August 5 - Day 3

Here they are getting to work on their contributions to the mission.

Today was an incredibly difficult start. DragonGirl finally made the discovery that even though we were homeschooling, life still has routines. She did NOT want to put on clothes today, and she spent about a half hour crawling around the house with a comforter over her head. Eventually she got dressed when I told MonkeyBoy I'd take him to the library.

He wanted to go to the library because he is avoiding doing any "desk work". Getting him to write a note in his journal or do ONE math worksheet has been an adventure. He's super good at distracting me and then before I know it he's off playing video games and hasn't done one ounce of work. I need to keep an eye on this.

At the library MB only wanted to look at books with recipes for sweets, and we ended up with probably eight books on cookies, cakes, smoothies, and the like. DG would only look at nonfiction trade books on animals. What was interesting, however, is that MB said the next time we went he'd like to get some books on sports. Then hubby asked him if he wanted to play a sport like baseball. When all was said and done, we had discussed several sports, and looked in the park district catalog to find him a basketball league to play on. I'm going to ask him again tonight, but I think he's going to play basketball this fall! I think this will be good for him because I know he's athletic, and the teamwork would do him some good too.

I tried helping DG with her math sheets to no avail. That girl has NO concept of place value. It's so discouraging because I know she was mastering it last year. Even the fourth grade stuff she couldn't do.

What was amazing today was our work on our mission statement. I took the kids outside because I didn't want to feel stupid using my teacher persona. We have a house full of people right now, and I often wonder if they think I'm an idiot when I work with the kids. :)  We chatted about the mission statement, and then I gave them both a big sheet of paper to write down things they were happy about and looking forward to in homeschool. DG wrote in words, which surprised me because she's usually super visual and artistic. MB drew, which also surprised me a bit, but I went with it. When all was said and done, we put all of their thoughts together, and DG even started rhyming things. Our final mission statement is this:

The Lambert family (sort of) likes to learn. Our house is our school. We go lots of places and meet lots of faces. We do school every day, but we like to play. School is going to be fun.

I loved this because I felt like it really embraced what my kiddos are about, and yet it also reflected my thoughts about their schooling.

Our final activity today is our Wednesday Thank You notes. Each Wednesday we will choose one person to send a thank you letter to - I wrote one to my parents as a guide, and then they chose a person to write to. The goal here is to get used to the letter-writing process, including addressing and stamping. MB lost momentum at the end, but he managed to stick it out until the stamp went on. I didn't even have the heart to make them do a reflection in their journals today because it was two o'clock before we finally finished, and they'd been going since before nine.

I was really pleased with a lot that happened today, and I'm looking forward to settling down into a good solid routine and lots of learning. One thing I need to remind myself to do is to allow them to choose their reading. This is SO HARD for me because I feel like they should be reading fiction constantly, but for some reason each of them chooses nonfiction. And MB - a cookbook? But he's been doing that for years . . . I need to come up with ways to embed some good reading strategy instruction, so I'm thinking maybe some newsela articles or Reading A-Z stuff. I need to release a bit and just feel them out, but I feel like I'm not doing my job if I don't instruct - instruct - instruct. Public school mentality. I must shed this. I must. Until next time!

Day 1

Today went well. Monkey Boy has great theory and philosophy of math, but he goes so fast he makes calculation mistakes that piss him off. He can read and figure out word problems in his head and knows what he has to do but can't explain it. He needs better grasp of basic math facts. Also, he loves racing the clock, which is interesting because he feels like he needs to go fast all the time. But then he makes careless mistakes. The timer is funny. He wants it on all the time.

He was not thrilled about decorating the journal because he "hates art" so I guess this means I need to get a little sneaky in how we present art to him. I'm thinking linear and geometrical art. Something mathematical. Donald Duck's Mathemagic Land comes to mind, and I may have to pull that out tomorrow. He also didn't respond well to dancemat typing, so I'm going to get him onto typing.com, which is a little more straight forward with no frills. I think he will like it better.

He did make a funny comment about writing in his journal. The dreaded question - How many sentences does it have to be? I told him that he needed to write enough to communicate what he wanted. Of course, he wrote one sentence. My response to his journal will hopefully spur a few more tomorrow. 

Dragon Girl has been wildly independent. Got to work on that journal Sunday night, actually, and it's all decorated with pictures - front and back. She has no sense at all of the order of operations, but she LOVED graphing x,y patterns once she figured out how to READ the directions. She struggled with directions BIG TIME. She also finished the first three levels of Dancemat today as well. Oh, and she asked for a piano lesson; we got about 20 minutes in and she was done, but she does have 3 new tunes to practice.

Tomorrow I have a doctor's appointment in the morning, so I'm going to leave them a few things to do and then we are off to go grocery shopping. They both chose one recipe and wrote down the ingredients needed, so I need to add those to the list. They're also planning to cook their chosen meal! I can't wait for that either.

Pardon the play by play, but I wanted to get down as much as I could remember before I run off and get things started for bedtime.

Day 1 begins tomorrow

So I've been doing tons of research on homeschooling and unschooling and making connections with homeschoolers in the area. I've decided to start tomorrow with some schooling because I want to have the flexibility to take time off, and my general overall philosophy is going to be all year school. My kiddos will get used to it - I'm convinced.

So tomorrow is our first day, and already we have made plans to leave and go swimming in the afternoon. To get in our exercise I'm going to encourage them to get on their bikes and ride over to the pool (it's about a 2 mile ride).

In the morning I'm planning to have them decorate their "mom and me" journals with a collage of pictures they can cut out from magazines and then write me their first note. Their journals will be a quick and simple note to me every day - and they can say anything they want or ask any question they want. I'm predicting a little bit of resistance at first because they both hate to write, but I'm hoping with a little pressure and some fun back-and-forth responses that they fall into it and just run with it! My goal is to reassess at the beginning of September to see if I need to tweak this idea.

Also tomorrow I'm going to get them both logged on to typing.com or dancemat and get them working on typing lessons. Dragon Girl will also choose 2 of 4 pages I'm going to set out for her for math (5th grade) and Monkey Boy will choose 3 of 5 (2nd grade). I'm already looking at the fifth grade stuff and wondering if I'm going to frustrate her with it. That makes me a little sad, but this is why I'm taking this year off - to help her build some skills in a nonthreatening way. Not sure how Monkey is gonna do, but we shall see!