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| The learning that happens out of school hours :) |
For the last couple of years, I have written out a list of school work and chores for each day of the week on an index card, with a column for each week so they can tick off each thing as it's done. Handwriting these takes quite a bit of time - it would be way quicker to print something out - but I quite enjoy the process. More recently, I've started writing the things I'm not so sure about in pencil, so if something is too much or I want to change the order, I can just erase stuff and move it around. Activities like Bible and music practice are down in pen because they won't change in a hurry.
Every day includes prayer and individual and family Bible reading, hymn singing (although this happens not-quite-daily since it depends on if I feel up to playing the accompaniment. Theoretically, we sing the same hymn every day for a week so we learn it really well), piano and violin practice, scripture copywork (the same scripture every day for a week, which means the scripture is memorised by the end of the week), and Calculadder (a maths drill). Oh, and I'm also trying this term to do a little bit of German each day to give the girls a little more exposure - I'm making that a part of our lunchtime routine. We managed four days out of five this week, which is a pretty good start!
Monday started pretty gently - I had family shopping and cooking down on the lists, but decided to ditch the shopping for this week, since it wasn't necessary. And rather than preparing a whole meal together, I just had everyone cutting up peaches from our tree for stewing, so that didn't take long.
Monday is also the day I have scheduled to give each of the three older girls a piano lesson. Setting a time for each of them on a set day means that the piano lessons actually happen each week. Before I set aside that time, they just weren't happening consistently and daily practice tended to fall by the wayside as well. For our family music is as important as maths and english. Our girls all have some natural talent; the Raamonster and I both play musical instruments and enjoy singing and making up our own songs - and so we see this as a way our family can serve others. For that reason, we put a lot of time and effort into music practice.
I try to "attach" group learning activities to lunch time. This helps me to stay organised and is the easiest way to have everyone together in one place without interrupting individual work. Monday's group learning is some kind of history reading. This week we started "God's Dangerous Book", which is all about the Bible's history. The beginning is a bit dry, but hopefully it will get more interesting... Each of the girls had a bit of extra maths to work on on Monday. Singapore for Miss Curie (still working her way through book 5A), timestables for Angelina, and a grade one workbook from Kmart for the Chatterbox. I also got Miss Curie to write a little about what we read at lunchtime in her history notebook.
Tuesday, on top of the daily activities and some extra chores the older two did Singapore Math, Chatterbox had a logic worksheet (recognising patterns, I think it was). The older two also did a short English activity to supplement the IEW course we were working on at the end of last year - choosing adjectives and adverbs to insert into short sentences. Miss Curie started on "Exploring Creation With General Science" (Apologia) and I read a chapter from "God's Design For Plants" at lunch time. I'm planning for General Science to take two years, rather than one! I had prepared a shelf in the "school cupboard" in the big girls' bedroom with the materials for most of the experiments for this term, which means Miss Curie can work on that pretty independently (but her sisters are enjoying watching the experiments, which is great for them, too). That evening we watched a couple of segments of Dave Ramsey's "Foundations in Personal Finance" course on DVD with the Raamonster. This is excellent so far - interesting and engaging for all ages and easily understandable.
Wednesday after the morning Bible reading and hymn singing was "band" practice. I've decided to let the girls off piano practice that day and I guide them in playing pieceson violin all together. There are a couple of simple pieces they all play together, and then the older two are working on a couple of duets (Amazing Grace, which they worked out themselves and Minuet by Bach from their Suzuki book). Then there was Singapore Math for the older two, another logic worksheet for chatterbox. More of the General Science for Miss Curie; a small segment of Queen Homeschool's "Learning How to Learn" for Angelina; and a sewing lesson for each of the girls after lunch (yes, even "Baby").
Thursday on top of the daily stuff and additional chores they each had a little bit of English to do. This is my trickiest subject, since there's not one resource I'm entirely happy with, so we're mixing it up between the Queen Homeschool Language lessons for the older girls, a grade one workbook and her own writing (which she does a lot of) for the Chatterbox, a bit of IEW and some extra bits and pieces that I come up with. Miss Curie has also started on "Vocabulary Vine" which is a course on some of the most common Latin and Greek roots. We'll see how we go with that one - I don't want to overload her, but am trying to step up the expectations a bit as she gets older... hopefully without losing sight of life's greatest priorities!
Friday is a bit lighter-on with school work to allow ample time for Sabbath preparation (we observe the seventh-day Sabbath, because that's what Jesus did). Miss Curie did some Life of Fred, but for the other girls their schedules are just the daily tasks mentioned at the beginning of this post. Sabbath preparation means getting clothes ready for church, helping out with meals and making afternoon tea for church if I need it, and generally getting the house into an extra state of cleanness for the following day. Generally this means that Friday afternoons are a bit more relaxed than other days... in theory, anyway!
SO, that was our "official" school week, but there was plenty of unofficial learning happening as well. Angelina is reading through the Little House on the Prairie series and we're having lots of discussions related to that. There have been several "tea parties", with Angelina presiding over tea-making and other preparations. Miss Curie made brownies today and we've made fresh cheese several times from the raw milk we've been buying from a family farm... Then we've had discussions about why I can use just baking soda without cream of tartar when I use the whey from the cheese to make pancakes and scones (surprisingly the Chatterbox worked that one out!)
Thankfully, with their lists and a fairly predictable routine, the oldest three girls can work reasonably independently, which allows me time with "Baby" (who really needs a new name!). She loves to help me with cooking stuff, so I try to include her as much as I can in what I'm doing. Plus I'm starting to give her more little jobs around the house. The fact that the older girls are good at working on their own means that I can give the time and attention to training up "Baby" in those little jobs.
Over this term, I'm trying to encourage Miss Curie and Angelina to work on some sort of project that they choose for themselves. At the moment Angelina is inclined towards working on her drawing, and Miss Curie is keen to further develop her cooking skills... You may notice that I don't include any traditional "Art" in our schedule. That's because I don't need to! All my girls love to draw, paint, sculpt and craft without any prompting from me, and that tends to happen a lot in their spare time.
So overall, it's been a good week. I'm really excited as the girls are getting older and they can be setting a path towards their own unique futures.
