Saturday Catch-All: First Week, Dudamel, Nature Journal Share

First Week
We just finished the first week of our new school year. Why so early, you ask? Two reasons: We had already had five relaxed weeks and needed to get back into routine, and starting early allows us to be a little more flexible about taking a day off here or there if necessary. We are already planning on a two-week break at the end of August/beginning of September as Stephen takes his vacation then. SA(7) started Year Two using Ambleside Online, and JJ(5) started his "Kindergarten" year. This basically means that I have started reading lessons with him, while he continues to participate in our family outdoor time, reading aloud time, poetry tea time, math activities, etc.

Anyway, I am exhausted today. Homeschooling requires intense interaction with my children, and I had gotten used to less of that during our vacation. As an introvert, all this interaction drains me. I know from last year, though, that I will adjust over time and come up with coping mechanisms to deal with it. And I do love homeschooling with a passion that still surprises me despite this small drawback in my own personality.

The rewards appear daily when I least expect them...
-the twinkle in SA's eye as he's about to narrate something that amused him.
-the effortless use of a big word that he just heard for the first time in reading a week ago.
-the creative engineering of paper airplanes to make them fly better (a collaborative effort between the oldest two).
-JJ's excitement in the discovery of addition facts using Cuisenaire rods.
-the enthusiasm with which all three of them run around gathering fistfuls of flowers for me to draw in my nature journal as I sit peacefully in the grass with the baby.

This is what I will remember, and it is what I choose to think about after the exhausting jumble of chores and schoolwork, discipline challenges and moments of joy, happy lessons and lessons that meet with resistance.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

(Philippians 4:4-8)

Introducing Dudamel 
Our composer this term is Johannes Brahms, and this week's listening was "Variations on a Theme by Haydn." Our music appreciation lesson is very simple. On Thursday morning at teatime, we get our snacks and go watch the piece on YouTube.  Yes, that's all we do. One of my favourite things about watching music on YouTube is that you can often watch the conductor. I love watching conductors! This week's conductor was Gustavo Dudamel. I was immediately struck by his air of calm joyfulness. Curious, I later looked up more videos with him conducting and was amused to see a huge difference in style between his older and younger self, though still the same friendliness and joy (see especially around the 4 1/2 minute mark in that second link). Finally, I looked up his website, and found a fascinating character. Do check it out! You can also find a few interviews on YouTube as well.

Nature Journal Share
If you enjoy nature study, you may like the Mud Puddles to Meteors blog. They also have an active Facebook group, a great place to share your nature walk finds with an appreciative audience! One fun thing Dawn just started there is the Nature Journal Share. She invites anyone in the group to post their nature journal entries on Saturdays with the tag #naturejournalshare. I anticipate that this will be an inspiring event every week. I am not a natural artist, and have been slow to get into the habit of nature journaling, though we love our nature walks here.

My share this week is a small weed...we have so many weeds I don't know the name of! I suspected that this one would have some relation to chamomile because that's what it smelled like to me. Sure enough, it's known as rayless chamomile, or wild chamomile. I think one of its other names, "pineappleweed," will stick with us, though.

And that's all for this week!

The Term that Fell Apart

All I can say is, it's a good thing this is only Kindergarten. After a very happy and productive Fall and Winter, we lost steam at the beginning of May. I signed up for a theatrical production that required rehearsals three times a week, and we started swimming lessons once a week for six weeks. Add in the garden, and suddenly the easy, calm routine we followed every day all winter just didn't work anymore. The worst thing was that I didn't seem to have the time or energy to sit down and fix it, so we just stumbled along in the chaos.

This is why I plan each season. A fresh start four times a year? Yes please. Things have settled down a little this week, and that has given me a chance to think about what happened with our Spring and plan for better things in our Summer.

I don't want to give the impression that everything fell apart. SA read about fifty books this term, and while he doesn't love reading the way he loves math, he is happy to read every day. Our math lessons did rather dry up after the beginning of May, but he hasn't lost ground. He continued to practice at Khan Academy daily, and has almost finished Early Math there (as far as I can tell, this level covers K-Gr 2). I don't consider Khan Academy a tool for significant growth in math for him, but at least it kept his math love somewhat satisfied. Another area of progress was piano. I started him off with a few lessons from an Alfred book I found at Value Village, and he took off. He practices for the joy of it every day, and that makes me very happy.

But what I felt was the best part of our homeschool this Fall and Winter, our "circle times" of morning devotions and poetry teatimes, really did fall apart this Spring, and I regret that. Every time I needed the car, we would have to go to work with Stephen in the morning. This meant that the breakfast-around-the-table anchor for our morning memory work was gone in favour of a quick sandwich in the car. Tea time also became sporadic, happening once or twice a week instead of every day. This meant that our memory work slowed down significantly. We kept up with Scripture and hymns, but learned only ten new catechism questions and no new poems. I have noticed something good coming out of this, though. The boys are eagerly requesting favourite poems whenever we do have poetry teatime, where before they were rather taking it all for granted.  JJ especially has really connected with some of A.A. Milne's poetry, which we began to read in this term.

Nature study was very informal and mostly related to gardening. They planted some seeds and watched them begin to grow. My nature journal has been sadly neglected.

Habits are another area that suffered. Not only did we not develop any new habits, our old ones have not been doing so well with our irregular routine.

I think the most important lesson for myself is just to pick myself up, adjust my expectations, and begin again. Now to work on my plans for Summer!

Winter Term Goals and Wrap-Up

I made some goals back in January for our winter term. It may seem a bit much to have such elaborate goals for what really amounts to less than an hour a day (not counting Nature Study), but hey, I'm a beginning homeschooler and this is still fun.

Bible: The Goal
-To read a Bible story every day, beginning at Genesis 1 and continuing through Judges using selected passages from Penny Gardner’s list.
-To memorize Psalm 100 and the Beatitudes from the Bible (ESV).
-To memorize one hymn per month:
January: Trust and Obey
February: All People That on Earth Do Dwell
March: How Great Thou Art

Bible: The Reality
We did read a Bible story every day, beginning at Genesis 1. We did not follow Penny Gardner's list after the first little while, choosing instead to simply read the chapters consecutively. (I did skip a few names...). As a result, we are still in Exodus instead of all the way in Judges. I am not unhappy with this. I feel that for the first time, they are really learning the stories. We memorized Psalm 100 with ease, but are still working on the Beatitudes. I simply read the passage for memory every day until they are able to say it with me. We memorized the hymns we planned, but are still in the middle of "How Great Thou Art" because "Trust and Obey" took more than a month to learn with its multiple verses. We also began work on the Children's Catechism, and while I haven't been as consistent with this as with the Scripture and hymn memory work, we memorized up to question 18. I am so thankful to have been introduced to Songs for Saplings songs based on the Children's Catechism. It amazes me how easily my children pick up these songs, even though they still can't carry a tune in a bucket! All of these items were memorized by simply taking five minutes after our meals every day to review them. Now I need to figure out a system to rotate review of things we've memorized in the past so we don't forget them.

Habits: The Goal
To learn habits of attention.
January: Listening to the Bible Story each day
February: Paying attention in church
March:

Habits: The Reality
Attention did not end up being our focus, as I noticed that obedience needed some attention. This ended up being quite difficult for me. Creating practical habits (such as putting away toys or getting dressed before breakfast, as we did in our Fall term) is fairly simple. Creating moral habits such as obedience require a much more constant vigilance and much more wisdom (which I may or may not have very much of...). I think we made progress. I found a way to communicate with my 3-year-old about it that we did not have before, a light-hearted way to get his will on my side.

In other habits, I began having the children do chores after breakfast each morning. They clear the breakfast table and collect the laundry.
I also am working hard on getting SA to sit quietly in church and participate in whatever he can. This also is not easy. He is a fairly calm person, but, boy-like, he does have a hard time sitting still.

Reading: The Goal 
To spend 10 minutes each school day in focused attention on learning to read. Use books that are interesting to SA. Teach sight words, then related phonics rules on alternate days. Use fun games as often as possible.

Reading: The Reality
Shortly after the term began, SA took off with reading. I got as many good, easy-to-read books from the library as I could, and allowed him to read them as he pleased. We recorded the books he read on "reading ladders" and later on a large poster. He is currently at book #30 since January. During this time, I have not done a lot of phonics (maybe once a week, casually, rather than every other day). I will have to pick that up again during our Spring term, but I'm not sorry I dropped it during our Winter term.

Math: The Goal
To introduce a math game from Games for Math once a week (on Mondays).
To spend 10 minutes three times per week in focused attention on learning math concepts presented in Miquon Math.

Math: The Reality
We did introduce a new math game almost every Monday. This was a happy success, and I really feel it helped to continue to build their "math sense." Kalah remains SA's favourite game, and we still play it often. We also did Miquon Math, continuing with the concept of addition and subtraction, and introducing the concept of multiplication. In just the last couple of weeks, SA became interested in adding and carrying, so I taught him that as well.

Pencil Skills: No Goals
SA did some printing incidentally, mostly numbers in his math. He is very neat and accurate. I don't feel the need to push this yet.

Read Aloud: The Goal
To read and enjoy several books from Ambleside Online’s list for Year 0. Begin reading from the Winnie the Pooh series this quarter.
-To read and enjoy poetry at a daily poetry teatime.

Read Aloud: The Reality
Poetry Teatime continued to be one of our favourite parts of the day. The boys memorized several poems. I simply read the same poem (from The Harp and Laurel Wreath) every day at the beginning of teatime until they could say it with me, then went on to the next one. They learned:

The Little Turtle (Vachel Lindsay)

Once I Saw a Little Bird (an old nursery rhyme)

Rain (R.L. Stevenson)

Bird Talk (Aileen Fisher)

At the Seaside (R.L. Stevenson)

Of course, we enjoyed many other poems and nursery rhymes as well. They were always excited to choose what they wanted to hear.
We did read Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, which they loved. (They preferred the first to the second, though. I'm not sure why.) We have also begun to read from When We Were Very Young and Now We are Six, and will continue with those into the next term.

Nature Study: The Goal
To spend time each week observing and learning about nature, choosing from the Outdoor Hour Challenges found at handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com. To buy a birdfeeder and observe and learn about birds there.

Nature Study: The Reality
After reading more from Charlotte Mason, I ended up making much larger goals of spending time outdoors. I failed to meet my lofty goals (10 hours a week). However, having these goals meant that we did go outdoors for at least an hour almost every weekday this winter (barring extreme wind chill conditions). This is an accomplishment to be celebrated, since my usual mode in our Canadian winter is hibernation.

We did get a bird feeder, and it was a wonderful, wonderful thing to see the boys so excited about the birds we saw there. Even MM shouts "Chickadee!" whenever he sees a bird. We saw a couple of unusual birds: a brownheaded cowbird and some snow buntings. We learned about the difference between crows and ravens.
We did not follow many challenges at the Handbook of Nature Study blog. To be honest, most of our outdoor time was spent shoveling snow or playing games of hide and seek tag. But I began my own nature journal, which I hope will be the beginning of a family hobby.

Field Trips: The Goal
To learn from people and activities outside our home. Examples might be homeschool co-op events, or trips to Opa’s bakery.

Field Trips: The Reality
I ended up being without a car for most of the winter, so we just stayed home. We made it to one Co-op event, a Valentine's party. I think SA in particular needs to get out a bit more. We went out this week and he got more and more anxious the farther we got from home. New and different situations take practice, with him.

I felt very happy with this term overall. I think I deepened in intention to do little things every day, and in understanding of how all those little things add up over time. It was exciting to see SA's reading take off, and his enjoyment in numbers and patterns continue to grow. I felt less satisfied with our work on habits, and I'm thinking of how to improve that this Spring.

My Weekly Homeschool Checklist

This is the checklist that I created to keep track of our first quarter of homeschooling kindergarten. I've saved it so I can tweak it as needed.

Weekly Homeschool Checklist (Kindergarten)

Each lesson on the daily checklist portion of the page is intended to be short (10-15 minutes). I've included a little space to take notes in case there are things I'd like to remember about that week in homeschooling. All the items in the weekly checklist at the bottom of the page are ones that we do together as a family, no matter what age.

I will revisit this after our quarter is complete so I can tell you how it went!

What are your plans for the school year? Please share! I love learning from what other people do.

Considering Year-Round Homeschooling

I've been interested in doing year-round homeschooling since I first stumbled across it online. You might think that sounds pretty intense (especially if you clicked on the link), but really it can be much more relaxed than cramming all your school into the "school year". Different families do it different ways, but I am considering organizing my year into quarters, with 45 school days in each quarter. To make things easy, I would start each quarter on the first day of each season. We'd do 4-day school weeks, and there will still be over a week to play with each quarter.
Why would I consider this?

1. I really want learning to be a natural way of life in our home. I think having learning as a relaxed part of our regular daily routine year-round serves this purpose better than having weeks and weeks of school, followed by weeks and weeks of vacation.

2. There's really no obvious reason that I should follow the standard school year. I'm free to organize my year as I see fit, to suit my family's needs.

3. As someone who loves planning but tends to lose steam after a while, planning each quarter separately would be highly motivating for me. I'd have an opportunity to tweak my plans and begin with energy once again at the beginning of each season.

4. Seasonal planning makes sense where I live. We have different weather in each season, making different kinds of opportunities for learning in each season. (For example, we could have more outdoor pursuits in the Summer and Fall, like gardening and field trips, and more indoor pursuits in the Winter and Spring, perhaps more reading aloud and focus on academics.)

What might the drawbacks be?

1. It might be nice to be off during the summer, as it's so short here. I would counter that by having a lighter schedule during the summer, and planning more nature study and history/geography field trips for then.

2. There might be less time for my children to hang out with their friends in the summer holidays. My children are young, though, and don't know too many people in the school system yet.

I really think this is worth trying for my family, at least for these early years. I'll keep you posted as to how it works for us!
How about you? Have you tried year-round homeschooling or know anyone who has? Do you see any major pitfalls that I'm not considering? Any benefits? Please comment!