School of Smooches 2013

I meant to post this a few weeks ago, since we just finished up our 3rd (woohoo) week of school, but I just never got around to doing it!  So here’s the post from our first day of school.

In the past 3 weeks I have fill up EVERY inch of this bookshelf

The School of Smooches is in session!  Summer is gone and “book learning” has begun…….or something like that!!  I always have great plans for summer……lots of reading, math or other “educational” things, and usually by the time our school days start up again we’ve done none of it!!  But that’s ok, summer is a good time for change, relaxing a bit and doing lots of outdoor activities.  And usually by the time September comes around I’m ready for more structure and so are the kids, they really do seem to thrive on structure, and some of my kids need it more than others.

The last few weeks I’ve been doing hours of prep work.  Honestly, I am not a fan!  Doing the prep work is harder than the actual teaching, but doing the actual teaching would be impossible without the prep work.  Carlos’ books arrived the week before we moved back to the “big house” and those four huge boxes sat in our basement unopened for almost two weeks.  I just couldn’t get my nerve up to open them!! In fact when I finally did open the boxes, I took all the books out, looked through them, put them back in the box and promptly closed up the boxes!! Haha

This year we decided that Carlos needed something different for his education.  Last year was very difficult (that’s putting it mildly) and so after researching, reviewing and discussing several options we decided to use Bob Jones video school.  And I think this is going to be good for him and for me too!  I love that the “teacher” gives the assignments (no fighting with mama about not wanting to do the work since I didn’t assign it) and that he is expected to work independently from me for most of the day.

So this year I have a 6^th grader, a 2^nd grader, a 1^st grader, and Kindergartener, and a trouble maker!  Even though we say that Natalie and Jeremiah are in different grades they actually do all the same work, with the exception of reading……Natalie is not quite as proficient a reader as Jeremiah, so she has less pages of reading.  Ben mostly does his work as a class of one, but he does sit in on science and history class with Natalie and Jeremiah.

Our first day went actually very well.  My middle kids remembered A LOT from last year…..and I mean A LOT!  I was so pleased.  Both Jeremiah and Natalie remembered almost all their math facts, they both moved seamlessly into their new reading books (ok for the sake of transparency Jeremiah did throw a bit of fit over reading and tried to convince me that he “just couldn’t read” the book that five seconds before he was reading with ease).  Natalie is my school loving girl.  She would do school all.day.long.  And she LOVES math and is very good at it too!  Carlos did great watching his videos and doing the work pages.  Ben, Jeremiah and Natalie all LOVED science, which made me super glad I decided to include it in our program this year.  Science has been hit and miss for us, but every time I make the extra effort it always seems to pay off because the kids love it.

My trouble maker……oh boy!  I forgot how much harder schooling is with a 2 year-old!!  Poor Jade.  She’s just lost without “issy”, “Mi-Mi” and “Been” to play with and she wants so badly to do what they do, but she just can’t sit still long enough to do it!  I’m sure we will find a “happy place” soon.

A parting thought:  I have no idea how people homeschooled before the internet!  Since our science unit is on animals, I decided to incorporate some art into the science……I Googled “how to draw a giraffe” and found this great webpage with step by step instructions on drawing simple animals!  My artsy kids LOVED it.