Blooming

In two weeks we'll take another break from homeschooling, this time so that the boys can go to summer camp(s).  In a perfect world they'd do all of their summer camps in August so we could stay on our 'three months on, one month off' homeschooling schedule, but over the years I've had to loosen up about that, so that the boys can do the camps they want to do (this year: Primo is going to one week of sleep-away Boy Scout camp, while Radish gets a week of Wayfinders role-playing day camp).  Later in the month they'll do two weeks at a local town Youth Department day camp, not our own town but a 'better' one nearby.  We'll start back to lesson in August, which means we'll have *four* months is a row 'on', before we take a break in December.

We've had some good days of homeschooling lately, and I've been trying to remind myself to slow down and pay attention, really appreciate what it feels like when things are going 'right'.  All too often I *expect* 'right' and ignore it when it happens, then pay a lot of attention to the times that everything seems to go 'wrong'-- anxiously fretting about whether we should be homeschooling at all.  On a good day of homeschooling, the big boys are cheerful and willing to do their work, they don't break down in frustration over how 'hard' the math is (or writing, or whatever they're least in the mood for that day).  They make connections between the different things they are learning that day, and between what they've learned in the past and the current work.  On a good day I am cheerful and clever, thinking of ways to help them through their work before they get frustrated.  On a good day Snorzy is able to amuse himself for a while during the big boys' lessons, using his toys and books without whining and without asking for too much extra attention, until it's time for his morning nap.

Snorzy is getting old enough that I'm starting to think it's time for him to have some 'lessons' each day, too.  When Primo was a baby I never had to think about it, I just naturally supported his learning by interacting with him over toys and books all day.  By the time Radish came along, I had to be more deliberate about it.  When he was a little guy, I scheduled some time into his day for 'working' on various skills (I was influenced by the books I read back then about Montessori and her methods).  Now Snorzy is a big boy of 15 months old and he seems a little at loose ends throughout his waking hours, and I'm so distracted by the older boys and my own activities that I can easily let a day pass without so much as reading him a book.  Luckily, I have plenty of ideas and resources for making his world richer in experiences, I just have to put myself on some kind of schedule like I did with baby Radish.  For today, we're going to do a modified version of the 'Age 1, Week 15' activity from June R. Oberlander's Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready.  The activity specifies making a simple play house out of a cardboard box, but lacking a big box I'm going to use a pop-up play tent that we've had since Primo was 4.  I'll have to keep myself alert to find a good time, after he gets up from his nap.

In other news, look how different my frenemy rose looks, since I let weeks pass between the last time I wrote on the blog, and now:



Here's the whole, bloomin' garden:



And here's a view of the backyard, which is looking better than it has in years:



My goal is to plan and plant the whole place, so that we have one little square of lawn in the middle of all deliberate plants and features.  Every year I talk Sweet Hubby into giving up a little more lawn, in favor of other things.  A few years ago it was the rose, lilac, and peach that you see in the left (back) of this photo.  This year it was the hostas below those three.  Next year I want to take my frenemy rose out of the garden patch and put it in that blank spot near the fence, rooted in our former compost pile.  Then I'll train it over an arched trellis, and put a metal bench in front of it.  I've always wanted a small water feature back there somewhere too, but I'm re-thinking that now.  Water attracts mosquitoes, and they're so bad this year, I'm worried that it's because our local bat population has suffered from white-nose-syndrome related dwindling in their numbers.  I'm worried about the bats.  And theoretically the bees too, but I'm not feeling their loss yet, the way I feel (itchy) without the bats.

Back To It

The best part about getting back into daily lessons (as of Jan 2nd, even though Sweet Hubby is still on vacation from *his* school, if we didn't start I was sure we wouldn't finish the math and history curricula by March 31st) was watching Primo and Radish collaborate on filling in their timeline of history.  We asked them to find between 5 and 10 important events from the medieval periods that we've studied so far this year, and add them to the timeline (a purchased one which we have not yet cut into pieces to mount on the wall-- I tried having a mounted timeline when the boys were small, but our house doesn't have any accessible wall long enough for even a significant portion of it to fit).  At first it was slow-going and they argued a little about sharing the resources (Story of the World, Kingfisher History Encyclopedia).  With a little help from me, and from Sweet Hubby too, they settled down and it was sweet to watch them discuss which events to include. 
Next best was how enthusiastic they both were about trying BBC's Dance Mat Typing.  After lessons were officially over for the day, they each returned to this 'game' and played some more.  The only downside is, they were able to progress quite far in just one day, which tells me that this free online game-style typing instruction is not meaty enough for us to use all semester as their touch-typing curriculum.  So the hunt continues, for a program that will last a bit longer, and give them a good strong introduction to touch typing (or, re-introduction in Primo's case-- he tried Typing Instructor for Kids when he was 7, but he found it frustrating).
I'm thinking about what to do with our weekly schedule for the rest of the year, so that the boys have enough time to work on math, science, history and English, while also spending at least a little time on Latin, geography, music, art, and now typing.  My ideas so far are either to schedule one 'special' lesson per day (as there are 5 of them and 5 days in our school week) or to save them all for Fridays, and do just math and 'extras' that day.

Schedules

We’re on day three of our month-long ‘December Break’.  After more than three months straight of 'lessons’ nearly every weekday morning, there is a holiday atmosphere around taking our mornings off.  I still insist that we all get dressed, make beds, and brush our teeth first thing.  And we always make ‘December Goals’ before this break, outlining some plans so that the month doesn’t fly by with nothing to show for it (in the past, the boys’ goals have mostly had a lot to do with hot chocolate and sledding, this year I asked them to include at least one thing they want to learn more about, and one thing they want to learn how to do or in which they want to improve their skills).  It’s not suddenly anarchy around here.  But we watch an episode of Doctor Who in the middle of the morning.  The boys open one of the twenty-four ‘literary advent calendar’ books.  Hours of drawing, playing and reading ensue.
Schedules and timing are one of the things about our homeschool that I’m always looking to refine and perfect.  Our yearly schedule is: the school year starts May 1st for the two boys (although Radish started lessons the January after he turned 4, so his ‘school year’ as far as moving up to the next level of writing and math is off from our school year as a family), we go three months and then take a month off—theoretically, although things get complicated around summer camp starting in July which is supposed to be an ‘on’ month for us, and sometimes I give them their standardized tests in the first week of April, although it is one of our three vacation months (April, August, December).  Our daily schedule is more fluid, although paper-and-pencil lessons mostly fall between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.  Lots of things that ‘count’ fall outside of these hours (reading, music lessons, physical education), but I try to hold our mornings free from outside activities because I found in our first years of homeschooling that if I’m not strict about this, we don’t have time to do much of anything academically.  This has meant, over the past few years, that we’ve missed out on a lot of things that are going on in the homeschool community, and which begin either in the morning or too early in the afternoon for us to manage to get there.
Being way off from the public school in our yearly schedule doesn’t bother me a bit, and the kids don’t mind except when someone asks them what grade they’re in and they have to think about it for a second.  The daily schedule is different-- every once in a while something very cool is happening in the morning or early afternoon in our homeschool community, and I have to stop and think about whether to make an exception to my rule about ‘morning is for us at home, doing lessons’.  Sometimes I bend a little, for a one-time thing like a field trip or for an academic co-op that meets often.  Right now we’re doing ‘Friday lessons’ with some good friends, as a kind of a mini co-op (just our two families).  It seems worthwhile to make an exception for this, because I want my guys to have the experience of doing academic and project work with other really bright kids.