A Joyful Keeper

Today was just one of those days. Actually, it started yesterday. It happens quite regularly, and I’m sure no one else in the whole wide world has this happen to them… You’d think that after 7 years of homeschooling I’d be prepared for the attack - the attack of panic in the Homeschool.

Just in case you are one of those who has never experienced this (because it only happens to me), this is how it goes. Your day starts out fine. Everything is going well…. until you look around you and realize that the dishes aren’t done….. dinner isn’t even a figment of your imagination, and your son has just spent the last hour on one Math problem. The children are hungry, but you didn’t have time to bake this week and you are being frugal, so of course you didn’t BUY any snacks. You decide to bake cupcakes… and donuts…. and some cheese cookies while you are at it. The kitchen looks worse and worse, but the children are fed - sugar and white flour. Oh, and some cheese.

The kids have a break and run to their rooms to play, leaving you to survey the mess.

Then the voices start….. you can’t do this.. it’s too much…. they will never learn everything they need to know…. they are behind…. you haven’t even put the washing in the machine yet….

The voices are not just discouraging, they are also full of “good” advice. No, don’t put them in school, get a REAL curriculum. Then you will know that they are covering EVERYTHING. You can have more time for yourself. You can sew. You can quilt. You can have gourmet meals on the table, because this wonderful curriculum that will teach them EVERYTHING is self taught. You don’t have to do ANYTHING, but make sure they are at the table working. That is the only way you are going to survive the high school years…. until you have to put them in school……

When your husband sets foot in the door he knows there is something very wrong. As soon as he hears you wail, “I can’t do it anymore!!!! ” he knows… it’s that time of the month again where there is panic in the homeschool……

Thankfully this too passes and the Word of the Lord reigns supreme:

“At their wit’s end, they cry unto the Lord in their trouble,

and he bringeth them out” (Ps. 107:27, 28).

Today Daniel breezed through his Math and Science. Matthew and Elizabeth wrote a story in their free time. Matthew worked on his Bee lapbook and happily told me all he already knew about bees. Elizabeth started working on a cat lapbook, making up crossword puzzles and word searches herself. The dishes eventually ended up in the dishwasher and the kitchen was tidy. Some more dirty clothes were washed and dinner was on the table, simple, but nice.

You know what? My children may not learn EVERYTHING, but I didn’t either when I was at school. Our curriculum may not cover EVERYTHING, but it covers what we think is important. And some of my children still don’t know their times tables, but one day they will.

And so the panic ends…. and it is time for bed. Aren’t you glad this NEVER happens to you?!

I haven’t really got back into the swing of blogging yet! So here is a bit of a catch up post.

I had a lovely day for Mother’s day - with breakfast and presents in bed, and then lunch with Robyn’s family. This is one of the presents I got:

I know I will be using it a lot. I also got a few other bits and pieces, including some yummy chocolate!

This weekend we went to my parents’ place to see my sister and her family one more time before they headed home to outback Australia. My Dad had built my nieces and nephew a cute cubby house from bits of wood and cardboard boxes:

Isn’t it too cute?! Even our older kids loved it. They played in it for hours while us big people had cuppas and chatted. Saying goodbye was sad as we probably won’t see each other for another few years, but we were glad we got to have this extra afternoon together.

Dad sent us home with some more pumpkins, so I really need to get my big pot out and make a big batch of soup!

I did a lot of school planning last week. I mostly worked on Science and History schedules. Daniel is doing Apologia’s General Science and there is a lot to get through. I split up the chapters into days and made a simple checklist for him. It is a pretty full schedule, but so far it is ok. Here is this week’s if you’d like to see it:

Apologia General Science Module 3 Checklist

I found a complete schedule for this textbook (and others in the Apologia series) at Donna Young’s website. She has done a fantastic job in putting these schedules together and other resources too. They are free and great to use if you don’t want to make your own.

I also did a schedule for Daniel and Elizabeth for History. We are on Chapter 14 of The Story of the World, Middle Ages. I typed up the review questions from the student workbook with lines underneath them for answers for Daniel. For Elizabeth I typed up some copywork for her to copy onto notebooking pages. I would post these as well, but I am not sure about copyright laws, so I’d better not.

And that about sums up what’s been happening around here….. I’m slowly getting around to everyone’s blogs again and popping in to say hi! It’s nice to be back in blogland.

We are slowly getting back into a school routine after having three weeks of holidays with our visitors. We all find it difficult to get back into things when we’ve had a long break. One thing that I try to do to make it easier, is plan something fun. The kids were keen to make another mural, and we will start on that as soon as I can find some paper to cover a large portion of the wall in our hallway. In the meantime, I found the Ancient China Treasure Chest that we started on last year, and the kids tried their hands at some Chinese writing:

While the two younger ones were in China, Daniel was in the same time frame in Europe, building a castle:

This castle is going to be so cool! I’ll keep putting up photos as it gets built. The main problem is to find a spot for it where it won’t get wrecked during construction!

I find it easy to get stressed when things don’t go the way I planned in the first weeks back at school. At these times I need to keep my eyes on the Lord and take it a day at a time. He led us to homeschool, and He will give us the strength and wisdom. Oh, how I need wisdom!

Yesterday was a tough day with the children’s attitudes. Dh had a chat with them last night and today went much better. Again, I need to remember to allow all of us, myself included, some time to get back into things.

I cannot know why suddenly the storm
Should rage so fiercely round me in its wrath;
But this I know–God watches all my path,
And I can trust.

Just in case anyone is interested, I have my school plan for 2008 worked out. You can see it HERE. It is basically an outline of what books we will be reading & using.

What I haven’t written about or planned, is the everyday learning and extra-curricular stuff. I’ll add a bit on that another day. Most of the everyday learning, however, can’t be planned - it just happens! LOL!

I have gone more structured this year, with a lot of things the children can do themselves. These are the basics. On top of this is the things we do together - music, languages, sports and in depth History and Geography. Field Trips will be in there somewhere, and all these things will be linked to English, somehow…. oh yes, by writing about them!

The reason I am aiming for more structure this year, is because last year was so unstructured. I will see how we go. I am hoping that structure in the mornings, will help us to learn unstructured in the afternoons - if that makes any sense at all! I know what I’m trying to say….. lol! I also plan to do outside activities and projects on Fridays. With our main “book work” done in the first four days, this will allow a bit of Friday fun. We will still do Maths on Fridays though.

I’ve printed out a mountain of ebooks, or should I say a leaning tower… Now I need to bind them all! When I am done, I will post photos.

Hosted by Biblical Womanhood

There is nothing more frugal than FREE!! And this is my gift to you this Christmas… I made these simple Christmas notebooking pages and want to give them to all of you this Christmas Season.

This ebook is especially for those of you who homeschool. Feel free to pass the link on to others. Just go HERE to download your copy!

Last week we went to visit Sovereign Hill, which is a wonderful historical Gold Rush village. We have a family membership so that we can go as often as we like. Of course it doesn’t fit in with the period of History that we have been studying lately - the Middle Ages. The perfectionist in me says that we can’t start studying something else until we have finished the Middle Ages. The practical in me says - the weather is beautiful, this is the time to make the most of your membership and go regularly. So, I have listened to the practical in me and we will set aside our Middle Ages study until next winter, and make the most of our spring and summer and our family membership to Sovereign Hill.

What helped me make the decision was Elizabeth reading the Little House books for the umpteenth time. Just as I did as a child, she loves them. I had a few unit studies on the Little House books sitting on the shelf that I had picked up on sale years ago. They were sitting on my shelves waiting for the right time to use them. I decided that now was the right time. With us moving out to our little homestead soon, we could do a lot of the things that the guides suggest to do that are “country-ish”, like growing things, making butter, etc. I know we don’t really need to be out in the country to do that, but it does fit in nicely. Now, to convince DH to pack all our stuff into a covered wagon for the move….????!!!!

Also, the gold rush in Australia and the pioneer days in America are around the same time period, so I can link it all together. I think it will work well, and the children will enjoy spending more time at Sovereign Hill, I know. It will also make History come more alive for them, as they can see the way people used to live in those days, while studying about it.

I have never really been that fussed about studying History chronologically. I think it does have its place, but as we have traveled a lot over the years, I have tried to fit our History in with what we were seeing. For example, when we were in the Middle East, we studied Ancient History, and we saw rock art (paintings) that were approx 4000 years old. We walked on Roman Roads that were built 2000 years ago. That is living History.

Australia is a young country. It makes sense to me to make the most of the the History we see around us. So we although we are jumping around a bit, I am hoping that by using time lines and other things, the children will be able to draw it all together.

I was thinking I’d love to share a bit about our travels in the next months. I need to get myself and my photos organized! I’ll also be sharing the History we will be learning about currently. I’m afraid we didn’t get very far with the Middle Ages timeline - that will have to be continued next year!

So those are my musings for this beautiful Monday, and here is my menu plan for the week:

Hosted by Orgjunkie

 

Tuesday

Taco Salad

Wednesday

Tuna Casserole and Rice

Thursday

Pasta Bake

Friday

Leftovers

Have a great week everyone!!!

I’ve started putting up some of my forms as pdf’s on this site! I have been wanting to do this for so long now. Go and check it out over HERE - they are all FREE!!!! You can also use the Freebies link on the side bar.

Feel free to pass the link on to others. I want to bless as many people as I can with these forms. There aren’t many up yet, but I am hoping to keep adding to them bit by bit. So, spread the word and drop back in now and then.

On another note, my blog is fixed. Frugal Friday has gone back to where it should be. I don’t know what went wrong, but I fiddled with the post that came after it, and it went back to normal…. who knows… just glad it is back to normal!

Well, it’s dinner time, and look what’s just come out of the oven:

Yummy Cheese and Herb Pull Apart!!! If anyone is interested, I’ll post a recipe and tutorial sometime…..

At the beginning of last week, we decided to do an experiment. We wrote down the reading on our electricity meter, and then used all our appliances as per usual. We left on our computers, had tvs, etc, on standby, switched on lights like we normally do. It was a relatively normal week.

This week, we are going to do things a little differently. We are not going to go without power entirely… phew! But we are going to try to do without it as much as possible. We are going to turn all the appliances off at the power point. We won’t leave the computers running all day or on overnight. We will make a conscious effort to turn off all lights as we leave the rooms.

We were going to have a “harsher” non-electricity week, but dh said he wanted us to compare with doing these small changes first. So, we will put that off to another week. I’d say the week after, but my parents are coming to visit and I don’t think they will appreciate only having candle light in the evenings - lol! What we did last time we studied the Middle Ages was go an entire day without electricity. That was fun! We might do that again instead of a whole week.

So, next week - I will check my mail in the morning and then switch off my computer. I will check it again in the evening, and then switch it off. I will not be blogging and I won’t be checking other blogs! Don’t worry, I’ll catch up with all of you the week after! I’m sure it will be fun. The reason I will not be using the internet other than for emails, is because I am banning the kids from using computers too next week, and it isn’t fair if I am on it all the time. Besides, I want to use the time to spend with them, either playing board games, doing puzzles, or other non-electricity activities.

We will check the meter reading tomorrow morning and write it down. The Monday after it will be interesting to see what difference our electricity savings week has made…

Have a great week everyone, and I’ll update you in a week and tell you how we went!

Oh, by the way, it is Spring down here!!!

to Tiany and all the sponsors of the Homeschool Open House 2007! It was so much fun! I haven’t quite made it to everyone’s house yet, so I am glad that Tiany is keeping the links up permanently. Every now and then I will grab a cuppa, have a break and visit someone else’s home….

I was one of the first 100 on the list, so I got to sign up for 3 free issues of the Homeschooling Today Magazine! I hope they will be able to send it to Australia because I would love to see a *real* homeschooling magazine, LOL! It will probably tempt me to get a subscription… So, thank you to Homeschooling Today Magazine for being so generous to us!

Also a big thank you to Crystal from Biblical Womanhood for donating her latest ebook to ALL of us who participated! I’ve had a quick look through it and it looks fantastic. Thanks Crystal!

Don’t forget my ebook with simple notebooking pages for use in your homeschool. It is free to EVERYONE, not just those who participated in the Open House, so tell your friends

Go HERE to download it!

Tiany is going to have a Christmas Open House later on this year, so make sure you check back at her site from time to time. I’m sure it is going to be great fun!

As I have mentioned before, we started on Latin this year. For some strange reason I have always wanted to learn Latin! Must be the romantic in me…. oh, and yes, I am a linguist… that might explain some of it. Anyway, when we had our first lesson a few weeks ago, I was trying to explain to the children why we were going to learn Latin - a dead language. I had trouble explaining this, and they wouldn’t accept the main reason I had: “It will be fun!!!” My idea of fun and theirs’ is vastly different!

I was very pleased, therefore, to come across all these wonderful reasons for learning Latin on Carla’s blog. Go and check it out HERE!

I feel so much better now :), I’ve got 14 reasons to tell my children why we are learning Latin!

(#14 is my addition: “IT’S FUN!!!!”)