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To say that it’s been grueling, that I’ve been stretched to the pique of my limit, would barely do justice to what the past two days have been. Bouncing between three kids, two of which take a great deal of effort suddenly, while keeping dishes out of the sink, laundry at bay, meals on the table and sometimes very challenging experiences FUN -- whoo! NOT EASY. That being said, I’ve learned more about Mary in these past two days than I could have done in six months‘ time.
Part of what’s made this a challenge is caring so painstakingly much about her success in every area - from character development to spelling. She’s learned to stop asking me why doing an assignment or learning a subject is EVEN important because I’ll never just assume it’s a rhetorical question. We got sidetracked for fifteen minutes, just covering the importance of handwriting yesterday because she made the mistake of insisting that it would never matter. In two days time we’ve virtually wiped out the immediate “I can’t, I won’t” response that she almost instinctually jumps to even outside of schoolwork. And she’s already completed a few assignments she was positive to the point of even shedding a few tears, were impossible. Which is to say that I’ve definitely had to throw down the hammer a time or two, just to show that I’m not backing down from anything she thinks she has to throw at me, but it’s paid off ten-fold. Within minutes of crossing a hurtle or giving something new a chance (because I won’t get off her back until she does) she totally flips from having an utterly defeatist attitude, to dancing like a goof around the room because she DID IT! And taking on the next assignment with totally unshakable confidence. I. LOVE. IT.
This is the breakdown of her classes (a few of which she only has once, twice, or three times a week): speed typing, cursive handwriting, vocabulary, grammar, writing, editing, spelling, math, mechanics, history/geography, logic, and electives like art, phys. ed., and health. Beside those, we’re taking time everyday to focus on stress-reducing exercises, discovering what faith means to her, and character development. (No more snappy, condescending attitudes!) She’s also excited (legitimately excited!) to become a part of the girl scouts AND 4H this year! Spencer and I are both extremely proud of her enthusiasm.
Yesterday was fantastic, all things considered. One of the neater parts of the day was taking a trip to Glassgow Park for Physical Education and a lesson in mechanical science. She filled out a graph on all the different types of simple machines that could be found on the playground equipment, and then got to use my camera to photograph Matthew playing on sixteen different types. We had a total blast!
At the end of the day, we had our first club meeting for homeschoolers - where the both of us were totally blown away by just how HUGE the home schooling community in our area really is! Since Spencer decided to join us, the whole family stopped for ice cream on the way home and Spencer regaled us all with tales of learning how to shoot and care for animals in 4H when he was young. (And how, one of the best parts was all the cute girls! Which of course piqued Mary’s interest because it hinted to the fact that MAYBE there would be a few cute boys… Hmmm…)
Overall, it’s given us the opportunity to have many long overdue conversations, covering every topic from civil responsibility to abiogenesis to the latest gossip about her favorite band. This is certainly not the most well-constructed post I’ve ever thrown together, but getting the experience of these past few days on record is important to me. Our family dynamic has changed a great deal in a very short amount of time, and I know that writing on here will be scant at best until we find out niche. So until I get the chance to update you again - just know that I’m exhausted beyond anything I could have imagined a month ago, and that I’ve never been more excited.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Saturday, August 25, 2012
How The First Day Went.
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Matthew had been ready for days, so when I finally uttered the words, "Okay, buddy, get your sister. It's time for school." he popped to his feet like a kernel of corn.
Matthew had been ready for days, so when I finally uttered the words, "Okay, buddy, get your sister. It's time for school." he popped to his feet like a kernel of corn.
"Mary! Mary!" he called, ripping through the hall, "It's a real school day today! Come on! Let's go!"
Actually, it was just the orientation I talked about setting up a couple of weeks ago, but to him it was real because Mary would be there with us.
Before this, we've kind of "played" school in the classroom - just Matthew and I. Sometimes he'd draw out scenes from a story I was reading, and we'd spend thirty minutes a pop just talking about it afterward, thinking of anything we could add to his illustration. Sometimes I'd give him an actual activity from one of the history lessons to work on. He'd roll clay, and twist pipe cleaners and come shrieking for me to evaluate whatever he came up with as soon as he was done. I found my teaching voice, redirecting his attention when doing handstands in the seat of his desk wasn't part of a game, without letting on that it was my motive.
As elementary as the practice might have been, it helped me. I was able to see firsthand how letting the baby roam a little while in the adjoining room would work, and for how long. I was able to gauge how far his attention span had grown from last year, and what his maturing body language meant now.
As agreed, by the time we met in the classroom (albeit later than it will be on Monday) everyone was fed, showered, and dressed for the day. Matthew sat at his desk, getting to work almost instinctively on a ball of purple, fragrant dough. Mary twirled in her chair. And I talked.
I talked, without realizing it, until my voice did to my throat what truck tires do to a quiet gravel road. If it weren't for the fact that Matthew thought to bring a glass of water down with him, I might have had no voice at all today. Who'd have thought with a class of exactly two students, that could even happen? Suffice to say, Monday and everyday after that, I'll get my share of hydration. I also realized I'll need a bean bag chair or something. Pacing the room when I talked felt more natural than I expected it to, but I wound up sitting on the floor with a book between my knees toward the end, and that's just not a long term solution.
I can't believe how fortunate we are that it all fell together exactly the way I hoped it would. For the most part, Matthew stayed at his desk and Mary barely gave herself time to digest answers to the last question she asked, before jumping to the next. I had to keep her focused, but because she's easy to make laugh, that wasn't a problem. Sometimes Matthew would raise his hand, and as usual, it was hard for him to wait when waiting was necessary. But they listened - both of them, remarkably well - and the baby was such a non-issue that a few times I wondered if the sound of my constant talking wasn't as much a source of soothing entertainment for her as the T.V. would have been. I remember being distinctly happy that I hadn't jumped to the assumption she would need it. She kept herself occupied for the entirety of any time she wasn't napping, just outside of the schoolroom with nothing more than a few blocks.
Overall, the only surprises were good ones. Mary actually laughed at every attempt I made to snag a reaction out of her, and every time she piped up, it was to add something, not only enjoyable, but relevant, to the conversation. And a conversation it was, which was probably the best part. Anytime within the course of this summer that I thought about homeschooling in terms of it being worth any effort it took to set up; I thought about it happening like a conversation, one part unfolding into the next like no one had an agenda.
If there's any doubt left nagging us at all, it's from reading so many blogs that say: don't try to mimic public school; remember, they left for a reason! While that's obviously true, and something to consider, it's all we know. Plus, she's going back to it eventually, so I can't afford to get too lackadaisical. I want to focus of character building and togetherness and all that quiet, zen jazz, but I also want her going back to school in ninth grade knowing her shit, and knowing it so well that returning to the world of standardize testing and a cafeteria lunch won't completely derail her.
Arguably, one of the best parts of the day was just how much of it WASN'T spent with my drying eyes locked helplessly onto a computer screen, FINALLY. This past week especially has been the worst of it. Everything I've had to do toward to end was online, which I thought would probably be kind of nice since, after all, I do love to blog. Turns out, doing other stuff online -- even getting a facebook to help break the monotony of plugging assignment after assignment after bloody assignment into a gradebook -- not the same amount of fun as writing. Like, not even a little the same. At all.
By four o'clock we'd lost all track of time. I guessed it was probably somewhere around two, when Mary popped her eyes at me after checking. (Note to self: SET WALL CLOCK.) We still had our electives to discuss, so we woke the baby, grabbed a snack and headed to the park for what was supposed to be the last of our discussion, but wound up being just what it need to be - downtime. We instagram'ed it up all over the baseball field, playground equipment, and dandelion dotted grass. The day rounded itself out in such a bafflingly (wow, not a word) flawless way that not one of the kids - not one - even whimpered a sigh of complaint as we bid the park adieu. Like, what?
And just like that, we had done it. It's hard to tell if Monday will be any more difficult than yesterday, considering that everything we do will be 'on record', which sounds a lot more official than it actually is, or if it'll be a lot easier because at least there won't be so many kinda-sorta vague notions to cover. But if yesterday was any kind of a window into the soul of our post-September home, I'm glad. Yesterday was really fun.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Just So You Know.
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This harrowing labor of love that came to us, a sheep in wolves' clothing, has turned into something unexpectedly powerful for me. Something really nice in an out of the blue sort of way. Moonstruck by this thing that I've actually managed to pull together for our family, it's hard to believe this homeschool plan has turned into something so cool, I can't wait ten more days to get started.
I'm sure it has something to do with just giving me a simple sense of purpose - which has always been covertly medicinal for people like me, people who are always questioning if what they're doing is enough. But I'm uninhibitedly proud of what I've built here, from everything left of last year's confusion. I've succeeded in taking an ambition to do something big, something uncertain, and I've turned it into something done. We haven't started actually homeschooling yet, but with every paper filed; every clip color coded by subject and day; every trip planned on her Hello Kitty calendar; every project detailed in pencil on the narrow lines of a thirteen-tabbed planner, I feel good knowing that I've actually pulled it off. For one of the few times in my relationship with this kid who is and will be forevermore such a monopolizing part of who I am, I feel like her parent. I feel like I finally have the opportunity to parent her the way that I parent her technically-half-siblings; to do more than just be here, watching her grow. But to be a working part of the process.
I'm always looking for ways to validate our wildly unorthodox relationship, without shoving myself too far down her throat. Most of the time it all just falls into place. We have a good relationship, but we also have nothing to really compare it to, either. It's kind of it's own thing. I came into her life too late to ever completely be a legitimate exchange for her real mom, even without her real mom being around. But I'm more than a step-parent because raising her falls, in a lot of ways, more on me than it even does her dad - who is the only biological parent in her life.
When you're a biological parent, you put aside yourself for the children you conceive without even consciously having control of the decision. You become pregnant and you lose control of your diet, your comfort, your body. You give birth and for a cluster of terrifying hours, you lose control of any and everything that has ever conceivably existed within your control. You keep an infant alive and you learn to play it's personality like a very tricky instrument you feel like you were born to play yourself, and without even being aware that any transformation has taken place at all, you look up from them and don't know where the old you has gone; you try to remember hearing them leave, and you can't. You don't care, either. This new thing, this new you is infinitely better than anything you've ever been or done before, and you realize that relinquishing control of yourself for them was the best thing you've ever done. You look back down at this child that is so mercilessly yours, wholly unaware of anything you might have missed about the old you if only you could manage to take a second's thought away from them, and you know that you've become something metaphorically invincible. You know, all at once, that you're a parent. You are impermeably strong, wise, and unrelenting in anything you do on their behalf. Because of all you've done without ever having to even really try, nobody can take that away from you, or deny that it's yours.
And then you have a child that you did not conceive. And you are in every similar way responsible for them. You are their protector, their guidance, their shoulder, their foundation, their voice. It's permanent, but it can be easily questioned; it's durability easily doubted. Mary has never once said to me that I am not her mother. But it's always with me that if she wanted to, she could. People don't often question what my relationship is to her, but it's always with me that sometimes, they will. Her mom hasn't been around in two years, but at any given moment, she might.
Mary's proficiency in grammar and physical science and algebra are completely unconnected to my relationship with her as a parent. Teachers teach and parents parent, and the rewards of each are not the same. But homeschooling has proven to be, even in only the preparatory stages, a shit-ton of work. I wake up everyday an hour before the sun drains darkness from the windows above our bedroom copy machine, and instead of writing - which has always been a great love in my life, I watch tutorial videos over cereal on how to teach shortcuts for dividing fractions. I make back-up plans for my back-up plans so that if this whole first week somehow falls to shit despite all of my efforts, I'll know exactly how to pull us out of the rut. I don't expect this thing to run like a military base, but I know that everything I consider now with military precision is one less thing I'll have to consider once we're in the thick of wanting to just enjoy it. Which is all to say that with everything I've put into this thing just to cover my every hypothetical base, I'm predicting an easy ride, come the sweet end to our very long August. I fully expect this whole endeavor to be a lot of fun. But getting us there... Getting us there has taken an amount of time and effort I've never had to put into her before.
I'll never be able to go back and pay closer attention to who she was back when she was somebody else's child, the way that I imagine all step-parents (especially those who raise their step-children primarily) wish they could. And I don't think that hyper-parenting her will make up for what is unquestionably lost in those relationship-fusing years of early child development. But setting this up for her and doing this for her has unexpectedly catapulted me, personally, into exactly that direction. Or so it feels, anyway. It's put me in a position to do what maternity did naturally for my relationship with her little brother and her baby sister. This wasn't what we went into homeschooling hoping to gain, but it's become a very welcomed way for me to say to her: Hey, just so you know... I am yours, whatever it takes.
This harrowing labor of love that came to us, a sheep in wolves' clothing, has turned into something unexpectedly powerful for me. Something really nice in an out of the blue sort of way. Moonstruck by this thing that I've actually managed to pull together for our family, it's hard to believe this homeschool plan has turned into something so cool, I can't wait ten more days to get started.
I'm sure it has something to do with just giving me a simple sense of purpose - which has always been covertly medicinal for people like me, people who are always questioning if what they're doing is enough. But I'm uninhibitedly proud of what I've built here, from everything left of last year's confusion. I've succeeded in taking an ambition to do something big, something uncertain, and I've turned it into something done. We haven't started actually homeschooling yet, but with every paper filed; every clip color coded by subject and day; every trip planned on her Hello Kitty calendar; every project detailed in pencil on the narrow lines of a thirteen-tabbed planner, I feel good knowing that I've actually pulled it off. For one of the few times in my relationship with this kid who is and will be forevermore such a monopolizing part of who I am, I feel like her parent. I feel like I finally have the opportunity to parent her the way that I parent her technically-half-siblings; to do more than just be here, watching her grow. But to be a working part of the process.
I'm always looking for ways to validate our wildly unorthodox relationship, without shoving myself too far down her throat. Most of the time it all just falls into place. We have a good relationship, but we also have nothing to really compare it to, either. It's kind of it's own thing. I came into her life too late to ever completely be a legitimate exchange for her real mom, even without her real mom being around. But I'm more than a step-parent because raising her falls, in a lot of ways, more on me than it even does her dad - who is the only biological parent in her life.
When you're a biological parent, you put aside yourself for the children you conceive without even consciously having control of the decision. You become pregnant and you lose control of your diet, your comfort, your body. You give birth and for a cluster of terrifying hours, you lose control of any and everything that has ever conceivably existed within your control. You keep an infant alive and you learn to play it's personality like a very tricky instrument you feel like you were born to play yourself, and without even being aware that any transformation has taken place at all, you look up from them and don't know where the old you has gone; you try to remember hearing them leave, and you can't. You don't care, either. This new thing, this new you is infinitely better than anything you've ever been or done before, and you realize that relinquishing control of yourself for them was the best thing you've ever done. You look back down at this child that is so mercilessly yours, wholly unaware of anything you might have missed about the old you if only you could manage to take a second's thought away from them, and you know that you've become something metaphorically invincible. You know, all at once, that you're a parent. You are impermeably strong, wise, and unrelenting in anything you do on their behalf. Because of all you've done without ever having to even really try, nobody can take that away from you, or deny that it's yours.
And then you have a child that you did not conceive. And you are in every similar way responsible for them. You are their protector, their guidance, their shoulder, their foundation, their voice. It's permanent, but it can be easily questioned; it's durability easily doubted. Mary has never once said to me that I am not her mother. But it's always with me that if she wanted to, she could. People don't often question what my relationship is to her, but it's always with me that sometimes, they will. Her mom hasn't been around in two years, but at any given moment, she might.
Mary's proficiency in grammar and physical science and algebra are completely unconnected to my relationship with her as a parent. Teachers teach and parents parent, and the rewards of each are not the same. But homeschooling has proven to be, even in only the preparatory stages, a shit-ton of work. I wake up everyday an hour before the sun drains darkness from the windows above our bedroom copy machine, and instead of writing - which has always been a great love in my life, I watch tutorial videos over cereal on how to teach shortcuts for dividing fractions. I make back-up plans for my back-up plans so that if this whole first week somehow falls to shit despite all of my efforts, I'll know exactly how to pull us out of the rut. I don't expect this thing to run like a military base, but I know that everything I consider now with military precision is one less thing I'll have to consider once we're in the thick of wanting to just enjoy it. Which is all to say that with everything I've put into this thing just to cover my every hypothetical base, I'm predicting an easy ride, come the sweet end to our very long August. I fully expect this whole endeavor to be a lot of fun. But getting us there... Getting us there has taken an amount of time and effort I've never had to put into her before.
I'll never be able to go back and pay closer attention to who she was back when she was somebody else's child, the way that I imagine all step-parents (especially those who raise their step-children primarily) wish they could. And I don't think that hyper-parenting her will make up for what is unquestionably lost in those relationship-fusing years of early child development. But setting this up for her and doing this for her has unexpectedly catapulted me, personally, into exactly that direction. Or so it feels, anyway. It's put me in a position to do what maternity did naturally for my relationship with her little brother and her baby sister. This wasn't what we went into homeschooling hoping to gain, but it's become a very welcomed way for me to say to her: Hey, just so you know... I am yours, whatever it takes.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
The Grocery Apocalypse.
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Shopping days are the worst. There aren't many moments in my life as a mother that I lose sight of how lucky I am to be in the moment that I am with my family. The little, compounding stresses; the struggle to balance authority with compassion; the big-picture issues that come with managing the lives of real people -- even when it sucks, I love what I do. In the very worst of our most trying family crises, I see clearly still that I do it all for them, and that they are worth it, a million times over. But shopping days are the worst.
In two days I've braved four different stores, stocking up on food and supplies for the end of summer and the establishment of our homeschool endeavor. Non-food items are crossed in hurried lines of ballpoint ink from the list. Time for Costco.
In high spirits, we step over the threshold, Matthew coyly showing a woman in a vest our Executive Membership card. I know that what's in store for us here is misery, at it's worst. When we leave, I'll be a shell of the person I was walking in. But I have to start optimistically because my ability to parent well will gradually be eaten away at with every minute we are here.
We have to eat, though. So here we are... again. I hate this place.
Mary eats us out of house and home as it is, and because she's the validating size of a pretzel rod, I'm glad she does. But it takes a small fortune just to feed her, and compared to what we paid in lunch money last year, having her home everyday will cost us, and require a good deal of stocking up. Wanting to feed my family of five meals that are reasonably nutritious will cost us even more. Healthy shit sucks to stock in a cart, too. Kale, spinach, peppers, they're all soft and squishable, and take up so much space. Space is an issue with a single cart, even if it is Costco size. A few minutes into any shopping trip, ever, I'm not sure we can fit everything that we need to buy in this cart. There's only so much space and two kids are wasting A-1 turf in the front.
On the rare occasion I get to run somewhere without them in tow, it makes me literally glow to set bread and eggs in the little butt-basket usually reserved for kids. How perfect they fit! How protected they are!
Costco is the only store in which Matthew will agree to be placed inside of a cart-seat. This way, he can eat all of the free samples without having to watch where he's going. Plus, this is the only store with a cart that seats two kids in the front. In every other store, 93% of my attention is consumed protecting Matthew on foot: keeping him from shouting, keeping him close to me, keeping him from getting distracted and walking off in a different direction, keeping him from making his sister cry, keeping him from taking EVERYTHING off of the hooks to ask if we can buy it/if I need it/if I think his friend would like it because it has Spider Man on it, keeping him from knocking down displays, keeping him from hiding in clothing racks, keeping him from climbing into freezers, keeping him from licking the floor to make Scarlett laugh, keeping him from being kidnapped and chopped into little pieces. I am not ABOUT to suggest that he walk.
But space is an issue. I have to buy as much as I possibly can right now so that we don't wind up back here in a week and a half. I have to do that without going over the grocery budget, which my husband would say is liberally, about twenty-four dollars. Although I would argue that it takes around five hundred, easy, to feed everyone on an inorganic, mildly processed diet for about two months. Because we were particularly low yesterday, and we cannot look forward to Mary eating at school this year, it was over that.
Trying not to think about it, I can't help myself from envisioning the spiel when I get home, having to justify every single purchase. Although, when I try to cut out snacks, the only dispensable thing on the our list, it's the first thing he'll complain we don't have. Thinking about this makes me irritated. Plus, I remember, Mary eats four snacks a day between meals. If there are no snacks, she'll pick through all of the vegetables and pastas I was planning to make dinners with. She'll eat three bites and throw the rest away, just to open something new 30 minutes later, take three bites of that, and put it in the fridge without covering it so that it spoils. Then, in an hour, she'll open something ELSE. With every dinner item that's wasted on a half-eaten snack binge, I'll be forced to come back here a day sooner. No! Need snacks. Healthy snacks. Filling snacks. Inexpensive snacks. Stewing in my own thoughts, I head for the snack isle. The cart already weighs a ton and these isles are impossibly narrow. Nothing fits my criteria of filling/nutritious/inexpensive, but I fill the cart as best I can, heavily resenting that I have to buy so much. I can already hear Mary complaining that she has to help me unload the groceries, declaring outrageously that I "always" buy too much, then eating half of it that night. I can hear Spencer groaning about how much must have been spent when I get home to unload it all myself, then complaining in a week that we don't have enough cereal.
I'm already at the boiling point it takes someone to eat their dog alive, when Scarlett reaches backward into the cart, just to punch the eggs. WHY. Seriously. WHY the eggs, of everything in here that would have been easier for her to reach? I'm not even questioning why she feels the need to punch anything; I feel exactly the same way. That part, I completely understand.
Trying impossibly to nest six loaves of bread into the cart safely, I fantasize about surviving a zombie apocalypse. I could loot these stores of canned goods without worrying about budgets or feeding the kids every single time that they're hungry. I'd go by myself, so that Spencer could keep the kids safe back at "camp." Better yet!: Spencer would venture out to do the shopping, which he wouldn't mind because he'd get to carry a gun, and I'd stay home with the kids. I sigh. Seriously, that would be the life.
Mentally, this is where I'm at before the kids start screaming and trying to climb out of the cart, aiming for a concussion over concrete floors, and throwing things off of shelves because I won't buy them 30 dollar bags of candy for no reason. This part gets ugly every time. Once, Matthew sat on the floor of Walmart and threw his sneaker across four isles, screaming at the top of his lungs because I interrupted him. Another time, Mary took one of those giant bouncy balls from one of those bungee cord cages and purposely bounced it so high that it knocked a shit-ton of canned vegetables off the top shelf of the next isle over. THEN LAUGHED. Yesterday, Scarlett shrieked so loudly in Costco for so long that people were still talking about it when we left.
We left the store yesterday with two carts, the heavier of which a stock boy had to help me get out the door to my van. But ten minutes before we checked out, as I was standing over my list, crossing things off and counting in my head like my mom used to do when her children little enough to fit in the front of a cart, a woman approached me.
I could see the bottom of her skirt coming toward me in my peripheral, downward vision. I ignored it, bracing for one of those familiar: "Ma'am, I think your kid is licking the cart handle" type of comments that make me want to scream at THEM for being such a fucking tattle-tale. I'm not in the mood for this. I never am. Shopping sucks. I want to go home.
"Ma'am", she starts. I look up, exhausted; feeling impatient, but conditioned as the mother of three kids never to show it. "I just want to tell you that you have two very well behaved children. And so beautiful, too. I just saw them from across the isle and couldn't help myself from pointing it out."
Immediately, I wanted to hug her. I genuinely wanted to hug her.
Then I laughed, reality settling in over dumbfounded silence. "Oh, they were the ones you may have heard screaming at the top of their lungs twenty minutes ago. I don't know if you were here for that part."
She smiled, and I wondered if she expected me to think of something negative to say. "Well, they must have gotten it out of their systems, at least."
I'm not that kind of mother anywhere else in the world, I rationalized to myself. I'm the kind of mom who encourages her four-year-old to be loud when we're anywhere it won't hurt anyone, the kind who makes messes with her toddler on purpose, the kind who deals pretty well with her preteen having ROYALLY obnoxious opinions for the greater good of letting that child know that she is listened to and cared about.
But shopping days will do to me what being left on the dashboard of a hot car will do to a happily yellow banana. Shopping days are the worst. I looked down at Scarlett, who was sitting with her arm around Matthew's back, in a way that she only rarely does. (Certainly not when we're shopping). Matthew had folded his arms into a pillow over the cart handle and was lying, uncharacteristically docile with patient boredom.
Before she made it too far away, I said, "You don't know how much I needed to hear that. Thank you."
I bought them a smoothie on our way out. And while I unloaded the cart, a second woman approached me to ask if she could take my two carts for me. "I know how hard it can be with little ones," she comforted. "Let me take these for you so that you don't have to walk them all the way back from the cart return."
When I got home, Mary was there to help with the groceries. Matthew pitched in without being asked. Spencer walked in the door while there were still boxes piled into categorized sections of the kitchen, where he could see all of our "wasted" money in bag and box form before it was taken to the pantry and chest freezer downstairs; he didn't complain. To my surprise, he hugged me. He thanked me... and looking around at the noisy kids and the boiling pot of water on the stove and boxes and boxes and boxes of crap, he said, "... for doing all of this."
Shopping days suck. But as far as shopping days go, yesterday is one that I will remember for being a little less awful than fighting off zombies.
Shopping days are the worst. There aren't many moments in my life as a mother that I lose sight of how lucky I am to be in the moment that I am with my family. The little, compounding stresses; the struggle to balance authority with compassion; the big-picture issues that come with managing the lives of real people -- even when it sucks, I love what I do. In the very worst of our most trying family crises, I see clearly still that I do it all for them, and that they are worth it, a million times over. But shopping days are the worst.
In two days I've braved four different stores, stocking up on food and supplies for the end of summer and the establishment of our homeschool endeavor. Non-food items are crossed in hurried lines of ballpoint ink from the list. Time for Costco.
In high spirits, we step over the threshold, Matthew coyly showing a woman in a vest our Executive Membership card. I know that what's in store for us here is misery, at it's worst. When we leave, I'll be a shell of the person I was walking in. But I have to start optimistically because my ability to parent well will gradually be eaten away at with every minute we are here.
We have to eat, though. So here we are... again. I hate this place.
Mary eats us out of house and home as it is, and because she's the validating size of a pretzel rod, I'm glad she does. But it takes a small fortune just to feed her, and compared to what we paid in lunch money last year, having her home everyday will cost us, and require a good deal of stocking up. Wanting to feed my family of five meals that are reasonably nutritious will cost us even more. Healthy shit sucks to stock in a cart, too. Kale, spinach, peppers, they're all soft and squishable, and take up so much space. Space is an issue with a single cart, even if it is Costco size. A few minutes into any shopping trip, ever, I'm not sure we can fit everything that we need to buy in this cart. There's only so much space and two kids are wasting A-1 turf in the front.
On the rare occasion I get to run somewhere without them in tow, it makes me literally glow to set bread and eggs in the little butt-basket usually reserved for kids. How perfect they fit! How protected they are!
Costco is the only store in which Matthew will agree to be placed inside of a cart-seat. This way, he can eat all of the free samples without having to watch where he's going. Plus, this is the only store with a cart that seats two kids in the front. In every other store, 93% of my attention is consumed protecting Matthew on foot: keeping him from shouting, keeping him close to me, keeping him from getting distracted and walking off in a different direction, keeping him from making his sister cry, keeping him from taking EVERYTHING off of the hooks to ask if we can buy it/if I need it/if I think his friend would like it because it has Spider Man on it, keeping him from knocking down displays, keeping him from hiding in clothing racks, keeping him from climbing into freezers, keeping him from licking the floor to make Scarlett laugh, keeping him from being kidnapped and chopped into little pieces. I am not ABOUT to suggest that he walk.
But space is an issue. I have to buy as much as I possibly can right now so that we don't wind up back here in a week and a half. I have to do that without going over the grocery budget, which my husband would say is liberally, about twenty-four dollars. Although I would argue that it takes around five hundred, easy, to feed everyone on an inorganic, mildly processed diet for about two months. Because we were particularly low yesterday, and we cannot look forward to Mary eating at school this year, it was over that.
Trying not to think about it, I can't help myself from envisioning the spiel when I get home, having to justify every single purchase. Although, when I try to cut out snacks, the only dispensable thing on the our list, it's the first thing he'll complain we don't have. Thinking about this makes me irritated. Plus, I remember, Mary eats four snacks a day between meals. If there are no snacks, she'll pick through all of the vegetables and pastas I was planning to make dinners with. She'll eat three bites and throw the rest away, just to open something new 30 minutes later, take three bites of that, and put it in the fridge without covering it so that it spoils. Then, in an hour, she'll open something ELSE. With every dinner item that's wasted on a half-eaten snack binge, I'll be forced to come back here a day sooner. No! Need snacks. Healthy snacks. Filling snacks. Inexpensive snacks. Stewing in my own thoughts, I head for the snack isle. The cart already weighs a ton and these isles are impossibly narrow. Nothing fits my criteria of filling/nutritious/inexpensive, but I fill the cart as best I can, heavily resenting that I have to buy so much. I can already hear Mary complaining that she has to help me unload the groceries, declaring outrageously that I "always" buy too much, then eating half of it that night. I can hear Spencer groaning about how much must have been spent when I get home to unload it all myself, then complaining in a week that we don't have enough cereal.
I'm already at the boiling point it takes someone to eat their dog alive, when Scarlett reaches backward into the cart, just to punch the eggs. WHY. Seriously. WHY the eggs, of everything in here that would have been easier for her to reach? I'm not even questioning why she feels the need to punch anything; I feel exactly the same way. That part, I completely understand.
Trying impossibly to nest six loaves of bread into the cart safely, I fantasize about surviving a zombie apocalypse. I could loot these stores of canned goods without worrying about budgets or feeding the kids every single time that they're hungry. I'd go by myself, so that Spencer could keep the kids safe back at "camp." Better yet!: Spencer would venture out to do the shopping, which he wouldn't mind because he'd get to carry a gun, and I'd stay home with the kids. I sigh. Seriously, that would be the life.
Mentally, this is where I'm at before the kids start screaming and trying to climb out of the cart, aiming for a concussion over concrete floors, and throwing things off of shelves because I won't buy them 30 dollar bags of candy for no reason. This part gets ugly every time. Once, Matthew sat on the floor of Walmart and threw his sneaker across four isles, screaming at the top of his lungs because I interrupted him. Another time, Mary took one of those giant bouncy balls from one of those bungee cord cages and purposely bounced it so high that it knocked a shit-ton of canned vegetables off the top shelf of the next isle over. THEN LAUGHED. Yesterday, Scarlett shrieked so loudly in Costco for so long that people were still talking about it when we left.
We left the store yesterday with two carts, the heavier of which a stock boy had to help me get out the door to my van. But ten minutes before we checked out, as I was standing over my list, crossing things off and counting in my head like my mom used to do when her children little enough to fit in the front of a cart, a woman approached me.
I could see the bottom of her skirt coming toward me in my peripheral, downward vision. I ignored it, bracing for one of those familiar: "Ma'am, I think your kid is licking the cart handle" type of comments that make me want to scream at THEM for being such a fucking tattle-tale. I'm not in the mood for this. I never am. Shopping sucks. I want to go home.
"Ma'am", she starts. I look up, exhausted; feeling impatient, but conditioned as the mother of three kids never to show it. "I just want to tell you that you have two very well behaved children. And so beautiful, too. I just saw them from across the isle and couldn't help myself from pointing it out."
Immediately, I wanted to hug her. I genuinely wanted to hug her.
Then I laughed, reality settling in over dumbfounded silence. "Oh, they were the ones you may have heard screaming at the top of their lungs twenty minutes ago. I don't know if you were here for that part."
She smiled, and I wondered if she expected me to think of something negative to say. "Well, they must have gotten it out of their systems, at least."
I'm not that kind of mother anywhere else in the world, I rationalized to myself. I'm the kind of mom who encourages her four-year-old to be loud when we're anywhere it won't hurt anyone, the kind who makes messes with her toddler on purpose, the kind who deals pretty well with her preteen having ROYALLY obnoxious opinions for the greater good of letting that child know that she is listened to and cared about.
But shopping days will do to me what being left on the dashboard of a hot car will do to a happily yellow banana. Shopping days are the worst. I looked down at Scarlett, who was sitting with her arm around Matthew's back, in a way that she only rarely does. (Certainly not when we're shopping). Matthew had folded his arms into a pillow over the cart handle and was lying, uncharacteristically docile with patient boredom.
Before she made it too far away, I said, "You don't know how much I needed to hear that. Thank you."
I bought them a smoothie on our way out. And while I unloaded the cart, a second woman approached me to ask if she could take my two carts for me. "I know how hard it can be with little ones," she comforted. "Let me take these for you so that you don't have to walk them all the way back from the cart return."
When I got home, Mary was there to help with the groceries. Matthew pitched in without being asked. Spencer walked in the door while there were still boxes piled into categorized sections of the kitchen, where he could see all of our "wasted" money in bag and box form before it was taken to the pantry and chest freezer downstairs; he didn't complain. To my surprise, he hugged me. He thanked me... and looking around at the noisy kids and the boiling pot of water on the stove and boxes and boxes and boxes of crap, he said, "... for doing all of this."
Shopping days suck. But as far as shopping days go, yesterday is one that I will remember for being a little less awful than fighting off zombies.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Orientation: Part 1
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*In less than 20 days, we'll have our first official day of homeschool! Before the first on-record day, I plan to set aside the previous Friday for a little bit of an orientation in the classroom. Each subject comes with a pretty involved introduction, so instead of squeezing all of the more general, big-picture questions in that same day, I want to tackle that stuff the week before. This is just an outline of what I plan to cover about our daily schedule (part 2 covers expectations and junk) - although, realistically, I'll probably just talk, instead of printing this up and handing it to her. Then I thought, why not share this on my blog? It explains a good bit about our new adventure and quite frankly, I don't have time to come up with anything better. So enjoy! And feel free to tell me what you think.
Welcome to New Ridge Middle School!
That's right, we have a name. (Goofy, I know, but it's required. It's the first part of our city, the last part of our development. I know, I know, GENIUS.) You'll find over the course of this year, there's a lot about this homeschooling thing that isn't all that terribly different from what you're used to, right down to the awful name and early mornings. It won't be exactly the same - obviously, you won't be lining up for assemblies or eating tater tots in a cafeteria - but our day-to-day rundown should all seem pretty familiar. You'll still go on field trips, get to meet new people all the time, study for tests, participate in after school activities, and have a field day at the end of the year!
Today is kind of like orientation. Monday is our first official day of school, but before we get started, I want to introduce you to the classroom, to the materials we'll be using, to the schedule, and of course, to a few of the rules. I think it's important for us to talk about what I expect from you in the classroom and for you to have the opportunity to tell me what you're expecting to get out of 7th grade. There's a lot to cover and I know that you've got questions of your own, so let's get down to business!
Let's get started with your schedule. First, you have a weekly dry-erase planner posted above your desk. I'll write on this for you, so that each Monday, you start the week knowing exactly which subjects you have on which days, and in what order. It'll also tell you exactly which lesson, page, or project you're working on, on each day. You don't have to keep track of any of that yourself.
Also, the white leather tray to the left of your desk is where I'll put each of your printouts for the day. (Except your morning work binder, which is in the cubby.) Everything is already paper clipped by specific color within my filing cabinet under the day and subject it covers - but you don't need to worry about that. Just know that when it comes time for a certain subject, all you have to do is reach in the bottom compartment of that white tray and find the sheet(s) for that subject. When you're finished, lay in on the top tray.
Everyday:
The kids and I wake up earlier than you do, so the mornings will be for you to sleep in a little and for me to have some time with them before our day begins. You'll be waking up at 8:30, which is when you'll get dressed and eat. I do expect everyone out of their pajamas by this time. We can make exceptions as we get further into the school year, but for the purpose of keeping everyone sharp, I think it's important that we get in the habit early on of treating our school days as school days -- not an extension of summer vacation. At 9:00, we'll meet in the school room.
Morning Binder
(Monday-Friday)
I made this part of the day easy on you. You have a binder of morning work, which you can work on independently while I set Matthew up on his Reading Eggs. You'll start with a quick ten minutes of typing practice (which is more fun than it sounds, especially as you start getting the hang of it, and includes a section of games). In your binder, located at the top right shelf of your cubby, you'll log the start and end times of your computer practice as well as the level you're at. Inside of your binder you'll find a section for cursive practice and a section for our Word of the Week sheets. I don't mind if you work on more than one cursive sheet, or play an extra level on the game portion of your typing program, so long as by about 9:30 all three parts of your morning work are complete. You tend to work fast and this part doesn't involve a lot of concentration, so again, this part should be very laid back. Feel free to listen to music as you work. Just remember that neatness counts for a lot in your morning work binder.
*A word on craftsmanship: Neatness will count this year. I want to talk about this for a second because your handwriting has become very stylized in the past few years - which I've always said is fine, so long as your letters are all still effortlessly decipherable. It isn't going to cut it when writing an essay to say that dotting your i's with a giant bubble is "your style". So when you're practicing your cursive or filling out a vocab sheet, remember that these serve as practice for less-stylized handwriting, too.
Grammar
(Monday/Wednesday/Friday)
When I meet you back in the school room, we'll review your Word of the Week sheet and discuss it a little before copying it onto the board for the week. Then, we'll have our grammar lesson at the whiteboard. When the lesson is over, you'll go into the bottom slot of your white paper tray. This is where I'll put every assignment sheet for that day. You simply find the grammar packet (there will be 2-4 sheets a day), and start working. This work will be independent, but obviously, you can come to me at any time for help. I won't be giving you the answer, but briefly going over that part of the lesson again - so don't expect a quick hand-out of answers. You will be expected to use your noggin. When your work is complete, just place it in the top tray and let me know.
Creative Writing
(Monday-Thursday)
After grammar, we'll have a lesson on creative writing. Each lesson ends with a few creative exercises. This course actually comes with a workbook, though sometimes we'll do exercises on notebook paper to allow for more room. In the same section of our book-file as your workbook, you'll keep a notebook that will be used exclusively for this subject. It needs to be one of the thicker notebooks because this course will come with a number of essay assignments as well.
Spelling
(Monday-Friday)
I have good news and bad news, here. The bad news is that you'll have a test everyday. The good news is that I'll be giving you the answers! This course is one of my favorites. It's unique, completely stress-free, and very quick. That said, I'm counting on it being one of the most influential of your classes this year. When you're finished with your creative writing assignments, you'll pull out your spelling response booklet. I'll say a word to you, use it in a sentence, and then say the word again. You'll try to spell it in your response booklet. After you've written it yourself, I'll spell the word. You then have the chance to correct it if it was wrong. The idea is that by a.) thinking about it, b.) hearing it spelled, c.) writing it yourself, and d.) seeing it spelled, you'll be committing it to memory through what is called a "multi-sensory" approach. As long as you pay attention enough to correct any misspellings, you should get an "A" every time. You'll also be gradually building off of smaller words that you learn throughout the coarse, so that by the end, you'll be spelling words like 'psychoanalysis' without even getting a headache!
Editing
(Tuesdays)
Editing is easy, as it's mostly an exercise in practice. Once a week you'll do a sheet, which will require you to edit a short article.
Math
(Monday-Thursday)
Everyday you'll watch an animated lesson on your computer program, read a little from the chapter, and test your knowledge; first in a set of practice problems, then in a problem set, which will be recorded into the computer and graded automatically. You get immediate feedback on how well you did. If you didn't do so well, you can repeat the lesson as many times as you need or I can come in to explain it to you on the board. I've taken all of the quizzes myself so you can be confident that I know what each lesson covers and how to help you find the answers required. Students your age rated this the most fun math class they'd ever taken. And to make it more fun, I've compiled a list of math labs we'll be adding to the curriculum, which are just hands-on games and activities that we get to do together so that you're not always stuck at a computer. We'll run into a math test about once (occasionally twice) a month.
Physics
(Monday/Friday)
Mondays, we'll have a lesson in Physics. Throughout my spiel, we'll cover vocabulary (which we'll be writing on one of our chalkboards to keep up for the rest of the week), and when it's over, you'll do a "Review It" sheet. I'm excited about getting into note taking with you this year, which I'll go into more detail about later. For now, just know that you'll be taking notes as I'm speaking; jotting down anything that YOU THINK will help you to remember at a glance what I taught you about. You'll use these to study from later. Note-taking is the only activity in which you WILL NOT concern yourself with neatness. You'll be writing as I'm talking, so (although I'll go easy on you at first) you need to write fast and decipher quickly what's important to note. On Friday, we'll do our activities, experiments, or projects, and you'll answer a few "Think About It" questions. Then, every few lessons/weeks, we'll have a test on that unit.
(*Note that we'll be taking pictures of our larger experiments and projects for your middle school portfolio. Just a heads up, in case you wanna wash your hair that day!)
Mechanical Science
(Monday-Friday)
This is something you're familiar with from school last year, and I remember you saying that it wasn't one of your favorites. It is important though, so we're going to cover it again. We'll just chip away at this one a little everyday, focusing on the parts with which you could maybe use a little extra help. It's important to me that you not ever be bored, but because I loved this part of science in 7th grade, I'm confident that we can think of ways to make it fun.
History
(Monday-Thursday)
We'll generally start the week by reviewing the previous lesson's note cards. (More on that later.) Then, we'll take a pretest (don't worry, no grades!) - which should just help to pique your curiosity about the upcoming lesson, and help me to determine at the end what you've gained from it. On Tuesday, we'll get into the lesson. There will a combination of reading from the text and just listening to me talk for a while. I want to incorporate other media into this as well, so we'll watch movies and video clips from time to time, go on pretty regular field trips, include art projects, and venture out to the library often. On either that same day or the next, depending on how much time it requires, we'll do an activity. Some of them, like I said, will be art projects; others may require some research. It's a mixed bag. But there will be an element of fun and a ton of great experience in everything we do; that, I promise! The next day, we'll record what we've learned on "memory cards", from which we'll later use to study. Memory cards will be kept in a special 2 ring binder throughout the school year. We'll also add objects or figures from that week's lesson to our timeline (again, this will make more sense on Monday when we get into the specifics of each subject), and work on your mapping. Then, we'll wrap it all up with a periodic quiz.
Logic
Your logic assignments will probably happen at the end of the day because I like the idea of involving Daddy or maybe even some of your friends. They consist of The Fallacy Detective and your Anti-Virus board game. The Fallacy Detective comes in the form of a very quick, once-a-week lesson, but can be fun to discuss if more people are involved. (This may just be a cool over-dinner thing to do sometimes.) Anti-Virus is that game Matthew's been eye-balling since your curriculum came in the mail, and we'll be playing that one twice a week. Whenever you want to just kind of get it out of the way, you can play it on your own because there is a 1 player option. But, like I said, I think it would be a fun way to maybe involve Daddy a little, too.
*A note about lunch:
Okay, obviously, lunch is going to happen in the middle of the day - not the end - but it's tough to say exactly when because I don't have us on an hour-to-hour schedule. I did that because I want you to feel free to work (more or less) at your own pace. If dividing fractions is trickier for you than we expected it to be, we'll work on it until you understand. Or, we'll pack the kids up and go for a walk to clear our heads. So instead of having a specific time for each part of our day to start, we'll just follow a sequence. Math will come before science, which will come before history, and so on... so that we can take precisely as little or as much time for each subject as we need.
Our goal is to finish each subject by the end of the day, but even that can be changed if it has to. Obviously, you won't be meeting your friends at the mall on Friday if we haven't finished all of your assignments for the week, but lunch will happen when there's time.
Also, when we DO take our lunch, we'll be having 'recess' afterward. I know what you're thinking: you're in seventh grade!, but Matthew and Scarlett are not, and honestly, some fresh air to break up the school day will do you as much good as it will them. While the weather's still nice we're going to take a walk to the park, or the trail nearby. When it starts getting chillier, we'll drive to the park, and on really cold January days, we'll just go out into the yard for a while or hit up an indoor play space like Hullabaloo or the mall.
~~~~~~
Part 2 is where I go into expectations and explain a little bit about how homeschooling works compared to what she's familiar with from public school, including her out-of-the-house activities. I expect there to be a lot of dialogue here as she asks questions of her own, and I want to have answers ready for her so I haven't finished typing that up. I'd like to say that I'll post it tomorrow but... well, that's becoming a joke.
But, hey! Guess who has a freakin' facebook now? Look me up, yo. I joined an awesome homeschooling group in Delaware on there and everything, so when things get slow here, you can see what we're up to by friend-ing me there. I hope ya do. :-)
*In less than 20 days, we'll have our first official day of homeschool! Before the first on-record day, I plan to set aside the previous Friday for a little bit of an orientation in the classroom. Each subject comes with a pretty involved introduction, so instead of squeezing all of the more general, big-picture questions in that same day, I want to tackle that stuff the week before. This is just an outline of what I plan to cover about our daily schedule (part 2 covers expectations and junk) - although, realistically, I'll probably just talk, instead of printing this up and handing it to her. Then I thought, why not share this on my blog? It explains a good bit about our new adventure and quite frankly, I don't have time to come up with anything better. So enjoy! And feel free to tell me what you think.
Welcome to New Ridge Middle School!
That's right, we have a name. (Goofy, I know, but it's required. It's the first part of our city, the last part of our development. I know, I know, GENIUS.) You'll find over the course of this year, there's a lot about this homeschooling thing that isn't all that terribly different from what you're used to, right down to the awful name and early mornings. It won't be exactly the same - obviously, you won't be lining up for assemblies or eating tater tots in a cafeteria - but our day-to-day rundown should all seem pretty familiar. You'll still go on field trips, get to meet new people all the time, study for tests, participate in after school activities, and have a field day at the end of the year!
Today is kind of like orientation. Monday is our first official day of school, but before we get started, I want to introduce you to the classroom, to the materials we'll be using, to the schedule, and of course, to a few of the rules. I think it's important for us to talk about what I expect from you in the classroom and for you to have the opportunity to tell me what you're expecting to get out of 7th grade. There's a lot to cover and I know that you've got questions of your own, so let's get down to business!
Let's get started with your schedule. First, you have a weekly dry-erase planner posted above your desk. I'll write on this for you, so that each Monday, you start the week knowing exactly which subjects you have on which days, and in what order. It'll also tell you exactly which lesson, page, or project you're working on, on each day. You don't have to keep track of any of that yourself.
Also, the white leather tray to the left of your desk is where I'll put each of your printouts for the day. (Except your morning work binder, which is in the cubby.) Everything is already paper clipped by specific color within my filing cabinet under the day and subject it covers - but you don't need to worry about that. Just know that when it comes time for a certain subject, all you have to do is reach in the bottom compartment of that white tray and find the sheet(s) for that subject. When you're finished, lay in on the top tray.
Everyday:
The kids and I wake up earlier than you do, so the mornings will be for you to sleep in a little and for me to have some time with them before our day begins. You'll be waking up at 8:30, which is when you'll get dressed and eat. I do expect everyone out of their pajamas by this time. We can make exceptions as we get further into the school year, but for the purpose of keeping everyone sharp, I think it's important that we get in the habit early on of treating our school days as school days -- not an extension of summer vacation. At 9:00, we'll meet in the school room.
Morning Binder
(Monday-Friday)
I made this part of the day easy on you. You have a binder of morning work, which you can work on independently while I set Matthew up on his Reading Eggs. You'll start with a quick ten minutes of typing practice (which is more fun than it sounds, especially as you start getting the hang of it, and includes a section of games). In your binder, located at the top right shelf of your cubby, you'll log the start and end times of your computer practice as well as the level you're at. Inside of your binder you'll find a section for cursive practice and a section for our Word of the Week sheets. I don't mind if you work on more than one cursive sheet, or play an extra level on the game portion of your typing program, so long as by about 9:30 all three parts of your morning work are complete. You tend to work fast and this part doesn't involve a lot of concentration, so again, this part should be very laid back. Feel free to listen to music as you work. Just remember that neatness counts for a lot in your morning work binder.
*A word on craftsmanship: Neatness will count this year. I want to talk about this for a second because your handwriting has become very stylized in the past few years - which I've always said is fine, so long as your letters are all still effortlessly decipherable. It isn't going to cut it when writing an essay to say that dotting your i's with a giant bubble is "your style". So when you're practicing your cursive or filling out a vocab sheet, remember that these serve as practice for less-stylized handwriting, too.
Grammar
(Monday/Wednesday/Friday)
When I meet you back in the school room, we'll review your Word of the Week sheet and discuss it a little before copying it onto the board for the week. Then, we'll have our grammar lesson at the whiteboard. When the lesson is over, you'll go into the bottom slot of your white paper tray. This is where I'll put every assignment sheet for that day. You simply find the grammar packet (there will be 2-4 sheets a day), and start working. This work will be independent, but obviously, you can come to me at any time for help. I won't be giving you the answer, but briefly going over that part of the lesson again - so don't expect a quick hand-out of answers. You will be expected to use your noggin. When your work is complete, just place it in the top tray and let me know.
Creative Writing
(Monday-Thursday)
After grammar, we'll have a lesson on creative writing. Each lesson ends with a few creative exercises. This course actually comes with a workbook, though sometimes we'll do exercises on notebook paper to allow for more room. In the same section of our book-file as your workbook, you'll keep a notebook that will be used exclusively for this subject. It needs to be one of the thicker notebooks because this course will come with a number of essay assignments as well.
Spelling
(Monday-Friday)
I have good news and bad news, here. The bad news is that you'll have a test everyday. The good news is that I'll be giving you the answers! This course is one of my favorites. It's unique, completely stress-free, and very quick. That said, I'm counting on it being one of the most influential of your classes this year. When you're finished with your creative writing assignments, you'll pull out your spelling response booklet. I'll say a word to you, use it in a sentence, and then say the word again. You'll try to spell it in your response booklet. After you've written it yourself, I'll spell the word. You then have the chance to correct it if it was wrong. The idea is that by a.) thinking about it, b.) hearing it spelled, c.) writing it yourself, and d.) seeing it spelled, you'll be committing it to memory through what is called a "multi-sensory" approach. As long as you pay attention enough to correct any misspellings, you should get an "A" every time. You'll also be gradually building off of smaller words that you learn throughout the coarse, so that by the end, you'll be spelling words like 'psychoanalysis' without even getting a headache!
Editing
(Tuesdays)
Editing is easy, as it's mostly an exercise in practice. Once a week you'll do a sheet, which will require you to edit a short article.
Math
(Monday-Thursday)
Everyday you'll watch an animated lesson on your computer program, read a little from the chapter, and test your knowledge; first in a set of practice problems, then in a problem set, which will be recorded into the computer and graded automatically. You get immediate feedback on how well you did. If you didn't do so well, you can repeat the lesson as many times as you need or I can come in to explain it to you on the board. I've taken all of the quizzes myself so you can be confident that I know what each lesson covers and how to help you find the answers required. Students your age rated this the most fun math class they'd ever taken. And to make it more fun, I've compiled a list of math labs we'll be adding to the curriculum, which are just hands-on games and activities that we get to do together so that you're not always stuck at a computer. We'll run into a math test about once (occasionally twice) a month.
Physics
(Monday/Friday)
Mondays, we'll have a lesson in Physics. Throughout my spiel, we'll cover vocabulary (which we'll be writing on one of our chalkboards to keep up for the rest of the week), and when it's over, you'll do a "Review It" sheet. I'm excited about getting into note taking with you this year, which I'll go into more detail about later. For now, just know that you'll be taking notes as I'm speaking; jotting down anything that YOU THINK will help you to remember at a glance what I taught you about. You'll use these to study from later. Note-taking is the only activity in which you WILL NOT concern yourself with neatness. You'll be writing as I'm talking, so (although I'll go easy on you at first) you need to write fast and decipher quickly what's important to note. On Friday, we'll do our activities, experiments, or projects, and you'll answer a few "Think About It" questions. Then, every few lessons/weeks, we'll have a test on that unit.
(*Note that we'll be taking pictures of our larger experiments and projects for your middle school portfolio. Just a heads up, in case you wanna wash your hair that day!)
Mechanical Science
(Monday-Friday)
This is something you're familiar with from school last year, and I remember you saying that it wasn't one of your favorites. It is important though, so we're going to cover it again. We'll just chip away at this one a little everyday, focusing on the parts with which you could maybe use a little extra help. It's important to me that you not ever be bored, but because I loved this part of science in 7th grade, I'm confident that we can think of ways to make it fun.
History
(Monday-Thursday)
We'll generally start the week by reviewing the previous lesson's note cards. (More on that later.) Then, we'll take a pretest (don't worry, no grades!) - which should just help to pique your curiosity about the upcoming lesson, and help me to determine at the end what you've gained from it. On Tuesday, we'll get into the lesson. There will a combination of reading from the text and just listening to me talk for a while. I want to incorporate other media into this as well, so we'll watch movies and video clips from time to time, go on pretty regular field trips, include art projects, and venture out to the library often. On either that same day or the next, depending on how much time it requires, we'll do an activity. Some of them, like I said, will be art projects; others may require some research. It's a mixed bag. But there will be an element of fun and a ton of great experience in everything we do; that, I promise! The next day, we'll record what we've learned on "memory cards", from which we'll later use to study. Memory cards will be kept in a special 2 ring binder throughout the school year. We'll also add objects or figures from that week's lesson to our timeline (again, this will make more sense on Monday when we get into the specifics of each subject), and work on your mapping. Then, we'll wrap it all up with a periodic quiz.
Logic
Your logic assignments will probably happen at the end of the day because I like the idea of involving Daddy or maybe even some of your friends. They consist of The Fallacy Detective and your Anti-Virus board game. The Fallacy Detective comes in the form of a very quick, once-a-week lesson, but can be fun to discuss if more people are involved. (This may just be a cool over-dinner thing to do sometimes.) Anti-Virus is that game Matthew's been eye-balling since your curriculum came in the mail, and we'll be playing that one twice a week. Whenever you want to just kind of get it out of the way, you can play it on your own because there is a 1 player option. But, like I said, I think it would be a fun way to maybe involve Daddy a little, too.
*A note about lunch:
Okay, obviously, lunch is going to happen in the middle of the day - not the end - but it's tough to say exactly when because I don't have us on an hour-to-hour schedule. I did that because I want you to feel free to work (more or less) at your own pace. If dividing fractions is trickier for you than we expected it to be, we'll work on it until you understand. Or, we'll pack the kids up and go for a walk to clear our heads. So instead of having a specific time for each part of our day to start, we'll just follow a sequence. Math will come before science, which will come before history, and so on... so that we can take precisely as little or as much time for each subject as we need.
Our goal is to finish each subject by the end of the day, but even that can be changed if it has to. Obviously, you won't be meeting your friends at the mall on Friday if we haven't finished all of your assignments for the week, but lunch will happen when there's time.
Also, when we DO take our lunch, we'll be having 'recess' afterward. I know what you're thinking: you're in seventh grade!, but Matthew and Scarlett are not, and honestly, some fresh air to break up the school day will do you as much good as it will them. While the weather's still nice we're going to take a walk to the park, or the trail nearby. When it starts getting chillier, we'll drive to the park, and on really cold January days, we'll just go out into the yard for a while or hit up an indoor play space like Hullabaloo or the mall.
~~~~~~
Part 2 is where I go into expectations and explain a little bit about how homeschooling works compared to what she's familiar with from public school, including her out-of-the-house activities. I expect there to be a lot of dialogue here as she asks questions of her own, and I want to have answers ready for her so I haven't finished typing that up. I'd like to say that I'll post it tomorrow but... well, that's becoming a joke.
But, hey! Guess who has a freakin' facebook now? Look me up, yo. I joined an awesome homeschooling group in Delaware on there and everything, so when things get slow here, you can see what we're up to by friend-ing me there. I hope ya do. :-)
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Our Homeschool Classroom.
Pin It
**Okay, so apparently I didn't take any real money shots of the whole room, just bits and pieces of my favorite parts. Eh, I'll getcha next time.**
Small homes grow tight families, right? Well that’s sort of what we’re working with, here. Honestly, our home wouldn’t be such a tight fit were it not for the fact that we so enjoy filling it with new people. Our general priorities on conceiving children are: feed animal instinct to repopulate the earth now; think about it later. Even after we were actually married when The Urge #2 hit, Scarlett was about the size of a dump truck in my baby-making organs before we started reconstructing a quarter of our house just to make her fit. Whatever, it was fun.
This time we may not be having another baby, but you wouldn’t know it from the way that I’m nesting. This is a big change for our family, and a chance for me to reshape the future of my kids. This is cooler than a new baby; this is the opportunity for me to be a better parent to the ones I have already - like it is literally my job. I know that I tend to over think things like this, but it just means an awful lot to me, and if on top of that, I get the chance to buy chalk board decals from Target, then baby - let’s DO it.
When we renovated our den to become the master bedroom, the little room to the side we call a classroom now became the catch-all for anything that didn’t look pretty enough to be in plain view. My type-A mother taught me never to believe in catch-all rooms, but I’d just dropped like 3 grand on new carpet and furniture so until we were ready to pay cash for a master bath with a flat screen, I needed a place to put the cat poop. The paneling was eye-sore faux wood and if that wasn’t enough to make you instinctually avert your eyes and walk away every time you almost felt ambitious enough to organize it, the gradual inhalation of cat litter hissing up your nose uninvited you, itself.
Cleaning it was not as therapeutic as it was nauseating, but I didn’t realize that until I was close enough to finished that I could just barrel though the rest. In the end, eighteen coats of stark white, framed maps, and cork boards on repositionable tape pulled the room together. Bearing in mind that this is a work in progress, and there are many-a-Pinterest idea I haven’t applied just yet, here is what we have:
A clip of our chalk board decals, which will hold important snippits from different subjects we've covered over the week. Above her work space, she also has a weekly chart, which gives an at-glance rundown of her assignments for each day. (lesson, chapter, etc.)
We have two filing cabinets, both set up by folders containing a week's worth of each subject's print-outs, which are then paper-clipped into days within the folder. The, there are dividers which break the weeks into months, in order to keep us on schedule. The cabinets are labeled with these super-cute repositionable, dry-erase, notebook paper decals from Target. We have them all over the room. I LOVE them.
The bottom cubbies hold 'busy' activities for Matthew, (and Scarlett, if she absolutely must be with us inside of the room while I'm in there with Mary). The middle cubbies hold a few of the educational games/materials that I've used a lot for Matthew's pre-school activities in the past.
The unfinished closet this sets over is seven different kinds of hideous. But this is cute!
We didn't have tie backs for the curtains, so I did it up with some schoolish-looking ribbon I found lying around.
Matthew's Responsibility chart. He's already asking to earn point on it! Funny enough, Mary saw it and actually said: How come MATTHEW gets all the fun stuff? Ha, I guess I'll have to find a responsibility chart for her too... Something tells me she'll regret putting the idea in my head!
One of my favorite little finds. Isn't the white leather so pretty? This is where papers will go in-transit on days we need them. I'll pull papers she needs for the day from the filing cabinet and place them in the bottom tray for her to pull out as needed when we get to that subject. When she's finished, she'll put them on top. I like this system because the top part is wide enough to even fit her workbooks.
Matthew's desk. I love my in-laws a little more everyday for giving this to him. Genuinely one of the coolest presents, ever.
Just some shots of the desk. I like that it's so spacious for her.
This is a filing crate that we re-purposed for holding books instead. It's great for keeping workbooks and notebooks organized into subjects, so that they aren't just piled on top of one another or stuggling to fit awkwardly on a bookshelf. They're within easy reach, but also off of her workspace. She can also see all of the titles at a quick glance this way and keep her notebooks with the subject to which they belong.
I still need cute side-labels for her morning-work notebook, but this is the top shelf of the cubby for keeping her thicker texts and three-ring binders. Also, doesn't every schoolroom need a globe and a trendy, green wall clock?
I wanted this room to feel like a classroom. Mary was always the kind of kid who never wanted to miss a day of school. She may not have loved actually paying attention or doing most of the assignments, but she was going to miss being there. So I thought that going with a classroom ambiance would help her to feel a little more… um, UN-at-home? Unwilling to splurge on new flooring, an intentional classroom décor would help to disguise the fact that asbestos tile flooring and florescent lights were not our first choice. We also had this incredible desk (which, I kid you not, I could have kissed my in-laws for giving our son last year) that pretty much sealed the decision for me to set aside a room for schooling in the first place.
There’s a very good argument out there for not dumping money into a school room (as most families gravitate toward the higher-trafficked kitchen table anyway), but for the sake of transition, it was essential. And look --I know that this endeavor is mostly about Mary -- but, how adorable this boy looks, sitting under the American flag, pasting sight words to construction paper beside his little V-tech globe! Ugh, it’s sick, people. It really is.
The room is small, and being a virtually windowless area only adds to the sense of confinement I’ve always hated about this part of the house. We had to do some banking on creativity to work with what we had. The desk is pushed up into this little nook which I never would have appreciated before the new paint, but it actually looks nice. Even though we aren’t utilizing the dinosaur computer modem that takes up a little space and looks awful, it serves as the perfect side table for her supply tins. And since they’re sitting on metal, we can put little magnets at the bottom to keep them from sliding around. Classroom chic? Oh, I think so.
We were working on a budget, and I had to keep in mind that I’m really only using this stuff to teach one kid, so even though a wall-covering chalk board and locker cabinets would be cool, they boiled down to an unnecessary expense. (I will be home pre-schooling/kindergarten-ing Matthew like last year, but that doesn’t involve any heavy equipment yet.) I tried to keep it light, reminding myself that we didn’t have a lot of space to work with anyway, and that I wanted to keep it feeling open and uncluttered. For that reason, we decided on a nice, spacious white board, and went smaller with chalk board decals. Broken up the way that they are not only looks a little cooler, it helps me display important information for each subject, separately. Word of the Week will be displayed here. Vocab for our Physics unit this month, there. Reminders from our grammar unit when working on this week’s essay, to the left. I have a thousand (and by a thousand I mean like, 12) educational posters that I’ll just be cycling through as they relate to what we’re learning. Some of them are for Mary and some of them are for Matthew. I would have loved to incorporate some pretty, motivational posters in quirky, repurposed-vintage frames like I’ve Pinned from all over the internet, but again, wall space is prime real estate in a small room, so we’re sacrificing taste for functionality with additions like my awesome rainbow multiplication chart. I’ve come to terms with it.
We have a filing cabinet we decked out in these great dry-erase decals from Target, which more than take care of the need we have for storing assignments. The filing crate I’d bought turned out to be a little more than we needed for paper storage, so we reassigned it to holding our textbooks/workbooks instead. It’s a little unorthodox, but it’s one of my favorite quirks of the room. I read before that curriculum texts are not book shelf-friendly, which turned out to be very much the truth. They’re bulky and soft-covered, so they slump down unattractively, sliding everything else around - if they even fit. In this, the books stand upright, divided into subjects by little dividers, so that their titles are easy to spot at a glace. Every response booklet, reference, or text that she’ll need is at arm’s length; out of the way and off of her workspace, but still within easy reach. The white organizer up front is where papers will go in transition - the bottom slot will be for assignments-in-progress (essays and such) and the top will be for any assignments ready to grade, including her workbooks.
Speaking of storage, a definite perk to this being an unfinished room is that there’s really no need to get fancy with the closet space because it still has concrete floors. However, it does go back really, really, really far, have a deep shelf inside, and have a thick tension rod built across top, perfect for one, or even a few of those hanging organizers. It won’t be photo-shoot material, but together with our other organizational tools, should more than keep the clutter at bay.
We’ll see, right?
**Okay, so apparently I didn't take any real money shots of the whole room, just bits and pieces of my favorite parts. Eh, I'll getcha next time.**
Small homes grow tight families, right? Well that’s sort of what we’re working with, here. Honestly, our home wouldn’t be such a tight fit were it not for the fact that we so enjoy filling it with new people. Our general priorities on conceiving children are: feed animal instinct to repopulate the earth now; think about it later. Even after we were actually married when The Urge #2 hit, Scarlett was about the size of a dump truck in my baby-making organs before we started reconstructing a quarter of our house just to make her fit. Whatever, it was fun.
This time we may not be having another baby, but you wouldn’t know it from the way that I’m nesting. This is a big change for our family, and a chance for me to reshape the future of my kids. This is cooler than a new baby; this is the opportunity for me to be a better parent to the ones I have already - like it is literally my job. I know that I tend to over think things like this, but it just means an awful lot to me, and if on top of that, I get the chance to buy chalk board decals from Target, then baby - let’s DO it.
When we renovated our den to become the master bedroom, the little room to the side we call a classroom now became the catch-all for anything that didn’t look pretty enough to be in plain view. My type-A mother taught me never to believe in catch-all rooms, but I’d just dropped like 3 grand on new carpet and furniture so until we were ready to pay cash for a master bath with a flat screen, I needed a place to put the cat poop. The paneling was eye-sore faux wood and if that wasn’t enough to make you instinctually avert your eyes and walk away every time you almost felt ambitious enough to organize it, the gradual inhalation of cat litter hissing up your nose uninvited you, itself.
Cleaning it was not as therapeutic as it was nauseating, but I didn’t realize that until I was close enough to finished that I could just barrel though the rest. In the end, eighteen coats of stark white, framed maps, and cork boards on repositionable tape pulled the room together. Bearing in mind that this is a work in progress, and there are many-a-Pinterest idea I haven’t applied just yet, here is what we have:
This is a filing crate that we re-purposed for holding books instead. It's great for keeping workbooks and notebooks organized into subjects, so that they aren't just piled on top of one another or stuggling to fit awkwardly on a bookshelf. They're within easy reach, but also off of her workspace. She can also see all of the titles at a quick glance this way and keep her notebooks with the subject to which they belong.
I wanted this room to feel like a classroom. Mary was always the kind of kid who never wanted to miss a day of school. She may not have loved actually paying attention or doing most of the assignments, but she was going to miss being there. So I thought that going with a classroom ambiance would help her to feel a little more… um, UN-at-home? Unwilling to splurge on new flooring, an intentional classroom décor would help to disguise the fact that asbestos tile flooring and florescent lights were not our first choice. We also had this incredible desk (which, I kid you not, I could have kissed my in-laws for giving our son last year) that pretty much sealed the decision for me to set aside a room for schooling in the first place.
There’s a very good argument out there for not dumping money into a school room (as most families gravitate toward the higher-trafficked kitchen table anyway), but for the sake of transition, it was essential. And look --I know that this endeavor is mostly about Mary -- but, how adorable this boy looks, sitting under the American flag, pasting sight words to construction paper beside his little V-tech globe! Ugh, it’s sick, people. It really is.
The room is small, and being a virtually windowless area only adds to the sense of confinement I’ve always hated about this part of the house. We had to do some banking on creativity to work with what we had. The desk is pushed up into this little nook which I never would have appreciated before the new paint, but it actually looks nice. Even though we aren’t utilizing the dinosaur computer modem that takes up a little space and looks awful, it serves as the perfect side table for her supply tins. And since they’re sitting on metal, we can put little magnets at the bottom to keep them from sliding around. Classroom chic? Oh, I think so.
We were working on a budget, and I had to keep in mind that I’m really only using this stuff to teach one kid, so even though a wall-covering chalk board and locker cabinets would be cool, they boiled down to an unnecessary expense. (I will be home pre-schooling/kindergarten-ing Matthew like last year, but that doesn’t involve any heavy equipment yet.) I tried to keep it light, reminding myself that we didn’t have a lot of space to work with anyway, and that I wanted to keep it feeling open and uncluttered. For that reason, we decided on a nice, spacious white board, and went smaller with chalk board decals. Broken up the way that they are not only looks a little cooler, it helps me display important information for each subject, separately. Word of the Week will be displayed here. Vocab for our Physics unit this month, there. Reminders from our grammar unit when working on this week’s essay, to the left. I have a thousand (and by a thousand I mean like, 12) educational posters that I’ll just be cycling through as they relate to what we’re learning. Some of them are for Mary and some of them are for Matthew. I would have loved to incorporate some pretty, motivational posters in quirky, repurposed-vintage frames like I’ve Pinned from all over the internet, but again, wall space is prime real estate in a small room, so we’re sacrificing taste for functionality with additions like my awesome rainbow multiplication chart. I’ve come to terms with it.
We have a filing cabinet we decked out in these great dry-erase decals from Target, which more than take care of the need we have for storing assignments. The filing crate I’d bought turned out to be a little more than we needed for paper storage, so we reassigned it to holding our textbooks/workbooks instead. It’s a little unorthodox, but it’s one of my favorite quirks of the room. I read before that curriculum texts are not book shelf-friendly, which turned out to be very much the truth. They’re bulky and soft-covered, so they slump down unattractively, sliding everything else around - if they even fit. In this, the books stand upright, divided into subjects by little dividers, so that their titles are easy to spot at a glace. Every response booklet, reference, or text that she’ll need is at arm’s length; out of the way and off of her workspace, but still within easy reach. The white organizer up front is where papers will go in transition - the bottom slot will be for assignments-in-progress (essays and such) and the top will be for any assignments ready to grade, including her workbooks.
Speaking of storage, a definite perk to this being an unfinished room is that there’s really no need to get fancy with the closet space because it still has concrete floors. However, it does go back really, really, really far, have a deep shelf inside, and have a thick tension rod built across top, perfect for one, or even a few of those hanging organizers. It won’t be photo-shoot material, but together with our other organizational tools, should more than keep the clutter at bay.
We’ll see, right?
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