4 hours ago
Making A Plan
I already wrote about how I am using a notebook planning system this school year, and this is the method I am using on the road to keep our school on track. Before our trip, I mapped out all the days we will be driving, and then tried to set reasonable expectations for each day in to-do list form. The difference between this and my normal planning is that I am going to be the keeper of the notebook, since most of our car school subjects will be done all together. I made a list of resources I want to use on our trip, and for each car day I included "all together" lessons, and a few individual learning activities as well. Here are some of the things I'm bringing:
Masterbooks States Unit Study
Since we will be driving through so many states, I figured this would be a great time to learn some United States geography and state history! We are going to try this resource from Master Books, which came with a free student workbook when I purchased the PDF. I'm going to print off the work pages for all the states that we will be driving through, and we'll learn about each one as we go!
Audiobooks
I'm loading up my phone with audiobooks that I would like to listen to on the road, and I am hoping we will get through at least one or two audiobooks. I specifically downloaded some titles from the two companies below, which have some really solid and rich historical books on audio! Both narrators read the text in an engaging way, and I'm really looking forward to listening to these books with the kids.
Uncle Rick's Audiobooks - I remembered seeing this website at a homeschool conference, and was pleasantly surprised to see that you can sign up for a 30 day free trial and get two free audiobooks! There is a wide selection of historical books, character stories, and Bible resources for kids. I chose "With Wind And Tide" (sea adventures, since we'll be going near the ocean), and "America First Vol. One" (great stories from American history).
Jim Hodges Audiobooks - I remembered this audiobook company at the homeschool conference as well, and was pleased to see another opportunity for a free audiobook! The freebie I got was "Under Drake's Flag: A Tale Of The Spanish Main". Though this particular novel does not fit with our history studies for the year, I did a little research and found some other titles from Jim Hodges Audiobooks that I am excited to dive into with the kids!
All-Together Subjects
Though I could bring several of our all together subjects, the main one I will bring for our car schooling is our history curricula. Both our history texts (Our Star-Spangled Story and Taking Africa For Jesus) are easily done in the car, with just a couple workbook pages that I can easily bring along. I also have an excessive collection of read-alouds that I will be bringing, including various picture books that relate to our destinations, The Horse and His Boy, The Trolley Car Family, Pilgrim's Progress For Young Readers, and African Pearls: A Story Of Faith In Uganda (which was published by a friend of mine, and which I'll be writing more about later...there may be a giveaway coming!).
Language Arts and Math Workbooks (and Apps)
Math is the one subject that I am hesitant to leave behind for two weeks in the middle of the school year. I want my kids to keep practicing their math facts, and not to lose their momentum with math. Though our main math curriculum (Rightstart) is too bulky to take on our trip, I have found some math coloring workbooks, math drill workbooks, multiplication fact apps, and flashcards that we'll bring to review each day that we are on the road.
For language arts, we will be leaving the writing and reading curricula behind (too bulky), but the kids Masterbooks Language Lessons For A Living Education books have pages that are easy to tear out. I will bring enough work pages to last the duration of our trip, and it won't add alot of extra weight!
Handicrafts
I've decided that lanyards 100% count as handicrafts. You know, those plastic-cord weaved keychains that we made when we were kids? Was that just me? I rediscovered them recently, taught my kids how to make them, and they've been weaving up a storm. This is a great activity to keep hands busy while we read in the car. Here's a post with some lanyard tutorials.
Getting Organized
Once I decide what to bring with us, the next step is to keep it all organized without loading our car down with too much bulk. As I mentioned, I am able to print off worksheets for most of the subjects, or tear work pages out of our curricula. Certain textbooks I will bring, but some of my resources are also in digital format (such as PDF's and audiobooks), and won't take up any space. The main thing I need to do is keep track of the kids' individual workbook pages and remember what I want to do each day.
My daily plan will be kept in our scheduling notebook for the week. For the kids' individual work, I bought them each a plain folder with the tabs inside for holding loose papers. I am going to hole-punch all their loose papers, and make an individual, custom "workbook" for each of them to use on vacation! I'll use sticky notes to separate the work pages into sections that they have to complete each day. I think this will keep everything in one place, and I'll be able to look through their work without alot of mess or a huge homeschool book bag to tote around.
Planning For Field Trips
Since we'll be driving through some pretty interesting areas and exploring a state we don't get to visit often, I am excited to take my kids to all the local historical sites! The husband and I are mapping out a plan for the things we would like to see (or that we can reasonably see) on our trip. Once we have our completed list, I'll bookmark websites and interesting resources that relate to those places. We will be reading about some of the related historical events as we drive, and then I will use field trip journals for the kids to record what they saw and learned after each stop. I hope this will be a fun way for them to look back on our trip in the future!
One Last Note
One thing I am trying to remember is not to get so rigid in our driving and schooling schedule that we miss interesting stops along the way! Sometimes those impromptu stops are full of interesting tidbits. Once I stopped along the side of the road in my own state on a whim, and read a plaque on a monument honoring one of our governors who stood against the Japanese internment camps during World War 2. I had no idea! Our summer waterfall hike was another random, side-of-the-road destination that we spotted, and it ended up being so memorable! On our trip to New Mexico, we took an hour detour to see the Manhattan Project site in Las Alamos, and it was a great learning experience. Those opportunities to stretch our legs, learn something, and make a new memory are things I don't want to miss.
I am really excited to report back on how my system for car-schooling works out, and what things I will do differently if we ever take such a long road trip during the school year again! I'll update this post and share on Instagram how it went - if it goes terribly, you can look for a future post about how we'll do better next time!
Since I've already shared most of our curriculum choices for the 2022-2023 homeschool year (except Bible curriculum, that post may be coming), I thought I would share three smaller changes I am making to our homeschooling this year.
Latin
At the end of last year, I decided to start my oldest on Latin lessons. Foreign language is one of those subject areas that scares me. Even though I took a little Spanish in high school, I remember almost nothing, except "Gracious" and "Por favor", and the only time I use those words is incorrectly in order to make my husband laugh. I read somewhere once that people whose brains have the talent for thinking in code excel at music and languages - I guess I'm not one of those people, since neither of those subjects is my forte.
It is yet to be seen if any of the kids picked up the code-thinking gene from their dad, or if they are stuck with inheriting my brain, but I decided Latin was something we would try. I think whether they go on to excel at foreign language studies or not, Latin is one of those things that will give them a good foundation for understanding many languages better, including our own!
After doing a bunch of research on Cathy Duffy's website, I decided to go with The Great Latin Adventure. The website is pretty old-looking, but don't let that fool you! This is an interesting program that comes in a PDF format, put together by a Latin teacher for use in either a school setting or in homeschools. There are no bells and whistles, no colorful flashcards or CD's. It's just bare-bones Latin instruction, where the student makes their own flashcards, does two translation worksheets a week, studies their notes, and listens to Latin pronunciation mp3 files.
What I love about this curriculum is the extensive teacher guide that goes into detail about how to teach each aspect of Latin to the student - sometimes it goes into too much detail, but it also gives me confidence that the course is thorough! It also helps that it was very affordable. I'd say the first level seems appropriate for 5th or 6th grade, though some younger kids might also be able to understand it!
Scheduling In Notebooks
The other big change I am making this year so far is using Sarah Mackenzie's spiral notebook method for planning and scheduling our homeschool week.
Planning the year all at once, or even a semester at a time, doesn't work well for me. If I plan too far out, we will inevitably get behind the pre-printed schedule, and then the schedule will feel useless and I won't look at it at all. Then books or subjects I wanted to get to will inevitably fall through the cracks.
This year, instead of planning the whole homeschool year out, I gathered my curriculum, and sat down with a weekly calendar planning page, and laid out all the subjects each kid would have to get through in an ideal week (I made a separate calendar for each child). Then I printed that sample week and pasted them into the back of plain notebooks, one for each kid.
Each week I will consult the ideal week sample schedule in the back of the notebooks, and then write a to-do list for each day of the week in each child's notebook. The kids just have to check everything off the list, and they will be done for school for that day.
Benefits of this:
-It encourages my kids to be independent, while letting me keep track of what they should be doing and what they already did.
-It helps keep me on task throughout the day, and reminds me of the things I wanted to accomplish each week so nothing falls through the cracks.
-Planning once a week (with the pre-set guides) helps me set short-term goals within a reasonable framework, and we end up getting more done.
We've been using the notebooks for a few weeks now, and it's been going wonderfully! I wish I had started keeping a homeschool to-do notebook years ago. I may write a more detailed post, with pictures and trouble-shooting in the future, so if you have any questions or comments about this system, let me know!
Working At The Kitchen Table
The last change I am making is insisting that all the kids need to do their bookwork at the kitchen table.
Some of my fondest homeschool memories were of doing my schoolwork in unusual places - the couch, the spot of sun on the living room floor, the porch, the hot tub. Because of that, up to this point I have let my kids work on their schoolwork anywhere that they like.
However, last year it become obvious that they are still just a little too young and distraction-prone to be allowed to work anywhere. They need to be where I can see them, and where I am easily accessible to help them if they get stuck.
With four kids doing serious schoolwork this year, I need to be able to help multiple kids with their work at once if I don't want the day to drag on. Ideally I'd love to work with them back-to-back on their individual lessons, giving my full attention to each child in sequence, but it's really not practical with a bigger family, and it's also not necessary. Even though it's a little exhausting for me to be on my feet all morning, circling the table to explain concepts and answer questions, it actually is manageable, not confusing (as I was afraid it would be), and much more efficient.
I'm sure the "stay at the table" rule will change in the future as my kids grow more independent, but at these ages, when they do need me to explain the lessons to them, it is so helpful to have them all in the same place, getting their work done at the same time - instead of scattered throughout the house and possibly getting distracted by toys or games!
That's all for now, though I am sure I will be making adjustments throughout the year, as always! Are you making any big changes to your homeschool this year?
Feeling...Really good about how our start to the homeschool year is going. I started using Sarah MacKenzie's notebook scheduling method, and it has honestly changed everything! We are getting SO MUCH done, way more than in years past, and it's been pretty easy to keep on top of, even three weeks into the school year. It's helping me keep the kids' work organized and not forget about things I wanted to do, and I am loving it.
Organizing...lots of clothes, and not because I'm switching to fall clothes - not yet. No, I have been sorting through everyone's drawers and packing things for a vacation to North Carolina! I wasn't sure if we would be able to take an official vacation this year (New Mexico was a long weekend trip), but we finally got everything finalized! We are going to be driving with five kids across the country, WHILE trying to homeschool in the car. Wish us luck. (I'm sounding nervous, but actually I have a pretty organized plan for carschooling, which I will share on the blog soon!)
Baking...a key lime pie, because my parents are coming over for dinner tonight. I tell you, I'm really getting into baking pies. Pies feel so domestic and homey, and they're surprisingly quick to throw together once you get a recipe down. I love it when the kids come up to the counter, peer over the edge of the dish, and then run off yelling "Mom is making a pie!" Do I want my kids to have memories of their mom making pies? Absolutely, yes.
Reading...I have really been loving the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series lately. The characters are so lovable, and the mysteries are not terrible at all. It's a cozy mystery series, but with a fun twist of being set in Botswana. I've also been listening to Skeletons On The Zahara, also set in Africa, but the complete opposite of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency in every way.
Watching...Derek and have been re-watching the documentary from the History Channel about Ulysses S. Grant. I love it just as much the second time around. It's so well-done, and it makes me reflect on how the Lord really does choose the times and places where we live (Acts 17:26) for a purpose. I don't know if Grant was a believer, but from the documentary, I know that he was mediocre at pretty much everything, barely scraping by for most of his life to support his family, and had very little gifting or talent - except in the exact qualities and skills he needed to be an amazing general and win us the Civil War. I have no doubt God placed Grant exactly where he was in history just for that purpose, and gave him the exact talents that he needed to help the country get past that dark time.
Worried...that we are going to miss the fall leaves on our trip. Usually, I was thinking we would be back in time for the peak week of leaf season, but things seem to be changing a little early this year. All the trees and bushes started getting a yellow hue a couple weeks ago, and there are some bright gold leaves popping up on the ends of scattered tree branches. Here's to hoping that the fall colors will hold off until we get back! I told Derek that we are never going on vacation in Autumn again. I get too stressed about the leaf situation.
Loving...that I think my sense of smell is mostly back. I can't remember if I've mentioned it on the blog, but my smell has been wacky since last November, which is when I'm pretty sure I actually got Covid. I really have very little trust in those tests, because we supposedly had it in September 2021, but I'm almost certain now that wasn't correct.
Anyway, I couldn't smell anything immediately after our November illness, and after a couple weeks of being very stressed about it, I started doing smell-training - which is basically choosing a scent that you know very well, and sniffing it very hard while concentrating on smelling for 20 seconds, and doing that daily until something starts to happen. I got quite a few smells back that way. (What were the first smells I worked on? Coffee, and books.)
However, for a long time, I had to be really concentrating to smell things - I couldn't just walk into a room and tell if it smelled good, I had to focus on smelling and then I sometimes could. I then had a brief period in the summer where lots of perfumes smelled completely terrible.
That weird experience lasted a couple weeks, and has mostly gone away. I can smell pretty much anything now! Sometimes without even trying! I did have to sniff-train myself to smell this scent from Bath and Body Works the other day, but it only took me a few hours to be able to smell it.
Enjoying...fall soaps. Speaking of Bath and Body Works!
Planning...on ways that I can preserve the herbs in my little herb garden before we leave on vacation. It just occurred to me that if I don't do something with them now, I'll probably return from our trip to a garden of dead herbs. I'm planning on freezing the mint leaves in ice cubes, freezing the rosemary sprigs, drying and crunching up the basil into basil flakes, hang-drying the lavender, and making mint and lavender syrups. Should be a busy couple days of work! Next year I'm going to harvest and preserve all through the summer and build up a little herb cabinet, instead of waiting until fall. I'm by no means a gardener, Derek keeps my herbs alive, but each year I get better at figuring out how to make good use of them.
A Quote
"In Christian circles there is constant talk about free salvation. It is free, thank God. But it is only free to us. God paid a great price for it. Jesus paid with His blood. It is free to us because someone else paid a great deal.
And this is why we do not work out our salvation by never doing anything that might be hard or difficult to us. We imitate Christ, and we make sacrifices for others. We do things that are hard, that cost us much, because we want our gifts to be free to others.
So imitate Christ in your giving. Do it daily, do it in as many little ways as you possibly can. Find a way to imitate Him in the folding of the laundry, in the stocking of the fridge, in the picking up of other peoples' socks. And then decide consciously that you're giving this meal, this clean room, this cheerful Christmas - that you are giving it all freely.
And much later, maybe thirty years later, you would like to see your children turn a profuit on it. You would like to see your kids taking what they were freely given and turning it into still more free giving. This is because God's story is never little. He works in generations, in lifetimes, and He wants us to do the same."
-Rachel Jankovic, Fit To Burst
I loved this quote when I read it in the context of giving freely to my children and being generous to them in various ways as we start school this fall. It was such an encouragement to me!
A Book
I've been reading a bunch of books at once, as per usual, but I just started Skeletons On The Zahara by Dean King, which is about this harrowing survival story of two men in the 1800's who were kidnapped, made slaves, and forced to travel across the desert. I also read Land Of Hope by Wilfred M McClay this morning, because I bought it a while back because I wanted to re-study American history, and then forgot about it until now.
A Bit Of Nature
The last of the summer columbines.
A Recommendation
I recently dug a Lemoncello La Croix out of the back of my pantry, and now I have declared that no one else in my household can drink them. The four remaining cans are MINE. It's a lemon-y vanilla flavor, and for some reason it really hit the spot.
A Moment Of Happiness
I took my four year old grocery shopping this past week, and she wanted to ride in the basket of the cart. I know they say not to do that, but whatever, this is America, we do what we want! She tried to stand up as I was walking toward the shelf to grab something, and I advised her to sit back down. As I turned to look at her plopping back down into the cart, she looked at me with her wide brown eyes, and asked "How did you KNOW I was standing up?" I declared that I had eyes in the back of my head, and her eyes got even wider, and she said "You do?" I, feeling a little mischievous, nodded my head and said "All mamas do."
I foolishly assumed she knew I was joking, but she was overheard by my husband later informing her siblings that Mom has eyes in the back of her head, and then trying to exercise her own back-of-head-sight skills. He texted me the story as I was leaving the gym, and I laughed to myself all the way home!
Disclaimer: After that I did clearly explain to her that I don't have eyes in the back of my head, but I am not quite sure she believes me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
