The Chipps Family Homeschool : Recovering

Well, what is it? The end of January...time flies– even when you’re not having fun!  Ok, we’re having fun at last. In our homeschool.

For our little homeschool group we started a weekly unit study on Medieval History, making a lapbook. Constantly misplacing my white board marker and misspelling the kid’s vocabulary words...I mean, why can’t I remember how to spell chivalry! I manage to bore everyone for an hour and a half, rambling on about the things that excite me about the middle ages, oh well the kids keep coming. I had great plans on “dressing up” for the part, and I made a dress and hood.  My plans were to add and alter the dress every week to the styles according to rank (peasant to noble lady), but after my children –one at a time, of course, came down with a cold, coupled with various gentle comments on how I actually looked in the dress, I seem to have no time and lost enthusiasm to alter the dress to rise out of serfdom . I hung it up and taught this weeks class in a T-shirt and denim skirt. My usual over zealous ideas modified for reasonability.

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Our school year started out a bit funky and left me feeling burnt out.  During Christmas break I took the chance to overhaul our program to look in and see what was the hold up. All I need to share is: I am now a recovering escapaholic. 

 My favorite discovery has been our Home School Journal. Each child records what they do every day (Bible chapters read, Math lesson #, a place for copywork, memory verse, science lesson—pages read, etc). . This is also where they take their grammar lesson from. It helps me see at a glance what they forgot. Mind you, it was like pulling eye teeth to get them to try it, and now the kids even told me that it helps them keep better track of what they need to do.

Math: Sticking with the Saxon. Algebra 1/2 is tough and slow for the two oldest, I wonder, should I have jumped over 87? I’m thinking everything is ok, it’ll just take longer. This year Jeremiah is doing great with 65, whew! Samuel is working with math facts and workbooks that we had already and should be into the 54 book pretty soon. Jonathan…well, there’s time.

History: Streams of Civilization– so interesting that Nathanial interrupts (and gets glared at) to tell us something that amazes him, everyday. Abigail is reading The World of Columbus and Sons and enjoying that too. Jeremiah is reading Our Island Story. Now, this book is very interesting and easy to read  but the beginning bothered me about mixing myth and history...unfortunately so many “histories” are just that– relying on someone’s way of writing and recording, sigh.  The Tutor has been my geography and history resource for the little guys, there was a $12 well spent, we’ll probably be able to use The Tutor for many years to come.

Science: Another sticker wither– the Apologia Series. Each one of the children are reading one of the series on their own. I am reading Swimming Creatures to the youngest. Right now we are  making a shadow box with playdough sea animals. It takes a bit of patience to add science with younger children, I always figure that they get enough in the barns and

little children, if you don’t share the whole book with everyone at once. But I really like the time I need to spend with the little ones.

Grammar: After avoiding this subject for years, as a  separate curriculum (other than our copywork, dictation, and spelling), I decided to continue to avoid this subject as a separate curriculum!  Every time I thought about adding grammar to our list I felt like it went against my anti busywork ideals, but still I feel like I need to cover several things that do improve writing and structure, I know that I could pick up some goodies too. Grammar and other Grammar links and more like this one are some freebies . Also a friend passed along to me “Simply Grammar”. From these I can get an outline and teaching order. A sentence everyday, and that is it, and they think it is fun. I have them apply the grammar rule from a sentence from their daily writing in their journals . No extra writing or books. This is my easy grammar.

Literature: I make a booklist for each child every year of books their age level or just above. Grampa made a huge wonderful contribution to our homeschool this year by purchasing 4 kindle readers! I have been able to find on Amazon 99%  for free. For some sites like Project Gutenberg, it is necessary to download them onto the computer first and then add them to the kindles—took me a while before I found that out. It’s classics and more classics!

   Also on our reading lists this year are: Preparing for Adolescence, Beautiful Girlhood, A Pillar in My Father’s House, and  Mirror of the Martyrs. These have been a tremendous help for my young adults.

Reading and Writing: Again from The Tutor: George Washington’s Rules of Civility. These are great! Use then in any way you can. These are from conversation pieces to eye openers for all...we have let the bars down America! You can find this on-line very easy.

   I did get a few workbooks for Samuel and Jonathan. Pathway Readers are very economical and they have nice (nothing really amazing, but realistic) drawings of farm life, tools, animals, etc. For the most part we continue with the copywork and dictation. I still use the McGuffey Readers (available free on the Kindle) for much of the copywork. 

    Jonathan actually has made great headway on his reading! Thanks to Ruth Beechick’s A Home Start in Reading. I started out using 100 Easy Lessons for him but, as with any perfect solution, we found that this wasn’t the way he was going to learn to read, and bonking him over the head with the book wasn’t going to get us anywhere either! Now his writing is waiting for that special moment when he finally “get’s it”.

Other Goodies: I am the proud owner of Far Above Rubies and Blessed is The Man. I tried to use this for Abigail this year but she is just not mature enough, nor has had enough experience to keep up with all the research required of her. I really think that it is a good curriculum so we will make another go at it next year. That said, I absolutely know that it won’t work for Nathanial this year either, and maybe never! But I still have 4 more boys to see about!

I have let myself become more relaxed, practicing everyday. It all works out in the wash and we

just keep doing our very best. I still love our little homeschool and so thankful that I can.