School

I've been asked by numerous people what we do for school or what we are doing this year. We are very eclectic in our approach to school. We sort of follow a classical model, but throw in some Charlotte Mason, some workbooks and some confusion and that's what we do! :-) This year we are changing things a bit more. Mainly, we are trying to not focus so much on academics and instead focus on character issues. With a move last year, a baby and lots of sickness, we are having some pretty big character struggles with our kids (and ourselves at times!). Our hope is that we can maintain minimum structured academics (math and reading) and spend more time working together and enjoying each other while getting the other academics done (science, history, language arts). How is this all going to work? I am not sure at this point. You know, I always have this vision of what school will/should/could look like and very rarely does it happen that way. :-)

Here's what we are planning. My (good) day will start with us all getting up, getting dressed, eating breakfast and doing devotions together. Then we will get some chores done - some every day ones and (hopefully) one "big" chore we can do together. We've been trying this model for about 4 weeks now and some days it works, others, it doesn't. The days it works are the days I am on top of things, staying on top of the kids and making it all happen. If I let my guard down for a while (get on the phone, get on the computer, take a shower!, go to the bathroom - ha ha - only partly true) it all seems to fall apart. Obviously, the goal is that this will start happening without me hovering, but for now ... After all that, I'm trying to get Little Bit down for a nap (around 9) and then we do math. If we don't do math first, it will NOT happen. Again, we've been following this part for about 4 weeks and mostly it's happening. The hardest part of math is trying to have 4 kids do math at the same time - at 4 different levels. Trying to switch my brain from the preschooler and teaching him shapes, numbers (and he needs help nonstop and is NOT quiet about asking for it - or patient) to jumping over and teaching the 6th grader how to divide fractions. My brain is worn out by the end!

So far that is all I've been doing consistently. My goal for right now is to get at least one other subject done during the day. We've done an ok job at geography. We're using A Child's Geography, which is very friendly to all the kids and yet isn't boring for our oldest. For history we will be studying the Middle Ages through the Renaissance (ought to learn how to spell that word - took me a few tries!). We'll have the kids listen to Story of the World vol 2 on CD and then have readers and read-alouds to go with it. My dream is to have everything sort of correspond with history - music, art, literature... Not sure we will accomplish it, but I want to try. Science is chemistry this year and we're using a fun science, Real Science 4 Real Kids. We've used this before and the kids loved it. The experiments are easy. Also, the Pre-Science books correspond by chapter with the regular books, so we can keep all the kids on the same chapter. Eric is planning on keeping up with the science with them.

Now, language arts. We've tried many different things here. This year, we will try to drop all the different parts and combine it into one. Instead of grammar, spelling, writing, vocabulary and handwriting (although Anne is learning cursive and Dawn is learning typing), we are going to notebooking/journaling. The idea there is that when they learn something in history or science or take a field trip or go on a hike, they journal about it and draw pictures about it (art!). So far this has been working great for the girls, not so great for Joseph (he's almost 6 and hates drawing and writing). We're still working on it though. Joseph will dictate to me and I write it down. Oh, so how does that cover language arts? Well, if they have errors in spelling, grammar or poor penmanship, we correct it and they can rewrite.

I'm sure I'm skipping a few things here, but it doesn't matter. You get the main idea of what we're trying to do. I guess I've had pretty rough time trying to juggle 5 kids, 3 not really doing school, 2 heavily into the academics, plus the rest of normal life. I know, I know, I have many friends who seem to do this well. I can't. I don't know why, but I've just struggled so much with it this past year.

What I was really hoping to post about here was how God has been trying to open my eyes to stepping back from the academics and trying to enjoy the kids and work more on character issues. I had some good quotes and everything! But, if you're like me, this blog post is long enough and you have other things to get done. Maybe I will post about that subject another day. :-)