Summer camp

You know, if you've been around homeschooling for any amount of time at all, the most asked question to a homeschool mom.  "What do you do for socialization?"  Well, since we don't have recess or a lunch room where schools have free time socialization, we have to do what other kids do for further socialization.  Extracurricular activities!  I'm glad for no lunchroom or recess because, well, those are the places I hated as a child!  I went clear through school in public school and I still get a sunken feeling about those place.  I was punched in the face by a boy at recess while most of the school kids looked on.  I spent many lunch hours with a tray of food looking for someone as lonely looking as I felt to sit by or hoping someone would choose to sit with me.  That was probably the worst part of school for me!  Anyway, what was I talking about?  Socialization!

My son has always been a social butterfly.  He easily meets friends.  We go to the park, boom, leave with 3 new friends.  Daughter, not so much.  Ok I can't attribute this to homeschooling because when she was born until nearly age 5 I worked full-time as well as served as a leader in my church.  I began my life as a stay at home mom just over 4 years ago.  My kids went to daycare and private school until 2 1/2 years ago.  They are 9 and 11 now.  My girl didn't come home telling me the names of the other kids like her older brother had, she was timid.  She hid her face when an adult spoke to her ... Still does sometimes.  When she went to kindergarten, she was more focused on goofing off to get people to laugh at her.  She came home at one point saying that a child at school was mean.  I brushed it off and told her that maybe she misunderstood, but she insisted.  A few weeks later I had lunch with her and that child was saying very mean things to my daughter.  We prayed for the child and later they became good friends.  It's hard when people say mean things to your child!

I had a conversation with my girl a few months back about someone hurting my feelings with words.  I asked if anyone did that to her.  She told me a story that made me cry.  I am now realizing that it was a situation that I watched play out, but thought she didn't notice because she seems so care free about so many things.  Wherever they are schooled, in social settings, there is a chance for bullying, rejection and hurtful words.  Thankfully, after gatherings with our homeschool group, she comes home recharged.  When my kids are hurting, I hurt too, when they're happy, I am overjoyed!

So tomorrow, she will go to summer camp.  I was her counselor last year and she was really clingy to me.  She didn't try hard to make friends and was a bit whiney.  I opted not to go this year because I felt she needed a break from Mommy and Mommy from her.  I want her to experience camp.  She was really anxious when I told her I wasn't going.  She was to the point of not wanting to go, but finally asked me to find her jobs to raise money for camp.  I got to sigh relief.  She is fully funded and is packed and ready to go.

Who's getting anxious now?  This Mom!  The situation from before that I thought she didn't notice is upon us again in a little different format, but it I am afraid to bring it up in case she really didn't notice!  I could make it a thing when it may not need to be.  Pray, pray, pray!  Big brother will be at camp as well as trusted adults from my church.  It's hard to know when to step in!  It was conflict like this that helped shape me into who I am today, but makes me often suspicious unnecessarily as well.  Sooooo, yes, she is going!  Yes, I will pray for her tender heart and mind.  I know one day I will need to let her go out on her own into this big dark world, but that day is not today.  Lord, give me wisdom to guide her and let our conversations prepare her for what may come!  May her heart pursue You more than any other thing at camp!

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.

Ha Ha! It's official, I have fallen behind!

Well it's not really funny, but what can I do?  This is the first weekend this school year that I haven't graded all of last week's assignments.  The classroom is a mess.  The lesson plans are drafted through Thanksgiving, but they're not in the grade book yet.  The Homeschool Helper app has been fantastic and worth every penny.  It does work better, though when you're caught up.  Last week's buttons are still showing up as red instead of green, and it's not because the kids aren't done, it's all me.  

So last Friday was a scheduled homeschool group bowling trip.  I made it so we would do character, math and spelling, then hit the road for a nice 45 minute drive to the activity.  The kids were excited to see and play with their friends.  I scheduled to help a friend at 5 and bowling was until 5 so I would have to leave around 4 to get back in time.  I didn't look at a map because I had the directions in my head.  My husband is laughing at this point if he's reading this.  I drove East and after about 30 minutes of driving and daydreaming, I realized that I should be going North by now, so I turn on the GPS.  It says to continue East for 7 more miles.  I keep going and after a few miles begin to realize that I would be going East to find another paved road to take me North so I can go back West.  No!  At this point, I look at the time I'm supposed to arrive at my destination and it tells me I have another 50+ minutes.  It is already about 2:40.  I don't have anyone's phone numbers in my phone, but I have extra directories in my trunk.  Why?  Because I'm the group's leader.  Now that's funny!  I finally get ahold of someone and tell them I just won't be making it to bowling.  Over 2 hours of driving for 30 minutes of bowling wasn't going to work.  So now I'm going home and I could catch up on grading and lesson plan entry, but no, I let the kids do wii bowling because they were disappointed.  I have continuing ed for my nursing license to do, so I start reading and start to doze off.  I set my iPad alarm to remind me when to help my friend because I can be there by 4:30 now and I won't be late.... If I turn on the volume for my alarm.  So I wake up in a start and wipe the drool off my face.  "Get your socks and shoes on!  We're late!"  I make it to my next destination just before 5.  Done by 9.  

So now the weekend is gone, I never caught up our homeschool stuff, but I've completed 15 of 30 CEU's for nursing and am well on my way to the next 5 being done.  I had a great time at church and fellowship group, bought groceries, babysat the carpenter who still didn't have the right parts to finish a door install started in July, and baked a dessert and bread.  I even got a Sunday afternoon nap which is why I'm still awake and blogging at 2 a.m..

If you've ever read someone's blog and felt inadequate, I bet you will feel empowered by reading this one.  School for us is still successful even though I told my husband last week that I felt like a failure.  My bathroom hasn't been mopped since... I don't know for sure.  My kids have been fed, there's clean and folded clothes in various places in the house and the bills are paid!  I'm just feeling blessed that we made it 1/4 of the way through the school year this time before I got behind.

Have an excellent week!  I intend to.

Mixing it up

Hah! I typed this all up on my phone and went to load pics.  I had to change my privacy settings and didn't get it saved.  Two full rambling paragraphs and som more fluff gone.  Oh my!  So I don't know everything I was saying, but wanted to make a few points.  First of all, I feel like my home school mom confidence level increased this year.  I don't feel trapped in the subjects.  I put the history project grade in the "art" tab in my grade book today.  I have felt like we weren't getting any art in last year, but we did these projects.  Why not score them in art with a "excellent, satisfactory, needs improvement, unsatisfactory," grade rather than try to put a percentage score on it.

By the way, the wire above his head is not connected to anything.  That's another long story.

We went the extra mile on this and covered the brooch with foil, then colored it with Sharpie markers.

Another thing resulting from my confidence that gave my OCD a run for its money is I'm letting my kids do worksheets orally and skip problems in math.  We are doing discussions rather than quizzes every time in history.  Spelling isn't graded, though it is a separate subject for us.  If they've already learned something and can explain it to me effectively, it's ok to skip the lesson.  When I did a few placement tests and found my kids slightly above grade level, I relaxed a bit.  I can do this!

Well I'm sure whatever I typed before was just as random as this with more words, so that's all for now.  I hope to post more regularly this year.

Our new classroom should be ready by next week, so I hope to be able to post about it soon!

It is that time of year again!

I am super excited to begin another year in our school, Life Song Academy.  Shaping the life songs of to very unique, very lovable children is not an easy task.  I am challenged daily as I spend time with them.  I am learning that if I expect them to work hard, which I do, then I must work even harder.  Parenting is not very effective when it is done passively.  Neither is home schooling for me.  Sure, they can breeze through their subjects like math and science and language with little assistance from me, but I need to be their coach, mentor, teacher, mother all the time.  Keeping them on task can be frustrating, but it is important!  They need boundaries and deadlines!  I don't remember the exact Proverb, but there is one that starts, "Consider the ant, you sluggard..."  It is from the Bible, but I don't really remember which translation either.  I don't want my kids to be defined as sluggards.

Now, I may sound like I'm overbearing and maybe I really am, but one of my goals this year is to teach them with firm gentleness.  Now that's an oxymoron!  Or is it?  My speech can be quite harsh and I get a little crazy when the kids misbehave... Yes I've stomped my feet a few times, but I don't like when I behave that way.  I hope  that my children's life songs will not be resentful or resistance songs, but will be of strength and Godly character.  Discipline is necessary as is love.  We will find this balance, I know it!

We start full days on Thursday, so breathe in, breathe out.  Never mind that the house is still torn up and we don't have our classroom yet.  We have our supplies and our family!  Let's go!

Story of the World - my take

I have heard, rather read, several negative reviews about Story of The World by Susan Wise Bauer saying that this is not a Christian curriculum and other things.  While I have only used the first year and purchased the second year and skimmed it briefly, I really feel it has been given some unfair press.

I researched the author and she is a Christian.  She claims to be a Christian and her writings outside of this curriculum suggest that she is a believer in the resurrected Son of God.  It is not mine to debate her faith, nor is at for anyone else to debate.  Her publishing company is called Peace Hill Press, feel free to explore it on your own.

The curriculum in question is not out and out Christian as some homeschool curricula.  What I mean by that is that each chapter does not contain a Bible reference, lesson or story.  Instead, each chapter is written about a different civilization or time from the perspective of someone who could have lived in that time period or culture.  The author is a story teller.  The facts are included in these stories to give a timeline and culturally significant details within a folk-tale-like lesson.

The very thing that many are opposed to is that Bible stories are treated in the same manner as other stories.  My argument against that is if we are learning the Chinese emperors and are expected to believe this is, in fact, history, we should also believe that the Bible stories are, in fact, history.  When she she shares about things like the Cyclops or other mythological beings, she clarifies the difference.  Not many world history books include Bible history as fact.  In my opinion, this alone clearly makes this series Christian.

Now, I questioned a few things in her timeline, but even Bauer acknowledges this when you look at the appendix.  "In order to keep the narrative coherent, I have occasionally told the story of one culture or country before going back in time to begin the story of another." (Page 389 SOTW Volume 2:The Middle Ages)  even the Bible itself is not in Chronological order.  There are so many philosophies about how a history book should be written so there are certainly going to be people that disagree with her approach.  She has a definite targeted audience and that audience is reached with this style.

The next argument is that she skips the flood and several key Bible teachings in this book.  Now as Christian home educators, are we really going to solely rely on anyone's history writings to teach our children the Bible?  There is an interspersing of Bible in all we do.  Not a day goes by that we do not talk about the Bible, so even if I only have 2 pieces of curriculum that mention the Bible in daily work, we are still giving them more Word than they would get at a public school.  Peace Hill Press even offers a Bible Curriculum, which I will not entertain as I have no first-hand knowledge of it and have only read reviews.  I personally do not use a Bible curriculum at all because we read our Bibles and pray and discuss things using our Bibles all the time.  My kids' Sunday School teachers tell me that my kids have the answers to most of the questions and can tell the stories along side the teachers, so I am confident that we are in the Word enough.

Now if someone wants to argue that their children don't care for it or they don't care for her style, I get that.  Not every student and not every teacher are the same.  That is why it is such a joy to homeschool and teach what works for our families.  My kids are excited about history and I can hardly keep them from reading ahead.  To me, this makes a good curriculum.  I have researched some of the things mentioned in the book and found the book to agree with other Christian and non-Christian writers.  There have been a few discrepancies, BUT in those cases, there were several theories floating about regarding that piece of history.  For instance, she describes the process of mummification.  The recipe and amount of days for each stage was different in this book than my niece's history book from a Christian school and different in a few different web sites.  Those details are not important for memorization or testing and it is not enough for me to want to throw out the book.  Especially if historians can't agree on them.

What we love is the stories.  My kids retain the information well and after reading it to themselves, they usually get most of the review questions correct.  Sometimes I do review orally and sometimes written. My son loves the map work and my daughter loves the coloring.  My son was in 4th grade last year and didn't care for the coloring pages.  They both loved the games and extra activities that are optional in the activity guide.  The tests are well formatted and give a great review of each chapter.  My second grader passed them all.

The whole curriculum is not necessary, but we did purchase it.  I opted for the hard cover text this year since we are not nice to paperbacks.  I ordered one activity book which has the activity pages at the end and review questions, additional reading, and projects, games and recipes at the beginning.  I then ordered a set of activity pages for each child.  For the cost of my ink and paper, this was a less expensive option for me.  I also chose to order a test book for each child as well.

I would say that is my 2 cents, but I think I put more in there than that. 

A picture of one of our game days.  The instructions told us to use beans and a penny.  We chose glam.

iPad app

Educreations.com.
I am super excited that I can use fun gadgets to teach my kids. I made a lesson using the educreations app on my iPad and projected it on my television using appleTV. My son said that he was able to learn the new concept with my help. Happy day!
Here is my first creation!

Enjoy your week!