School Year on the Horizon...Realities

Okay to the school year...

My oldest is getting to the age where I'm feeling like I'm needing to push a little. Roo will be turning 8 this school year and I feel like it's time to have some daily requirements. Traditionally speaking kids wouldn't start school until they reached the age of 7, and studies have shown it is to their benefit to wait. So at many times in history and in many countries today, this really would be Roo's first year of school.

Thus far with school I have been very hands off. I haven't been stressed that she's taken her time with reading, that it hasn't "clicked" into voracious book love. I haven't pushed handwriting or math or really any thing. I love the idea of "child directed" learning and "delight directed" learning. In my heart I would love to un-school. In my reality I know it's not going to work with Roo.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think I've been doing any thing "wrong" so far.. This whole parenting thing is really just flying by the seat of your pants anyway. You research, you give it a shot, you celebrate when you find some thing that makes your child's life better, and you lick your wounds when you make mistakes. You learn, you grow...you try other things. And it's all very fair and good because when you think you figure "it" out, you have another kid that it doesn't work for, and you have to start all over. It is fun though, and it is amazing to watch how they grow and change and they help you do the same.

 Okay back to this school year, I feel like with this child [Roo] and her unique personality she'd happily float along for a very long time. She doesn't really mind that she doesn't know schooly things. Reading? It's a lot of work! She can do it, but why bother when she can listen to books and watch documentaries. Writing? Why? When she can draw fantastic pictures to communicate a story!

And you know what? She's not wrong, she does know how she learns best. She is very much a person who knows where she's comfortable and how she likes things to be, and until she's made uncomfortable by it, she's not going to change it.

She was the kid who couldn't dress herself with out help until she was 5. She did have some slight suspected fine motor delays (thanks to diagnosed vision issues). But really it was mostly a, "Why bother when I have loving hands to help me?"  or more, "I am the most comfortable this way, I just won't get dressed at all unless some one makes me." She lived her underwear or footie PJ's unless I force dressed her to take her places.
Once she was told that at her age (at 5 I had had more than enough!), she had to be do it herself, and she had to do it every day, she did. Some slight push back initially, a few meltdowns and then she got used to it and it was no big deal.

And I'm thinking that's again where we've landed. I see she can do it, I see she needs to be able to do it better, it's time to set her up to be a bit uncomfortable until she see's how "not a big deal" it can be.

I've had "rules" during the school year, "nothing but PBS shows" or "no TV before lunch" rules. Especially with the childcare kiddo, her parents didn't send her here to watch TV! And all except for my worst morning sickness days, the TV stayed OFF. And this year I think we're going to institute some slightly uncomfortable Bigger Kid Rules and I'm trying to decide what would work. It has to...

1) be possible to enforce with a newborn in the house.
 2) be a positively enforced rule that sets us up for success and help us meet our goals (in other words, proactive "this is the positive thing that happens when you" not reactive, "You didn't do it so now you will feel bad and miserable").

I am thinking our Rules for Second Grade will be some thing like...
 1. No TV, ipad, or minecraft until you've completed your...

• Reading assignment (read 7 pages from reader to Mom [these "pages" have about 2-3 sentences on them each).
• Writing assignment (write dictation assignment for the day, one brief sentence using a vocabulary word from our read aloud, OR complete a Grammar worksheet, OR Spelling You See workbook page [also includes handwriting]),
• 30 minutes of outside time 
• One Morning Chore

 I want to add "AND History, Science and Language Arts" but unless Hubby Joy takes on assignments I just don't know.
I can sit and listen to her read for 15 minutes every day. I can dig through 10 minutes of writing a sentence or completing her Spelling -even with drama. I can help her complete a work sheet or read Life of Fred with her. I can't guarantee I'll be up to all the reading every day of the week in history or Language Arts, at least until Ziggy is a few months old. I'm trying to be realistic...

I have a feeling some of the new rules will make Roo uncomfortable, she likes to do her thing and do it her way... I also think second grade is going to bring a lot of new growth for her as well! I am hoping in making it so that she has to practice reading daily (and not just with me, but in the day to day things she'll skip because it's too much of a bother) she'll start to see the NEED for it in her life and start to push past the plateau she's sat at for the last  year or so. It's comfortable to just avoid the need to read...This year, we practice and make it more of a focus.
Honestly, I don't know that Roo will ever be one of those kids to LOVE reading. I would be absolutely delighted if she does! But I've been trying to be realistic and not set expectations too high for her. She's got some vision issues that makes reading tiring. Vision issues that we haven't been able to fully address and are still unsure exactly how we will address them.
 It doesn't mean she can't overcome them and go on to be a book worm. But it could mean that she sticks to her strengths, auditory learning. And that is okay. I just want her to work past the struggle part, and master the concepts so that she can function on a more average level. I want to be able to leave her notes with simple directions, especially with the new baby coming. There are many days it would be great to write saying "Please make sure Pip gets a snack, if I'm not up by 8 please quietly come get me." She doesn't have to love it, but she needs some fluency to survive.

Oh, And here are the work sheets I promised in my last post! I've been using a few of these (especially the first and second grade grammer/phonics worksheets!) to fill in gaps or when the kids ask to do "school" and they mean do worksheets. :)
KINDERGARTEN 

READING BEAR (Learn to read with reading bear Free online Phonics program!)

Dynamically Created Kindergarten Worksheets MATH   (PDF's free printables!)

My Number Book (kindergarten printable number book)

Multiple Grade Levels
Make your own Handwriting Worksheets 
(a program to design and print your own handwriting practice sheets)

Free Dinosaur Worksheets (many different coloring pages multi grade level)
 Free Character Building Bible Lessons (multiple grade levels)

FREE Math Worksheets (K-6th)

Math Worksheet Factory (Free math worksheets)

FIRST GRADE
 First Grade PHONICS workbook (free printable workbook 258pages!)

Learn To Read Phonics Program (phonics concepts, printables)

First Grade Spelling Practice Book (Free printable workbook 128pages!)

SECOND GRADE
Second Grade Earth Science (full printable text book 112pages!)
Grammar Practice Book (free printable text book 158pages)

I found all of these on FREE Homeschooling 101 give them a follow they've been awesome!

5 Things I Learned My First Year Homeschooling

The official school year is fast approaching! Every few days I find another sweet "First Day of School" picture in my Facebook newsfeed. The fresh faces full of anticipation for the new adventure: a school year!

We've continued to do "school" all summer, settling in, enjoying slow summer days of learning together. It's been a wonderful, wonderful summer!

With all those reminders of the coming seasons change, I find myself looking back over the past year.  I wanted to verbalize the things I've learned this past year.

So here they are:

5 Things I've Learned My First Year of Home Schooling...

1. Set loose Goals.
 Before the school year begins set out a SHORT (especially if your kids are young) bullet point list of the basic age-appropriate things you hope to learn together. Last year for example,I wanted to introduce these concepts and see where my oldest landed. Some of these might be too academic for some familes, and others might find my list too simple. These were things she had expressed interest in the concepts and we worked towards it and she "got it" to varying degrees.
My list looked some thing like this:

• count well to 100
• by 10's 
• by 5's 
• understand the concept of counting to 1,000.
• understand basic addition and subtraction.

Our goals for the rest of our curriculum were...

• to love and enjoy reading together even more.
• to read through the entire Bible (in general stories) from Genesis to Revelation.
• To give her a general idea of world history and the concept of time and dates.
• To really understand Seasons, Months, and Days

Our Seasons and Months Art Project. Our boxed curriculum had a great way for teaching Months of the years and all 3 of the kids can chant the rhyme pretty well- the littlest in her own way! :)

  
2. Ask any one you can what they do for school and follow a few homeschooling sites on FB.
This is a pretty personal one. All personalities are different and another homeschooling Mama might find this completely AWFUL. This is just my preference, I like to know about ALL the options, have a general sense of what they are, and be able to evaluate on a gut level if they'd be a good fit for one of my kids.
I have a binder that I call "All the Things Learning" and I have a section of the Binder that is just for this information. I have a plain piece of note book paper with each curriculum or resource I find as the title. I fill the page with bullet point snippets about the curriculum (from websites and online reviews). I may never use the curriculum, but if I wrote a lot about it I probably hope to! And it's there when I'm circling around to a new school cycle and am weighting my options for each child.

For *me* this is helpful. I don't find it overwhelming and I tend to only keep detailed information on curriculums that really catches my fancy. There are probably about a hundred times that one click on the website told me it wasn't a good fit, and I only wrote it on a list of "math curriculum options" or whatever. A glance at a website can often quickly tell you if it's worth any time for your child.

3. Just DO IT. 
You don't have to know all the curriculum out there. You don't even need to have a curriculum. Set some loose goals, and search (google and pinterest are handy!) for ways to make it fun and relationship building.

4. Know your child...Guiding them to Discovery brings JOY!
This is probably my favorite part of homeschooling. These are my favorite people, and discovering what interests them and what doesn't adds this beautiful dimension to life together. I want my kids to be interested and invested in whatever we're learning together.
This year we were using Heart of Dakota "Little Hearts for His Glory" and it was great! I loved it! It was open and Go and I would advise any first time homeschooler to get a "all in one" home school curriculum.
*Not because you'll use it all.
*Not because it will enable you to teach all the things it says your child will learn.
*Not because it is the best way to home school.

None of that was true here! But it gave us an awesome baseline. It said "this is what you can introduce to your child today...give it a shot!"

A lot, I discovered, my kids didn't like. They didn't want to do handwriting. They disliked some of the hands on activities, they looooved others!! They disliked math work sheets or being given a big thick book full of un-done work (one piece of paper please!). I learned a hundred more things about how they learn, what works best and all with in the frame work of that all in one homeschool curriculum.

We made paint together and learned about mixing colors...

We took a field trip together to a local Museum and got a hands on look at local History

I discovered SO much, and I am so glad for the experience. I also learned an "all inclusive" curriculum isn't a good fit for us right now. We need eclectic! We need to be interested! We need to be asked "what do you want to learn this week?" and then head off to the library, youtube, pinterest, and google to discover what's out there on the subject!

Which brings me to my next and final "thing I learned"...

5. There is no right way to homeschool...or unschool!
It's completely individual. The awesome and awful part -as with all things in parenting- you just have to dive in and figure out what's right for your family. Read books about it. Ask older home school Mom's to hear what they're doing and what their kids have enjoyed.  Also, home schooling doesn't have to be any thing like a class room.
 For many kids and parents learning together isn't going to involve a straight path of objectives and check marks. Learning is cyclical. It's a spiral. You introduce a concept, you find creative ways to help them practice new skills. It's holistic, you're working with a whole human being here, with many other areas of life they're growing in as well. Some months new math skills aren't going to be a good thing to investigate. If it's not working, if there is refusal to get involved, if there is upset over a subject...Step back! Ask yourself, "Do they HAVE to know this NOW to survive?"
 Learning happens, really happens, when the person is wanting to learn and invested in the knowledge. No one wants to grow up and be ignorant! Just like they learned to walk, and feed themselves, and talk- they'll do it! We all want to  know things.
Balancing the "they need to know this now" pressures from the outside can be tricky. "Does your 6 year old really need to know how to write perfectly and tidily, NOW? Maybe playing some letter shape games together with chalk or on a chalk board would be a better use of hand writing practice time. It doesn't have to fit in a box, learning is learning...and it is only learning if it is really LEARNED. :)

hand writing practice: playing Doc McStuffins together...She'd copy the words or sound out her own when it came to writing the "Diagnosis" in the Big Book of Booboo's. :)

Okay I lied, there's a #6
6. Challenge yourself.
What do you want to learn more about? Are there novels you've never tried to read before? Time periods you'd like to discover? Take some time to educate yourself, for fun! It really really is fun, and it is probably the most rewarding part of home education: you get hungry for knowledge too!

Next Post! 4 Resources I found helpful to me as a Mom on this learning Adventure...
http://mamaojoy.blogspot.com/2014/08/4-resources-ive-found-helpful-on-this.html