Okay, let’s get that downer post off the top of the list, shall we??  And talk about how a day really goes over here!

We all know that I homeschool my hooligans.  I also babysit a few more gorgeous hooligans a couple of times a week.  Makes life a bit… interesting… around here, to say the least!

Basically what we’re doing for homeschool is using a Charlotte Mason method of learning as laid out by Ambleside Online.  I love Charlotte Mason, have her original series (am working through it), and really love Karen Andreola’s Charlotte Mason Companion.

In a nutshell, while we do a lot of reading on our bed, on the kids beds, under the trampoline, curled up in the living room…  our written stuff happens here.

The dining room.

You know, I debated for a while on making the dining room the “school” room, because we also have a playroom in the basement.  The problem with the basement is that it is dark.  And dreary.  Our living room and dining room are bright, and are really the centre of our home.  If the hooligans are working independently, then I can easily putter around in the kitchen, that kind of thing.  The dining room and living room are kind of the central parts of our home, so it just makes sense to have the school “stuff” located there.

A basic rundown of where we are right now goes like this,

Zi is seven and in grade two.  Her “regular” stuff is,

Ambleside Online Year 1, term 3 (with a few modifications… we’re using Clara Dillingham Pierson’s Among the Meadow People INSTEAD of Parables from Nature)
Math U See Alpha (she’s almost finished this book, and we’ll be moving onto the next one probably in January.)
All About Spelling Level 1 (she is zipping through this one, and we’ll be moving onto level two probably in a few weeks)

Ephraim is doing a bit of a mish mash, he is six and in Grade one, but he is a boy, and he does have a hard time focusing.  I was going to try and start him on Ambleside Year one in January, but he simply isn’t ready.  We’re going to hold off on that until September, I think.  I cobbled together a year .5 for him that he’s really enjoying.  Narrating was a constant struggle, so now we just read read read.

So, his basic every day stuff is,

Math U See Alpha (he just started this book, although we are skipping ahead through about the first quarter of the book)
All About Spelling Level 1 (we are going to start on this tomorrow, and do it very very slowly… like stretch one lesson out per week. It’s a very hands on program, and I think it’s really going to make things click for him)
The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading (I can’t say enough good things about this book.  It’s easy to implement, is logical in the way it works through things, and he LIKES it.  What more can I say?)
We also read read read.  We like the Burgess Flower Book, A Child’s Book of Stories, Each and All, and especially Clara Dillingham Pierson’s Among the People Series.

Those are the things they do that are kind of at different levels.  Here’s what we do all together as a family,

Le Francaise Facile
History Odyssey - Ancients (a happy combo of history, geography, poetry and reading)
Grapevine Bible Study - Old Testament Overview
Map Study
Nature Study
Poetry
The Complete Writer (this is copywork, grammar, literature, all rolled into one.  We LOVE this program.  It’s so easy to implement, short lessons… fabulous)

So, you may be wondering how our day looks with all of that stuff in there, right?  Well, we don’t do EVERYTHING every day.  We have goals, but sometimes we can’t or don’t meet those goals.  Sometimes the sun is shining and we spend the entire day outside.  Sometimes people are grumpy, and we just do the bare minimum.

We are always always working on the habit of attention.  In a nutshell, you teach your children what it’s like to pay attention to an activity without gazing around, without doodling, and you gradually lengthen that time.  Zi is already pretty good at this, but Eph needs some work.  He’s definitely improving, even since September, but he bores easily.  I have to be right on top of how he’s doing so that if he understands something, I move him onto something new right away.

Anyway, on an IDEAL day, we get up in the morning, and the kids do their daily chores.  We loosely use Choreganizers for this.  They get dressed and we have breakfast.  If the girls are here, we take them to the bus, and then head back home and do school right away.

We always start with prayer and bible study.  No lesson is ever longer than 15 minutes for any one subject…  After prayer, bible study, and memory verses, we usually do math.

I have two cheapy egg timers for lessons, especially for math lessons.  Ephraim works for 6 minutes right now, and Zi for 12.  It has made a huge difference to us to have the timers, it’s nice and tangible so that they can see how much time they have left.

While Zi does her second half of math, I usually work on The Ordinary Parent’s Guide with Ephraim.  Then we all do our Copywork together.  Then French, then Zi will do some independent reading while I do Spelling with Ephraim.  Zi will come and narrate to me while Eph does something independent… whether that be drawing a narration, playing a computer game, or what have you.

Zi does her spelling usually at the very end.  That way Eph is off outside or creating a masterpiece with his legos, and she can get my focused attention.

We do usually use a loose version of Sue Patrick’s Workboxes, and that helps make the day go smoother.  Click that link to see how we’ve implemented it in our home.

If things go really well, and they don’t always, we’ll be done everything by 10 or 11, depending on what time we start.  Then if the weather is nice, I kick them outside!

After lunch, we have an hour long mama sanity time.  That means that Talya naps, and the other two have to do something quiet and separate in their rooms.  I can putter around, do some bible study of my own, have a cup of tea, and just generally regroup.

We also read several chapter books.  We just finished Peter Pan, which they so totally loved… and we read The Tale of Despareaux when the girls are here.  Ja just started Old Mother West Wind with them, and we’ll read that one at night before bed.  In the Afternoon we are going to start on Pinocchio.  We ALWAYS read the books in the original.  No abridged versions in this house!

SO… for organizational methods, and how I keep track of things, I have three binders.

One for each hooligan that holds finished and upcoming papers and copies we may need, and one that is my homebase.  The basket you see beside them there is where all finished work goes, so that I can file it away, or repack it in the workboxes for the next day.

This is my binder.  Everything has a tab, and it is all very nicely labeled so that I can find things easily.  My teacher copy of the copwork is kept in here, along with our weekly plans, nature study challenges, calendar and etc.

For term 3, I’ve changed up my planning pages a little bit. I did have Ephraim’s books all planned out for each week, but that wasn’t working very well for us, and having it on my list created a personal pressure to just do it that wasn’t working for him. Instead, for this term, I just put a bunch of blank lines so that I can easily write down whatever we’ve read or etc… I think it’ll be much less pressure on all of us that way.

On the right side is the week that we’re currently on (two weeks on a page), and on the left is a monthly calendar to keep track of extra things. Like when the girls are here, when we go to the library, what day we’ve done Nature Study, had friends over, gone to friend’s houses, that kind of thing.

So, you can see at the top of that section, there’s a list of what we do daily, what we do weekly, and then the additional reading that we try to get through in the week.  I added the checklist for All About Spelling, although we only need to do that 3-4 times a week.  Same with Ordinary Parent’s Guide.  Ephraim’s section has lots of space so that I can keep track of what we’ve read and etc…

Now, I know it seems difficult, and I do have repeat that we do NOT always get everything that I have planned for the day finished… but, that’s the beauty of homeschooling.  Quite frankly, if we need to spend 6 weeks on a Shakespeare Play, then we can do that.  If we need to stop and spend extra time on a math concept, we can do that too.  Conversely, if math is coming easy, we can simply skip ahead to something more challenging.

I love that I get to see the links being made in their heads.  I love that I could figure out that Ephraim couldn’t handle the intensity, and I could back off, let him absorb more, and just gradually give him more challenges as his self esteem built up.

I like the system that we have now, and I love all the different curricula that we have managed to gather to tailor make our school our own.

This is what works for us for right now, but I have to remember to be open to tweaking and changes, to gauge how the hooligans are doing… to keep them loving to learn.

My goals for them are to love Jesus and to be men and women after His own heart, and to love to learn.  I want them to not be bored, to not think of it as drudgery like I did when I was in school.

And now I can’t think of a good way to end this novel of a post, so I think I’m just going to end it like that!

Homeschooling works for us, what works for you?

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 12:23 pm and is filed under General, Homeschool. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.