Homechooling Mamas

[Angierae]

Just wondering how many other Feb mama's are homeschooling older kiddos.

Mine are 6 and 3, so there isn't a lot of pressure to do any serious "teaching," but I am wondering if I am providing enough activity. It seems I have an active day and the next day I just want to lay on the couch and groan. I am hoping to be more organized before the babe comes. I want to have a lot of prepared activities/ideas that I can pull out without having to use any intellectual energy. Of course, that requires me to have intellectual energy NOW, which isn't happening.

Luckily we are part of a wonderful group of young children, and we have outside activities 2-3 times a week. My SIL have children the same age and is also h/sing, so we get together 3-4 times a week as well. I don't think the girls are bored, but I feel like I should be doing more.

With pregnancy, planning a homebirth, h/sing my girls, cooking, and keeping the house from falling apart, sometimes I feel totally overwhelmed. Just looking for some like minded support I guess! And it doesn't help that most people IRL think we're crazy.

[eilonwy]

BeanBean = almost five-year-old kindergartener in a virutal academy.

BooBah = three years old and desperate to "do more school!"

Bella = 19 month old shrieking meemee.

We do a lot of work. It's not enough for the kids. I wish I could clone myself.

[applecore]

This post came at the exact right time for me! I'm homeschooling my 5.5 y/o and almost 3 y/o using the Enki curriculum. I've only done our regular activities one day this week so far, and I was feeling a little guilty. My only consolation right now is that they are really having a great time just doing free play. They aren't bugging me for something to do, so I figure they're just doing what is good for them right now. We have a no tv rule on weekdays, and since we started that, they don't even ask for tv or videos very often, which is a big improvement from them asking numerous times a day. We have music on a lot (kid and adult), and they are really into drawing right now. The beauty of homeschooling is that there aren't any rules, so I have to remind myself that they are being enriched by our normal, healthy lifestyle every day. It's nice to know that I'm not the only pregnant hsing mama who just gets too burned out to do lots every day!

[the elyse]

i'm not hsing yet, but i can't wait. i was homeshcooled all my life so i'm excited to draw from my own experiences and hopefully give dd and bean a great learning environment. don't stress out too much about the structure...i had alot of free time and learned the most when i didn't have the pressure of quizzes and testing.

[True Blue]

I hear ya. I'm getting better at organizing, though. We are using Oak Meadow along with Shiller Math and HWT. I finally started making a loose plan for each week. Really though, with kindergarten, I'm not too stressed...he's already ahead academically so we just take it easy. I'm not saying he's some genius or anything lol, but I know I have some leeway for the year. I try to make sure we do circle time, handwriting, and either math or reading each day, and try to do some sort of craft too. We're working on it. Mostly they get lots of free play LOL.

Keeping the house in order is another story LOL. It should be really interesting with the new baby! I'm actually planning on a schooling hiatus once the baby gets here. The beauty of homeschooling!!!

[mama_nym]

We're a life-learning family here....the world is our "school".

Our homeschoolers are 8.5, 7, 5 and 2. We have journals that they do every day or two (I give them an "assignment" such as reading a story or researching something they're already studying and ask them to answer a few questions....they learn more about the topic of discussion, work on their writing skills, do some reading in the process, have to *think* about things to answer my questions, etc.), they have workbooks available should they choose to do them, we're reading the series by Laura Ingalls Wilder together, are starting Earth Scouts tomorrow, make weekly trips to the library to borrow interesting books, are involved in playgroups and such, and I try to take them on one outing a week (museum, hike, orchard, farm). We don't do a heck of a lot of one-on-one teaching/learning, but explore topics as they come up. It helps that my 8 year old is reading at 9th grade level and my 7 year old is reading at 7-8th grade level. We're working on reading with my 5 year old dd (who just wants to instantly know how to read and doesn't like having to take the time to learn to do it - she's more of a tactile learner) and our 2 year old is basically working on learning to introduce the use of consonants into his speech since he speaks in mostly vowels.

There is a lot to be said for the learning that takes place simply by exploring the world around them. My kids learn so much more just exploring nature than they do if I try to sit down with them and teach them about something. The more senses that are stimulated ... the more of a total body/mind experience it is ... and the more time my kids are allowed to explore things on their own, the more they seem to retain.

[camille76]

we home school too.
ages 5 and 6.
2 yo too but she doesnt do much, of course.

[Traceyky]

We have been hs'ing 16 years. The house gets disasterous occasionally - but it has never fallen down. 6 graduated now.... 9 to go :-) It is not an "event" it is a lifestyle :-) Just keep talking with your kids.. they will learn even when you are low energy :-)

[nolonger]

I homeschooled for 12 years. ds is now in public school against my wishes and dd is in college. My favourite job pays below minimum wage under the table but has TONS of non-monetary rewards: I am a full time private tutor for a fourteen year old boy who is in an independant study program at a public charter school.

I don't want to get into another big, divisive debate about semantics and the We Stand for Homeschooling petition; nothing has changed about my beliefs, only my circumstances.

It is soooooooooo nice to be working with a flexible charter that lets me fall back into the old rythms with a new child, though and I am beginning to reconnect with as much of the homeschooling world as wants to interact with me and my "spare son".

Stevie has been failed miserably by the public school system in the past and is recovering from years of institutionalized educational neglect and coming out of bad reactions to ADHD meds. We are focusing on reading right now (he reads at about a high first grade level) with Ball-Stick-Bird and also lots of reading aloud to show him the beauty and variety of literature that is just out there waiting for him. We are memorizing Shakespeare;'s Sonnet 29 and reading Shakespeare Stories in preparation for seeing a play or dowloading a movie of a play to watch together. He loves theater and visual arts. I'm pretty sure he's going to be comfortable with Saxon 54 for math, at least for awhile, because we need to build up his confidence before we switch over to Jacobs.

The charter has provided us with the complete Oak Meadow seventh grade curriculum, so I'm just reading the history aloud to him right now and we haven't even started the science yet (the spot in this charter just opened abnd the charter he was using before was less flexible). We went to the monthly roller skating with the local homeschooling group ds and I used to go to and felt very welcome, so I want to continue that, and his charter has a field trip to a pumpkin patch on Friday. We also do volunteer work together once a week. Stevie would be perfectly happy with lots and lots of one on one, but I do want him to develop some positive relationships with other children and with the community. After all, I'm not his mother even though I have known him since he was seven years, care very much about him, and hope that the friendship I have with him and his family will last a lifetime.