More Homeschooling

Answers for the curious:

Second Day of Homeschooling

During breakfast I read a couple passages from the Bible. I read the accounts of the Annunciation and the Visitation, hoping that putting a story to each of the Mysteries of the Rosary would give Miriam something to think about besides how tired she is during family Rosary at bedtime. Miriam LOVED this! Throughout the day she kept begging me to read more from the Bible. I've decided to read about one Mystery each day, and then continue with Bible Stories.
For Morning Prayers we say this prayer that I learned from good ol' Prof. G at the Alma Mater:
Direct, O Lord, all our actions by Your holy inspirations, and carry them out by Your gracious assistance; so that every prayer and work of ours may always begin with You, and through You be happily ended. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
This is followed by a short hymn, "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow," since Miriam loves to sing so much. I'll probably change the hymn periodically. When I get a little flag to salute we'll learned the Pledge of Allegiance.
We read the story "Funny Jack" from The Bumper Book (an ancient story book which according to Amazon is worth quite a bit!). I'm sure everyone's heard a version of the story -- it's about the foolish boy who keeps carrying home presents incorrectly. The school lesson I wanted to get out of it was remembering a sequence of events, or doing this and not that to a string of objects. I don't know if the lesson took -- but I thought Miriam would appreciate the boy's silliness anyway.
For Math we learned about coins -- I gave her a penny, nickel, dime and quarter and let her explore them; then we played a game where I put a coin in her hand and she had to guess what it was by feeling. She was pretty good. I haven't bothered to touch the idea of values of coins -- maybe next year. Right now we're just focusing on distinguishing and naming them. I'd leave some coins out for her to explore regularly, but since Katie is still in a very oral phase I'm afraid of what could happen if she got a hold of one.
Next we learned about Responsibility thanks to the Three Little Kittens and the Book of Virtues.
For Reading readiness we learned about the letter V. We've been going through the letters of the alphabet one by one. We've only got a couple left. As soon as we've done them all I'll have to take a picture of our "letter wall!"
By this point Miriam was getting antsy so I pulled out the tempura paint and let her finger paint. She thought this was great fun. She was supposed to learn that red and yellow made orange, but I think I added too much red. Her mesterpiece is mostly red with a few pinkish highlights here and there.
For storytime she chose a story about Joseph of Egypt. Then when taking a nap became obviously out of the question, she helped me make a PBJ sandwich card game, then we played it together. (I have to confess I ripped the idea out of a cool kids stuff catalog. I pore over those kinds of things for ideas now!) We play the game almost every day. Now Katie will walk up and say, "Kay turn! Kay turn!"
To get the wiggles out we sang and danced "Looby Loo" (sort of a tamer version of the Hokey Pokey). Katie loved going Looby Loo. She also loves playing Ring Around the Rosy. She also loves going around the Mulberry Bush. Actually, she pretty much loves anything that involves holding hands and running around in a circle.
But I digress.

My thoughts for the day: it's important for Miriam to switch back & forth between busy and quiet activities -- otherwise she gets bored from being still too long or hyper from moving too much.

Thursday Mom needed a break (since I didn't have a set lesson plan and had to wing it each day), so we shopped for new carpet (hooray!), took a long walk, and rested as much as Mom could. I learned however that the girls do better with a schedule. They were at each other's throats for much of the day. I understand now why parents of schoolchildren hate holidays! :b

Third Day of Homeschooling

Friday was sort of a half day. It was Mother Mary's birthday, so we celebrated by going to Mass and a little party afterwards in the parish hall. Then we shopped and ran errands all dressed up. I can't prove it, but I think the girls may behave better when they're dressed up. At least, they get more comments from people about how adorable they are, and therefore don't want to tarnish their images. :)
In the afternoon I started making bean bags from some leftover fleece from the scrap bag. I wanted to make something active for Miriam to do on days when we can't go outside for recess. On Saturday I finished them, and Miriam helped. I threaded a needle for her and started a couple stitches, then let her finish whip-stitching them closed. She was actually very good! I was duly impressed by how even her stitches were. We have a little seamstress in the making. Time for her first sampler! :)

Well, my additional thoughts at the end of our first week of scheduled homeschooling:

5 days a week is too much to start with, as I discovered after 2 days! :) For one thing, I've still got a household to run. So M/W/F are now dedicated to school in the mornings, and T/Th are for playdates and errands. Our afternoons are technically free, but since both girls still take naps (praise be!), and Mommy needs her afternoon teatime, that really only leaves us an hour in the afternoon before it's time to start dinner. (This is just enough time for the weekly grocery trip, however.)
So a typical school day looks like this:
6:30am (ugh) -- Rise etc.
8:00-ish -- Breakfast
9:00-ish -- Start school, with recess (15 min. walk, weather permitting) in there somewhere
11:30am -- Clean-up
Noon -- Lunch
Game
1:00pm -- Storytime
Nap
3:00pm -- Tea
Walk
5:00pm -- Dinner Prep while girls do puzzles
6:00pm -- Dinner, followed by rapid progression to bedtime

For a while that 4 to 6 time period was just killer -- we were all such cranks. Poor Mr. Pickles when he came home to us! I finally figured out that if I spend some "quality time" with the girls in the afternoon, they're much more likely to leave me alone while I'm trying to prepare dinner. I can't say that I'm very faithful to this ideal, but the afternoons I make an effort (*cough* get off the computer *cough*) go much more smoothly.

Regarding tea time -- I just read an interesting article on the Charlotte Mason website about ending your homeschooling day with afternoon tea. Lady Lydia has had a bit to say about that recently too. I really liked that idea -- there's something so civilizing about formalizing the afternoon snack. It also gives me an excuse to bake yummy comforting things during this icky murky weather. :)

And regarding recess -- as any parent knows, kids have lots of energy to burn after they eat. I'm trying to make sure mine get some kind of recess after every meal. After breakfast I pretty much turn them loose while I clean up the kitchen. After lunch I want to play active games with Miriam -- bean or ball toss games -- some big muscle movement stuff. And after tea time I like to take them to the playground. Katie's such a busy little person that I don't need to worry about her keeping active, but Miriam will happily sit for hours on the couch, reading. I'm not complaining about her love of books, but for the sake of her health she needs to be more active. (I do too!)


So... that's our first week! All in all I'm very happy about it -- I've learned a lot about my girls and myself already, in just these past few days! I'm really looking forward to the upcoming school year, to introducing the universe to Miriam and Katie.

Further bulletins as events warrant!