Monday, July 16, 2012

Ain't Nothin Gonna Break-a My Striiiide

Procrastination. Is that the cause of our non-schooling summer? I really really wanted to continue blasting through, thinking we would take a few weeks off, which turned into two months. Here we are, mid-July, and full school just hasn’t happened. Blah.
Sure, Large reads most days; not the literary classics I had planned, but whatever his heart desires. This summer his heart desired Rick Riordan’s newest release Throne of Fire. Thanks to Mr. Riordan’s books, he has learned the names and some details about Greek and Roman gods, so at least there’s that.  Medium *acts* like he’s reading Mr. Popper’s Penguins, (yes, still), but usually has to get a drink, go to the bathroom, randomly roam outside, doze off… you get the picture. Reading is not his gig, especially when he wants to play an uneducational app about slicing fruit or flying a jet pack. Small read to me daily when trying to earn a new (shudder) video game, quickly meeting his goal, then sadly realizing that thanks to Medium’s avoidance approach, the chances of the three of them finishing their required books to get the game, wasn’t going to happen. Bless his heart.
This weekend, I buckled down and marched boldly into mapping out our entire school year.  I spent any spare time during the week pouring over homeschooling genius’ blogs about organizing the day, the week, the year, and finally settled on trying the approach I stumbled upon at the ever helpful Facebook. Thanks to Chelli at The Planted Trees I now have the subjects, weeks, and a rough yearly outline done! Yay! I would do a happy dance but my spine is currently misshapen thanks to hunching over the laptop for hours. Maybe when all this planning business is finished I’ll put off starting school a day and get a massage take the kids on an invigorating nature walk.
I have the bones of the schedule worked out, but not the actual dig-into-the-books lesson break downs. That’s the goal of the next two weeks because…….
We will officially start back on a full schedule July 30!! For my own “I school year round” attitude I want  have, we’re starting in July.  If we started in August, after finishing in May, we would be on a standard school year schedule. Which we’re obviously not. Obviously.
The tentative, written-in-pencil-only weekly schedule looks like this:

I know it is hard to make out with all of the erasing that occurred. Fam is the time block we do together as a well, family, lasting at the most two hours. Reading is when I will read to them while they eat breakfast or work quietly at something or other. The numbers in parantheses are the amounts of time I *think* a subject will take. Memory Work involves poetry, math facts, Bible passages, etc. Friday isn't scheduled into the school week because that will be field trip/catch up day, until we join a local homeschool coop which meets on Fridays starting in September. 

Last semester I let them pick the order they completed their subjects. For Large and Medium I will probably stick with this, because they liked having some control over their school day and it helps them learn responsibility and planning.  Small will have a modified version, where he will pick the order of some of his subjects, but they will be put into time blocks. For example, in the morning, he will have an hour of Grammar, Spelling, and Reading, all of which he will complete with me. He can pick which one he starts with each day, but they will all three be completed in that time block. As this is only our second semester at this homeschooling thing, and I still consider myself a newbie, if something doesn’twork, we’ll change it. No biggie. Flexibility and Perseverance….my homeschool sanity chant. I'm in FULL PLANNING MODE and..

Ain't nothin' gonna to break my stride
Nobody's gonna slow me down, oh-no
I got to keep on movin'
Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride
I'm running and I won't touch ground
Oh-no, I got to keep on movin'

Break my Stride  by Matthew Wilder

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