth comparing.  We use KONOS Character curriculum as a supplement.  Some people use it as core and up kudos to them, because I don't spend that much effort in planning.  We are at the end of our unit on responsibility and there are checklists for to help evaluate what you can teach your kids.  Wow!  I've spent so much time focusing on the info about early colonists that I almost missed this amazing part!

We've been going over the checklists for the past few days and I'm not grading the kids, but I'm mostly just keeping these things in mind.  Today we had "laundry," on the checklist.  I never thought about it.  I have the kids put their dirty clothes in a basket or hamper in their rooms and the bathroom and they haul the laundry downstairs once a week and then deliver clean clothes to rooms when it is their chore.  Why did it never dawn on me to teach them proper folding techniques?

I can give you a hint... CONTROL.  There are certain things I like done just so, and laundry happens to be one of them.  Now I know people who have their young kids do all of the household laundry and act like they should win a merit badge for doing so, but that isn't my ultimate goal.  Over the past 2 years, I have never upped the ante for my kids on chores, though and maybe after today's lesson, it may just be time.  My husband knows that I'm, well a little particular on the way things are folded and my closet is organized by item and color.  O.K. I'm OCD!  This shouldn't prohibit me from teaching my children my OCD ways, should it?  

I brought a whole load of clean towels into the classroom and showed my kids how to fold them.  They had some nice ideas of how we can fold, but I told them to hold on to those ideas and use them in their own homes.  For now, we do it my way because they fit into the cupboards and drawers best this way.  After a few attempts, they actually did pretty well.  I admit, I was tempted to fix a few, but the stacks were neat enough that they didn't fall over, so I let them be.

The next load was done as well (yes, I let unfolded towels sit over the weekend, and the washer and dryer sat unemptied too), so I gave instruction on shirts, pants and undergarments.  They already know socks because they are hard to get wrong. They did a great job with each article of clothing and were actually excited for the next load!!  Wahoo!  Unfortunately, we had to do a little math, spelling and you know other school stuff or I might have them be my laundry slaves today.

Well, I'm glad to know that my kids can do laundry all the way through.  I need to do a few things now. First, I need to let go of some of my OCD or teach it to my kids.  I also need to learn a balance between giving the kids responsibility and letting them be kids.  I need to learn to be sensitive about time and place for just plain old fun!  They are not my slaves, but they are mine to teach.  Balance!  They one day will leave my home and need to survive in this world without me and the training began even before we home schooled.  My goal is to release my kids into the world and watch them thrive and not just survive.

Really I think I'm learning as much or more than my kids.  I thank God for the opportunity to train up my children.