A Real Homeschool Day in Our House

This is how one real homeschool day in our house went:

I actually got up at my 6:30 alarm. Bonus! Nick did not get up until 7:00, which is pretty good, except I hadn't been able to get my shower in yet. Quick shower, briefly interrupted by Nick as usual, but otherwise on schedule. ("I need my privacy right now," is my mantra these days.)

I got out our warm-up board and magazine box because it was Magazine Monday.

Nick was allowed to eat breakfast early (leftover coffee cake and fruit) while I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to him. He is actually listening to whole chapters sometimes. I read the same book to Xander around the same age, but Nick seems sooooooo much younger at all the same ages than Xander did. Skewed mommy-perspective.

Nick shared his breakfast very nicely with me. He read magazines.

I opened the boys' bedroom door and told Xander it was time to get up and do Morning Cards. I turned on a lamp.

Xander groaned, got up to go to the bathroom, turned off the lamp, and went back to bed. Nick and I did his Morning Cards and my morning chores.

Nick got to play for a good while. Xander was still not up.

Finally, we got Xander up. He made himself yogurt with cherries, then sat on the couch to read one of the magazines I had gotten out.

Nick and I did learning time together. This was at 10:00. I reviewed left and right with him, using all kinds of body parts. He does not get it right 100% of the time, so I left our first lesson at that. (If he had seemed to really get left and right, I was going to do a quick and easy math lesson with him that required using left and right hands.) We did some tracing in his Kumon My First Book of Tracing. That went so much better than it ever has before, but we stopped as soon as Nick's attention wandered. At this point, we tried the very first lesson in The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. It was a job of work. According to Nick, he does want to learn to read now the way that Xander can. If he decides to sit with me and obey the instructions, we will continue. If it is still hard after a week, I will set aside the book for a while. Slow and Steady Get Me Ready is a gentler introduction to learning academic skills, I think, and he likes those activities.

Update: We did Lesson 2 of The Ordinary Parent's Guide together today and it went very well.

It was time for Nick to have independent playtime. He chose Sandy's room to play in.

Xander was still in his pajamas but had started playing toys in his room. I gave him five minutes until school time.

When I got him out to the dining room, I had to spend a minute or so addressing his resistant attitude, but after that everything went well. I am excited about that, considering we started formal spelling and grammar curricula today. We worked on spelling for 15 minutes and grammar for 20 minutes, which included beginning to memorize a new poem. I read history books to him for 30 minutes (A Child's History of the World and This Country of Ours). He cut out images that pertained to the world history we learned and pasted them on their own index cards. I wrote captions for the pictures and hung them on our history timeline.

Then it was lunch. I have to admit, the kids had complained about hunger during school time and I had made them plates of sandwiches and cherries. Nick had come out of independent playtime after only 15 minutes or so. But they were both cheerful and cooperative and everything worked out well. (Except for the duration of the independent playtime. You can't have it all.) I heated up some chicken that we all ate. The kids cleared their places and I did dishes. Xander had to get dressed and brush his teeth before I would allow him to come to the mailbox with me.

We all went to the mailbox together. Xander received an issue of Appleseed today (thanks, Grandma Lucy!) so he went to work on that. I decreed an early Sustained Silent Reading time. Nick and I looked at our own books on my bed.

Then it was time to make a batch of cookies because we were all still hungry. A little blogging for me, a little playing for the kids.

I explained our current version of Rest Time to them (a new concept starting today). I said they could have stuffed animals, books, and even a few toys on their beds for a rest time. They could even talk to each other, I said, if it was quiet. I showed them the time on their clock when rest time would end. They were excited about it! Xander said he would not need toys on his bed even if he decided to play because he could use his imagination. From the sounds of it, this is turning into sibling playtime, but it is relatively quiet and I am very happy.

The other times I have enforced a rest time, they have ended quickly and have been quite a bit of work for me. This one is going fabulously well. I went in to check something Nick wanted me to see, and Xander said, "Mom, can we have extra rest time if we want that?" I nicely told him I would check our schedule.

This brought us to about 3:00 p.m. The kids played for a long time together while I read a bit. Between 4 and 5:00, I started making breaded pork chops, macaroni 'n cheese, and green beans. People helped me set the table. We had a family dinner.

I went running while Erik did the first phase of getting ready for bed. He did a lot of the rest of the phases, too. When the kids were in bed with lights out, Erik and I watched Under the Dome together. (Lame show, but it was fun to watch as a couple.) And that ends the homeschool day.

School Work

Nick asked me what every shape was that he cut out

Finally cutting in a way that works for him!

Tracing, shape, coloring, cutting exercise

Nick and I have done the first two lessons in The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading!

Xander really likes Spelling Workout B so far

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We are starting up school again this month, then August off, then 2nd grade beginning September. The goal for this month is to finish up all the 1st grade work I wanted to do. We will have 4th of July off and a couple of weeks for cousins to come visit and for us to go to Florida with them to stay with Grandma.

I have a few other goals this month. I am introducing more formal spelling and grammar, the same format we will use for 2nd grade. I am also starting Right Start Math with Xander. It has lots of manipulatives and few worksheets. My Singapore Math book and workbook seemed great, but Xander did not enjoy them. He has a mind for grasping math quickly, and I thought if he is dreading math, then let's try a different approach. Right Start uses the same approach as Singapore but with more manipulatives and games, less workbook work, and a special abacus to help group numbers rather than relying on counting.

We started Spelling Workout Level B today. I set a timer for 15 minutes. Xander was resistant at first, but was soon laughing as we went through the different activities. He was doing his first crossword puzzle ever, with the word list for this lesson, when the timer went off. That was not good news to him. He wanted to finish the puzzle before stopping. !!!!!!! This is my son who supposedly doesn't like to write and doesn't like formal instruction such as what one might use for spelling.

We also did a few lessons in First Language Lessons and that went well, too. I had tried this book with him a couple years ago and it was a flop. He seems more mature or simply more able to handle it this year. The lessons are going to be easy for him, but they add a few more useful bits of knowledge to what he already knows, providing a better base of knowledge for his future education.

I had Nick sit down with me to do a lesson in The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. I had used quite a bit of this (long) book with Xander when he was about four years old. He did not like it. It was hard to get him to sit down long enough to do a lesson. I see that Nick is the same way right now. A good solution would be to wait until he is five, but when I asked him if he wanted to learn to read like Xander, he said yes. In that case, I told him, he had to sit down with me and do the lesson. It was challenging to get him to repeat after me when he needed to do that. He loves to spout off nonsense words instead. I had to make him do it on the threat of taking away Imaginext toys. If he continues to resist a lot this week, I will put away the book for a while. I would rather he do more of Slow and Steady Get Me Ready, which is at his level, than rush the reading if he resists.

So anywho, after I did that review for Time4Learning I was contacted by the company with an offer to get a free premium trial for VocabularySpellingCity.com. In fact, after I post an honest review, I can get the free trial for a full year! I described above what we are doing for spelling, but here's where VocabularySpellingCity.com can fit in: You can make your own word lists, so I could put in the word lists from Spelling Workout Level B. Then you can have your child play games on the site using those word lists. If Xander ever gets resistant to the Spelling Workout activities, we can take a break by playing computer games with the same word lists.

Following is the disclosure from VocabularySpellingCity.com:

"Disclosure:
I've been given a Premium Membership to VocabularySpellingCity.com for a candid, personal, online review.

VocabularySpellingCity helps students study word lists using 25 different learning activities such as Unscramble, Hangman, WordFind, andCrossword Puzzle. Parents can create their own spelling lists, find published lists already available on the site, or use any of dozens of free teaching resources on topics such as Multiple Meaning Words and Possessive Nouns . Be sure to come back in three weeks to read about my experience.

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