Pieces of Us

Typical Day

I have had the request several times to lay out an average day in our homeschool/life. I can honestly say that with homeschooling there is NO typical day but I can outline about how our day works most of the time.  However, your day will vary depending on the ages and grades of the children in your home.

8:00am- Generally I get up. Sometimes this can stretch to 8:30.  I am not a morning person.

8-9am- Generally I do all my email checking or blogging or whatnot while I drink coffee.  My kids get their own breakfast.  They always have.  Even Jillian.  She likes her independence and will make peanut butter bread or waffles or cereal.

9:30- Usually we start work around 9:30.  However, I mean this is when I am available to work with them. Some of my kids are very self motivated to get their independent work done early and will set alars for 6 or 7. They will do their math assignment (lecture and lesson are on the computer) and generally spelling or cursive (for the middle kids).  Gabby will often do her history reading and notes. Maddy sleeps.

10:30-Around this time the kids will be finishing their independent work.  Sometimes they will need help or I will administer a spelling test or something of the sort.  After that I do grammar and writing lessons with Ginny and AJ. I also have Caleb sitting down working on his math, phonics and handwriting.  If Jess is here she usually works on reading or math with Caleb and Jilly while I am with the middles.

Noon- We have lunch.  Kids still make their own normally. Big kids help little kids.  Sometimes I make lunch,

12:30- A few days a week I do science with the kids.  This month there is a lot of science because we are preparing for science fair.  Other times the kids silent read. By 1:00 the younger ones are often done. Sometimes they are done by 11:00 but that is if they did some of their work at 6 or 7.

1:00pm- The elder girls are still working at this point.  Usually a writing assignment or on their history notes or health.  They are self motivated most of the time so I just check over their work and do oral quizzes for history, literature and bible.

Evening: Elder girls study for tests, sometimes get a jump on the next days work, write papers or just work on art.  We read (when I get my act together) aloud as a family around 7:30 or 8.

I probably missed some stuff because I am pulling this all off the top of my head.  As far as planning goes I plan all year.  I generally have some sort of idea what I am going to use for curriculum the next year but it will always change, sometimes even mid-year.  If we hate something we switch. I do big planning around February.  Budget is something that changes from family to family. In general I probably spend the most on math. About $400 for 5 students. But that is so I can use self graded computer programs.  It frees me up from having to watch all the lectures and relearn everything. Although I am kind of auditing College Algebra this year so I can brush up and be a better teacher for the girls. For the older girls we use a history/bible/literature program.  I probably spent about $450 on those types of programs this year.  Spelling/grammar/handwriting I spent about $300. Health was $60 but I bought it used.  I try to buy used as much as possible. Science I spent about $200. 

Here is a link to the post with all the curriculum we bought this year.

I like to keep my budget around $1500.  That is for 5 kids and of course doesn't always stick but I do my best.  Information overload is inevitable. But it's best to know what your goals are, what you think is most important for your child to learn and wht you'd rather them not learn.

 

That's about it!

The Post with all the Pictures

    This is the post where I suck you in to life around our house over the past month. I take so many pictures with my trusty phone and then forget to share them.  So take a glimpse into the more random parts of our lives.

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Morning Science Experiments: Jillian says, "Wear your safety goggles!"

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This is what my teenagers look like when they go shopping around town. Honk and wave if you see them.

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This is what the littlest sister looks like when she is trying to be just like her big sisters.

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This  is what a typical rowdy playtime looks like at our house. DOGPILE!

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This is what Jillian looked like on Christmas Eve just as guests started to arrive for our celebration.

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These are the ingredients I used to make all my Christmas goodies!

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This is the fireplace heater I got for Christmas.  It resides in my room where I can blog and be nice and toasty.

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This is the beautiful Gabriella in her shirt from Secret Santa.  Her Secret Santa was Genevieve.

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This is the fabulous Madeline in her Christmas coat and scarf/hood combination.

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This is the stack of games the kids got for Christmas this year.  Lots of fun for all!

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This is a house that Caleb built with his new Lego set from Jessica.

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These are the matching shirts that Maddy and Gabby bought at Aeropostale for $5.  Don't they look adorable?

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This is how Jilly fell asleep the other night.

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This is Jillian's hair after her first haircut.  Her hair was waist length but scraggly on the ends.  I miss her natural shaping but she needed the cut.

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This is how I have been braiding Ginny's hair.  It's a little dark but hopefully you can see the curved french braids.

Ch-Ch-Ch-CHEA...again.

    It's CHEA time again!  That would be Christian Home Educators Association.  I'm off to the convention again this year in hopes of revitalizing, refreshing, renewing, re-whatevering.

    OK, secretly I just can't wait to get into the marketplace and play with all the curriculum...and buy those crazy cool highlighters!

    Truthfully, it's hard to leave the family behind but I really do enjoy the couple of days where I don't have to cook, clean or drive anywhere. This year Danielle and I are staying at the hotel adjacent to the convention center which means pretty much just walking out the door and into convention. 

    Last year's trip to CHEA began with a completely bizarre set of mishaps and weirdness which later evolved into many jokes that still stand today. We left for for Pasadena in the blazing heat and decided to wait to get lunch until we were close.  After driving miles and miles down the main road past many, many eating establishments we unwisely selected a Carl's Jr.  Entering the restaurant we were greeted with a blast of heat and several sweaty, grumpy-looking workers. Air-conditioning=Out of Service.

    We each ordered a salad which was our second mistake, our first being the choice to stay and eat there at all. Immediately I noticed the salad was warm.  And not just -warm because there is grilled chicken on it- warm, but nasty, sitting out of the fridge warm.  I sent it back and watched them put it back into the fridge.  Really!  They intended to re-cool it and give it back to someone else...after I had opened it and felt the lettuce with my fingers. I received a cool salad and we sat down. Danielle pulled back the lid of her salad only to find there were no walnuts or cranberries on her 'Cranberry-Walnut salad'.  Back to the counter.  The worker opened the lid looked inside, dumped the salad in the trash and then gave her a new salad...along with a packet of berries and a packet of walnuts.  

We stood there.

I'm still to this day trying to figure out why the first salad needed to be dumped if they were just going to give us packets.

 

    On our merry way, we check in to the Hilton hotel realizing that we had picked the wrong hotel and were 1/2 mile away from the convention center.  No fear, there is a free shuttle driver.  Enter Phillip, our right hand man for the weekend. Needing to check in our bags we waited in the lobby while an amazon of a concierge looks down her nose at us.  We wait for a bellhop but they were too busy for the likes of us.  Maybe we smelled like hot salad. Finally a maintenance man offers to wheel our bags up since we were not permitted to do it ourselves.

He greets us by saying, 'HELLO GORGEOUS!' (This has since become our standard greeting to each other.) As we traipse through the parking garage and begin to head to the elevator he stops us and says, "I know a short cut!"  

    Lesson to my readers...when a maintenance man whom you have never met, greets you with compliments and then tells you he knows a short cut...run!

    We didn't run.

    No, we giggled insanely and decided to soldier on ...past the garbage cans that smelled of rotting bodies or some such macabreness. Past the road we just drove in on.  Past the main doors. Into...the underbelly of the hotel.  Through the laundry area which smelled like bleach.  Past the behind-the-scenes hotel workers who looked at our maintenance guy with looks that said, "What the HECK are you doing bringing those insanely beautiful women down here?"  (OK, I embellished that a wee bit.)  Still in the steaming underbelly of Hotel Hilton we were paraded past the downstairs offices and to the maintenance elevators.  At this point I whispered into Dan's ear,

    "Should we be getting into a maintenace elevator alone with this guy?"

    Common sense would tell you  NOT to get into the elevator.  But who says either of us have any common sense?  We did.

    We rode up in the elevator, not so silently, stifling our giggles as best we could. 

    "See, this is a good shortcut!"  Maintenance dude said.

    "No, Our way was shorter,"  Danielle replied.

    "Next time you go your way and you can time it, " he retorted.

    We shut up.

    Finally we reached our floor. The elevator dinged and we waltzed off and into our room where our admirer stood expectantly waiting for a tip.  We gave him some change (I think) and he smiled and said,

    "This is why I work here, I get to help beautiful ladies."

    {{shudder}}

    I think I need a shower....again.

 

As my memory serves that is how it happened last year.  We shall see what this year has in store for us.  Danielle and I will be together so some hilarity will ensue...that's for sure.

 

A Little Bonding Time

  I'm not one to sugar coat the realities of having a large family. It would be very easy for me to state that I have ample time to give each and every child and my husband the exact amount of my time that they need to feel complete.  I certainly try to be there for all of them but the truth is I am spread thin.  There are certainly positives on the flip side of this, my kids are very independent and are strong self motivators and logical thinkers.  I just can't always devote time to work out every issue with them and they know this and thus move to figure it out themselves. This should not be taken that I ignore my children, truthfully I spend every waking minute with them on most days but generally as a whole group or a partial group. 

  I know many parents who eschew the idea of individual time at all.  While I do think that parents coddle their children at times and do not expect a whole lot of them, I do think there is some merit in carving out a niche of time to spend with each person on their own. When I am alone with one of my children I get a glimpse into what is going on inside their little head.  I see a part of them that they may not let out when they are in the group.  I think they appreciate the little bits if time we get to spend alone together and in truth, they value it more.  

    On Wednesday nights the eldest girls have their youth group meeting about 45 minutes away from where we live.  At first the thought of having to drive them all the way over there every week seemed like a burden. But after the first week I realized it was a blessing in disguise. Wednesday also happens to be Cub Scouts night. The boys are already gone with Daddy that night and Genevieve goes with them because there are a lot of sisters who meet and do crafts together at the scout house. That left me, Jillian and the twins home alone. Now we head out to youth group and I drop the girls off.  This leaves me with an hour and a half of time to spend with Jillian.  Just the two of us. 

 

    Generally we just pop into the Walmart that is right across the street.  It's huge and still has fabric.  Double bonus! Jillian and I wander the aisles, take pictures doing silly things, make birthday lists, buy groceries. After our wandering we get a snack and then I might teach her about crossing the street or safety in the Parking Lot. We both enjoy the time together so much and it is at these times that I get a glimpse of the life of a non homeschooling parent.  This would be one of the downsides to having your kids at home all the time.  You miss out on those couple of years with just the 'baby' at home.  God has given that back to me at least for Wednesday.

 

    Of course my children are not starved for attention or wasting away in neglect and lack of love.  They are smothered in affection and drowning in attention. But I would be a fool not to recognize that there are certainly some trade-offs in living the homeschool life. Would I want it any other way?  No. I think that while I must make more of an effort to spend time alone with each child, I cherish it a teensy bit more than I would if the opportunity came up a lot more often. Grabbing one of the children when I run errands and buying them an ice cream while we pick up things at the store...I treasure it.  It's special to me.

And moments like these will always remain in my heart.

Big Scary Babies...Save yourself!! AHHHHHHH!