Ever get that feeling that something has got to give?  I'm there.  About a month into the school year and I'm not sure we'll make it with our sanity intact.

Of course, both kids are homeschooled, so that requires planning, teaching, grading etc.  Lots of time.  both kids added athletics; golf and football.  My hubby is the football coach.  Both are Monday through Thursday with Football games on Saturday. There is also Girl Scouts for Callie and myself (a leader, not to my daughter's troop and SU Manager).  Callie attends the local Middle School for two art classes and violin, this is Monday through Friday for 6 hours daily.  And to top it off, we've started attending church 60 miles away.   All this means the next day of doing nothing is very far away.

What is truly amazing is we are pulling it all off with only one vehicle.

My son had 41 spelling words last week.

I teach my kids spelling and grammar rules, but we do things in a way that feels natural to us.  Reading is core to our literature based education, so I have no concerns about them not having a diverse vocabulary.  As I review their work, any misspelled words are added to a list.  This list becomes next weeks spelling list.  If I see them struggling with a specific rule, I will add words that will help them understand it.  I use Spelling City to create lists and worksheets for them to work on that week.

Theoretically, they could have no spelling, but this has yet to happen. Usually they hover around 10 to 20 words, but my son had a epic week.  Most were errors because he didn't want to take the time to look up the word, but 41 is a lot of spelling words!

Books are the core of not only my children's education, but my own continued education.  I'm currently reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and How to Rule the World From Your Couch by Laura Day.  Brent is reading James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling. Callie is reading The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare and numerous other books.

This is my first time participating in the Homeschool Hop.  I love seeing all the different blogs out there.  There is such a wonderful community of homeschoolers.

For those of you stopping by, our homeschool is quite eclectic.  We use a thematic approach, it has been the only thing to keep my kids interested.  I homeschool a 4th and 8th grader.  This is our 3rd year of homeschooling.

Welcome!

I'm looking forward to a normal week.  If there is such a thing.  While this week wasn't a bad week, it wasn't normal either.  Callie was sick two days last week and really struggled getting the extra work done on top of her regular weekly assignments.  This was due to planning problems.  By Wednesday we sat down to go over her schedule and plan out her remaining assignments.

Our cats seem determined to undermine the kids attempts at learning.  The big gray one, Delilah, swats at the pencils when they try to write.

I can't believe we are nearing then end of August.  This month has flown by and we're all exhausted.  It just now feels like the schedule is starting to work, though I must say I wasn't kidding about being exhausted.  Brent has started taking power naps in the afternoons and the rest of us want to.  We are almost half way into the second week of homeschool plus electives at public school.  Of course this only applies to Callie, however, we are all feeling the impact of this on our day.

Callie is really enjoying her classes.  She loves her two art teachers.  One is a drawing class and one is an arts and crafts class.  She is also enjoying her Violin class.  Today was the first time she picked up her instrument.  Exciting.  The Library period has turned out to be a blessing.  Plenty of time for quiet school work and a room full of books for her to use for 70 minutes.  The only disappointment so far is that her lunch is during the 7th grade lunch and not with her 8th grade classmates.  She has joined the student council, plans on joining a few clubs and is thinking about going out for golf.  As if she didn't have enough going on already.  She is volunteering at the Animal Shelter and is doing Girl Scouts.  I'm tired thinking about it.

For his part, Brent has been quite happy with the new schedule.  He says it's quiet with Callie gone.  He is getting his work done much faster than before.  I don't think Callie was noisy alone.

Our schedule looks like this:

5:30am - Callie's alarm goes off
6:30am - Brent gets up
7:00am - Breakfast
8:00am - Brent starts school, Callie heads to RMMS for Creative Art/Painting, Crafts, & Violin.
Noon - Lunch for Brent
2:00pm - Callie is done at RMMS and the kids take a 30 min break
2:30pm - chores
3:30pm - School for both
4:30pm - Brent is done for the day.  Callie takes a break
5:30pm - Football for Brent until 7:00pm, if no Girl Scouts- homework for Callie until 7pm
7:30pm - Dinner
8:30pm - Bedtime

Saturdays are when Callie does her volunteering at the shelter.  We'll see how clubs and golf fit in.

Week 1 was tough to get through after having so much time off.  I don't know how teachers do it!  We have a little unfinished work from last week, but that is why we started early.  The hardest challenge will no doubt be next week, when Callie has to be somewhere everyday by 8am.

I completely see the reasons behind year-round school.  It wasn't just one thing that slowed us down this last week, it was everything.  Handwriting is rough, time-management skills are poor, heads are a little slow.  I had intended to maintain a small amount of daily writing, reading and math; I wish I had.

I'm sure we'll get up to speed.

This week I'm putting together the kids' binders for the first period.  Callie is focusing on the Ancient Middle East and Brent is all about Insects.  Our main resource is the Thematic Units from Teacher Created. They were both downloaded as ebooks, so I can print just what I need.

We are saving money and looking out for the environment by using binders from last year.  They don't have a lot of life left in them, when I do replace them I am looking at getting away from the vinyl.  The Naked Binder makes some very nice ones as does Earth Binder.  Earth Binder is especially great because you can replace the shell only and keep the metal rings as long as they last.  The disadvantage, they are sold in packs of 10.  We are using about 8 right now, so maybe 10 isn't too many.  I have 2 binders, one for yearly records and one for the current period.  The kids have 3 each.  One for the current period, one for the upcoming one (this allows me to get it ready ahead of time) and an annual portfolio binder.  The annual portfolio binder is where transcripts, attendance and samples of their best work is kept.


I'm organizing the period binders by weeks, normally this would be a 6 week period, but we are going to ease into it for the first one.  We will be doing it in 8 weeks.  Both kids thought this was a good idea.  It's hard to start up when you've had so much time off.  This should allow the kids to get back into the swing of things.  The weekly organization helps the kids see clearly what needs to be done each week.  In addition, both kids will be using planners this year to help organize their time.

I feel a little silly.  Trying to save money and get the cheapest edition of James and the Giant Peach that Barnes and Noble offers I accidentally ordered James and the Giant Peach: A Play.  I then had to order the book too, lessoned learned.  Other than that, everything for school came promptly and I'm getting a little excited for school to start.  Next Friday our home school group is having a Curriculum Show and Tell.  I am looking forward to seeing what everyone else is doing.  I'll have to bring my laptop though, I have two ebooks to share.

It's about a month before school starts here.  I have been chatting with the kids trying to determine how we want to approach this year.  The kids and I agree that we've had the most success with thematic units.  Callie especially seems drawn to this and has expressed learning more about ancient cultures.  After much looking and decision making the kids have picked their 6 subjects for the year.

We are dividing the school year into 6 six week periods.  Each period will be focused on one subject.

Callie is doing a survey of ancient cultures:  Middle East, India, Egypt, Rome, Greece, China, Japan and a unit combining Mayans, Incas and Aztecs.  She is also doing Oceanography.

Brent is doing Insects, Inventions, Flight, Amphibians and Reptiles, Money, Spiders, Baseball, Chocolate and Oceans.

We've ordered some of the supplies for the first 6 week period and have scheduled an Insect fieldtrip.  We are also busy updating the website.  The first day of school will be here soon!

This morning both kids made online posters using Glogster for History.  Callie did one on the Magna Carta and Brent did one on Lief Erickson.  A couple things to note if you try this free service.  First, save frequently.  It doesn't save automatically, as Callie discovered today when she lost over an hours worth of work.  Second, don't hit the backspace button on the keyboard unless you are in a text field.  That is how Callie lost all that work.  Third, there is no spell/grammar check so we found it easier to type in a word processor and copy and paste.  I like the technology and the savings on wall space, but sometimes the features became more important than the information in the poster.  A simple syllabus with the required content can help kids stay on track.  Overall, a really nice site.

Well, it's that time of year.  Curriculum time.  At least it is for me.  I'm looking back and planning for the future.  I have been contacting companies about educational discounts and I keep running into a problem, they want me to have an official name for our school.  Their accountants prefer it if it doesn't have homeschool in the name.  So we decided to name our school and reap the benefits.  We got some ideas from A to Z Home's Cool.  We narrowed it down to two and we are now officially, drum roll, The Ocotillo Academy.  Bring on the discounts!

We've also decided to make our private homeschool site public.  This is the one the kids use regularly.  I had made a small public one with links, but got so many requests to see the real one, that I gave in.  I made a few changes to get it ready and there is a lot more information there now for fellow homeschoolers.

This morning I woke deciding that the kids aren't getting enough physical activity.  I hated PE in school and I want my kids to have that memory too.  So after JT left for work I told the kids to put something athletic on.  Callie came out in a sporty cute outfit.  I told her that wasn't exactly what I meant.  Driving to the track it started to rain, I was undeterred.  Then it started to hail.

Callie, "Is that Hail?"

Me, "No, that would be crazy."

Brent, "It's Hail!"

We went anyway.  Callie was able to run and glare the whole time.  Truly amazing.  Brent was able to run and grin.  It was fantastic.

JT and Brent worked hard and got two garden beds in.  Callie and I took diligent notes and planted them.  Here's hoping.  We still have a long way to go, but the back yard is looking better and more useful already.  Both kids were surprised how much math went into gardening.  From what to plant and when, to the layout of the beds and finding out how many cubic ft of each soil component to buy, there was a whole lot of math.

For Girl Scouts we went to EYH. One of the workshops I got was on Biological Anthropology. It was so great that the other day I got myself two college text books on anthropology. Anthropology is the study of Humanity. It has four categories, Biological, Archeological, Cultural, and Linguistic. I'm so interested that I think that's what I want to be when I grow up. We're having a project fair in four weeks and my project is going to be on anthropology. I don't know exactly what it's going to be about yet but It's going to be more on the biological and Archeological side. Wish me luck!

We watched this movie as a follow-up to the Omnivore's Dilemma that we just finished.  It was very good and interesting.  It was helpful, especially to my youngest, to see it rather than just hear it.  If you rent this, there are a few tough parts, but overall it is very easy, and interesting, to watch.

This weekend we sat down and discussed our Language Arts program.  Right now, it is the subject that feels like it is just not working.  Both kids are finding the lessons a little boring and abstract.  Starting this week we are going to relate most of the Writing/LA assignments on our History.  Research Projects will have a greater writing requirement to help.  We all think this is a great idea.

Our school schedule experiment is over, that was a rough two weeks.  Now that the kids have more to do in some subjects than others, they find the time constraints of a schedule confining.  They also are now frustrated to stop working on something and move to something else just because the class period is over.  I couldn't be more happy to rid myself of that demanding, artificial schedule.

We had fallen behind Monday and Tuesday, a little on Wednesday too, and spent the rest of the week catching up.  It is often tempting as a homeschool to just do it later.  If there had been an event that caused our falling behind, that is what would happen. Part of the advantage of being able to deal with the surprises in life.  In fact, we were sick most of January and just added a week on to the end of the school year rather that stress about catching up.  This week however, it was just a lack of focus on the kids part.  Monday, all the lessons happened, but no assignments were finished at all and actual daydreaming was seen.  Both kids have claimed the new class periods helped keep them focused.  I guess that effect has worn off.  Maybe I should increase snacks.

Today, we have park day.  Considering the week, we can all use the break.  The kids will spend the rest of the day completing the weeks' work.  I'm glad they will have no work over the weekend, they need a break before next week.  I will spend the weekend grading and planning, but that's OK.

It seems just as I get used to something, change is needed.  We've switched our schedule this week to a conventional schedule with class periods.  All I need is a bell system.  The results have been immediate.  The kids' school work has improved and both have expressed that they prefer this; it keeps the day more interesting.  They are getting a lot more done.   

Vacations seem to end just as they really get going, however part of me is happy to slip back into a normal routine.  We have just completed our first week back.  It took about a week and a half.  We started some of the assignments early because I know the kids would have a slow start after so much time off.  We needed the little jump start, since the kids are just now finishing up.  Monday was rough, but over all the week was a success.  Now, if we can just fit a week of work into an actual week.