On to the next thing

So we're off and running into our next quarter and it looks like we have enough events going on that we will not have as many days as we have school before Christmas break.  My kids are already fretting about the assignment load.  I'm happy they can participate in many things.  Choir, sports, scholar's bowl, forensics and youth group activities are enough to keep us hopping.  Basketball practices began this week for jr high and high school will start next week.  I am blessed that in our small corner of the world we have so many options.  We only had a few hours dedicated to bookwork yesterday and today, so that isn't very good for high school especially. But the kids still seem to be taking it well and we are succeeding!  Two more school days and then youth convention for our church youth group and I get to be a sponsor.  It will be a great time!!  

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!

Another First Day of School

     Interestingly, it seems I named this blog incorrectly.  It was named "Day by Day," when it should be, "Year by Year."  I have good intentions, naturally, but life happens and school happens.  I have decided to plan on my plans being ruined.  My kids are healthy and strong and well-educated.  I have nothing to complain about!

I got my workspace cleaned off and ready to go. 
Add coffee and a cool drink and I'm on it!

     Today marks another first day of school for Life Song Academy.  This time, I have a high schooler and a middle schooler!  That sounds so crazy to me!  I want to slow the progress somewhat, but I don't want to reverse time.  I love watching my children mature and grow in so many ways.  We have relocated and have a wonderful school room.  We have space for recreation and we're near a few towns so we can get supplies we need.  However, Amazon.com is my friend.
     With all the changes and "maturity" that we are experiencing, I should have expected that there would be no hiccups for our first day.  WRONG!  First of all, my hubby recommended I just get up with him so I could get the kids up on time.  My daughter came in at 2 AM saying she hadn't fallen asleep yet.  We prayed and I sent her back to bed with a few suggestions to remedy why she couldn't sleep.  Then hubby's alarm went off earlier than I thought I had agreed to.  Well, I kissed him goodbye and fell back asleep thinking my 7 AM alarm would wake me in time to get things done.  Yeah, I must have ninja skills in my sleep because I don't remember shutting off my 7AM alarm.  I awoke at 7:30 and did my morning Bible reading and slowly got around to waking my kids up at 7:50.  Not a good habit to keep.  So it was after 9 AM that the chores were finally completed and breakfast eaten and we were able to begin the day.

Schedule

The optimal week schedule.

     I made this handy dandy optimal week schedule and I think maybe I'm maturing a little as well.  When we start school, I really want things to go as planned ... at least for the first day.  I gave instructions and prompted for things to get done with very little yelling and frustration.  I spent a month this summer doing a devotional about taming the tongue and this time it helped.  We decided that it is due time that the children wake themselves up.  When they're out of the house, mommy isn't going to hug them awake any more and urge them out of bed until they're on the verge of being late and the, "hurry it up!" yelling commences.
     So another discipline that I've never implemented is self-motivation and record-keeping.  I have typed up lesson plans by subject and then put them on a planner sheet and then typed them into my record-keeping app and then adjusted according to the type of week we have.  That's a lot of work to keep rewriting things.  I listened to a webinar by Kim Sorgius from Not Consumed and it really put me into a new mindset.  If we were a younger homeschool family, I would have bought most of her material.  Through trial and error, I have already created similar templates that work for our family.  My students now have blank planning sheets with their subjects listed down the left column and blank squares for each weekday where the kids fill in what they did each day instead of me writing  and rewriting it for them.  Seriously, if the child doesn't understand that Unit 3, lesson 4 comes after Unit 3, lesson 3, then I've done a terrible job thus far considering their ages.  My weekly schedule is also patterned after Kim's.
    Here are my 2 students on their first day of 9th and first day of 7th grade!  Aren't they cute!

First day of high school and first day of 7th grade

Cell Phones

     In our family we decided that a rite of passage into high school includes the gift of a cell phone, as long it is used responsibly.  Not that we don't trust our kids, but temptation is really strong, so we opted for iPhones and have parental control limiting the features our kids can access.  Our younger child may borrow the phone that is considered the home phone since we don't have a land line, but we've locked up the parts that make it a smart phone, except the "find my friend" feature where we can track where the phone is from anywhere.  All that said, today I also learned early on why many schools of every type have a cell phone collection at the beginning of the day.  When your high school student has their phone out of pocket and has been on the first page of a lesson for over 20 minutes, it is pretty evident they are not really reading it.  Enough said.

     Here's to a great school year!  Hopefully you'll hear from me in less than a year this time!

Yes, No, I don't know!

Saying yes or no seems simple.  When you have several opportunities to do things you enjoy, of course the answer seems simple, "yes!"  There are times that everything seems to be well-balanced, but then it turns out that everything you say yes to, lands about the same time.
Yes, being a homeschool family gives you freedom to start and end your school days when you can or want to.  It gives you freedom to have days off when other schools are in session, and hold school while area schools are in recess.  It doesn't mean that you have more time than other families, though.  Well, not in the same way at least.  And we still must meet several state requirements to be in compliance with the law.  I got so busy this last few weeks, I didn't review my lessons for this week and it makes a big impact! 
There are weeks that we are all less prepared than others, but I was convicted last year to make sure that I am as prepared for my own kids as I am when I teach a class at church or lead worship.  When I was working full-time, I studied before my meetings and when I was on committees, I gave my best.  My kids deserve no less!  I would be furious if I sent my kids to another style of school and the teachers were ill-prepared and yelled at my kids when communication failed.  Yeah, that happens here on occasion.
There was a time that I tried writing some of my own material to save on money or other reasons.  It was an ok thing and I do enjoy that, but it turns out that it is not for me!  I am more of one to adapt the material to fit my kids and their needs.  They somehow learn in spite of me at times, but I love the interaction of them learning because of me.  If I plan to adapt the material to fit the lesson theme and don't even know what we will be discussing, that is a problem!  Some weeks I can prepare during the school hours, but other weeks I can't. 
For me it takes a good 5 + hours to plan for a week of school for 2 kids.  I have already made a layout of what I want to accomplish through the year in each subject and that took some time as well.  I would say that I am at the point in preparation that people who get a boxed curriculum set are in.  The disadvantage is that I don't have a concise list of supplies laid out for me.  I choose not to make these lists in advance because it requires too much redundancy.  I just do it when I make my shopping list for the week.  I preview the language material so that I know that I can help with questions.  I preview the science experiments to make sure they are doable in our home.  I look through our history curriculum because I don't remember most of it and I like to learn with the kids!  We also have many activities to choose from in history and some of them that I chose when I laid out the year aren't going to work out at this point. 
Another part for my planning that takes plenty of time is my digital gradebook.  I have chosen the Homeschool Helper (HH) app for record keeping.  It is less paperwork and more paperwork all at the same time.  I use weekly planning pages from donnayoung.org so that I have a layout of what is happening with everyone all in one spot.  On the HH app, I have to click on each student individually and that is ok.  It is so interesting that because there is such a variety of styles of homeschooling parent as well as family size, curriculum choice and state requirements, that there can never be a one-size-fits-all solution to record keeping in a homeschool.  This is working for me, but takes a bit of effort.  I transfer daily assignments to my weekly planning page and then enter them into HH.  The beauty of it is that I don't have to rewrite the assignment to put a grade in.  I can alter things and make comments, but all-in-all, the entry at the beginning saves me time with grading in the end.
So I will let my yes be yes, and my no be no!  BUT I will keep in mind before giving a yes or no that I only have a short time left with my kids and open-ended dates will be considered differently than solid dates.  I need to be intentional about keeping a good universal calendar so that I don't over-plan!  Outside experiences and watching the good and bad parts of a parent juggling activities are an education in itself.  Oh the joys of figuring out balance!