Homeschooling Routines

I thought I was ready for homeschooling ... I'd done all the research, we felt it was the right decision for our family, I have a plethora of STUFF, different curriculums, reading material, ideas galore.  Isn't that all that needed to be done?  NOPE!!!  I had to figure out how to narrow all the STUFF down, and how to make education a priority.  Most of all I had to figure out a ROUTINE, something I've ALWAYS struggled with.  It's been extra tricky when I still have too many late nights of not wanting to give up the quiet hours of reading or don't want to go to an empty bed.  Or maybe I put off my weightlifting for the day til 11 p.m., or when I'm just having a down day and say "O.k. kids, special treat.  Pick out a stack of movies for today and ENJOY!!!  Just be quiet so mommy and babies can sleep."  It's made it tough to come up w/ a routine to do everyday when I myself haven't had the self-discipline to ... what's the phrase?  JUST DO IT!  Those days are especially the days that I second guess and wonder if homeschooling is something I'm really going to be able to do?  Are we really doing the right thing?

Good news!!!  I finally feel like it's coming together.  I was introduced to www.lovetolearn.net.  This family has been homeschooling approx. 20 years and they sell only products they have tried, tested, and used SUCCESSFULLY.  What a better place to glean even more ideas.  That's all I need right?=)  Well I read everything I could on her site, picked up a few pamphlets she'd written and LOVE IT.  Being excited about our progress, I wanted to share how it's at least sort of being run.

  The kids had a project to decorate their own special notebooks.  Some random stickers (I think Andrew found a pink pacifier sticker and thought it was too cool), Izzy colored out all the letters so you can't see that her notebook says Izzy's school stuff anymore, even Alex has her own notebook that she can pull out and "do school" with us.  Mess up printing jobs find their way to her notebook so she looks like she has schoolwork to do.  Inside each of their notebooks is a pencil pouch.  They each have their own pencils, pencil sharpener, ruler, eraser and I keep thinking they need their own crayons.  This is still a work in progress. 

Everyday we do a journal page (or at least that's the plan).  This is from the website.  Diane Hopkins (the mom) put together her own Language Arts program geared for grades K-5.  They practice writing skills, sentence structure, have spelling tests from words they misspell, etc.  The older they get, the more they're expected to write.  At the end of the year, we'll take their journal to Office Depot or something like that and spiral bind it so they can keep it forever.  

So far it's becoming quite the treasure and what a better and more fun way to learn language arts.

As I said, Alex wants to join in too.  I kept telling her to smile for the camera and she absolutely refused to open her eyes.

Also in their notebooks are Saxon Math worksheets.  The goal is to have a math lesson everyday and then sometime during the day to do the worksheets.  Izzy's not quite to this level yet, but Andrew just eats it up so we're still figuring out how we'll do the math thing.  I have a math box filled w/ all sorts of math manipulatives.  The other day after the lesson, I had the kids pick out something from the math box.  Alex loves the bears.  Izzy chose marbles (yes, they can be counted as math.=)  And Andrew loves the dice.  Everytime he pulls out the dice, he makes up a new game.  This past week, Andrew, Izzy and I would pick a number between 1 and 6.  Out of the 25 dice that were rolled, if our number was rolled, we got to keep the dice.  When we ran out of dice, the kids had to figure out who won and by how many.  Andrew said, "Wait, did we just do math?"    

We're still figuring it all out.  It was very exciting for me yesterday when we had an errand to run and Andrew said, "Can I bring my school stuff?"  He did some in the car, did some when we got to the house, played for a bit and then finished school later.  As I said, it's still a work in progress, but it's comforting to be seeing progress.  One thing I don't like about homeschooling is that it's another thing added to my to do list and if it doesn't get done right, it's easy to feel like a failure.  But as long as we're working together as a family w/ the Lord on our side, the end outcome will be worth it.