The Question. (and yaay! organizing!)

Several people have asked me lately, "So how is homeschooling going? Are you totally stressed? Are you getting out enough? How are you holding up!?" and other questions along those lines.  My answer shocks most people -- I actually am more relaxed and happy than I have been in years.  After getting stumped the first time someone responded with, "How!??! Why!?!?", I gave it some thought.  It's a valid question. I have my kids home all!day! every day.  I rarely have time completely to myself.  I have added a lot of work & pressure to my life by taking on this whole homeschool thing.  Shouldn't this all translate to being a kazillion and three times more stressed than I was last year at this time???

After pondering it for awhile, I realized that the answer has two parts ---

1. Homeschooling has slowed our lives down. We have opted out of the kiddy rat race that school can become.  And for us, we knew there were holes in Bug's education, so we also were supplementing when we could.  I never felt like we were doing enough to fill in those gaps, and that was super-stressful for me.  We have a lovely routine to our days now, and I am loving it.  Also, it's not like during the summer, where everyone is crazypants by the end. That was a concern of mine at the beginning of August.  Everyone was yelling at each other and all the fun summertime relaxation that seemed wonderful in June was just making everyone crabby.  While this was happening and I was putting together lesson plans, I kept thinking "OMG you are insane, woman!! Get them out of the house and take a BREAK!"  But the whole vibe changed once we started our school routine. (Whew!) And as far as "me time", the girls have quiet time in their room every afternoon for an hour or two.  During that time, I *make* myself rest, either with a book or catching up on TV. I relax. Sometimes I even close my eyes for a few moments. :)  I do the same in the evenings after everyone is in bed. And bedtime during the school week is nice and early, at 7:30.  So I get a couple of hours to myself each night.

2. It's such a relief to finally be homeschooling.  I have felt the pull to do this since Bug was a wee one, probably about 2 or 3?  For whatever reason, I really feel in my bones that this is right for us. That is a more nebulous answer than #1, but there you have it.  To finally be diving in and doing it feels SO right to me.  It's a relief to not fight it or worry about it, and just do it.  A huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

~~

As you can probably tell from my posts, homeschool is working for us, so this is not going to be a temporary situation.  And, as most of you also know, I love a good organizing/decorating project!! :) So I am working to create a more permanent school room.  Right now we have a nice set up, but it's in our dining room with things piled into every nook & cranny I could find out there.  I'm really excited to get a HUGE dry erase board, a school table, and get all my school stuff organized in a more functional way. It will also be nice to get it tucked away into its own space.  This will happen during the week of Thanksgiving, which is our first big break this year.  So, be warned, there will be lots of pictures and posts about the new schoolroom!! :)

I hope everyone is enjoying all the holiday activities this weekend! Happy Fall! :)

Catching Up

I was reminded last week that I haven't been blogging very much.  Oops! :) I'll try to update more.

So, we have finished seven weeks of homeschooling, and I'm ready to call this as one of the best decisions I have ever made. Seriously.  I have had so many moments where I want to freeze time and savor whatever is happening. Some examples: the light bulb going on over Bug's head during a math lesson and the excitement in her eyes, and how she wants to do "just one more!" problem to practice her new skill; when I get to witness my girls laying the foundation for a lifelong friendship; Bug teaching Lulu after she finishes her work; and just those times when I think "Wow, this is amazing that we can do this!"  Those times are quite frequent. The flexibility we have, the latitude to study what we find interesting -- I have not yet come across a downside on this journey.

Last week we wrapped up a few things, and we are about to start some new material.

• We have finished Alice in Wonderland. The lapbook and book report are completed, and we are ready to start Black Beauty this week.  As you can imagine, Buggy is much more excited about this book. :)  

• We completed our unit on Picasso and are ready to start Van Gogh.  It's so cool that Bug now knows famous Picasso paintings and can talk about the style of painting he used and what influenced his different painting periods. (Add that to the list of "happy moments" above!)  

• We are about to start Chapter 3 in our Math in Focus book.  We are *loving* this book. It's very user-friendly for both mom and child.  So far, we have reviewed adding and carrying numbers to add up to 1,000, and then we did subtracting with borrowing (although Bug pointed out that it should be called "stealing" because the tens or ones columns do not give the 1 back...) and subtracting "across zeroes".

• We are done learning about the Southwestern and Western regions of the US.  Right now, we are reviewing both regions, making sure all the capitals, landmarks, and land forms are memorized before we move on to the Midwest.

• We are *almost* done with Bach --- we did the different orchestral music periods and types of instruments, and now are listening to various Bach pieces and discussing what we hear.  Handel is next.

• Science -- I've talked a bit about this in previous posts, but we learned about atoms & matter, and we just finished up a unit on the Animal Kingdoms. This week we will start a month-long unit on rocks & minerals.

• Spelling - we are going to switch gears on this one after Thanksgiving.  I am not pleased with just memorizing 16 words each week.  I don't feel like Bug is "getting" the rules of spelling or retaining the spelling words beyond the weekly tests.  So I am researching spelling curriculum to find something that would give more information and help Bug in this area.  In the meantime, I'm not going to waste our time with the "old way", and are tabling spelling lessons until December or maybe January.

• Grammar - chugging along, we do a lesson each morning -- I started her on Level 1 because I thought there may be some gaps, and we are approaching those gaps in the coming weeks. (Singular and Plural Nouns, Verbs, Adverbs, etc.)

• Reading/Writing - we are talking about the parts of a story, and Bug is working on writing a book.  We are plotting out the conflicts and resolutions, and she is making notes a few times a week about characters and ideas she has.  This should be completed by the end of October.

That about covers what we have been doing! :) Every Tuesday Bug does a PE class with our homeschool group, and then we hang at the park with everyone for an hour or so.  Each week there is a different activity - Lego club, Show & Tell, Cycling Group, etc.  We are all making new friends and feeling pretty at home with this group.

Alright, time to get back to planning and organizing!! I will work on posting more often so it's not such a novella each time.

She blinded me with...

SCIENCE! OK that was dorky. Sorry. :)

Aaaaanyway --- today's post is indeed about Science.  I will readily admit that Science, especially Biology, is not my cup of tea.  I did not enjoy dissecting a worm (all I can remember about that is I smashed the poor thing's gonads when I sliced it open), and I can will never forget the scent of formaldehyde along with the image of someone making their frog do a funny dance, when we were doing THAT exciting lesson. Blech.  I have always been much more interested in the "why" rather than the "how", when it comes to humans and animals.  What I mean by that is -- I'd much rather dissect (ew) someone's behavior and figure out what past events or hereditary traits are causing their current state than delve into their brain and talk about neurons and DNA and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...  And on the flipside from boredom, hearing about someone's broken finger or sprained ankle or, heaven forbid, WOUND (just typing that word made my wrists go weak and I had to stop typing for a moment) makes me have to put my head between my knees.  In my mid-20s, I had to bring my mother along with me to my pre-tonsillectomy doctor's appointments because when he started talking about what they would do, I turned green and the world turned fuzzy.  They even had to pull out the smelling salts at one point.  In summary, Kiki + Biology = no bueno, and being a nurse or doctor was never on my list of dream jobs.

However, I did always think it would be cool to be a storm tracker.  And earth sciences are pretty darn interesting.  Tectonic plates, earthquakes, volcanoes --- COOL. (or hot, really, I suppose)  The stars, planets, space -- also cool.  So I'm not totally a buzzkill about the sciences. :)  Just the ones that deal with innards, I guess.

My dad was a Chemist and now my brother is, too.  Chemistry can be interesting - cool experiments and analyzing, figuring out how many electrons are needed for bonding, etc (I love math, so I did enjoy all of that) - so I thought we would start with a Chemistry program I found online.  We dove right in and.... Snoozefest 2013.  Buggy did find the basics of it interesting -- what matter is, atoms, thinking about how tiny they must be -- all that good stuff.  But then... eyes glazed over.  For both of us, frankly.  The experiments and lessons are pretty dry. In my opinion, more for 5th grade than K-4.  Sooo -- we finished our lessons about matter, atoms, and bonds, memorized some terms, and then shut the book (literally) on that one.

We are now doing something much more exciting and FUN! Our homeschool group has a Science Club.  September was all about Weather. So - we kept a weather journal at home with the high temps, the wind direction, the barometric pressure, and the rainfall.  We looked at the journal and discussed any trends we noticed.  We poked around online and talked about earthquakes and tornadoes.  We watched some tsunami and flooding footage.  I showed Bug all the stuff about tectonic plates and fault lines.  Then, we went to our Science Club on Monday, and Bug made a tornado using two 2-liter bottles. So. AWESOME.

See the cute & tiny tornado?

Of course, it's glittery blue water, which makes it even more epic. :)

The kids also made lightning and thunder and learned about rain, and it was just all around pretty darn cool. The conversations that these kids had while doing everything were really neat.  I was glad we had learned about electrons, because there was discussion about electrons inside clouds in the lightning group.  Buggy was able to put together what she had learned with this and it made sense to her. :)

October is all about Animals, so Bug is a bundle of excitement about that!! In the weeks leading up to that next meeting, we are going to learn about animal classifications and habitats, and do all sorts of fun things.

Because Science = SUPER AWESOME FUN at the Cactus Schoolhouse. :)

Lovely Lulu

Going into this homeschool year, I had a pretty good idea of how things would go with Bug.  I spent a few years being her teacher before she went off to Kindergarten, and even then we did some activities in the afternoons together. I know how she learns, and she is a dream to teach. :)  Lulu was the wild card - partly because she is 3, and I was wondering how that would work, teaching a 2nd grader with a not-quite-a-preschooler underfoot.  But also because she has nuances to her personality that are different than her big sister's, and I knew I would have to get to know her in an educational environment to see what activities work best for her.  That is one of the many reasons we are homeschooling -- tailoring the girls' education to their personal learning styles!  A lovely bonus to just having two students. :)

As I have mentioned before, we are using this Letter of the Week program.  There is a LOT in there, so I printed out the things I thought Lulu might want to try, and we're going from there. So far, she has been a big fan of the Leap Frog Letter  Factory DVD, reading books (this is a newer development, sitting still for a story or two), Play-Doh, and coloring.  She also really enjoys painting, whether it's on paper with watercolors, or with water on the walls.  From the LOTW program, here are some pictures of what she is loving (and asking for each week!):

Circle magnets to fill in the letter of the week

Do-a-Dot markers in the shape of each week's letter...

...which ends up looking like this when she is done :)

Counting something that coordinates with the letter of the week (Apple seeds for A), finding the number, and gluing it to the page next to it.

We have also played some learning games (Memory, Dominoes, Candy Land), and she really enjoys those as well.  So far, so good -- her attention span is obviously shorter than Buggy's, but each week she gets more into it.  Whew!  I'm always looking for ideas on occupying a preschooler while an older sibling is learning -- so please share. :)

The Big Reveal...

As promised, here is the finished project from my last blog post. :) It's a Texas Covered Chuck Wagon!! From our Road Trip USA curriculum.

Wasn't that exciting? :)

Week 1 - Alice, Apples, & Atoms, oh my!

We did it! We survived our first week of homeschooling.  And --- we had a blast!!! :) It was everything I dreamed it could be. I know it's only the first week, but it really felt so perfect.  The rhythm, the learning, all of it - we just settled right in and found our groove pretty quickly. Whew!

So, here are some highlights:

A is for Apple!

Ten Apples up on Top

Some of Week 1's handiwork

The number jumping game was a hit ~ and Buggy even joined in as the "number caller".  Which leads me to one of my favorite things about this week.  When Bug finished up her work, she helped me lead Lulu in her activities.  :)  It was very sweet!

Thanks to the Internet, I found a creative way to reinforce the lesson about atoms.  The curriculum we got may be a wee bit too dry, but it's very comprehensive and Bug **loves** science.  Thanks to all my friends out in the Facebook world, we also now have many neat ideas for experiments and ways to keep science FUN!

Speaking of science, we had our first official Cactus Schoolhouse field trip, to the Arizona Science Center!  What a great place!!!! We walked around for 3 hours, and still didn't see all there was to see. We will definitely be returning sometime soon.

Sesame Street Feet!

We have to get one of these!!!! SO cool.

You know my girls loved to be able to talk about poop without getting the "bathroom talk" lecture!!!

If only Lulu would actually eat this healthy! :)

Making a vortex - SOOO cool.

Feats of strength

Spinning around & around & around...

This was my favorite. So cute :) Dust trees "dancing" to the music. :)

I see you!

And.... stay tuned to see pictures of Buggy's first lapbook (Alice in Wonderland), and to find out what this will become! :)

'Twas the night before homeschool...

Tomorrow is the BIG DAY!! Bug's first day of 2nd grade AT HOME, and Lulu's first day of Tot School or Preschool or Tagging Along School. :)  

So, before we dive into all this fun enriching goodness, I thought I would take a moment to share what curriculum/programs we are using for the girls. 

Ms. Buggy:

Math: Math in Focus (Singapore Method) - Level 2A

Grammar: Growing with Grammar - Level 1 (starting out at 1 because I don't think she learned some of the items in this book yet - back to basics!)

Spelling: Basic 2nd Grade Spelling Lists

Handwriting: Handwriting Without Tears

Reading Comprehension: Houghton Mifflin Reading and Houghton Mifflin Practice Book

Reading: Classic Literature Units

Social Studies: Road Trip USA

Science: Focus on Elementary Chemistry

The "extras": World's Greatest Composers and World's Greatest Artists

P.E. & Music: Bug will join swim team in October and start some sort of music class this fall as well (along the lines of choir or piano lessons). We will also be doing a weekly P.E. day with the homeschool group. We are taking September "off" from any extras so we can settle in and find our groove before over-committing!

Lulu Monkey:

Letter of the Week

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Lapbook

Whew. I think that covers it! :)  I think I'm ready to go.... I am equal parts excited and terrified.  Thanks for all the support!!!  I'll be back with a report later this week!!!

Kiki