Letting Go – Week #6

We’re still hanging on.  It feels strange and completely foreign to me and it’s easy to see why some families give up early on in the game.  It’s unsettling!  Especially after homeschooling for nine years with Sonlight only – there hasn’t been any deviation.

I’m sure the added stress of our Holiday – Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Birthdays – Season doesn’t help.    From Thanksgiving until February 4th we ramp up from merely fast-paced to going at nearly the speed of light.  This season actually has a very promising start.  I have nearly all of our shopping done, have planned out our gifts for friends and family,  and I’ve even bought the Christmas cards.  The weather has been so beautiful lately, I think my usual winter blues have taken a vacation.  It could have something to do with not having a lot of money for gifts this year – I’ve always wanted to scale back, but dh was never on board.  It’s very liberating not to have to spend way too much money on way too much <useless> stuff.

I missed my ‘year’ conferences with the teens for Core 300, so we are going back to that.  Originally I wanted them to do all the reading and footwork and only check in when they finished their decade summary.  Nice thought, but I realize now that there is much value in our time together discussing each year.  It’s even more exciting as Austin is working on decades that both dh and I have lived through.

Now I have to figure out whether the Battle for the Clean Room is worth it or not.  Flower Child could easily be a messy poster child.  She might even be TOO messy.  But, I haven’t come down to hard on Austin and <miraculously?> in the last couple of months he’s been keeping his room CLEAN!  Will his sister grow into her own method of organization?

Letting Go – Week #3

I’m not going to pretend that *poof* overnight our house has become some hotbed of creativity and work.  Honestly, not much has changed in our day-t0-day lives except for the absence of pressure to get everything done.

 

At first Princess was entirely against the idea and even made a sad-face-smilie on my FB wall when I became a Fan of Unschooling.  In the middle of last week, though, she started breaking out.  On Monday, she shared with me that she is very happy to have the time to spend on her photography and writing.  She seems much less anxious than in the past and much more relaxed.

No real progress with Austin.  But I must fight the good fight.  This is a worthy battle and one that he will be grateful to have lost when he’s older.

Of course, Flower Child is doing fine.  This all started with her, after all.  My only problem is that I can’t get her to stop reading and clean her room!

 

At this point, I have to be mindful of not reading too many unschooling blogs or talking to too many happy unschoolers.  My biggest challenge will be to not compare us to others.  Every home school is unique and ours is no exception!

Letting Go – Day 2

This is technically Day #2 of Unschooling at the Wingfield Speedway Academy.  No one did anything school-y yesterday because dad was home and we had to be out of the house by 1:15 for choir and a basketball game.

 

• Austin spent an hour writing a note on FaceBook titled Austin Hawks’s Guide To Be Ninja!!  I have now scheduled a meeting with him so we can discuss homophones <their, there, and they’re> and how to make our last name possessive. :p
  
• Princess signed up for the Young Writers Program of National Novel Writing Month and is making chocolate chip bar cookies to take to basketball practice.
• Flower Child is reading The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper while dressed as American Girl Julie.  Princess flat ironed her hair yesterday which makes her a dead-ringer for Julie.  The Julie Jammies were last year’s Christmas jammies.

 

More life school!

Austin is helping me paint the kitchen this week.  I’ve finally reached the point where I can’t stand looking at that 1970s wallpaper staring out at me.  Probably because my desk now faces said wallpaper and I can’t escape it!  Okay… he’s actually painting the kitchen, I’m just supervising.  In any case, I can’t wait to see the results!

Meanwhile, the girls are catching up on the work they missed during the last two weeks when they were too sick for school.  Generally, that doesn’t happen at our house.  I much prefer to take ‘Well Days’ than ‘Sick Days’ and go somewhere fun. :p  This flu was beyond typical illness, though, and there were several days that Princess didn’t even get out of bed.

I’m still waiting to see what a typical week is going to look like for us.  Since basketball started, we’ve spent two weeks on vacation and nearly three weeks with one or the other battling The Flu.

Home… STILL!

I’m excited to see what this school year is going to bring to our family. For the first time in YEARS we will have NO outside activities in the evening during the week, except actual basketball games which are really more fun than work.

Of course, we went on vacation for two weeks in September. Tracy was home on vacation and the girls had basketball camp the following week. The next week Flower Child became the first to fall to The Flu. A couple of days later, the teens joined her and ended up much sicker than she had been. Princess has been completely out of commission for two weeks.

So here it is… OCTOBER… and I still don’t have any clue what ‘normal’ is going to look like!

Personally, I’m thankful to have all this time at home, but at the same time I’m getting just a LITTLE stir crazy!

Home, at last!

First day back after our two week trip to visit family in Illinois.  I’m sitting at the computer pondering whether I should make coffee or go snooze for another 20 minutes or so.    There is a load of laundry ready to fold, too.   And school planning….  argh.

Back in July, I scheduled the month of August plus one week of work for our trip <it wasn’t all vacation>.  Guess what?  August is gone, we’re back at home and not one of my students has any idea what they’re supposed to be doing for school.  I’m working on a new method of lesson planning and it’s still in the early stages.  I did look at Homeschool Tracker and Edutracker last night.  NOT going to work for me.  So, this week I’m back to this new method that is little more than a spark of an idea.

Because our schedule changes so much from week to week, I’m trying to put together a system that has every lesson for every subject planned out for the entire year.   Sunday night I can look at our calendar and quickly pull together a plan for each child for the week that works around our commitments.  This will also make it easier to reschedule without any erasing when we have family emergencies or for when a fun opportunity drops in our lap.   I feel like we’ve lost some of the spontaneity in our school and I’m hoping this will allow us to bring it back!

The girls are at basketball camp from 8 – 10am all week.  That gives me some breathing room.  This afternoon they have choir.   Today’s filled!   The Boy is still sleeping as I type.  I have lots of Home Ec for him to do while the girls are gone.  I guess I’ll make coffee and start thinking about work.

In any case, I’m very glad to be home.  And I’m very glad to at least have the possibility of a more normal routine on the table.

Age segregation interferes with children’s natural means of learning.

Why We Should Stop Segregating Children by Age: Part I–The Value of Play in the Zone of Proximal Development

When you are little and just with kids your own age, the range of possible activities is restricted by the knowledge and abilities of those in your age group; but in collaboration with older kids there is almost no limit to what you might do!

Of course, none of this is news to most homeschoolers!

I’m looking forward to reading more of what this guy writes.

Why We Should Stop Segregating Children by Age: Part I–The Value of Play in the Zone of Proximal Development Why We Should Stop Segregating Children by Age: Part I–The Value of Play in the Zone of Proximal Development

Early School Days

This picture is my favorite.  I’ve wanted to post it for a long time, but first I had to sift through all the old-fashioned photographs in boxes and FIND it!

And… because they’re so cute…

Even earlier school days:

At last!

Austin finally finished his decade summary paper for the 1950s.  Just in time…  School starts on Monday!

It is the best paper he’s written to date.  Praying he keeps up this caliber of work for the remainder of Core 300!

Health

At the last minute I changed my mind and ordered Switched-on-Schoolhouse high school health rather than Total Health.  I’ve always wanted to see what their high school classes look like and this was an easy, inexpensive class to try.