Treat Time!

Trying out the four day week was interesting, yet didn’t work out well for all my children. The younger ones, K-2, had no problem getting the same amount of work done in four days as they did normally in five. However, my 6th grader had trouble getting all the assignments completed. Being challenged with a lack of focus, in addition to the shorter schedule, caused us to revert back to a five day week. But that’s okay, I think I will try segmenting each day instead of the week to try and fit in home school, house cleaning, sewing, cooking, and everything else that needs to be done.

So in honor of needing a break from it all, here is a quick treat to make!
Homemade Churros – the easy way.

You’ll need:

Tortillas

Butter or margarine to spread on the tortillas

Cinnamon and sugar mixture to sprinkle on the buttered tortillas

Here’s what you do:

Put the tortillas on a cookie sheet in one layer.  Spread with butter making sure to get all of it covered.  Sprinkle with the cinnamon mixture.  Roll up the tortillas one at a time and fasten with toothpick if necessary.  Bake in 350′ oven until heated through or edges start to crisp.  Take out, let cool, but not too much – you’ll want to eat these warm!

 

 

Keep pace.

Setting end of second quarter goals are my favorite because they are easy (just divide the total number of lessons by two) and there’s still time to catch up/slow down if the first quarter was slower/faster than anticipated.  If you use Homeschool Tracker, a handy way to do this is to create an activity called Goal. Then when you divide up your lessons, enter the goal lesson on the proposed completion date under the activity called Goal. For example, let’s say you have a unit of study with a total of 120 lessons.  That means that each quarter, you will be completing 30 lessons arranged loosely as 1-30 for the first quarter, 31-60 second quarter, 61-90 third quarter and 91-120 fourth quarter. If the end of your second quarter is January 16th, then enter a goal for that date for lesson 60.  Once all my goals are in, then I take into account the number of actual days available for lessons for the current quarter, which means taking the total number of days in the quarter and subtracting holidays, field trips and allowing for a sick day or two.  This gives me a really good idea as to how the quarter should be paced for each subject.

Booklets are popular around our house.  It seems that the pre-second grade crowd is especially fond of making their own booklets and it is a great way to reinforce lessons.  I use the half-page booklets most often – this just means that each side of a piece of paper will have two pages on it.  There should be four pages on each piece of paper, front and back. Make sure you leave your document in logical order because the printer will make sure the pages are arranged so you can just print, fold, and bind.  

Printer Trick

Did you know that you can make almost any multi-paged document into a booklet using just the options that come with your printer?   Go into the preferences for your printer and check out what it can do!  It will take some trial and error, to get things just right, but it is well worth the effort.

If you have an HP Officejet 6210 All-in-One plus MS Word (or Adobe Reader), then you can use these steps to help get you started.

1. Open a document with several pages in Word or Reader.  It helps to have a footer with page numbers turned on to visualize how it will print out. 
2. Chose  File – Print – click on Preferences.
3. Looking in the Printing Shortcuts tab, you will see it ask “What do you want to do?”  Use the dropdown arrow and choose Booklet Printing.  
4. Click Okay to close the Preferences window, and Okay again in the Print Dialog box to print the document.

Good luck!

Here are some ideas on what to put in your booklet

• Scan in your childrens artwork
• Use construction paper for the cover
• Put chores or goals on each page and use it as a reward sticker book
• Create a pictionary
• Use light grey font color for children to trace in words
• Create themed booklets like shapes, ABCs, numbers, etc.
• Use a sewn binding (older kids) or just staple
• Make a mini journal
• Dot-to-dots, mazes, other puzzles
• Autograph book (This is great for family reunions.  Have relatives sign, and make sure they add their relationship to you – this really aids genealogy projects.) 

In our last science unit, we talked about the forces of air and wind.  I like to make our science as ‘hands on’ as possible, but still affordable and not too messy.  After discussing the properties of air and wind, and how we use them everyday, we did a few fun projects to demonstrate the use of air and wind.

Soap bubbles are kind messy, but we did it at bathtime in the tub!  

We folded a paper ‘heliocopter,‘ then colored, cut, and formed it.  

We made paper airplanes and flied them by throwing them.  We turned on the fan and released them into the air flow.  

Lastly, we made pinwheels.  We blowed on them, then put them in front of the fan.  We improvised the mounting – I used some straight sticks from the backyard, and simply nailed them to the sticks using a bead as a spacer.

Gotta like cheap fun!

It is always an issue to complete lessons, grading and record keeping for my home school while keeping the house from becoming a toxic hazard zone.  To find that balance, I have started a four day school week.  The remaining day, Friday in my case, is for house work.  This is the second week of my four day week schedule, and I have to say that it is hard to remind myself that I should put off certain cleaning chores until Friday.  But I do have exceptions: laundry, dishes, and general upkeep.  The big tasks like bathroom cleaning are supposed to be reserved for Friday.  Once a week seems to be fine for most cleaning jobs, as long as you are not too messy inbetween.  But if you happen to miss a cleaning job and it has to wait another week…that is a different story.  This is where my careful planning crumbles like a dry biscuit.  The way to avoid this is to be thoroough, but that is not always easy.  Walks, games, visitors, sewing, there are so many wonderful things that take me away from my ridgid schedule.  And I am glad  they do, for it would be pretty dull around here if we didn’t let these interruptions lighten our load and remind us that the truly important things in this life are fleeting except one; God will be watching as I don’t get the tub sparkling clean and take a walk with my children to tell them about His glory.

At the beginning of the school year, I plan out each subject, noting how much material should be covered each quarter.  However, I do not make the quantity of the work my primary goal.  I wish to emphasize the quality of the experiences my children have; experiences teach much more effectively than books.

At my home school, I can’t tell what I might be doing one day to the next.   We do many surprise ‘field trips’ and other activities that take us away from the day to day seat work we normally do.  Between doctors, dentists, optometrists, allergists,  sick days, family outings, and other special occasions, it is hardly worth my while to plan too far in advance.  On average, I plan assignments a week in advance. Each Monday morning, I sit at my computer and make sure all my records are up to date.  As I look at each subjects completed assignments for the previous week, I create the assignments for the current week. Not planning to far in advance also gives me the option to move incomplete  assignments to the following week without too much hassle.

The Great Plant Escape is a great site with plenty of activities and visuals to keep kids from a wide group of ages happy.  If you are studying plants in Science, check it out as an additional resource.

Children have a natural talent to circumvent anything they perceive as drudgery. If you are like me, you feel accountable for the quality of education you supply to your children. Unfortunately, what we perceive as opportunity and responsibility, children sometimes see as (they say in the vernacular) a drag.   As a home schooling parent, I can not let this happen with home school activities (or any other part of the household, for that matter!) since chaos shortly follows and then no one benefits. Here is a list of common stall tactics my students use:

• Constant interruptions (changing the subject, too many questions, asking for drinks, etc.)
• Negotiating to do the least favorite job last (then they do everything else so slowly that they never get around to the last job)
• Playing possum (pretending to not feel well)
• Conveniently misplacing things needed to do the job
• Amnesia (conveniently forgetting to do it)
• Shabby work (partially done, sloppy, or not even the correct assignment)
• Plain Stubbornness (just refusing to work)
• Tit for Tat (wanting something extra for cooperating to do the undesirable job or offering to do extra chores to get out of the undesirable job  – this can be tempting, but in the end, everyone will lose)

Sometimes children will do these things without really thinking about them.  Other times, they have well laid plans.  Either way, making sure you do not reward these behaviors is very important to ceasing the perpetuation of the objectionable behavior.  Usually, the entire point is to put off a task, so here are a few ways I deal with it:

• Make the task due immediately (I call this ’stopping the world’ – absolutely nothing else happens until the task is done, with the exception of breathing)
• Make it the least-liked assignments the first items on the to do list (I like to teach ‘just get it over with.’  Google the term “If+you+have+to+eat+frogs”)
• Require the task to be done more frequently (if you try to get out of writing science definitions at my school, you will end up writing definitions in every subject)
• Assign multiple copies of the same task to be done, without access to the prior completed ones (repetition  = boredom)
• In some cases, I have been known to ‘alter’ an assignment when there has been demonstrable cause to do so.  Being reasonable shows your students how to adjust to changing circumstances.

As usual, the best way to equip yourself for dealing with children is to know each of them well.   Children give us the chance to be like angels.

Piece of Cake!

Good habits and routines make for a much smoother day at our house. But it takes a lot of work and consistency to start and keep good habits. God’s work can involve many tedious, under-appreciated tasks, but we should learn to find joy in them.

Get up, get ready!

Consistency in routine makes the day go smoother, especially if you have to do things like schedule many children around one bathroom! I have one phrase that sets my children into motion on their morning routines, “Do your four morning things!” Why four? Four things are easy to remember. (It really involves doing more than four things, as many sub-routines are included, but they don’t seem to notice.) I have taught them that if they are unable to perform one of the things because, for example, the bathroom is occupied, then they move on to another thing and come back to the incomplete one later.

All Messes Are Everyone’s Messes

Most of the messiness in our house is caused by group play, and so everyone must pitch in to pick up. This tends to work nicely and follow over into chores as well. I find that children would rather work together than alone, but getting them not to play and do the chore is the trick. Plus, the best cure for a messy child is to have them clean up after someone else’s mess. They start to realized that it’s very inconsiderate to be messy and not clean up after yourself. Making a pick up time a few minutes before meals is also a great incentive.

One thing at a time.

If you are anything like I am, you can feel overwhelmed by everything that seems like it needs to be done in one day. One way I combat this is to put each task on a sticky note and arrange them on a wall or fridge in order of importance. Remind yourself that there is always tomorrow and sometimes there are not enough hours in the day to get everything done – and be okay with that! Remember that children can help in small ways that can really make a difference – and they will learn the joy of service to others when you express your gratitude.

Think out loud.

Helping children prioritize on a general level is difficult. When is it time to play? When is it time to do chores? How do I know what I should be doing right now? I have started to ‘think out loud’ when putting together my daily schedule. Just stating that it’s time to pick up is not enough, they need to know what you are thinking to come up with the task that needs to be done. If children learn how to go through general priorities – hygiene, cleanliness, studies, chores, etc. – then they can start to figure out for themselves what they should be doing. So I would say, “First things first – is everyone done with getting ready for the day?” Then move on to, “After getting ourselves ready, we get our surroundings ready – is that done?” You get the idea.

It takes time and humans aren’t perfect

I always remind myself that children go through many phases, and keeping consistent through the phases is very important and ever so difficult. There will be things that they want to do, don’t want to do, can do and can’t do. There will be days they want to cooperate and days they don’t. On the days they are cooperative, I try to show them how much I appreciate it. The other times, I just try to get through the day as best I can with a smile. My goal is for my children to grow up to be adults that know joy in each task that is God’s work.

Wrap up the day

Bedtime is another good time for routine-building. Brushing teeth, getting on pjs, and picking up are just a few of the things we do. Something I heard the other day from a fellow parent was in regards to children that get scared at night. Ask them to talk to Jesus if they are upset. I am starting a new thing at our house – a short devotional time before turning into bed. I’ll write more about that later and let you know how it goes.

Habits are usually thought of in a negative way.  Nail biting, nose picking, and other undesirable acts can be at the very least embarrassing.  And if you think about how difficult it is to stop a habit, it is quite clear that you want to avoid starting them in the first place.  However, habits can also be positive, and if we focus on positive behaviors and make them a habit, we much better off.  Brushing your teeth, daily cleansing, and exercise are just a few good habits that you can create for yourself. The trick is to get into a routine of healthy habits and be consistent enough to make them stick.

Remember: The easiest way to get rid of a bad habit is to replace it with a good one.