Tools of the Trade

These are the Things that help me stay organized:

1. Bookshelves

I keep one bookshelf in my dining room, which is the place where I do most of my work and planning. It holds all books and resources for the current school year.  My kids know where to find their books and where to put them back.

Our older books are in shelves throughout the house where kids can access them easily whenever they want.

Curriculum that is not currently being used is stored in our garage. (Trust me, you don't want to see a picture of that!)

2. Supply Shelf

I keep all of our supplies in our dining room hutch.  As you can see, it can get messy. However, it is easy to put back in order because there is a place for everything.  The three drawers contain, school supplies, math manipulatives, and other office supplies.

The top of the hutch contains pretty things, art pencils, and brushes, and nature collections.

The Bottom cabinets contain, art supplies, and our sewing machine,

3. Planners and Organizers

I have used home-made binder planners in the past, but this year I treated myself to an Erin Condren teacher's planner.  It is lovely! I will write a post about it later in the year as I use it. I will use it to keep information I need handy throughout the day.  I love the page protectors that are included.  I will use the "Lesson Plan" section for keeping track of morning time items, and non-independent work.

For their independent work, each student has their own folder with daily assignment and AO reading lists created in Homeschool Tracker.

4. Student's Notebooks

Each child has a box on our piano for all of their notebooks. I will write more about them later. For now, here is a list of the notebooks:

Math - Graph Composition Notebook
Composition Notebook for written Narrations
Composition Notebook for other Language arts assignments
Copybook
Clipboard
Book of Centuries

It can take a while to figure out a system that works for you.  My advice to to anyone homeschooling is to keep tweaking your system.  Throughout your day, take notes of what works, and what is frustrating you. (like: I need to find a better place for math manipulatives!, It would help to have a copy of the table of contents in my planner. We probably should get an electric pencil sharpener.) Then in the evenings, on weekends, or during school breaks, look at your notes and pick something to think through and work on.  

Memory Work 2016/2017

I've been busy getting everything ready. One of the things I do at the start of a new year is update, reorganize, or rethink our memory work binders. 

Currently, the tabs on my binder are as follows:

Bible,

Poetry,

Shakespeare

Geography

Speeches & Documents

Science

Math

History

This is what we do. We set aside 15 minutes a day for memory work.  I work with one of the children each day while the others work alone.  Each tab has a new item they are memorizing, and all of their memorized pieces behind it.  Each day they work on the new piece, and review an old piece. They keep a sticky flag to mark the reviewed piece, and move it to the next one each day.  I think I learned that trick from Mystie.  They go through as many tabs as time allows. Their is no deadline- they each just work on their pieces day after day. Whenever it's their day to work with me, I check on their progress.  If they have memorized something, I move it to the back of the section and add their new piece.

We use Geography Songs to help us learn the countries. We keep a blank map in their binder with a labeled map behind it to check from.  The kids use a wet erase marker to write in the countries they know, and then they turn it over to check themselves.  

 For math, the younger ones use Calculadder drills, and the older one uses the Saxon drill sheets. I'll also include things I want them to memorize, like measurements and formulas.

For History we are memorizing Memoria Press' History Timeline.  We add a new event every few weeks.

Memory work is so important and enriching, but I don't want it to take too much of our valuable time.  Setting a time limit and rotating through the binder is what has worked for us.  

Homeschool Tracker

     I've decided to give Homeschool Tracker Online another try this year.  At this point I'm not trying to figure out how it works. I've spent a couple of years using it and figuring it out already.  HST like most home school record keeping software has a learning curve. I have quit using it several times and have tried other programs in between, but now I think I have a better understanding of how best to use it for my purposes. So....Here we go again.

     Being familiar with the program allows me to better use it as a planning tool, not merely a record keeping tool.  It is quite flexible and can be used to enter assignments after they've been done or before as lesson plans or assignments. I think the hardest part has been figuring out what will work best for my planning and record keeping style.

     In the past, I have used it to print daily task lists for each student, course descriptions, and report card, and several other ways. This year I will use it to make lesson plans, to print out check lists. and for keeping records of grades. Something I don't do until high school.

  

     I have different ways that I plan for different subjects.

• For subjects that I don't need a lot of specifics up front and will be repeated daily, I make a Lesson plan called weekly assignments - and the student name.  One example of an item in this lesson plan would be Bible.  My son is doing Bible study independently this year using The Most Important Thing You'll Ever Study.  I enter five assignments in this lesson plan for Bible, one for each day of the week. For the "Topic" field I enter "Study your Bible for 20 min."  In the "Directions" field I put a note asking the student to write the scripture passage read that day. This way when I am marking assignments as completed at the end of the week I can also enter the passage studied. All other assignments in in this "Weekly Assignments" lesson plan are similar. Once you've entered all assignments for the week, it can be used to schedule them for a week at a time, a semester at a time, or for the entire year.  It's like a skeleton of assignments that has to be thought out once, but can be used over and over again.

• For subjects that have specific assignments that are different each day, I enter them as a separate lesson plan for each subject.  One example for this would be Ambleside Online reading lists.  I'll make a lesson plan for each term of the year we are studying.  I'll enter specifics for each assignments, and group them by week.  I schedule them a week at a time.

• Last but not least.  I like to enter things that come up spontaneously during our days. This way they become part of our learning record.  If we go to a symphony, an art museum, watch a documentary, or do a weekend art project, I'll make sure to enter it at the end of the week.  Our morning time items, which will be kept in a spiral bound paper planner (because I still need this kind of loveliness in my life) will also be entered into HST at the end of the week.

 It is hard to write about planning that is this detailed without actually looking at it and hard to see the benefits of it without seeing the final outcome.  I hope to share more as I go along planning this summer, and then using those plans throughout the year. 

Homeschooling High School The Second Time Around

I am not actually quite there yet.

But soon I will be starting my second run through the High School years.

My first batch, two girls ages 23 and 21, have now graduated college. I've been homeschooling since the oldest was in 1st grade.

My second batch consists of three - boy 13, girl 10, boy 9. My son, will be starting 8th grade this fall. So technically we are not doing High School yet. However, the plan is to do Algebra and Spanish I during his 8th grade year. These are things that will be included in his high school transcript,so I think that counts. Right?  Maybe I should have said "Homeschooling High School the Third Time Around".

Anyways, I have benefited so much from other bloggers willing to share their struggles and triumphs of homeschooling through high school.  So even though I don't consider myself a writer, nor photographer, nor philosopher, nor homeschooling expert. I want to do my best to add to this great conversation of homeschooling ideas.

Holy Ground

 It was hard to get out of bed this morning.  A restless night full of regrets, doubt, hopelessness, but then finally came remembering and trusting, and hope was renewed.  Each day his mercies are new.       But still....nothing special planned for today. A summer day restricted and bound by budget and a work schedule. No day at the beach, no vacation planned for us. Yet as I saw the faces of my kids sitting around the table waiting for the next flour tortilla fresh out of the "comal" I felt it - joy and peace.  They were enjoying a quiet moment around the table. Giggling without any expectations for today except the thought that there is a newly acquired lawnmower box waiting for them to play with.

I think that it was through the discovery of Ann Voscamp's blog A Holy Experience, many many years ago, that I realized that I could find God in the everyday things of our lives as mothers. So an ordinary day in the life of an ordinary family becomes holy ground.  Even among brokenness and sorrow His Spirit still moves and brings forth good fruit.

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