2 Years Already!?!

I cannot believe it was 2 years ago this week, that we pulled Monkey out of school. I was both scared and excited to start! Looking back, I think I was TOO eager to start, we started right after coming back from our Christmas vacation trip, when I think we should have taken a few more weeks off to 'de-school' before jumping in.  Anyway, hindsight is 20/20, and while it did take a while to get into a groove, I think we have finally found that groove! Adding Bunny to the mix only slightly stirred the pot, but overall, we have gotten in a good routine that seems to be working.

After 2 years, I think we've finally settled into a routine that feels comfortable.

Each week, I pencil in what they'll do for the week. Sometimes I don't know what we'll cover on which day until the night before, so I don't fill it in until after we've completed the day. For History or Science, I have a list of readings, activities, videos, links that we plan to do over a whole unit, which might last 1-2 months, so we just go down the list and try to plan how much to cover each week.

I write up what they need to do for the day on a white-board (sometimes separating the independent vs. work I do with them), and they erase it as they go:

And generally, this is how our day goes: 

• Morning Bible lesson/devotional together at the breakfast table
• Science/History - read aloud and any activities together (We are alternating Science/History every couple of weeks)
• The rest of the morning is spent doing what is on their white-board, which usually covers math, geography, Chinese, and/or language arts. If I need to spend time individually with one of them for any subject, I do it one-on-one, but mostly this is when I do my work for my job.
• Lunch - While they eat, I will often read aloud some light geography or history when our focus is science, or we will watch a Chinese kids' video over lunch, or practice some Chinese words. 
• After lunch, they finish up any other individual work that needs to be done, and can read, play, whatever until whatever afternoon activity we have (sometimes shopping errands, or extracurricular activities or playdates). They get screen time if they've finished their work, read something, done something creative, and played outside (or inside if weather is bad). 

It's not quite a schedule and every day there's flexibility for them to choose in which order to do things. When we have co-op or field trips or other activities, we just push things back or skip the 'schedule' for the day. 

So as I enter my third year, these are some of the areas I want to work on:

• Adding more formal Chinese teaching, maybe introducing more reading/writing, since we've mainly focused on listening and speaking.
• Getting them to pick up more life skills/chores, such as cooking or cleaning. 
• Give them some practice with studying and taking tests, since we have not done any testing (we will do our first standardized test this spring).
• Doing more discussion about their reading. We don't have any reading plan or curriculum right now, so we need to work on understanding more complex literary elements.  

We're in a happy place right now so I don't want to rock the boat too much, but hopefully I'll add these in slowly as we continue. 

Teaching Two Very Different Kids

Yesterday was our first day homeschooling Bunny and I'm so glad to say it went pretty smoothly! I had laid out the daily schedule and their weekly assignments ahead of time, with both kids doing Bible, science,  history and Chinese together, but math and language arts separately, all by lunchtime. I've always known the kids had very different personalities, but it was especially clear as they went through their day yesterday.

With Monkey, a non-sequential thinker, he never liked schedules or checklists. He liked to just go with what he felt like each day, often dragging his feet so that the work spread out all day with very little free time.  Bunny, though, is very orderly and likes to check things off her list and get them done so she can have lots of free time. Because I don't want to be at the mercy of them needing help randomly throughout the day while I'm working, we are trying a more structured schedule, starting at 8:30am. When it was just Monkey at home, some days he wouldn't even be up at 8:30, or even if he was, he putzed  around until 10-11 before starting on his work, and the work would be spread out all day. Bunny, however, at 8:32 was chastising Monkey about "making us late for Bible time".

So we got off to a good start-I worked with Bunny on math while Monkey worked on Language arts independently. Right away I could feel the difference. Bunny set up a spot on her clear desk for homeschooling. She wants to sit in a chair and have a shelf, in her room. Monkey has always resisted desk work and insists on being in the same floor, if not the same room as me. He rolls on the ground and lounges on the couch and if he's at a table, he gets up over and over, (Over the past year though, I've begun to insist that he does written work at a table, rather than on lounging on the ground, because he's so easily distracted, but he can stand, not sit if he's at a table, as long as he has a firm surface to write on).  Monkey picks up math concepts really fast, I barely have to teach him. My work with him is helping him to be careful and not sloppy with his arithmetic, keeping his work organized and not scribbled illegibly all over the page, and negotiating how many problems on the page to do. Bunny, on the other hand, took some explanation to get her to understand how to do the math (multiplying 2 digits by 1 digit), and she got frustrated because she didn't get it. After she understood, I asked her to do the practice problems but out of habit, I said she didn't have to do them all (Monkey hates needless repetition of the same type of problem). She proceeded to write out all the problems neatly and orderly on a separate piece of paper and decided to do ALL the problems! 9 problems took her maybe 3 lines of paper. This would've taken an entire sheet of paper for Monkey, and probably taken him 3 times as long (not from not understanding, but just from dawdling).

We then switched so Bunny did Language Arts while Monkey did math. There are 5 days of lessons, and Monkey usually would do just 1 day at a time, even though I've told him he can go ahead and do more, and have less work to do later in the week. Bunny finished 3 days worth in the time it took Monkey to go to the bathroom! She would've done more if I hadn't told her to save some for later this week. That NEVER happened with Monkey.

We moved on to science - Animal Classification. Because Bunny doesn't like to read non-fiction, I'm planning on reading aloud a lot. Monkey used to read almost all his social studies and science independently. So for now, I guess I'll just read aloud to both of them.  That's going to be a change for me to get used to...more time spent hands-on for  science and social studies.

That's all we did for the core academic subjects yesterday. Later she worked on her nature journal, which she decided on her own that she would like to do as her own personal project, and started last week. We had gone out and chosen a special book for her to write her observations in. This was one of the things she was looking forward to most about homeschooling so I hope it will be a great learning experience as she observes the changes of spring.

With the new schedule, they both had a lot of free time in the afternoon, while I worked. Bunny bicycled and played outside, played with the bunnies and worked on some of the Skrafty Minecraft Easter lesson from last week. Monkey built a couch cushion fort and played Big Brain Academy on the Wii. (Normally I restrict screen time until 4:30pm, but he convinced me this was 'educational'). Overall, it was a pretty good first day!

I think it will be interesting to teach two such widely different personalities. In some ways, Bunny will be easier and in some ways harder. She is the one who will get frustrated really easily if she can't understand something, and will take longer to understand math and science concepts, but she loves to write and does well with grammar, spelling, etc. Monkey is more difficult in getting him to do work, but he understands things faster, but getting him to write, and to write with correct grammar/spelling, is a LOT of work.  I think it's the whole right brained vs. left brained thing.  I think having the more structured schedule will be better for all of us, even though Monkey may fight it at first and maybe teaching the science and social studies more hands-on will also benefit them both too.

I really don't want to do 2 separate routines, so we're combining as much as we can, but I'm going to try to make allowances for their different learning styles and personalities, within the topics we're learning.

For Bunny, more:

• worksheets
• straight math problems
• writing projects
• historical fiction reading
• art
• sounding out spelling words and breaking words into parts

For Monkey, more:

• non-fiction reading
• living math
• word problems
• building projects
• computer projects 
• visualizing spelling words

Things I think will work for both of them are reading aloud, videos, map work, timelines, free writing, Latin/Greek roots, and Minecraft projects. 

There's so many other homeschoolers who have many, many more kids, and I wonder how they keep up with all their different ages, learning styles, and personalities!

Homeschool Schedule as a Working Mom

This is something that I've struggled with a lot this past year. Before, we started homeschooling, I didn't know how it would work out, being a working mom and a homeschooling mom. I knew it was doable, because other moms have done it, but I had no idea how things would work out for me. I

Thankfully, I work at home 3 days a week. I go to the office the other 2 days and a sitter watches Monkey.  When I'm home, I usually have some flexibility in my work and my hours, so I can work with Monkey throughout the day. Usually the work I do with him might be 1-2 hours, while the rest is independent. However, it never seems to be 1-2 hours in a row! It's a lot of interruptions, and alot of trying to split my attention between my job and my child, and it's really, really frustrating sometimes. Monkey is not a routine, check-list kind of person, so each day is different. Some days he does math first, some days he does science first. I didn't mind too much if it's independent work, but when it involves me, I need it to work with my job demands. Sometimes when he had something he had a question on, but I had an urgent task for work, I'd just have to put him off until I finish, which might be hours sometimes.

So now that we decided to bring Bunny home to be homeschooled (in 2 weeks!), I'm frantically trying to figure out how to get into an actual routine. I could tolerate the lack of routine when it was one child, but I figure I'm going to go nuts with two if I don't have a better plan (Twice as many interruptions! Twice as many "Have you worked on this yet?")

I did some google searches, and I came across this article that had some good tips for scheduling when you're a working mom.

So after some thought this is my plan:

Morning:

• Bible
• Math/Language arts, with me working with math with one child at a time, if needed
• Either Social Studies or Science (not both) with me reading to them or doing an experiment 
• Free Time until Lunch

Afternoon (This is when I'm planning to do most of my work for my job):

• Computer Skills (currently using CodeCademy, and Scratch ) for Monkey, Nature Journal for Bunny
• Free Exploration - No electronic screens during this time, but otherwise, they can do whatever they want: read, play outside, build couch cushion forts, play board games, art, WHATEVER! 
• Guitar practice (Monkey) 3 times a week
• Help with dinner (kids alternate days, with the other child allowed to have screen-time during this period))

Evening:

• Evening extracurriculars (seems like they have something every night of the week!)
• Reading after getting ready for bed (read aloud or independently)

On days I go to the office, They will do the Social Studies/Science/Math/Language arts independently at the sitter's house, and we will do Chinese during lunch, snack or dinner (most of it involves practicing words, watching a video, or practicing writing of a new word, which is the only one that we can't really do while eating).

On Fridays, no formal Social Studies/Science/Math/Language arts, but they will have a Friday Free-write, and work on home projects around the house (Laundry, Cleaning, Garden, etc. to help them learn these skills and to help me keep the housekeeping up.) Friday is the day that there is often a church event that we need to help with (we help with childcare for the moms who attend), so half the day will be taken up with that. 

Well, probably a month from now I'll look back on this post and laugh about how different it is from reality, once I really start homeschooling Bunny!