Two Weeks Done

We are now two weeks into our school year and so far we've kept on track.  Hooray! I was so nervous about this year.  I told one of my favorite people that I was scared and I thought I was crazy.  What was I thinking? Eight kids? She responded, "We're all scared. Even those moms trying to teach just one kid."  She is so right. My Facebook feed was full of homeschool group posts of moms worried about everything from curriculum choices to school spaces.  I had been annoyed by them-after all, they only had one or two or three kids.  Or one kindergartener and three under four years.  And no one cares what math you are choosing and if you need suggestions on language arts curriculum, there is this thing called Google you can use.  But then there was one post from a large family blogger that had a "roll call" for homeschoolers and post after post had moms listing the number of kids homeschooling and how they too felt nervous even though they were starting year 17...and then I didn't feel so crazy.

I read somewhere to replace "crazy" with "..." gosh, I wish I could remember. But it was cool.

My daily schedule is working, not because we stick to it, but because it gives me a reference when I can't remember what to do next or where to jump in.  I've given an hour to each "class" but I've found we rarely spend an hour on anything.  I'm sure when math stops being review things will pick up.  It sure is nice to be done with everything by 2:00 in the afternoon.

Even with Monday being a holiday, Ian was done with an entire week's worth of work by 10:40 this morning.  His writing class at "The Ranch" was also successful.  He has discovered that he likes to listen to music while he is working.  I don't like listening to music while he is working, so he gets to use either my computer with headphones or his dad's MP3 player with headphones.  With headphones!  Both have a endless selection of classic rock.  He watched me yell at Shane and Daniel for rough play and said it was like watching a silent movie. I'm glad we've found a way for the noise of younger siblings to not bother him while he works.

Done with School Reward: Get Dumber

I've never been good at teaching spelling and have mostly left spelling up to workbooks (which does work), but we've come up with some new ideas.  One is Spelling City online.  I created a free account and I just type in the spelling words for the week for Evie and Ian.  Ian is using the 500 most commonly misspelled words list from Bookshark and Evie is using the weekly spelling words assigned by her Sonlight curriculum.  A computer voice reads each word out loud and they type the word in to the computer.  At the end they find out which words they don't know and they study in whatever method works best for them.  They get to decide.  Evie likes to put words she doesn't know on index cards cut in half on a necklace or play games at Spelling City.  Ian just studies.

Spelling Words

Daniel is always an adventure in teaching.  My successes this week have been hard earned.  We need a delicate balance between carrot and stick with this boy.  I have to have a complicated system of rewards to keep him feeling like he is in control, but confused enough he can't actually take control.  He insists on the hardest reading lessons and won't use the easier curriculum.  When he does a good job and finishes the lesson without too many interruptions, he gets a sticker on his chart.  If he is so bad that he ends up crying (for whatever reason), he gets an X.  After five lesson he can get a small piece of candy.  If he has two X's, no candy. 

For science, instead of reading a dull book about evaporation and condensation and the water cycle, I told him I was going to do some "science magic."  I was going to make all the water on the slides, swings, and grass disappear!  His job, which he was very excited about, was to periodically check on my magical progress. 

He also enjoyed imitating his social studies lesson on clothing and climate and running around in the sun wearing only his underpants.  The best lesson we had was handwriting the lower case g.  I took advantage of his destructive nature and had him trace over my g's to erase them off the white board.  If his finger followed the correct path (not if he erased the letter completely-I didn't want him going the wrong direction), I would exclaim, "GAH!" He loved it.

There is a reason school isn't compulsory until a child is eight years old.  Around this age, things just seem to click into place in their brains and the kids who were behind in reading suddenly catch up and those who didn't "get" math suddenly do.  And they sit still and listen and understand.  Fiona seems to have reached that point.  Last year, teaching her calendar skills was stressful.  Day after day, she would answer 2015 if I asked her the month.  Now she can do the entire day of calendar activities with no assistance.  Hallelujah.