Thursday, December 20, 2007

New Homeschool, New Schedule

Okay, I am writing this for my friend. ;), who wants me to update.

Yes, I am homeschooling now with my 6 and 7 year old. I was off to a rough start because we have all been very sick the last month between flus and colds. On top of it, my newborn hasn't been sleeping well because she has a stuffed nose and tries to breathe out of it. Last night I finally found my "booger sucker" and was finally able to help her go to sleep around 4:30am. The other night my son woke up shaking violently with a 104 temperature. It was the middle of the night so I made a tepid bath for him to cool him down and gave him medicine. That quickly put his temperature down by 2 degrees. Then I laid on the floor next to him for the rest of the early morning so I could keep checking on him. By morning, his fever was gone. Sooo, things have been a little rough around here. As I was starting the homeschool process, I hadn't realized that it would take some time for the books that I ordered to come in. Once it came in, my computer started to act up. Thankfully it is all working now. My only thing I am working out now is how to set up my schedule. I am finding that I might need to wait until the little one's naptime in order to really be able to work with the boys well. Either that, or split the work up throughout the day. Any advice is helpful! I truly am happy with our decision but it'll just take some time to work out what will work best for our family. :)

Oh, by the way. I am not a "quiverfull" mom. For those who don't know, that's a mom who lets each baby come as God allows. Actually, if I did that I would have one baby every year because I am so fertile. I did that before which is why I have a 6 and 7 year old. Hee, hee.... But actually, I have a lot of work to do with my kids such as disciplines and behavior so I really want to focus on that for awhile before I welcome in a new one. :)

I hope all my blogging friends are having an awesome Christmas month!

4 comments:

El Shaddai Ranch said...

Keep working on it - it'll take time to find your groove. Once you do you'll feel great about it (then, of course, it'll change.) That's the beauty of homeschooling, you can go w/ the flow more easily. Have a wonderful Christmas!

Happy Elf Mom (Christine) said...

YAY thanks for updating me!!

That's a rough start, all right. Since I am ALSO hsing a 6 and 7 year old together, I do the instruction time (this is how you do this kind of math problem, etc) during the FIRST part of the morning when the baby is calm. Then later on, if I want the boys to do worksheets, writing or reading aloud we can work that out with a crying baby. I'm making it sound A LOT easier than it is, but we do get done and it's ok.

I like having both these boys close in age and they are both taking all the same classes together. Emperor has a big strength in mathmatics (he is now almost THREE YEARS ahead of where he'd be in public school!!) and Elf is strong in reading and memorization. I'm a lot more lenient on handwriting and punctuation on the younger, and give a little more time for the Elf to do his math so the Emperor reads to me then usually.

All that being said, I have NO CLUE how I'm going to get anything done when the next baby comes. That's why we're doing about six hours straight each day now. We're completely done with our core curriculum requirements and just need to do about 300 hours between now and July 1. Yay!

Virginia Revoir said...

Whoa Mrs. C! You are amazing. Do you follow a certain curriculum? We are doing an online program that sets out our lesson plans each day. Whether we get behind or ahead is okay. I don't think I could wing it on my own. I need a guide. Actually, my 6 and 7 year old are in the same grade because Chaz had to be held back so that makes it easy. Next year will be different because Kyle will be starting Kindergarten.
Do you guys who homeschool think you could go online and answer this question I asked on Yahoo answers?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AoF2rCPNJPmpI2rZRMYkdxTsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20071219194312AATvphz

Happy Elf Mom (Christine) said...

Oooh, I'd answer over there, but you have a feisty public school lady that wants to butt her head in on that forum, don't you??

You DO know you can't do this and public school is best for your children, don't you??

LOL - oh, my goodness. She didn't read the question, did she? I mean, if you asked what colour hair dye works best on blondes and you got a response that hair dye is from the devil; take it from her because she oughtta know... that's the sort of person she is. What a snot.

Annnnnyway...

We do almost all Bob Jones curriculum. Go to the Christian Book Distributors (www.christianbook.com) and check out their homeschooling section. Look at all the stuff they have there. Some of the books and things you can "click" and see a sample on the screen. That's how I came to Bob Jones stuff... it looked like it had some meat to it but was easy to teach.

Our math is stuff the public school was going to throw away or sell for cheap in bulk to a used book place, so I have free curriculum through third grade!! Too bad I didn't know I'd be homeschooling two boys instead of one, so we have copier expense, but otherwise it's free and I absolutely know that my children are doing the SAME thing the kids up the street are and it's an apples to apples comparison in that subject.

Frankly, in the humanities, I know I can do a better job than they can. I get shaky on the math and science but it's not due to lack of ability at this level.

You've got to do what works for YOU and YOUR teaching style though. You *could* pretty well homeschool for free by planning your own scope and sequence, printing worksheets from online and visiting your library. You really could. I just personally like the packaged stuff and how it all goes together.