Spring Break 2013

What do mothers do all day!
I hear myself, exasperated say.
It is spring break for them, for me
and I'm not sure which feels more free!
(insert hysterically giddy laugh)

There's no math lessons, no drills
 of which to grit our teeth.
No piles of readings,
worlds of words with meanings beneath,

No-how do you spell 'usually'
or trying to identify some blooming tree
No shushing the screamer who wants another 'nack
No spelling rules (drop the y) to keep track

No pulling together of 4 different orbits
Or preaching sermons from 4 different pulpits
No hysteric calming (theirs or mine)
We just roam about with oodles of time...


I organize my bathroom closets, my pantry!
even sort the sordid clean laundry
I start to paint, to write, to draw!
I watch a movie-then 3 more
I plan my month's menus-
like never before
(I even think about mopping the floor.)

But I forget to read stories aloud for an hour
I let slip the scheduled scripture power
I miss hearing piano
and seeing them play
I fall into projects that take all day
The children are gone morning to night
with their friends, outside, then come home to fight


It's a free for all-almost
An instructional educational-coast
I walk from the shore toward the sound of sirens
Of time to think, to create, just silence.
Then Monday sends us all back, one week from the day
home to schedules and boundaries all gone astray

and it's good to be home, I say
those things,
those creations,
that organized bliss
is meant for another season
not this.

My Headmistress

She's a little thick in the middle, prefers blue, doesn't take any nonsense, and holds me to a high standard. She's my Head Mistress.

Short and sweet, this is how I record-keep our school year from the administrative end.
Headmistress keeps me in line. Within her D-ring files are color-coded tabs for basic sections.

 These are  plastic dividers with custom cottage-made tab labels (a.k.a. packaging tape and used index cards) here is the breakdown:

YELLOW:
Schedules- individual student schedule templates
Calendars-the year divided into 36 weeks of school & planned breaks
Habits-
Goals- non-school programs and general home school goals
Exams- my "ExamLand" version. Each year gets a progressively finer home.
AO Masters- Booklists & 36-week schedules from the AO website for the current year only.

Then the subject Tabs in mainly blue.

The trick comes in organizing multiple students in different years.
Each subject has a student tab on the top of the page divider. Each child has their own color, as you can see in the very first picture from the top of the folder. For instance, the Literature section pages look like-

• LITERATURE (blue tab on right)
• Bowery Bird (pink tab on top)
• 36 week AO Y4  Literature schedule (2 page spread)
• Mockingbird (green tab on top)
• 36 week AO Y2 Literature schedule (2 page spread)

BLUE:
YO- World Book Preschool Curriculum Guide & stuff.
Language Arts-Charlotte Mason is a bit all over the board with it's Language Arts. It's wonderful, yet can be confusing to track.

Continuing with BLUE subject tabs:

Foreign Language-
Math-schedules
Science- AO reading schedules and Building Foundations of Scientific Study flow-chart
Literature- weekly schedules as for other subjects that I made. I just highlight the assignment after we've finished it.

History-schedule, original maps, and original timeline figures for Our Island Study
Geography-schedule

Then comes

PINK:
Term Studies-really, I have a separate binder for this, here I just keep a simple schedule
Nature
Handicraft
Art
Music
Shakespeare-the 3 plays AY4 will do.
Plutarch- Anne White's Guides here for the year with smaller tabs.
PE-Information for their PE class through UVU
Affidavit-formal declaration of public school exemption
Supply List-where I list books & supplies to get as we can and a pocket for receipts to turn in.
Inventory-

Kindle- a how-to reminder and list of the Yesterday's Classics huge booklist to refer to.
Field Trips- a record & reminder if tickets are needed
Free Reads- record for our family of what year they were read (so I know who is old enough to not remember it later...)
Contests-
Resources-local PERC hours, etc.
Incentive Programs- Pizza Hut, etc.

So there it is! I open it every morning to the subject we're on it and she stays there till school is over. If not, I feel I am sailing without a course.

Annual Fairy Tea Party

 

Our local library holds an annual Fairy Tea Party in their ballroom upstairs in the old BYU Academy. This year they had a display of fairy houses and photographer there with woodland backdrop. As usual there was a fairy promenade for all the little girls to go and courtesy to the Fairy King in front of his throne and show off their outfits. Each girl got a wand, charm, and fairy feast. 

 

 

Four ballerinas came in and performed also. It's a fun formal event for little girls and LOTS of grandmas. At $5 a ticket- I didn't mind waiting in line for an hour (and it was sold out soon after ).My favorite was overhearing one of them saying "Grandma is fery silly today?" A cute event my friend re-created in her home when she moved out of state, she enjoyed it so much :)

 

 

 

Term Studies Board

 

I got this idea to paint a cork board black and rotate school-related topics from  Mt. Hope Chronicles. I use ours specifically for our Term Studies (selected from, but not following the calendar of Ambleside Online). It hangs in our kitchen or slides behind the school closet when company comes. (Don't want them to know we're learning about art for heavens sake!)

 

This has done the following for us:

 

1. For the chill'ns: it gives a visual reference point or "place to put new information" as we talk about these people and their contributions. All those new floaty bits of info have a place to alight.

 

2. For school: it reminds me who/what we are on for this term as it slips from my head easily without the daily/weekly schedule other subjects have.

 

3. For me: it gives a constructive distraction when lunch turns into a zoo.

 " ...Besides writing lovely little poems, and modeling for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Christina Rossetti also worked as a prostitute...Ah! Excuse me, I misread. Worked with prostitutes-- in a reformitive nature I'm sure..." 

 

 

 

So on here I stapled a list of this term's people:
Composer: Aaron Copland
Artist: Winslow Homer
Poet: Christina Rossetti
and Shakespear is a permenant fixture

I also have a calendar for Y0 to mark off the days we remember to read our scriptures with a sticker (don't judge me, we're back on the wagon again), a clear plastic page with artwork by Homer to switch out weekly, and a list of the people as well as our month's Hymn and Folksong so I won't forget.

The February Freakout- it's tradition

Is it going to stay warm or get cold?
Am I ruining my kids lives for homeschooling or should I keep at it?
Am I normal or going insane?

It's February.
It's the crux of the school year.
Rumors in the roost have it that it's the worst time of year when mother-in-laws (who used to be school teachers) visit, best time for bubble-baths to be taken mid-school day, and mostly likely time for home school mothers everywhere to freak out as they compare their immaculate September spreadsheets to lacking mid-year realism.

We've been homeschooling four years now, and I've noticed this pattern in myself, and-thankfully-honest others around me commiserate. I thought that this year would be a piece of cake with not  being pregnant, juggling a public school schedule for siblings, or having a baby under 1, but it's not been. I had heard somewhere that 3 years is what it takes to really make a difference somewhere. That teachers need about that time to really be competent in their classroom. But, my materials are new to me every year for my oldest, I am adding new students every 2 years, and these students aren't staying the same developmentally--it's always changing! Some things get easier, but it's not the same every year. I needed to not be so hard on myself. So if this feeling is predictable--is it normal?

For myself, I am drawing a conclusion: YES.

First, a few reasons why this happens in February so we can not just blame ourselves:

• The excitement of the new school year is gone--as is the delight of the holiday season.
• The weather is blah and unpredictable here, and air quality terrible. Field trips have tapered a bit, and we're just inside a lot.
• It's the middle of the year and we feel like there is so much more for us to do yet.
• We compare our kids to others in different situations, with different goals and priorities.

The way I've come to terms with this is:

• I am going to start school earlier in anticipation of unpredictable days during the year.
• I'm going to just enjoy what we are doing instead of checking off a list and 'catching up'
• Even when we have visitors we are going to do some school each day (reading, writing, math)
• I'm going to recognize more often that teaching good habits, exposing to inspiring material, and offering a variety of experiences will outweigh  x test score by the time my student finds their area to focus on. It's just an entirely different approach.
• I am also turning over more ownership of their learning, to the student. More here.

I think that this mid-school year insecurity is natural and healthy. Our students are about 6 months older than when we were beginning the school year and we see what they are capable of now-generally more. We see that what we started in September with gusto and dropped is really missed.

It is a great point to question what we need to change and more realistically see what we can still accomplish. I thought that my Y4 student should have been able to do all her work independently by now. But if I had seen the whole year as a transition and training for her to work on her own, it would have made me much more understanding and practical in my approach. But I can see it on the horizon now--and it's a beautiful glimmer in the bleak February days...