Ready to Relax

Take time to smell the flowers.

Our official school year has ended. The weather here has been gorgeous for most of the week and we have been taking advantage of the warm breezes and sunny days. I think the boys were only in the house about two hours yesterday. They spent much of the morning designing and constructing a cardboard quiver for their Air Hunter Z-Curve Bows. I worked on the final stages of their homeschool portfolios. Just when I thought I could finish them in record time, I ran out of paper for my Dymo label maker. After a quick trip to Target this morning, I should be able to check portfolios off of my to-do list.

I'm also in the middle of a packing frenzy for our trip to Maine. Because we are staying in a cottage with a full kitchen, I plan to cook most of our meals instead of eating out. I want to take as much food as we can from home and only buy the foods that won't travel well when we get there. All of this planning and organizing is adding a bit more stress to my life than I really want. It made me wonder if the relaxation I hope to enjoy while at the cottage is worth the stress caused by pulling off the trip in the first place.

I have been reading a fantastic book this month, Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time by Brigid Schulte. I know my schedule is not nearly as hectic as many of my friends; I do not work outside the home, my kids are involved in almost no sports, I guard my time very jealously. But I still feel the stress brought on by the time crunch we all feel living in such an always-on world. I am looking at changing the way I use technology in my daily life. I want to cut back on my online time this summer, maybe setting up specific times of day for checking in, then disconnecting and spending time doing more tangible work around the house. Or better yet, taking time to just relax and do nothing. I wonder if I can still remember how to just sit and not do anything.

That should make for a very interesting summer...

Carefree Kids

newest child designed game

We've been enjoying a very laid-back final school week in order to cope with a hectic life schedule. Luckily I knew it was coming, so I didn't over plan and everyone could work with less stress. JT finished his math course with Thinkwell and pulled off a 95% on the final exam. I was a bit worried that he would have a hard time because we've never really done a final exam for any other subject. He took a practice final at the end of last week, then he reviewed the lessons that went with the four questions he missed on Monday and Tuesday. After a little more review of the most common formulas for area and volume he would need, he took the final today. I was very happy that he was able to identify the areas he needed to work on, and then implement a plan that allowed him to do well on the final. It's good to see those study skills developing.

I plan to complete my work on the portfolios over the weekend. Then on Monday I will sit down with each of the boys, discuss their work for the year, and get their input on the plan for their next year of schooling. Monday night we will be seeing a performance by a local theater group about Ben Franklin. Bloomsburg Theater Ensemble puts on a Theater in the Classroom show every year at one of the local libraries. They are always excellent both in presentation and content. After that show, our school year is a wrap!

I'd also like to share one more thing tonight. This week Matt Walsh had a great post on his blog titled, Here are 13 things for kids to worry about instead of college and test preparation.  Every time I read a story about kids that are struggling in a bad school situation, it feels so good to look at my boys and see how carefree they are. They are creative, happy, and seem to really enjoy learning. Maybe that would be the case even if they were still in public school, but knowing how things were going when we pulled JT out, I'm guessing not. I hope improvements can be made to the system so that all schools can be places full of learning, happy kids. Until then, homeschooling remains the best option for our family, and many others like us. I'm thankful to live in a country that allows me that freedom of choice.

Coasting

It begins.

The last two weeks of schooling have been about as uneventful as it gets. Both of the boys are wrapping up their math work for the year, JT on Thinkwell, EM with Singapore 5B. We did our last Story of the World lesson last week, our last American History reading yesterday, last spelling test tomorrow. We have two more science lessons remaining, one is an experiment with some potential for excitement involving production of gases. I love it when the instructions include a step that says, "...bring the burning splint to the mouth of the jar. Be prepared for a reaction." After that experiment, there's really not much left to do except finish recording our work and close up the classroom.

Once we picked up the replacement printer, I started production for the portfolios. I'm not very original. We just keep using the same format year after year. Thanks to that, I had most of the documents ready to go with just a few alterations before printing. The most time-consuming portion of the project is taking pictures of their art so I can print a page of examples of their work. I'll probably tackle that project next week. I really want to wrap this whole thing up within a few days of our last day, May 2nd. Usually, I'll let it drag out until the day before we meet with the evaluator, but this year we planned a vacation to celebrate the end of the school year. We will be spending a week in Ogunquit, Maine!

We are all pretty excited about this trip. None of us have ever been to Maine. The closest I have been was on a ten year anniversary trip to Vermont with my husband, twelve years ago. Not many of the usual attractions will be open yet, since we will be staying pre-season, but we got a great deal on a cottage right on the shore. I want this trip to be about relaxation, not planned events. I recently read a blog post about the under-appreciation of rest in our society at Becoming Minimalist, that really made me change the plan for our vacation. I wanted to try to work a day trip into Boston into the week. We may still do it, but only if we can do it without much added planning and stress. Really, all I want to do is sit on the beach and stare at the ocean.

Before I can do that, I need to wrap up year six of our journey. Summer will probably have more planning time than usual since I have high school looming for JT. In the meantime, we'll just glide through these last few days of schooling with our eyes on the rest ahead.

Tools of the Trade

old friend

You never realize how much you use something until it decides to break. On Saturday, the black ink stopped flowing. At first, I thought I had a bad cartridge. Even though the display claimed it was half-full, I made a trip to Target, and $20 later, it still wouldn't print anything with black ink. Fortunately, I only had one more thing to print that night to complete my school planning, so I changed the font color to light red, and moved on.

As the week progressed, my plans kept getting thrown off because of the nearly useless printer. JT couldn't print out his latest draft of his persuasive report. I couldn't print the worksheet he needed to do for Thinkwell math. EM wanted a picture of our cat to give to his favorite art teacher that is moving away. A printer may be a luxury item to some, but in our house, it seems to be a necessity. With portfolio preparation looming, I am on the search for a perfect replacement. But this little frustration made me start thinking about the other indispensable tools I keep in my homeschooling toolbox.

confetti maker

Paper keeping is essential to our homeschooling life. We need to produce a portfolio of each of the boys' work at the end of every school year. My chosen method of presentation is a three ring binder with their work divided by subject. At the end of each week, I use my three hole punch on every paper the boys have produced and add them to the holding binder. Three times during the school year, I pull my favorite samples and move them to the keeping binder. All the remaining papers are stored in a box until the portfolios have been approved. It may seem like a small tool, but it is key to our organization and documentation of our progress.

artsy stuff

Over the years, our art projects have taken a smaller role in our homeschooling days. But when the boys were younger, I was pulling stuff from this cupboard on a daily basis. I still keep an ample supply of many kinds of paper. I also like to have good quality colored pencils, paints, and pastels available for the boys to work with. I try to have them complete one art project each month. They also like to hit up my supply closet when they are creating new board games.

Where in the world?

We have maps in several rooms of our home. The boys both had world maps on their walls until recently. JT took his down when we painted his room, but EM still has his. There is another world map on the wall in the library, and a United States map in the classroom. We also own a large collection of atlases and road maps. When we read history, I like to have the boys go to a map to get an idea of the geography of the areas we are studying. I think it's important to see our place in the global picture.

must haves

I was never a hoarder until I became a homeschooler. In the bottom of my art cupboard, I keep a good supply of glass containers that we can use for our science studies. You never know when you might want to mix up some chemicals in the classroom. I like to keep small containers, especially the ones used for spices. They work well for water and soil samples. My collection was also very helpful when we did our entomology unit a few years ago.

These are just a few of the things that make our homeschooling journey a little easier. Nothing very expensive, but all important to our daily activities. As our years of homeschooling add up, I find that I buy less and less for the classroom. It's not necessarily that we have everything we could use, it's just that I have found we don't need much to get by. Learning doesn't have to be about the fancy educational products out there. It just takes curiosity and a few handy tools you pick up along the way.

Closer

bee hangout

Spring has finally come! At least, mostly. We did have a crazy, not-in-the-forecast, snow storm Sunday afternoon into evening. Monday morning, the inch or two that accumulated quickly melted, and my crocuses popped open to welcome the bees.

On our classroom calendar, we are down to 18 days of school remaining to reach our required 180. I've been encouraging the boys to spend as many hours outside as they can, even taking some of their work out to them, so they could work in the fresh air.

This week we started our last unit study for the year, health. We will be focusing on chapter one, "Your Health and Wellness," of the Glencoe book, Teen Health, Course 1.  This unit will last the five remaining weeks of our study this year. Each week we will cover a separate lesson from the book, supplementing with online activities tied to the textbook on the Glencoe site, as well as BrainPOP videos and quizzes on related subjects. The study focuses on the idea that your total health is influenced by three different aspects; physical, emotional, and social health. 

This week I also had a great conversation with JT's future Spanish teacher. I called her to discuss whether he should start with the school's Intro to Spanish course or move right into Spanish 1. After I gave her some background about JT's schooling, she decided he'd do just fine starting with Spanish 1. It turns out she homeschooled her three children until they reached high school. She is very excited to have a homeschooler coming to her classroom next year. I am so thrilled to know JT's first classroom experience after six years of learning at home will be with a woman who understands homeschooling from the inside! We talked for about half an hour, sharing our experiences. She shared a few good websites to get JT up to speed with the students who took the Intro to Spanish class; myspanishgames.com and quizlet. She uses both in her classroom regularly. The quizlet site has the complete list of vocabulary words found in the textbook, Descubre, used by her Spanish 1 class.

I also spent a little time this week doing preliminary work on organizing the portfolios. This may be the earliest I have ever started that project. I want to get as much of the work out of the way before our last day of school because May will be a busy month. Our last day of school will be at the beginning of the month. Our meeting with our evaluator is on the 21st. That sounds like plenty of time to get things together until you throw in a trip to Maine. I would rather not have portfolios on my mind while I am relaxing along the shore. This could finally be a good enough reason to keep me from procrastinating.

Unexpected

hand wash only

When I started out as a new homeschooler I had a few expectations. I was pretty sure my life was about to get much busier. I felt an immense amount of responsibility to do everything just right or else risk my children never being able to get into college or get a real job. I was very concerned that I keep every piece of paper we generated in order to produce the perfect portfolio to prove I was doing a good job.

I never really thought I'd practically have a science lab in my house.

This week, while cleaning up after another science experiment, I took a look around my laundry room and realized it didn't look like the average person's laundry room with beakers, flasks, and funnels on top of the dryer. That made me start thinking about the other unexpected outcomes of our homeschooling journey.

at least I got a dining room

I have discovered that I spend LOADS of time researching, organizing, finding opportunities, and planning the boys' studies. I did not expect that we'd spend so little time in the classroom we added on the house when we made the decision to homeschool. For the first few years, we did spend more time in the classroom. As the boys have grown older, they have found their own places in the house to do their independent work. Other than the time I spend planning in the classroom, we only spend about two hours a day in there for schooling.


Everyone seems to think that homeschoolers get trapped alone, at home, and never socialize. I expected to feel a little isolated in our new routine, but I was wrong about that one too. We have met many families at homeschooling events, at the library, at state park programs, and through blogging about homeschooling. In fact, I probably have more friends now than I did before homeschooling. The boys have also made many friends both local and across the country via the internet.

The biggest surprise of all has probably been that I am not counting the days until this gig ends. Yes, some days I want to throw them out of the house... and have, on occasion, locked them out to play in the yard so I can take a break... but most of the time we all get along very well. We enjoy one another's company. We laugh at the same jokes. We have many of the same interests. We love to travel together. Way back in 2008, I was sure I'd want that big yellow bus to come take these boys away in just a few months, but the days passed and we adjusted to our routine. We found out we loved the homeschooling lifestyle. I didn't miss the stress of getting reluctant kids out the door before the sun was barely over the horizon. I didn't miss meetings with teachers that turned into yet another issue we had to try to resolve. I didn't even miss the free time I had that allowed me to keep the house clean.

The unexpected results of homeschooling have brought me more joy than all that free time or the cleanest house or that big yellow bus could ever have.

High School Plan

potential plan

I remember how I felt the first year we brought the boys home for school. I saw years ahead of me, planning what to teach, no end in sight. Now here I am, planning JT's high school years. In fact, I'm nearly half-way through my homeschooling years, assuming EM homeschools through graduation. Realizing how short the time is has made me want to spend considerable time working out a detailed plan for the next four years for JT, and seven years for EM.

Now that we have decided to use PHAA as JT's diploma program, we have a framework to use for our planning. The graduation requirements are 4 years of English, 3 years of mathematics, 3 years of science, 3 years of social studies, 2 years of arts and humanities. My rough plan for his 9th grade year looks like this - English will be primarily covered through tutoring by a former teacher/neighbor with the speech component of the English credit being my responsibility. I'm looking into getting enough kids together to participate in Poetry Out Loud. If that doesn't work out, we'll look for other opportunities. Math will be an Algebra I course through Thinkwell online. We may look into additional tutoring to make sure JT is really absorbing the math. Science next year will be a full course of biology. I'm still researching textbooks. I currently have it narrowed down to two or three possibilities. I am very comfortable teaching biology, so I don't think I'll need any outside help on that one. For social studies, I plan to put together a course consisting of two separate components, half the year covering American government and the other half on world geography. I want to continue our timeline study of American history, but that won't fit into the format for PHAA as well. We will just do that in addition to his credit course. Arts and humanities will be easy to cover in a variety of ways. He will end up with more credits than he needs. For the next two years, he'll be taking Spanish classes from a local private Christian school.  He will also continue taking drum lessons. Either of those activities can count for those credits. He may also take a few Coursera classes that might work as credits. Finally, even though there is no requirement by PHAA for physical education, our state's homeschooling regs do require it. JT will either be playing basketball and/or participating on the track team at the same school where he will take Spanish class.

Starting the planning felt a little overwhelming, but once I really looked at it, I realized it was easier than I thought. I still need to make more thorough plans for EM for next year. Things will be a lot different since JT will need to spend more time per subject, but have fewer subjects to cover than EM. I will probably sit down with EM closer to the end of the year to work out what he'd like to do next year.

One of the most important things I have learned in my years homeschooling is that planning always pays off. Sometimes the plans don't work out, but the process of planning helps me to see where we have been, where we are, and where we are going next. The more data I have about our journey, the better path I can make for the future.