Posts in School Organization
How to Accomplish it All
Can you hear me giggling? The uproarious laughing coming from California is me, because there is no way to accomplish it all. At least not today. But in all seriousness, I received an email from from Michele asking how to squeeze in a Circle Time on top of everything else: I have been following your Circle Time posts. Because it sounds like such a stress-free and enjoyable experience, I have tried to implement a Circle Time into our schedule. However, when I look at all the other things we need to accomplish, I just can't seem to find a block of time for it. You know----Bible time, school time for three school-aged children, piano practice for two children, read-aloud time, lunch, chore time, etc. I know you have posted your schedule before, but I was wondering if you could give some of us Preschoolers and Peace "followers" some advice on how you make the time for Circle Time while still accomplishing all the other activities of the day. Thanks! Michele, before I answer your questions, know that I am not laughing at you. I'm laughing at me, for naming this post after some pie-in-the-sky, completely unreachable ideal for most days. Circle Time actually became my personal answer for the question you posed of how to accomplish everything that needs to be done. Because everyone is all together, I can kill many birds with one stone. Currently during our Circle Time, we are studying the geography of the Holy Lands, grammar through the books of Ruth Heller, vocabulary by illustrating the word of the day, a new (to us) piece of art of the day, and memory work. We also pray together and Draw to Learn Proverbs. That's a lot, isn't it? Our time together usually lasts 30-45 minutes. Before Circle Time we've accomplished basic morning stuff (brushing teeth, etc.) and breakfast. After Circle Time we do chores, then the kids start their math. And the rest of the day currently goes like this: After math, the kids go outside and play-- sometimes the 13-year-old leads games and organizes an obstacle course, sometimes they ride bikes or play baseball. Then I read aloud while lunch is being made, and after we clean up lunch we have a quiet hour. The readers read off reading lists my husband and I have made (I'll write about those next time) and the little ones nap (except a very lively four-year-old who is currently finding napping a strain on her creativity). After quiet hour everyone works on the remaining school work (Latin, Greek, handwriting, etc.) and then I teach either history (Mondays and Tuesdays) or science (Wednesdays and Thursdays). And with six weeks until my due date, I then collapse :) I've got another post about that coming up, too. We school off and on throughout the day. It's what works for us, right now. Be sure to check the Your Day page where I've written about how schedules need to change depending on the season of your life. By the way, that's a link above on "Your Day". I've placed links throughout this post but am seeing that the color change is so slight, they're difficult to see. I'll be working on that.

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Circle Time, School OrganizationKendra Comments
Books

I admit it.  I'm a nerd.  I like that my spices are alphabetical- makes them easier to grab when the baby is crying and the phone is ringing and the oven timer is beeping.  I also like my books arranged alphabetically by author, at least the fiction titles. 

 

My nerdy friend Lisa (she admits it) got me started on taking book organization seriously, and as you know we homeschoolers can amass a lot of books in a short amount of time.

 

To begin organizing your books, you must know what you have.  You can track your library acquisitions using software like Readerware.  Next, get serious and label or otherwise mark your books using Dewey's system just like the "real" libraries.  This is a fabulous project for a high schooler in your home.  Because my kids were little when I started cataloging our books, I made little stickers for the spine of each book that would identify which shelf they should go on (see- told you I'm a nerd).  But I have my eye on the 13-year-old and will soon hire him to make labels with the proper Dewey decimals. 

 

 

After getting everything on the shelves and organized, I then bought tab labels for each shelf.  You can get almost anything library-related from Demco.

 

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Educating at Home, Home Organization, School OrganizationKendraComment
What's on the Clipboard?

Dana asked me, "What's on the clipboard you carry around?"  Well, I don't remember as I've been clipboard-free all summer long!

Alas, school is creeping up on our household, and once I start to feel better I will also have to reclaim responsibility for all the household tasks I've pawned off on my (mostly) willing family members.

So, what is on the clipboard?

  1. A copy of our current schedule, safely ensconsed in a sheet protector.

  2. The week's tasks as already thought out by Motivated Moms.  I also jot down other things on these sheets that we need to accomplish.

  3. Each child's list of schoolwork for the year.  These are simple lists that just remind my muddled brain of who is studying what and in what book.

  4. A list of chores that can be used as discipline.  Off the cuff I can look at this list and assign a little extra work to a child who has earned it.  Sample jobs are cleaning the mailbox, cleaning the garage and front doors, and assembling a snack for the preschoolerer for after her nap.

  5. Anything else I add for the day that I want to be constantly reminded to do, such as thank you notes or phone numbers for calls I need to make.

In short, the clipboard is my mobile brain.  I think I've mentioned this before, but thinking by the seat of my pants isn't one of my strong suits.  I am a planner (could ya tell???) and when the kids are all talking at once, the dog is barking, and dinner needs to be made, I. just. can't. think.

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Home Organization, School OrganizationKendra Comments
Homeschool Planning Weekend

This is my best girlfriend (she's on the right).  I gave a little history of our almost-20-year friendship in an earlier post, and if you're really bored you can read about it... but the long and short of it is that God has graciously given us both the sister we never had.  Our husbands are best friends, too.  We have matched each other child for child until my miscarriage, but I'm catching up.  Our husbands served as elders in the same church.  And we both casually classically educate.  Oh, and we both would live entirely on Scharffenberger chocolate if it were an option.  Or Phish Food. The reason for this post is not to bore you (or maybe I already have) but to give you a little intro to the planning weekend we had last week.  Our husbands gave us from Thursday night until Saturday night to plan the year ahead of us, and some of you have asked how we went about it.  We certainly did not get everything done- we had unrealistic expectations- but we did accomplish some good chunks and ate some pretty fine chocolate in the process. The week before, I packed up every textbook, coloring book, workbook, and resource I thought I would need.  I also made a list of what each child would be doing in the fall.  I felt I at least had a battle plan going into the weekend.  We stayed at Lisa's house and sent her husband and all the kids to hang out with mine. We spent most of Thursday night discussing the year ahead for both of us, and Lisa wanted to really pick my brain about several choices she was facing.  Should she start her 8-year-old in Latin this year (my thoughtful answer was no, for which he thanked me this week), which Omnibus I selections should she have her 12-year-old tackle this year, should she concentrate on non-academics with her only daughter?  Her questions inevitably led to some of my own, and because we know each other's hearts, lifestyles, vision, and children so well, we can count on solid and realistic advice from each other. Here are some tips on putting together your own planning weekend: 1. Consider asking a teenager to help you with the nursing babies.  Our French exchange student came along and helped Lisa with her five-month-old.  She even made us lunch. 2. Speaking of Elise, we would have utilized her better had we been better prepared.  We would have had her make photocopies for us and perhaps other paperwork. 3. Ample countertop or table space is important.  I have five students this year and Lisa has four plus a preschooler.  We need to be able to spread things out and make individual stacks for each child. 4. Access to two computers is really helpful.  Consider borrowing a laptop if you don't have one.  Just make sure your essential documents are on it. 5. Access to a printer goes without saying.  And if you plan to use it for all your photocopies as well, make sure you have extra ink cartridges as back-up. 6. Lists... make lists.  Make lists for everything from read-alouds to field trips to copywork.  The point of lists is not to tie you to them like a noose, but to give you something to fall back upon if need be.  During a planning weekend, you have the benefit of someone else's brain to help you make complete lists that will allow you to not be so rushed or stressed out during the school year. 7. Consider binding papers.  Lisa and I both use binders for different subjects but particularly history.  We are both not a little fed up with loose papers- somehow between filling out and coloring, the papers never quite make it back into the binders.  So Lisa came up with the brilliant idea of comb binding everything this year. 8. Chocolate.  Scharffenberger.  Godiva.  Ben and Jerry's.  Or Lisa's favorite- dark chocolate caramels from Trader Joe's.  Make a place in your budget for chocolate and you won't be sorry.
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Educating at Home, School OrganizationKendra Comments
Homeschooling Planning Angst
Dear Kendra, I'll try to explain my organizational school dilemma here without rambling.  I am having a hard time pin-pointing my problem.  I just know that I am frustrated with my planning at the beginning of each week. I needed a feeling for how the school year runs.  So now with a year of schooling K, 1st, and 3rd, I am trying to ask myself some questions. I think I need to do more of a goals list for each child. I bought the checklist from Cindy Downs and the Tanglewood Corebook. I am hoping they could work for me. What is the best way to list goals for the kids? Keep them in a binder? One for each child? Same binder? Keep a section of read alouds I read and want to read? How detailed should I be when I map out our school year? Math book page numbers? Should I put a time limit on our unit studies for science and history? How do I manage farming interruptions and illnesses? I can see our school year calendar with big red X's. Is this just part of the nuttiness of homeschooling? Do I  relax and just go with the flow? But I like a plan! How much prep do you put in at the beginning of the week? In planning your year? If I can get my vision/plan mapped out,  I hope then my summer schooling would be more clear to me, i.e. how much math, reading I will do. Plan my read alouds... I hope that gives you a peek into my head. Thank you for caring! Dana ♥ Dear Dana- BREATHE!  Phew.  I felt my blood pressure rising as I was reading what you wrote :)  I'll tell you what I've done/what I'm doing, what has worked when and why, and then maybe you can pull out some things that will be helpful to you. First, I do have a binder I simply call "School Records".  It contains: 1. A copy of our current schedule which, as you well know, changes fairly often 2. A section for each school-aged child.  Their sections contain: A. A goal sheet for the year based on the Trivium- grammar/knowledge stage, logic/understanding stage, and rhetoric/wisdom stage. B. Their "omnibus list" for the year.  These are simply personalized reading lists we create for each child based upon what we want them to read now and/or have read by the time they leave our home. 3. A section called "Books" in which I keep a list of read-alouds and a list of books we want to look into or check out from the library 4. A section for recording the year's field trips.  I only list them here by month and I scrapbook about them in our family scrapbook.  That has worked well for me. In regards to lesson plans, I have done it many ways: 1. In the beginning, I sat down every Sunday night and planned out the week, page numbers and all.  I quickly learned that was for the birds.  There were just too many variables, and yes, that is the nuttiness of homeschooling. 2. My philosophy has morphed over the years.  While still highly academic, we tend to want to be more relational amongst every member of the family and so I strive to structure our day so that we are all together as much as possible.  This also allows me to correct attitudes and stop silliness before it gets out of hand (boys!  humph) 3. While that means my kids are still doing the challenging stuff like Veritas Press Omnibus, Latin for Children, Greek and Introductory Logic, it also means that we don't really delve into the super-creative options or the unit study kind of homeschooling.  While I love Konos, it is completely impractical for my family.  Once you recognize what your overall goals are, how to achieve them, and what your limitations are (a baby every other year, for instance, or harvesting walnuts) you can decide what are the non-negotiables and what to toss.  Mummifying a chicken didn't make the cut the last time we studied ancients, but this year we've been able to do a few more creative things because the older boys choose to do them on their free time. So, here's where I am right now.  We are going into summer with quite a few unfinished tasks.  So what?  If we plod away at them casually throughout the summer in the cool mornings, they'll get done.  As for next year, I began planning in about January.  I started writing down what I wanted them to do next year (actual curriculum names and other goals such as "improve handwriting").  Then I began to purchase slowly in about March.  At the end of June my girlfriend who homeschools much the same way as we do and I will get together for a planning weekend where we will photocopy and assemble as much of the kids' stuff as possible.  Mine each get binders for almost every subject they have, and for subjects like history, I make all the necessary photocopies for the ENTIRE year.  Yep.  It is torture for the weekend but then it's DONE. One last thing- I LOVE history.  So I have made a spreadsheet for history each year based on the curriculum we're using.  Mystery of History is our favorite, but she's only written the first two years.  You could certainly do something like this for any subject; just be sure you use it and it doesn't use you.  In other words, feel free to toss a read-aloud you don't like a few pages into it, etc. Does that help? Kendra
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Summer School

We school year-round but take a decidedly laidback approach to summer.  I don't know about you, but I am SO done with school right now. We continue a light touch on math each morning, and some of my kiddos haven't finished up subjects from the school year so they'll be getting those done as well.  But then I always let them choose a subject or two and a project they want to pursue for the summer.  This year my middle daughter wants to learn how to jump rope, so we even put that down on the schedule. This is what summer's school load will look like:

13-year-old

Math          

Free Choice Reading         

Logic (his choice- gotta love these homeschoolers!)

Drafting (also his choice)

Piano

11-year-old

Math Drill

Free Choice Reading

Theory (his choice- he plays the guitar)

Guitar

8-year-old

Math

Free Choice Reading

Legends and Leagues

Greek (his choice- again, gotta love these homeschoolers!  You should have seen him the day this arrived in the mail.  It was as if the mail lady had delivered a giant vat of ice cream- he was THAT excited!)

Piano

6-year-old

Math

Continue Pathway Readers

Young Lady of Valor and Ruby Doll Kit

Cursive (her choice)

Signing Time

5-year-old

Counting With Numbers

Preschool Workbook

Learn to jump rope

Signing Time

Learn to swim

2-year-old

Be cute

Make us laugh

Signing Time

We can finish breakfast, Circle Time, chores, and school all before lunch.  Then after lunch we swim, I read aloud for an hour or more while they play Legos, draw, or otherwise keep their hands busy.  Swim some more, swing on the hammock, swim again, then make dinner. 

Aaaaaah.  I love summer!

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