Making Homeschooling Work

Things have gotten a lot more difficult for us on the homeschooling front since I began to get sick with the joint pain and related issues, but even more so once I was pregnant again and had to stop taking my ADHD medication. This medication had made homeschooling possible for us! Trying to get along without it has been a real challenge. I'm confronting an issue that every homeschooler, and probably every parent, has to deal with: how to reconcile ideals with reality. I was pretty happy with the Mother of Divine Grace syllabi that we had chosen and were using, and I was very happy with their overall methodology and "plan" for school from kindergarten through highschool. We'd made some adaptations, but for the most part I did think that many of their ideas were "right" in terms of being a thorough and insightful education. However, most of these practices were highly teacher intensive, and required set aside one on one quiet time with each child. That was very difficult managing with a four year old and a toddler constantly getting in the way. Math was one of our best subjects, precisely because I could introduce the work, make sure they seemed to "get" it, but then simply be near and monitor their work in the workbook without having to be constantly, directly teaching them. This made it much easier to respond to the needs of the nonschooling little ones.

So, we replaced much of our other work with workbooks. I don't feel like this is an "ideal" solution but it is at least making homeschool work doable at this time. The main benefit to me is that it is easier for me to switch my attention away to the littles or to other things that need doing, because I don't need to be spending a large chunk of uninterrupted time working with each kid. I can be in the kitchen washing dishes or simply hanging out and still be able to help which ever of the boys may need help, and can still make sure that they're staying on task. Really, I don't think that this is as thought-provoking and education as reading lots of things aloud, and having the kids dictate "retellings" of what they've read for me to write down, or other more reflective things that the MODG curriculum had us do, but it is much easier to fit workbooks into life with constantly interrupting littles, especially when everyone in the family has a short attention span and is easily distracted.

Although, now this has me thinking about what we'll be doing next year. (Isn't it always more fun plan next year's curriculum than to implement this years?) I'm looking again at lesson plans that use more workbooks and textbooks, as that just seems to be much easier for me. I do really like having lesson plans as a spine to work from, though I'm almost certainly going to make changes of one kind or another. And I haven't found curriculum that I love in any subject except math, where Math Mammoth is still working out very well for us. We've got things that will work for this year, but I'm looking to try new ideas for next, when I'll be juggling a newborn along with a toddler and three school age kids.

Changes

With changes in our life we're having to make some changes in our schooling plans. Over the last few months I've been experiencing joint pain that is progressively getting worse, and it was discovered that I have some autoimmune issues going one. Moreover, we have absolutely impeccable timing and now we are expecting our fifth child. Due to this I had to stop taking my ADHD medication, and due to the autoimmune issues I'm high risk and will probably require extra monitoring. We'll have to see how that works out, I guess. In any case, staying on top of school as well as managing the kids and doing housework has gotten much more difficult than it had been. We're going to try changing and simplifying our curriculum so that the kids can work more independently. Right now I'm looking for workbook options for phonics, spelling and general language arts/grammar for the boys, as what we're using currently is quite teacher intensive. If anyone has any suggestions I'd be glad to take them!

New Luvs

Luvs diapers recently announced a recent redesign -- they're replacing the Blue Clues with a cute purple monkey. The diapers themselves will remain unchanged except for the print. The blog And Twins Make Five is having a giveaway contest for a free pack of the diapers here.

A message to me?

Here was Pauly's spelling quiz/practice from this morning. He was told to write two sentences after the quiz.

1st Quarter Progress Report

This isn't so much a report on the kids' progress as a report on our home school's progress. We're roughly through week 8 of our planned curriculum, and as it only has 32 scheduled weeks that's a quarter of our way through our year.

I'm fairly pleased with how we've been able to stay on track, although perhaps that's because I've been somewhat free with our definition of "on track." The last two weeks I've been not feeling well and often at least one of the kids has been sick as well, and we've definitely been missing more things than we had previously. We are doing an exceptionally bad job of completing Pauly's assignments in the Primary Language Lessons book, and we're now behind on memorizing their poetry, although only by a week or so. I've meant to schedule a time for them to recite it for their dad, but we've been so busy that we haven't managed to do so.

Language Arts: We're still learning the routine and tweaking things, but I'm overall fairly happy with this for our spelling, phonics and handwriting instruction. I've tried doing the work with the boys together, tried separating them for a few weeks, and have decided to put them back together, although that means that Pauly will be reviewing words that he's already done. Our biggest problem with this curriculum right now is review. It is designed as a complete language arts curriculum, and when used as such you would be reviewing spelling rules and words during the "writing lesson" each day in addition to the work done in the "spelling lesson." As we had intended to use this only for phonics and spelling, I'm trying to figure out how to add in the necessary review. I'm considering adding in the WRTR "writing lesson" and possibly dropping Pauly's Language Lessons book. I do think the Language Lessons book could be good and helpful, but Pauly really does not like it and it tends to fall by the wayside. Just because he doesn't like it doesn't mean that it isn't good for him, though. So I'm still trying to work out exactly what I'd like to handle this whole area.

Math: We are still using Math Mammoth and I am still pretty happy with it. Math tends to be very frustrating for Roger and we often have lots of tears, but I think that much of this would occur with any math program. He doesn't like being told what he ought to do, and this can sometimes also become an issue with spelling as well, and I think that he easily gets overwhelmed even when he knows something. I like the Math Mammoth books and as I don't think that switching is likely to help, we just keep plugging away at it. Pauly is doing well in it, for the most part, and seems to enjoy it.

Other subjects: Science and History are going fine for Pauly, as far as it goes. I'm not very inspiring and we don't always get to the science experiments. I need to exercise some self discipline there and get better at making sure those get done, to keep things interesting. I feel that there is not really enough for history, even with the supplemental reading he breezes right through it, but he does seem to be learning. Religion is fine. We had a bad week in terms of the Faith and Life books: the activity book pages all seemed to be busy work without adding anything to the lessons whatsoever, unlike most of the earlier pages. So many of those went undone just because I thought they were unnecessary. I'm not sure what I think of the series overall, at the moment.

Roger's Story

Roger wrote this today:

Rosie is starting to write

although I'm not sure that I'm pleased with her subject matter. She says that this reads "PIWP," but I'm not so sure. It is supposed to be Obi Wan from Episode I.