The Postpartum Break is officially over

Well, that lasted a lot longer than it should have, but we're finally back into our routine. We tend to go through spurts of going great guns and getting a lot accomplished and doing absolutely nothing. Hopefully in the end it balances out. One thing that really helps me do school every day is having an organized school room. So, we just reorganized. I really like the layout now. Our school room is in the formal living room of our 1964 ranch. The kids bedrooms don't have room for anything besides beds, so this is the play room as well. The orange tote on the floor is for our completed books. I haven't decided yet where I want to keep it on a permanent basis, so for now it just gets moved around the room. The organizer in the middle has toys on the bottom and school supplies on the top. We keep flashcards, Handwriting Without Tears manipulatives, math manipulatives, etc. in there.

We've recently started Introduction to Classical Studies. I'm really enjoying it, I think its their favorite part of the school day, which has made me realize I don't read aloud to them enough. I'm going to try to start reading to my 2 year old more. We've tried doing Before Five in a Row, but I'm not good about keeping up with it. I think I'm just going to use their book lists to choose library books. We got a few out of the library last week, and I could tell she just adored it. So, my goal is to consider that her school work and to be diligent about giving her that gift.

The Best $1.78 I've ever spent

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but my 7 year old son hates to read. He has fought it for years. I've waited patiently for things to just click like they did for my now 9 year old girl, but I'd lost all hope of him every enjoying reading.
Well yesterday we were at Target where they have their Magic Tree House books on clearance. I picked up 4 and told him to pick one to read. Immediately I was inundated by tears and, "I can't read that! It's too hard."
So, I picked up the one he chose and opened it to the first page. I told him to read the first sentence. He read it with no problem. Then he read the next sentence and the next. Then we left the book area with his nose in his new book.
I don't care if the books aren't well written. My son is reading right now, by choice! He doesn't even like to read picture books, he just looks at the pictures. This is huge!

What a difference!

School has been quite enjoyable this week. What a relief that is! It's not because my kids changed overnight either, its because I changed my expectations. Instead of making them do a whole spelling lesson, they're doing one page. In math and Latin, instead of moving ahead as soon as they've mastered a lesson, we're lingering a little while to make them feel good about knowing it. Because of these simple changes we've had time to do science, Bible and history, including projects.

Next week we'll continue at the same pace, but I'm going to try to introduce reading time. I've wanted to implement a reading session for quite some time, but I haven't been able to yet. I'm looking forward to getting some of the great books we have read.

Well, I seriously need to get a schedule in place. We have 3 doing school this year, with another showing signs of readiness to read, and a newborn. The only outside activities we have are Brownies, Girl Scouts, and co-op classes. We also have animals (cows, chickens, a dog, and a cat) to take care of, in addition to the housework.

So, I bought Managers of Their Homes and was going great guns reading and looking forward to implementing it. Then I read the part about scheduling babies, specifically scheduling their nursing, and I just can't bring myself to read any further. I'm so philosophically and spiritually opposed to scheduling nursing, that it makes me feel bad about their whole scheduling plan. I've got to either ignore the parts I feel strongly about in this book or find some other way to schedule our days. I'm not certain if I'll be able to do that though, since my perception is skewed now.

I had planned on schooling through the summer, but somehow in those last 6 weeks of pregnancy I just couldn't find the energy. Now that G man is 6 weeks old we've started back up.

Last week Mister Blue (age 7) says to me, "I don't want to be in Cub Scouts. I'm shy, and I'm not good at anything." I was mortified. Here the son I've worked so hard on schooling thinks he's not good at anything. Ack! As a result, I've decided to take a slightly different tack this year than I'd originally planned.

I've had Miss Green (age 9) and Mister Blue doing the same math work for a year now. She's been slightly behind his understanding, but this year its switched and he's feeling lost. They both started Math U See Delta this year, but somehow he forgot everything he learned in Gamma. I'm letting her continue on in Delta and I've ordered Singapore Math 2 for him. I'm hoping to do a quick review through it and then start up again in Delta. In the meantime I bought Quarter Mile Math for him to review his multiplication facts. He's absolutely loving it and asks to do it several times a day.

We're also changing his spelling from Spelling Workout to SpellingTime.com. I'm hoping his self-confidence will improve with these changes, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Yippee!

Today we finished Rod & Staff English 3. I am so thrilled to be done with this book its unbelievable. We've been doing 3 lessons per day, with her reading the lesson to herself. Then she'll do the corresponding workbook pages and that's all. It doesn't take very long, but she's so resistant to it and thinks she knows everything she doesn't bother to actually read it. So when it comes time to do the workbook she doesn't read the directions thoroughly and then I end up having to explain the lesson to her and the workbook directions. While I expect to do this with my 7 year old, having to do it with her is getting tiring. I really don't enjoy the thought of having to sit by her and explain every little thing. We already do that for math for all 3 of them and English for 2 of them. I'm running on fumes at this point. Tomorrow we'll start Learning Language Arts Through Literature Orange. We'll see how that works out for us.

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On a more cheerful note, math is going better today. I remembered we had these lap boards.
We used them for multiple digit addition and subtraction with great results. Bubba has had a hard time getting the correct answer, even though he understands the steps. The problem lies in his atrocious handwriting. He can't tell what number he wrote, and he can't tell where he wrote it. So, this has the columns for him to work it out on and he can erase numbers that aren't written legibly and rewrite them clearly. For my daughter, she can understand better where the numbers go. I need to remember these more often.

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We're still waiting on Math U See Primer for my 5 year old. We had a tornado in our area right when it shipped out and it got lost. So, the rep sent a second package, but inadvertently sent Beta instead of Primer. Now we're waiting on the third shipment. In the meantime I've been printing out online worksheets. She is just bursting at the seams to learn. When I tell the kids its time to start school, she dashes in and does all the work I have prepared for her before the other kids even get started. She can add 0-9 plus 0-2, and can count and write from 0-20. Her reading is going very well. We're on lesson 80 of OPGTTR and she's just started ETC book 3. Its amazing to me how much easier it is than it was with the other 2. Its not that I think she's more intelligent than the others, but she's so much like me that its easy for me to teach her. I can really understand why kids in a public or private school can fall behind easily.