Still Plugging Along

We have been keeping a pretty good schedule.  It helps to have a list of everything each child needs to do each day.  We have been keeping up fairly well.  The girls have been focusing on Latin and should be ready for the NLE in March- very exciting.  The boys will do just about anything to play on the wii, so it has been very easy to teach them and make sure they finish their work-  plus it's my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th time through their curricula.  There's lots more to write, but that's all for now-- til next time!!

On the final Stretch of School

Monday again-- the boys finished all their stuff, but the girls didn't. I thought it might help them to see exactly what they have left and how when they finish, they'll be all done for the summer. We have 26 school days left
-- 7 weeks and then we'll take off 3 weeks where I won't even make them read if they don't want to.

#1 has 40 pages of math left and the test and the final test-- so if she does 4 pages a day, she'll be done in the next 3 weeks. She has 7 chapters of Greek left, so 1 chapter a week equals 7 weeks. One section of science left-- I've just got to gather the supplies for the experiments so she can finish-- it won't take long. She has a lot of English workbooks left, but the grammar practice ones are full of things I haven't learned yet like the pluperfect tense- so she'll be fine doing that alongside Latin-- it will probably make more sense that way too. So she can finish those up during the summer. I will also have her continue with history, required reading, a little science, music, art and writing over the summer after our break and only a couple times each week just to keep so good habits and keep boredom at bay. I think this will help her see the end and keep going to the finish!! She is way excited to be done with math. We've been going strong a long time and I think she's a little burnt out.

I will also have her do a couple practice tests of standardized testing each week over the summer. She took a reading test and passed adequately, but she needs to ace it. She just needs practice taking tests and reading the questions. I'll probably have her start with the early levels until she is acing those and then move her on up.

#2 just has about 15 pages of math left, so she'll be done very soon. She has 16 chapters of Greek left, so that will take some time over the summer, but she is very good at memorizing and being exact so I don't think it will be too hard for her. She has the same science section left as her sister and about the same workbooks. So they'll continue to work together. She's pretty far ahead so I don't worry about her so much although we're pushing her to start algebra and Latin in the fall with her sister so they can be study budies.

The boys are pretty far ahead so for them it's just a matter of building good habits and keeping them challenged which really isn't hard. They're not burnt out, their stuff doesn't take that long and it's not that hard yet. So they'll keep their regular routine, but I am excited to have a break myself!

Checklists and Deadlines

Checklists have been very helpful for kids to see what they need to do and what they have left. It's much easier to keep going when they can see that it will end and they know exactly what is expected of them. A new rule we have now for the 4th and 6th grader is that math and Greek have to be done before lunch or they don't get to eat. Those are the hardest subjects and they need to do them when their brains are most ready. Everything else they can pretty much do on their own and just take time. The boys also have to have everything they can do on their own finished before lunch also and usually they are done with the things I have to help them with-- reading, math and phonics.

Here is the girls checklist without the table and boxes to check for each day, the numbers are how many times each week they need to do the item-- so they can work ahead if they want-- which hasn't happened yet. I have also included brushing and flossing teeth because they would often forget. Here it is:

Clean room
dressed
hair
brush and floss teeth
Scripture 4x
Journal 4x
Read scriptures 7x
Read history 4x
History report 1x
Required reading 4x
Piano 7x
Violin 7x
Grammar practice 4x
Word study 4x
Sentences to Paragraphs 4x
Math 5x
Greek 5x
Science 2x
Composition 1x
Art 4x

They did a great job yesterday and had fun with Valentines. I think their expectations have been reset after the drama of last Thursday night and they know we are serious. We also had a great lesson in Relief Society on Work and how important it is. I really needed that to reinforce my feeling that we need to do more and it's O.K. I can see the value of children needing free time to explore and play, but I can also see how they can play and do fun things too much. It's all about balance and we are course correcting and learning about work was very nice and helpful for me to see that it's good to stretch these little ones to do more than they would on their own. Through work they will gain Victory!!

On to more work-- I fell asleep before I could clean the kitchen and that's why I'm up so early now- because I know what a nightmare it will be if it's not clean by the time the kids get up!! Work is good-- I am also listening to a teaching company course on Byzantinium times while I clean-- that is very fun and interesting.

Review of the Week # 9

This was a very good week. The twins turn 1 in a week so they are getting a little easier. It is actually easier to hold school and keep to our routines than it is to not hold school. Over the break I did a lot of organizing and moving furniture around and hangin' out. All the kids do better with a schedule and it is easy to teach school while I hold a baby which is all one of the babies wants me to do. He just likes being held all the time. I can manage that during school and it is nice. This is making it less stressful to teach school and I enjoyed it more this week than I have other weeks.

I made sure the kids felt good about what they were doing by encouraging them a lot and telling them how well they were doing. They thrived with this. I have to admit that I am not by nature real patient and calm, but I am now. Teaching kids teaches patience. It's really not that hard to be patient, but it is so important when teaching children. It can be so hard to wait especially when there are so many other things I have to do and I just wish this child would figure out the problem quickly so I can go change that diaper or wash those dishes or whatever. Setting the timer has really alleviated this for me.

Each child gets 30 min. of my undivided attention. We know the time is limited so I think the child works more efficiently because I am right there making sure they are and they know it won't last forever. I think everybody is making better progress this way because I can explain and go over the difficult parts and then I'm still around for quick questions afterward, but anything involved-- they will have to wait their turn. Assigning children to keep the younger ones busy while I teach the older ones has also been very helpful. The older ones are learning to serve and to enjoy the younger ones and I get uninterrupted time with whoever I'm working with and the younger ones love the extra attention from their older siblings. It is win win win!!

So this week the girls have been working on percents. I had to go over the textbook a few times to remember how to understand what exactly they are asking. It's all in the wording. The story problems have been very tricky, but it is so rewarding to watch the girls figure them out. #2 has almost caught up to #1. #1 was stuck for a while and experience has taught me that she can only do so much in a day, so we just go however we can. But I have added an extra hour of math to her week. She's not behind, she's probably a little ahead, but I want her to start Algebra as soon as possible-- I want her to be way ahead. Once she finishes calculus, she won't have to do any more math the rest of her life if she doesn't want to, and the sooner she finishes the more time she'll have to develop her other skills and talents.

#1 finished chapter 10 of her 3rd Greek book. She made a review game that I plan to use for all the kids in the future. I read about it here on familyfun I think it will help her really get all the vocabulary words down and the declensions and other concepts she needs. She only has 20 chapters left and I told her she doesn't have to do any more Greek ever if she doesn't want to and she will be plenty ready for Latin in September. Very exciting!!

#2 just started the 3rd year book. We are hoping she can start Latin with her sister in the fall so she has some extra work to do. It comes pretty easy to her so I think she'll be fine although she hasn't really been challenged before and she doesn't really like it. It is character building.

The girls finished all their workbooks, journaling, reading and practicing. We forgot about reports and compositions this week. I need to get our checklists printed-- my computer died so that slowed us down a bit-- should be back on track this coming week. We've also got to add in science. We have taken periods of time to focus on math, then we focused on Greek and now I think it is time to focus on Science. I'm excited. I think we will actually be able to fit everything in!!

The boys are doing very well. They are working on multiplication tables and on Friday I let them play the games on www.multiplication.com I told #3 that he has to read on his own 15 min. a day in addition to reading with me. He is reading in the 3rd McGuffey primer and does very well, but has yet to make the leap to reading for enjoyment. Next time I go to the library I'm going to look for the Wimpy Kid Diaries. I think he needs something to really grab his attention. He read for 7 min. on his own on Friday and we will increase that time each day until we reach 15 and then I think he'll realized that he can read and understand and that the Treehouse books are awesome. He will start Greek in the fall and #4 probably will too. It has worked out well to have the 2 girls work together, then the 2 boys. I also started #3 on piano again. but this time I plan to sit with him 15 min. per day and listen to him practice otherwise I think it is a waste.

#4 is doing great. He is amazingly ahead- he would ordinarily be in kindergarten this year and he just started Singapore Math 2B and is learning his times tables. he will probably start to catch up to his brother here before too long-- although I think the older brother may make sure that doesn't happen. Also he is doing great with vision therapy and his eyes stay straight now even when he takes off his glasses. He is using his eyes together close up and he is well passed where he would have been had he gotten the eye surgery. The doctor said that he will give us exercises to work on at home after January and we can take a 3 month break from our weekly visits!! I am so happy about this-- it will essentially give us back a whole day for our school week. I think his reading is improving too because he is seeing better. I think he would have been reading much better before this had he not had the vision problems. But we are making it work!! Very happy about that.

#5 is learning to do chores without complaining and loves the extra attention he gets in "preschool" and he know about 3 articles of faith.

The twins are growing. They are eating a lot of regular food now which takes a long time to feed to them and also means a lot of dirty diapers to change. #6 is finally starting to crawl on his knees instead of his army crawl so then I'll work with him on walking. #7 is the busiest little guy ever. He occasionally crawls all the way into the basement. He has been crawling on his knees since he was 6 mos. old so he is very fast and good at it and hasn't wanted to walk. But he can stand for a long time and has started pushing his little car around so maybe he'll be walking here before too long.

I've broken up group time into 2 parts. The first group time is before I start my individual time with everybody. We stretch and do yoga poses. Then we sing a few songs. We are learning "My Eternal Family" and "Hold to the Rod" and then we sing fun little kids songs. Then we read a few verses out of the New Testament and talk about what they mean and what the words mean and usually have some sort of discussion where I explain things about the world and life that the children are wondering about. Then we read a section out of Bible stories for children and practice our article of faith. We finished #10 this week and all 5 kids know it rather well. This first group time takes about 45 min. The scriptures and the gospel are the most important things I want my children to know and have in their life so that's why we do it first. Then if we've started early enough we can be done with the main subjects before lunch -- that only happened once this week-- but that is the goal. then after lunch we can do something fun and finish group time which is basically big kids story time and a little bit of language exposure. I would like to continue our French and Spanish study, but I'm not sure it's the best use of our time. Our time is so limited we have to be choosey.

We only had the second part of group time once this week because we missed Monday since we took it off, we go to the library on Tues., we take off Thurs. for vision therapy and Friday we went to a support group to make some new homeschool friends. But Wednesday was very fun. We played with Snap circuits for awhile. Then we read our inventions book, our history book, Pilrim's Progress and Little Women and a whole bunch of little kids books. Those are my favorite days. I'm going to try to schedule 3 of those a week-- so we just have activities 2 days a week, a full home day 3 days a week and Saturday for cleaning and soccer in the future and Sunday for church and rest.

It is so busy. We work really hard, but it is so worth it and I know I'm going to miss these days because I have everybody around me all the time. I know where they are, what they're doing and how it's going. I know it won't last that much longer. My oldest is almost 12. I'm going to savor each day, each week and each month. These are good times. I'm not sure what I'll do when I have time to clean the house and there aren't a bunch of bottles, lids and silverware all over the floor!

Back to School!!!!

We start tomorrow. We were a little disappointed not to have started today, but my husband had today off for New Year's so we hung out again. I was hoping to get the house all clean, but I have been staying up way too late and am now sleep deprived. My goal is to get to sleep by 11. 10 would be awesome, but I know it won't happen so 11 will be a great step for me. I've got my menu plans ready. I've got school plans ready. The new thing this week will be to have the girls practice their instruments before school. So I got everybody to bed early today and we should get up fairly early tomorrow. The house is a bit of a mess, but not too bad. Everybody has their zones and their rooms to clean daily and that has helped a ton. I'm the one with the problem getting my zones done. Anyway, we organized and rearranged a couple rooms. We have a larger school room area and computer station and we have a little toy area, so I'm excited to see how it goes. Our dining area is much smaller now, but that's O.K. we just really needed a change so I'm excited to see how it goes!!

Wish me luck!! I'm off to clean the kitchen and get to bed!!

Review of the Week #6

This was a pretty good week overall. We only got 2 group times in, but we are switching things around again. Read my previous post to hear how the new preschool works. We started that this week, because the 2 oldest just need one on one time with me for Greek and Math. It can be very taxing on me, but I'm figuring out how to manage it. The past 2 years most of my energy has been mainly focused on my baby twins- the pregnancy and nursing. The kids still did their workbooks and plowed through stuff, but we would spend a lot of time going back and filling in holes. It was not the most efficient way to learn, but we that's all I could do. It has been nice to get back into it and now I'm figuring out how to make the whole process efficient.

A couple weeks ago I adopted Diane Hopkins method from www.lovetolearn.net for getting everybody ready on time except we're using marbles instead of dimes. They can keep the marbles or trade them in for minutes on the wii. Each kid gets a marble when they are dressed and ready to go at 9:30. They have a zone of the house to clean and their rooms have to be done too as well as their breakfast dishes rinsed and teeth brushed in order to earn the marble. Then we have a short group time singing a couple songs, have a prayer review our scripture of the week and do some yoga/ stretching. Then I set the timer and I take one girl to work with one on one while the others do preschool with the other girl as the teacher. It was so nice this week!! The other change I implemented was to keep the time the girls work on math to an hour a day even if they don't finish their alloted pages so that they are not overwhelmed. This is especially important for the older girl because there are some math concepts that take her a while to sink in. In the past we would spend a couple hours trying to get the concept down and it was frustrating for me and for her, so now once the timer goes off we stop. I think it helps her to focus better during that short time knowing it will end and it saves my sanity because I just don't have time to spend any more than that.

We didn't do Spanish or French this week. I did find my mp3 player though. wE only did history and science once, but that's how it goes. The boys got to do preschool, we read a bunch of books from the library, we went to a reenactment of the journey to Bethlehem which was great. And everybody has kept up with what they were supposed to. Good overall, always room for improvement. I'm excited to try some new things this coming week!

Preschool taught by Older Kids

One new thing we did this week was to have the 2 older girls switch off teaching "preschool" to the younger boys. The little boys loved it- even the 8 yob except for one little session, but it's not mandatory so he looked at books during that time. The girls prepared their lessons and activities and everybody had a great a time. The reason for this new format was to keep the 3 yob entertained and busy while I teach a girl one on one. Monday was a very difficult day- he took a lot of my time and I had very little uninterrupted time to help the other kids. This was heavenly. The "teachers" enjoyed it and so did the students and so did I. I still had the babies to take care of-- but they will be quiet eating bananas and if not, they take a nap. So this was very good..

They made Christmas chains and Christmas trees. They went on a nature walk and played the bells and learned the months of the year and the days of week and played games. The girls were the leaders and got to pick the activities. The first day we did it for 45 min. each girl, then the second day we tried an hour each because 45 min. just wasn't long enough. Then the 3rd day we switched off every half hour. We did 1/2 hour for math and 1/2 hour for Greek because I needed a break to a different kid. I think this coming week, I'll add in some individual time for the boys.

Things just constantly change, I'm always finding new ways to do things!!

Scheduling appointments and shopping

This has been a busy week. One thing that was good about this week is that I combined all my necessary trips into 2 days. One day is huge-- we drive about 45 min. each way for vision therapy for my son, then do all our grocery shopping for the week, then go to the park with other homeschooled friends. There aren't many girls at the park, so we may start an arts and crafts club to meet after the park for my daughters. That is a long day, but then I don't have to load up the twins any extra time and we don't get interrupted in our school days.

One other day of the week my daughter has a violin lesson right after lunch for a half hour, then we go the library right after, because the twins are already in the car to take her to violin, so we just stop at home and grab the other kids and go. This is a little disruptive to our at home schedule, but the kids love the library and we had stop going otherwise because I just couldn't take everybody and we had way to many fines because of it. This way we have a weekly appointment so we shouldn't incur so many fines and the kids really learn a lot from their books. They get to check out 4 books of whatever they want and 2 books on something they are interested in learning about. The library took over group time this week. So we may just have group time 3 times a week instead of 4. I'm O.K. with that. That will give me a bit of a break too. I kept having the thought "it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength" (Mosiah 4:27
) run through my mind this week. There are so many things I want to help my children accomplish and so many fun and important things to do, that it can feel overwhelming. That thought helped me destress and keep perspective, that it will be O.K. if we don't do it all. But scheduling is going to help us get some order so we can accomplish a lot.

A Bad Day and a Good Day

Yesterday was a bad day. I didn't get up early enough to exercise before the kids got up and I had to decide whether to start school or exercise. I hadn't exercised for 2 weeks because I was sick and I cut my hand real bad Sunday night washing a glass cup that broke and slipped into my hand plus I hate Mondays. Then instead of letting my girls off the hook after an hour of math work, I made them finish their pages cause I didn't think they were concentrating well enough which took another 1 1/2 hours-- so that was 2 1/2 hours of math. The boys were good just playing around and pulling out every game in the cupboard and I felt bad that I didn't get to their work earlier and then I really regretted it that afternoon around 5 p.m. when I was trying to get them to practice their times tables and finish their other stuff and not making dinner. Also, we had a very short group time, we had to skip yoga and music we didn't do any Greek, and we spent a lot of time talking about how we need to act better. Then my mom came over to visit and I started to get a headache-- for good reason. Not my best day. So I sat in the tub and fortunately the headache did go away. My husband put the babies to bed and everybody else too which was nice and I got to rest. I went to bed early and got some decent sleep. soooooo.....

Today was a really good day. I loved it. I thought about how to make things run smoother and it worked pretty well even with violin lessons in the middle of it all. So this is what we did: I got up before the kids and exercised. I always feel so much better when I exercise. It's the one thing I do for myself. I love it. I just handle life so much better when I exercise. When I was done I started making breakfast and cleaning the kitchen and the kids started getting up. I told the kids to eat and do their chores and start school as soon as possible so that we wouldn't have a repeat of yesterday. They did very well so when it was time for school we had nice clean areas to do it in. I love that. Then I set the timer for 30 min. increments. I told the kids they had to work hard during that time with me helping them, then the boys could have a break while I helped the girls and the girls could do their piano practice or reading while I worked with the boys. I set the timer and didn't add minutes for the time it took for kids to find their books. When the timer beeped we were done.

So I started with boys- we worked on multiplication tables and they did well knowing we would stop when the timer beeped-- the girls did some of the things they can do on their own-- then I did 30 min. of Greek with the girls and the boys continued on with their work that they can do on their own surprisingly because I told them they could take a break. Anyway, when we finished Greek, the girls started math, but they were not allowed to ask me for any help because I was helping the boys finish up their reading, phonics and math workbooks, they were to skip the stuff they needed help with and when the timer went off I would help them. We were done at about 12:45 p.m. It was so awesome. The boys were all done and the girls were done with the hard parts. YAY!!

Then we started some birthday invitations, I nursed the babies, got lunch on the table and we got off to violin lessons. I needed a break after that so we all took one and then resumed school with yoga and music time outside. It was beautiful outside. We came in for Spanish, French, Scriptures, stories and -- oh I guess we forgot science today-- oh well. The rest of group time went rather well. The kids listened and payed attention fairly well. Then the boys went to their friend's house, the girls finished up stuff and I started dinner and then went to vote. My 11 yr.old then baked her 1st loaf of bread all by herself. It took her a while but it turned out pretty good.

Good day-- I guess I'd better go to bed so we can have a repeat of today!!