First Day Of School

We did it - the first day of school - and we survived.

I really need to tweak the system I tried today - the routine is definitely in need of adjustment.  But, in hindsight, I mean, every routine needs some adjustment.  Anyway, here's what we did today:

Woke up and started the day by getting ready immediately.  We were dressed and fed and beds stripped and little girl hair brushed and everything by 8am.  This seems early, but we didn't wake up any earlier than we usually do, we just got our act together a bit better.  I liked this part and how it set the tone for the day, but looking back I think we need to have clothes laid out the night before to avoid issues, and also I need to plan a bigger breakfast to see everyone through the morning.

We started school with a circle time which is an idea I really like but needed to plan out better.  We prayed for our school day, and then did some exercises and songs.  Again, really like the idea but need to implement it better.

Then we moved on to read-aloud time.  I had a specific book I was going to read to them but I thought they could choose some stories to have me read aloud first.  Not the best idea, maybe, since they were pretty tired of sitting by the end of it.  So tomorrow we'll just read the book I choose and maybe try a second story time later in the day if I can handle it.

We read our book, and then I asked the boy to tell me aloud what the story had been about - he did really well with this!  I need to read more about doing narration with small children but I was impressed.

Then we moved on to our activity - since the book we read was Blueberries for Sal I made letter circles and hid them around the house to find.  Then we laid all the letters of the alphabet out in order and again I was really impressed by how well this was done.

Finally we made blueberry muffins for our snack.  Sigh.  Cooking with small children.  Anyway.

So that was our first day of school.  It was about 2 hours long, which is more than I planned for but the game and muffins went on much longer than I thought.

Learning Notes for the end of July

As the first two weeks of July consisted of many days of driving and then camp and visiting and quite a bit more driving, the only thing that David and I managed to get sorted about school for our son was that it was going to happen at home again.  Take two, if you will.  And then of course there was a solid week of getting 'back into the swing of things'.  And so it fell on the final week of July for me to get curriculum organized and such - and I thought I was really ahead of the game, a whole month ahead, and then I saw people starting to 'do school' in August.  So in fact I am not way ahead of the game but sadly behind as usual.

So anyway, this past week I kept a very gentle, brief outline of some learning notes while I puttered on the curriculum for this school year.  Some of the things we did this past week include some math and logic games, discussing how everyone has a job, making paper airplanes, practical life skills (washing coins and filling up the q-tip container) and attending library club.  We read a lot of books aloud as well, some old favourites and a few new titles, some better than others.

And now here it is, Sunday, and I ordered the first batch of 'school stuff' from the library early last week but it hasn't arrived yet.  However, we are going to start school tomorrow regardless.  There you go.  I'm pretty certain that this first week (or month) will consist of just trying to get our feet under us again and figure out the whys and wherefores of what it is we're doing, so I won't share too much about our curriculum quite yet - I don't want to get all depressed if it doesn't go exactly according to plan.  I will say this though:

We're doing a literature-based kindergarten year and our main focal points will be phonics and math skills.  Our day is going to be loosely structured and I'm hoping that will help my desire for order.

Reading to the children and on my own

We've been focusing on trying to finish Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes as our bedtime chapter book, and the other night we finally got through it.  Personally, I loved it, and so did the boy.  I'm not as sure that Clara was a big fan, but they both did very well listening.  We're definitely going to have to read The Moffats, by the same author.  In the meantime I think we're going to take a different turn and read some Beverly Cleary.

Now what have I been reading?  A bit of this and a bit of that, really.  We were traveling quite a bit this month so I read Pride and Prejudice again, and then picked up and finished a book by a Canadian author - The Door Is Open - about Christian hospitality.  Now I'm reading some Barbara Pym and Kristin Lavransdattar is waiting for me.  A little intimidated.

My children eat fish

Of course, it's not their favourite meal, but here's three ways (all very easy) that the children won't moan when I put fish in front of them.  Which I do.  At least once a week.  Because I'm mean.

Creamed Salmon (or tuna) On Toast

Essentially you make a bechamel sauce - heat a fat, whisk in a flour until smooth, slowly add warm milk until a thick cream sauce happens - and season with salt, pepper, etc.  Add your flaked canned fish, serve over toast.  You can add peas if you like.

Breaded Fish

Shake those pieces of fish in a shake-n-bake coating and bake them in the oven.

Maple Salmon

I marinate the fish in a marinade of garlic, ginger, soy sauce, maple syrup and then bake.

Back

We got back a few days ago from two weeks away (I can't say it was a vacation, really) and we were incredibly happy for the break.  The first week we drove about 10 hours in one day to get to the city and saw my sister and her 6 month old twins, who I'd never met, and spent some time with David's parents and family and our friends.  Then David drove an hour to the conference he had to go to, spent the night, drove back on day two to get the girls and I, drove back, then drove all of us back the next day after the conference was over.  Whew.  Lots of highway driving.  Then we had another few days in the city with more trips to see people, and then we all packed up for a week at family camp.  Camp was wonderful for the children but wasn't much of a break for us, but we did eat a lot of food and go swimming every day.  Then back again up north with an overnight stop to see even more family until finally we showed up at our door - with a summer cold and a lot of laundry and dirty children in the back seat.

So for the past couple of days we've been busy - visiting a parishioner in the nursing home who is leaving us, grocery shopping, picking up the cats from the kennel, taking the car in to be serviced, airing out the house and pushing through the laundry situation.

Today, hopefully, we'll have the car all fixed up, or at least as fixed up as a 13 year old car is going to get.  I've made cherry jam and I'm trying to figure out if my sanity is up for taking all three children out to pick strawberries so I don't miss the harvest.  David is almost over the summer cold he picked up at camp, and I just have a bit of a cough, but at least one child is sick and that's resulting in a lot of tv and rest.

Anyway, here we are halfway into the week already and I'm pacing myself for the rest of the incredibly busy summer.

Homeschooling Update

It's been a little while since I did a homeschooling update, and since there have been some pretty substantial changes (well, one major one, anyway) it seems high time.

Since the beginning of the month my son has, more or less, been attending the local public school.  It's come as no less of a shock to me than to anyone else, really.  The reasons are many and varied, but the biggest one was that we've always said that we would give him the best education for HIM, and that in fact his education was not for us in any way, but for his benefit, and stemming from that we would re-evaluate our decision to home school him each year and decide whether that was the best decision for him and his own personal educational journey each time.  We had a great year at home and I do truly believe that it was the best education for him this year, but for several reasons David and I had begun wondering if next year should be in the public school system.  We decided to enroll him in school for the last month in order to get a better feeling for what was involved and how the system worked and if the boy thrived or not and just get more information all 'round to make our decision for next year.

There are some incredible benefits to homeschooling, and I'm learning that there are some very real benefits to public school as well.  Probably the biggest one is simply that that's where all the kids are, which should have been more obvious to me before but there you are.  My son is so, so, social and just wants to be with others so much of the time that it's been a challenge for me to figure out how to accommodate this need.  I've tried integrating into the homeschooling community, but with the exception of a few playdates and one field trip I've found it hard - we live quite far away from the central hub of homeschooling families.  The boy is my oldest child, so I'm in uncharted waters when it comes to kindergarten-aged friendships and how they work and how to foster them.  Our church is too small for a children's ministry so we send our son on Tuesday nights to another church in a different town to attend a children's Bible club, but friendships haven't seemed to stem from that.  He also attends a vacation Bible school in the summer at the same church.  It's just all been a bit of a shock to me, how hard it is to find another child for my child to play with.  So for that reason I will say that public school has been a relief.

David and I have agreed not to make any final decisions about school until the end of the month, but I think we can safely say we've enjoyed the experiment, but we're getting a little tired of it.  Public school is a lot of work!  There are constant reams of paper coming home and you have to plan your entire day around the time you drop the child off and pick them up.  The spontaneity is absolutely at an all time low in the house.  To go grocery shopping (which is an hour away) I either have to excuse the boy from school, or make this mad dash in between the time I drop him off and pick him up and hope the school doesn't call or the car doesn't break down and so forth.  Clara and Lillian both miss their brother and now THEY have no one to play with either.  He's so tired when he comes home, and crabby, and we all seem to get sick a lot more as well and he's eating less at his lunchtime.  I have to be on the ball with lunches now as never before because he can't just have some reheated leftover shepherd's pie like he would if he was home; he needs an actual packed (peanut free) lunch.

There are pluses and minuses, as I knew there would be and I was prepared for it.  Actually, I was prepared for a lot worse so I've been pleasantly surprised.  And the downsides are almost all about us, as a family, not about the school.  The school does its job well and orderly, but we may not fit into their mold as nicely as others do, I don't know.  Maybe we've been marching to our own drum for too long.

I have continued to look at homeschooling options for the fall on the chance that we decide to opt out of school for another year.  This past month has been such an eye-opener for me in terms of curriculum choices; I think I finally understand where a lot of my frustration with schooling was coming from - I didn't need to do less, I needed to do MORE!  I was so influenced by the gentle Charlotte Mason style approach to early learning that I ignored my own desire for structure and checklists - I realize now that I need to figure out a way to teach that also honours my teaching style, not just my children's learning style.  I've made some tentative curriculum choices for next year in case we need them, and they are all quite a bit more structured than anything we used this past year.  I've also been listening to what my son talks about all the time regarding school - mostly this seems to be playing outside and using the computers.  If that's what he likes, then that's what we'll do, too.  If we keep homeschooling we'll have a dedicated educational game time on the computer and we're going to have to get everyone outside more somehow, even with the whining toddler and the baby who puts everything in her mouth and can't go on the ground.  We'll figure it out.

Ultimately, that's the thing, isn't it?  You figure it out as you go along.  You have your children's best interests at heart, you use your adult mind to work around the problems and come up with solutions, you take suggestions from the troops, and you keep on.

Coming home

Gah!  Time flew away from me again and I lost the momentum on my couple-times-a-week posting schedule.  Back on the horse.

My mother has been staying with us for the past several days because David went out of town for school.  You'll remember from the endless ministry updates that I used to do (and don't anymore because there's almost nothing to update once you actually ARE a minister) that David is working on finishing all the courses he needs for ordination.  This past week he went to complete two of them that were being offered about 12 hours away and he arrives home today, which is terribly exciting news for me because even with mom here parenting solo is hard work.