Extracurricular activities!

I need to get some photos, etc, up here. I suppose I will refine this blog more as I use it more.

So Trevor is home now and we are deschooling a bit. He's not used to being "home" since our weekends are usually pretty full and Ray is here. So now that he is alone with me and the girls again, he must relearn how to get along with us. He's been a bit of a challenge these couple days, mainly because we are not structured and he's getting bored with being at home. I am letting him chill and be bored for a week to help him become inspired to find things to do. Next week I will add a little structure so our routine will be a little more predictable. We'll find our way.

We've also picked up some extracurricular activities. I have never really done more than informal free playgroups (never joined a pay mom's group), I've never put my kids in art classes, music classes, etc. It just seemed like a waste of money when they were so young. But now I see more of a benefit. Trevor is also old enough for cub scouts now! So Trevor is in cub scouts and LOVING it. Ray takes him every Thursday. It's not a homeschooling specific pack, but there are kids he knows from his year at school there and he plays with them and has a lot of fun.

Then I was looking through the Parks and Rec classes and found a drama class for 6-9 year olds open! Now, Trevor can be way dramatic and is constantly acting out things. He runs around pretending to be a villian and a hero and has he runs around, having this battle with himself, he is singing his action packed theme music *and* narrating what he is doing as he does it. It's hilarious to watch him play sometimes. So he is very excited to be in a drama class. It starts next week. Then Rachael, she wanted gymnastics, but they were all full. So I signed her up for this dance class that's more freestyle type movement than learning formal ballet and tap. It looked like a fun class that would get her moving, so she is looking forward to that as well.

I can't wait to find our groove! :)

Curriculum

So I haven't posted here in a while so I guess I should! After much searching, I think I decided on a curriculm for Trevor. I am going to skip one for Rachael this year simply because the school I chose is kind of pricey and I don't want to pay twice for something that may not work.

We are going to give Clonlara school a try I am almost positive. It has a nice kind of eclectic/unschooling friendly approach which will allow for the flexibility I want to have. But it also sets up a curriculum for me so I won't have to struggle with finding things for Trevor to do in my first year. Clonlara is a private, accredited school so they will keep records. grade work, etc for me and I *think* they deal with the state, too (I need to double check that). Now, I don't know that we will use them permanently as I get more comfortable in what I am doing. Or maybe we will love them and I will use them every year. It's pricey, but cheaper than private school. It's going to probably end up costing around 1K for the year for Trevor. Which is a decent deal to me.

For Rachael I am just going to use Starfall.com and work with her on the same things Trevor is working on, only to a more elementary degree. She recognizes her letters and can give me what a word starts with. She just lacks the hand control to make the letters on paper, though that is getting better as she LOVES making letters when she colours on blank paper. Ariel I might do something formal with, as well. Well, not FORMAL education, but I will probably give her the tools to learn things. She knows more than I think and alwats surprises me. She astounded me by singing her ABC's about a month ago. Just out of the blue she sang them! I also think she can count to ten, though she hasn't for me yet, she will count sequencial numbers just not all the way to ten. She does them in chunks here and there (7,8,9! 1, 2, 3!). She knows colours, too, unless I ask her directly then she won't answer me. heh. She's absorbing everything her older siblings say and do.

We also are thinking of joining this website called brainpop (I think! It's bookmarked upstairs where Rachael is playing Starfall). It has flash videos and lessons, etc for kids Trevor's age. We signed up for a trial and he LOVED it.

On another note, we went to the bookstore yesterday to look for a book on space since Trevor is fascinated by it right now. We found a DK book linked to google. So we not only got to look through the book, we got to find the website on google and look up more information. It was pretty cool. We can't check out encyclopedia type books from our library so I hope to build up a good collection of books to refer to.

OK. That's it from this end, MIL is coming in today and I need to tear Rachael away from the computer and get a few minutes outside before we have to go pick her up! I promise to start updating this more, especially when Trevor gets out of school- June 18th.

First post

I don't homeschool yet. Trevor is currently in kindergarten at a local public school. Rachael goes to preschool 3 days a week and Ariel stays at home with me full time. We had a rough first half of the year with Trevor. He didn't want to go to school, he cried every morning. It was pretty much torture for all of us so at one point we offered him the option of homeschooling next year but we would have to finish out his first year of school and make an attempt to make it work.

So, even though he is OK with going to school, he has still reminded me that he would like to homeschool next year. Since I had been planning on homeschooling before I decided to give public school and try, I figure I can take advantage of the fact he wants to stay home! Rachael, while she likes preschool, has also said she would like to be home next year. I think she is saying this largely because her brother is but, since preschool isn't mandatory, we'll give it a try.

I know we will definitely follow a curriculum but I have not decided on which yet. I looked into full on packages that were complete but there was always something about one part or another I disliked. So I am still on the lookout. I probably will use free resources for Rachael, since she is so young. I love the Waldorf approach to learning, but I am quickly finding that Trevor is ahead in some areas because waldorf follows a delayed approach to learning and with Trevor's one year in K, he has surpassed most waldorf grade 1 LA curriculums and even grade 2. I will probably pull nature oriented lessons from waldorf, math from saxon (which always seems to have good marks) and I haven't decided on language arts yet though I have found one book I would like to use but it would only be a part of the big picture. I haven't decided how to approach history.. if I should start with our local virginia history, US history or start with actual history of civilization (which I am leaning towards), etc. I think music will be satisfied through basic kindermusic type classes or a waldorf music type method. I haveb't researched it enough yet.

Right now I am really in the researching stage. I know homeschooling will allow me some extra time with my children (Trevor especially since I feel I hardly ever see him now) and some control over what he is learning. It also gives us more time for other activities. Right now Trevor spends all day in K, so I hesitate to fill his full time schedule of school with anything else (we leave for school at 8:40am and he gets home most days at 4pm). He needs time to be a kid, you know. But I hope with homeschooling we can sign him up for some interesting activities. The biggest advantage to me right now will be the extra time outside and following a family rhythm. The big thing school has taken away is the simple fact of family. Trevor spends so much time with other people besides us and is usually tired and GRUMPY when he gets home. He grumps and argues with his sisters, doesn't want to go outside and I really miss the way he was able to relate and play with his siblings and talk to me. His imagination seems to be stuck in a rut because it doesn't get the workout it used to get. I miss that he doesn't see the way a household runs, he doesn't see the laundry going into his drawer or being washed, he doesn't see baking happen or bread being made. History, science, math, etc are extremely important. But so is life, being outside and practical matters. So is the ability to be self directed. He spends much of his day being directed into actities and stimulated by other people that he hardly knows what to do when someone isn't giving him an activity or telling him what to do. He misses alot of this by spending an ENTIRE day on learning.

We'll see! I will use this journal more when Trevor and Rachael are both actually homeschooling. I might post from time to time here if I order something, or set up a part of the house for schooling. It's all a grand adventure!