Getting Connected

This summer has been one of the best summers of my life. Absolutely, without a doubt, positively, the best. Hands down! Why you might ask? Have a taken a wonder drug that I can tell you about? Well, no, not really. I am just getting connected.

I am getting connected with myself, first and foremost. I have spent time really understanding what I want from my life. What I need to accomplish. What marker I want to leave with my life. From my life. I have been prayerful in making sure God is guiding me and my decisions. For His guidance and direction, I am thankful. I will quickly tell you, you can not start anywhere else. You have to begin the journey with just you and God. No two ways about it. At least that is my heartfelt belief.

Second, I am getting connected with my family. I have spent great, deep down bonding time with Little Buddy this summer. Down in the floor playing time. Outside blowing bubbles time. Under the table reading about nomads time. Laughing at the clouds time. Discovering baby birds, mallard ducks, Little House on the Prairie. And having our hearts broken over baby bunnies that did not make it. We are positively closer than I remember us being in many a moon.

Thirdly, I am getting connected with the world. For so long, I worked. Now, I was super connected with my working network. I knew everyone in the field that I worked and spent a great deal of time making sure to stay in contact with them. Now, I am connecting with people of all walks of life, from all regions in this country and others, and loving getting to know each and everyone one of them. Homeschooling parents and writers have really had a deep tug on my heart over this summer. I have sought out their kindred spirits to be able to learn from these experts. I just have to say, these are some of the kindest, smartest individuals I have ever had the fortune to encounter.

What connections are next? Well, I think I have really just started. My life is much different from this time a year ago and I just can not wait to see what is in store for my future.

Today's Adventure: Backward Day

Yep, that's right. Off the top of my head this morning, I came up with the hair brained idea of having a "Backward Day." Pretty spontaneous, right? Little Buddy thought so. He thought it sounded like a good day to him.
As I walked into Little Buddy's room this morning, I had my shirt on backward. He thought I had just "lost it," but really, it was all part of my fun day with mama plan. He asked me why my shirt was on backward and I announced, "because it is Backward Day, Buddy." Some of the fun things we have done today are:

• Wore our shirts backwards
• Ate our breakfast from the wrong side of the fork (that was a challenge, I admit!)
• Did all of our homeschool work under the dining room table. I had thrown a blanket over the table so that it was like a tent for our study of nomads. That made it all the more entertaining.

There is no telling what other crazy, hair-brained, homeschooling mama idea I may come up with for more backward day activities. If you have any that I can use, please share them. It sure does keep things interesting around here. On to art and music appreciation this afternoon. I have to admit, I can not quiet figure out how to work those in to my backward day festivities.

By the way, I think I'll leave the blanket over the dining room table for a while. We might just have lessons under there all week as we study the nomads.

Weekly Wrap-up: Week 3

This week we enjoyed school at our lake house. I posted about it in School by the Lake. We especially enjoyed our special classmates, the two mallards.
I spent a good bit of time really evaluating where Little Buddy is with his school work. I could tell that we were getting completed with our coursework extremely quickly and wanted to be sure that Little Buddy wasn't just rushing through to be done. We had thoughtful conversations about it at bedtime, bath time, and during our school time. Not too much, but just enough probing questions for Little Buddy to share what he was thinking. I was impressed with the conversation and his evaluation of where we were and where we were heading. I do not believe I had given him enough credit before this week on his ownership of his schoolwork or on how advanced he is in many of the subject areas. To be frank, he already knew everything I was trying to teach him!
I spent the nights researching and remapping some of the lesson plans to include more challenging work for him. It made all the difference. I drafted out lesson plans through the end of February 2010 for our major studies of math and language arts. Now, I need to add in for science, history, Latin, and special studies. I am also going back and revisiting the books that I had previously chosen for our weekly readings, along with the artists and musicians we were going to be studying. I think now I am getting much deeper into my planning so that all of his school work is more comprehensive and pulled together. At least it is in my mind.
We should be completed with all 2nd Grade level language arts by Thanksgiving and 3rd Grade level math by the end of February 2010. I've planned celebrations for each milestone and order dates for ordering the next level of work.
I shared my planning with Little Buddy and showed him the lesson plan book which includes EVERYTHING! He smiled at me and said, "this looks like we'll learn a lot, thank you."
Now, that makes a Mama proud.

Visit Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers for more Weekly Wrap-up fun!

School by the Lake

This week we spent another few days at our lake house. We hardly ever come here, but for some reason this summer, I have just needed this place. It has been such a great source of relaxation and enjoyment over the past couple of weeks as we have visited. I now wonder why we haven't been coming more often. Could it be all of the farm animals we have at home? The RV that begs to be taken out on another adventure? Or just the routine of daily life that I do not take the time to push aside for a change of scenery? Regardless, the lake house now is up on my list of frequent visits. I'll just have to make the time.
We enjoyed school by the lake this week. I was a bit apprehensive as to how it would go, but it went well. During our morning prayer on Thursday, we heard a bit of a rustling beside us in the back yard by the lake. When our prayer was over, I looked up to see two gorgeous mallards. A male and a female walking straight to us. I knew then to take a deep breath and enjoy the nature around us during our lessons. I adjusted the plan and we spent as long as we could watching the mallards and talking about them. It honestly prompted the best discussion that Little Buddy and I had all morning and then opened up other topics that I am sure we would not have discussed otherwise.
Our mallards visited us again for school on Friday morning. Little Buddy asked if they were visiting like the swan visited Sam in "The Trumpet and the Swan." How insightful.

Controlling the Clutter

Drawers packed full of art projects? Storage bins in the attic or closet with projects you just have to keep, but can't enjoy from the attic? If this sounds familiar, check out my article at Chic Galleria by clicking on the link here.

These tricks sure have helped our family regain some storage while allowing us to actually enjoy those art pieces from preschool! Hope it helps your family, too.

Be sure to comment if you try this method or even have another method to recommend readers (me!).

Weekly Wrap-up: Week 2

With a wonderful first week under our belt, I just knew week 2 would go just as smoothly. Whoa! We had to jockey times around for golf camp, which lasts two + hours each day. I started getting just a wee bit stressed about not starting schoolwork until later in the day. I certainly don't want Little Buddy to think that we can be willy, nilly about our schoolwork. Well, it all came out in the wash (as my Grandmother used to say).
We accomplished all that we had planned for this week and have even mapped out a wonderful month of July for our homeschool. Looking back on this week, I am really glad that I had the stress of juggling times so early in our homeschooling experience. It taught me a great deal.

You should guard your time carefully. Make sure where you dedicate your time is where you want your time dedicated. Do not schedule every minute of every day so that you can have some time for free play and relaxation, but do not have an aimless schedule. Your time management habits will be followed by your children. You are their main role model for these skills. Teach them well.

You can learn in the afternoons, too. I had approached our homeschooling day a little backward I now realize. I had thought we should get up, eat breakfast, and then tackle our book work. Get it all done early so that we can have fun in the afternoons. Oh how wrong I was. I have now learned that our schoolwork can be done at any time of the day that works best for us. While a set schedule does work best for routines and planning, sometimes, we need some flexibility.

More than anything I learned to have a positive attitude and do not let myself get stressed out about it. Little Buddy certainly picks up on it when I am stressed and it just does not make for a good atmosphere for either of us.

Now for next week, we are return to our regularly scheduled program.

Living Math Lessons

Wondering where you can squeeze in more living math lessons? We have fit in a few this week. The more I began looking for living math opportunities, the more I seemed to find. Here are some that we had this week. I am sure there were many more that I failed to include.

1. Couponing. I've mentioned this before in another post. Or was it on Twitter? Anyway, I was excited and shocked at how much Little Buddy enjoyed clipping and then using coupons. He was on a mini-scavenger hunt all through the grocery store with me. He would compare prices for me and calculate the new price. Great math lesson. He read a good deal as well. And of course, we used some of the savings we had for an Icee on the way out. :) Fun and rewards were had by all.

2. Golf. During Little Buddy's golf camp, I heard the coach giving them scores from 1-10 on their hits. The first one to get to a certain number one the "shoot-out." He would ask the children what their score was as they went along. He made them add their scores. If they missed their adding, he would correct them nicely. They had a vested interest in making sure their adding was correct and had to do it rather quickly. Great lesson.

3. Tennis. Similar to golf, but the children were keeping score in a tennis match themselves. Amazing how sharp they are with their math skills when they are competing in a game.

4. Allowance. We handle our allowance a little differently lately. Little Buddy receives a certain amount each week and then extra for additional chores, such as helping with yard work, etc. He has to divide his allowance equally into three categories: 1) spend 2) save 3) donate. This is his responsibility to manage and know his balances each week. (With just a wee bit of help :))

5. Toys. Little Buddy has been saving his allowance for a while for a special Lego. Before we could go to the store to get this Lego, he had to be sure that he had enough allowance in his spending category to use. We remind him that tax also has to be included in purchases and ask him to estimate how much he expects to spend in tax. This is a little bit advanced since we are just beginning to work on our multiplication. At least he understands the reason why he needs to know his multiplication facts.

These are some of the living math lessons that I recognized this week. What about you? Do you have special lessons that I should look to include in our lives. Leave a comment to share.