How do we do schoolwork?

So how do we do the schoolwork with such a busy schedule you ask. Well.....

If you don't homeschool most people truly believe that we are always home, never around anyone else, just home doing schoolwork like you would if you were in school. Sadly, most of us have a public school mentality about school. I know I did until God led me and my family down this path. Most homeschoolers start out doing school at home, but over time each family finds what works best for them and their kids. Some homeschoolers use no textbooks at all instead they go to the library and get any books on any subject that the kids are interested in. Don't knock this I have seen some very smart kids emerge from this way of learning. They take the kids on fieldtrips to learn even more. They teach the kids with things in everyday life. This group is known by the label of unschoolers, there is even a group of radical unschoolers, but I know even less about this group. Then there are the eclectic homeschoolers. This group uses whatever works for each child. Meaning they could incorporate several different learning patterns into their family. They don't use a set curriculum, they could use some textbooks, some subjects may be all hands own and exploration, library, etc., a lot like the unschoolers. This group evaluates the need each child has and plans their school from there. The vast majority of homeschoolers I know do this. This is the style our family falls in. Though some of my unschooling counterparts are trying to move us to their camp it just does not work for us. Both kids like getting new textbooks each year and actually look forward to the day we get them. We had a big box arrive one day and you would have thought it was Christmas because both kids tore into the box and took out their books and started looking through them. The day I bought Alex's Chemistry book and several science things and used books from a friend the kids were again just as excited as before. Each took their books off to their rooms and started reading them. Several science experiments were picked out to do the next day.

Homeschooling is very diverse and until you are actually in the trenches so to speak it is very hard to see and understand it all. Homeschoolers are a very diverse group of people and each family goes about the same things in different ways. That is one of the things we love about homeschooling the most the diversity and freedom that comes with homeschooling. My goal for the kids is to raise independent life-learners. What I mean by that is that they understand learning happens all day, any day, and if they don't know something that they know how to go about getting the information they need. Alex is very independent with his schoolwork. He is responsible for taking his textbooks and doing his work, if he needs help he can come to us, but he is to try and get the information he needs by himself first. It is up to him to figure out how much he needs to do in order to be finished by the end of the "school year", if he wants a break. We homeschool year around, but the kids know our school calendar which goes something like this, 6 weeks in, 2 weeks out, and 6 week break in the summer. This schedule is when we cover, science, history, math, English, foreign language, literature, spelling, vocabulary, writing, geography, and health. During our 6 week break we take a lighter schedule. We do math to keep the kids fresh. Bri actually does something called Vacation Stations which is a couple of pages of math one day and a couple of pages of language the next, just to keep her fresh. Alex does things that may not have gotten fit in during the school year. Sometimes they do a typing course, language course. Every summer is nature studies, which is just going outside and observing nature. Studying the plants, bugs, trees, grass, rocks, etc. We get field guides to trees and birds and identify what we see. We have done in depth studies on bugs we find and don't know what they are, we find out though. We learn a lot of home ec things, such as canning, and preserving food. Harvesting and planting our food. We have a life skill day which is the day we clean the house and do laundry, ironing, etc. Each child is responsible for an area and we all pitch in and have the house clean within an hour. Keep in mind though this is not a deep cleaning, just a maintenance cleaning.

At the beach last year we found a dragon fly and studied its life cycle. We found a whole sand dollar and looked up ways to bleach it out white. We found out it was still alive because of the fringe stuff on the side which is how it swam, until we removed it from the water and caused it to die. We even found a baby lobster from the best we were able to figure out. We found dissecting a jelly fish still looks the same, there is nothing that we could find except clear jelly stuff inside of it too. Then there were the hermit crabs, we checked several books out on them and studied them for awhile. We learned that love bugs are very prevalent at the beach in September, and biting flies are too and how many of these you see depends on how the wind is blowing. Again, Alex is independent and does his own research and then writes about it. He has done many research papers on things that we have found and he wants to know more about. He has done book reports on books that he has read in our book club too. One of his research papers was actually quite funny to me. He wants a Playstation 3 so he researched all the game platforms out there and gave me the pros and cons of each of them and why Playstation 3 was the best choice.

So back to the school year with our books, when does that happen? Again, Alex is very independent. He gets up, gets his shower and usually works on his school work. I don't set a time for him to start his work, or to have it finished. He knows the daily schedules and is expected to be completed by the end of the day. One thing with teens is they are more awake at night, and more sleepy during the morning. So if he sleeps until 10 I really don't care. He has been known to work on his math at 10 p.m., or study his science at 3 p.m. My thinking on this is in a few years he will be in college and his schedule will be different. It will be up to him to schedule his time and plan his time. So he needs to know now how best to do that. Last year he did not pace himself well with his math and so he worked on it all summer in order to finish it for the next year. It was absolutely imperative he finish his Algebra I in order to do Chemistry this year. Of course by the same token he finished his vocabulary, English, and history by March. Did I know he was off on his pacing? Yes I did and we talked about what he would have to do to get himself back on track and his options. He made his choices and he lived with them. He keeps all of his work in a binder and for some assignments he has deadlines to turn them in to me. If I don't have them by that deadline he gets a 0, no questions asked. I expect him to keep up with his deadlines and turn his work in when due, no exceptions. Of course if he were to be deathly ill or some other major problem then of course I would cut him slack, but none of this has ever been the reason he has not turned in his work on time. He has actually only done this twice and now he knows so he does not procrastinate on it. As far as daily work he keeps it in his binder and I make "surprise" inspections. He knows what he is supposed to have done each day, I may check it that day or I may check it the next week. The deal is it better be done when I check it or a big fat 0 will occur. The first time I did this to him there were lots of tears, now he is ready when I inspect. All in all Alex is very independent and likes having his independence. He is very responsible with his schoolwork and I think this will help him in college. He knows that if he does not know something then it is time to research and he knows how to get what he wants. As one of my friends put it, "for him my greatest role is for support, but his greatest role is to learn how to get what he needs to learn without me."

Now Brianna is a completely different story. Where Alex is very independent, Brianna is very dependent, but she is getting better. This is really more of an age thing than anything. The difference in their learning is that Alex will pick up most anything he learns very quickly. Brianna has to go over and over the same material a few times. In essence, Alex learns like his dad really quickly. Bri and I have to study it and study it, but we eventually catch on. Both kids are very hands own people. Anything they can do with their hands or experience they learn much quicker and it stays with them. This is especially true for Brianna! So her studies are often done with her hands. I have to say her most hated subject would be math. She has a love/hate relationship with it. One day she will sit down and be finished in about 15 to 20 minutes, the next day she will cry and piddle and still not be done in 2 hours. On the days where math is a major chore then I have found ways to get her do it without realizing she is doing it. Now of course the workbooks are much easier for me, but for her she learns quite a lot just by doing. We have a math game that we pull out for math sometimes. When we play board games we let her be the banker and she is doing math and does not even think of it that way. When I cook I involve her in weighing things, measuring things, doubling things. In the store I have her search for gallons, pints, quarts and tell me the difference in them. I have her do price comparisons and tell me which is the better deal based on what she finds. Of course on these days at the store they are not usually my big grocery day or we would never get out of there, we are usually there a long time when Bri is doing grocery store math. These are all fun to Bri though and she never sees it as math, though I do tell her this is how she will use the math in everyday and how important it is. We measured out a dinosaur she was studying in science one day and found that it was as big as our house! Bri loves science, which I'm really glad. By homeschooling she has never learned science the way I did. I always thought science was so boring and dry, but since homeschooling I've found science is really a lot of fun! Right now she is studying the ocean and lakes and all the creatures that live in them. We have been to McWane and looked at a Bamboo Shark egg, and we saw some of the babies. We have seen an eel, jelly fish, and octopus. Eddie says we may even get to go to Sea World next year, yeah! We also have a field trip planned for January to the Atlanta aquarium. She loves her English too, and can break a sentence up pretty good, but she is not real confident in herself with it. She loves to write, but she has an awful time with spelling and is very self-conscious about it. Because of her struggle with spelling she tends to not want to write so much. She will write in her journal for herself though. Spelling is Bri's challenge and we have a few computer games to help her, and she and I sit down everyday and go over her spelling. We are doing a new spelling curriculum this year and I think it is really helping her. This has been a struggle for me too, as I can spell pretty good, and Alex has always been an excellent speller. To really get on Bri's level and try to see where her problem is has been hard for me. We got some outside help this year and they recommended this curriculum and it seems to really be helping right now. History is just something we both love and could spend the entire day reading it. She will read her history book and I ask her questions to see what she remembers. Usually she just re-tells it to me. Some days we watch the history channel if there is a show relating to what she is studying. We have watched many Civil War movies and read many books as she had a big interest in this for awhile. American Girl Club is another thing we do for history. Each historical doll we cover in this group covers a part in American history. Kaya we studied the Indians that lived here before we did. She does not feel she learned enough however and is wanting to study that some more. Josephina was about how part of Mexico became New Mexico and Texas, etc. We are currently on Samantha which is 1904. Next month's meeting we are going to learn a little bit about an orphanage which Samantha visited. In November we are going to make ornaments like they would have in the early Victorian era, and some will be in the pioneer time as well. The Jefferson County Historical Society was so impressed with our girls visiting some of the pioneer cabins in McCalla the girls have been invited to decorate one of the trees and attend a tea there. One of the girls even played the pump organ and really impressed the ladies with that as well. So our December meeting will most likely be going back to the cabins we visited when we were studying the pioneer lifestyle. We did learn a very hard lesson that day, cabins are not heated! It was a very cold and wet day and we were cold during our visit. I'm hoping for the tea it will be a nice day or at least have some heat somewhere though.

So what is our school day like this when we are home. We get up, eat and dress then Bri and I start our school day. Bri is usually done with all of her book work within a couple of hours if all goes well. We have been known to spend a couple of hours just on history and/or science. Alex gets up, eats, dresses, reads, plays a game, does his school work. If he sets his mind to his work, and he usually does he is done within a few hours as well. He has been interested in the Civil War too so he has been watching some of the programs we have been watching. He is also studying American Government right now and following the political events very closely which we count as political science. Believe me he knows his politics quite well. Much better than I ever did at his age. Studying government right now really fit in well with the time our country is in, election time. It has really helped him to understand the whole process very well. In fact, I got confused on some things with congress and he gave me a refresher on how our government works. I just laughed and told him I probably needed to read his book when he was done. Since then he has been bringing me things to look at in his book. After he finishes this he will do an economics course. I got the books from a friend of mine and I love these books. I looked at them and I understand economics now! To me it is usually dry and boring. These books are letters that a Wall Street accountant wrote to his nephew to explain the economy to him and they are on a level that is very understandable to the average person. The books are called Penny Candy. Anyway, my long range plans for Alex are to take him to Washington in the next couple of years and let him see some of these things up close. I think this would be a great history lesson for both kids!

Most of our outings are about the kids, piano is music, scouts is survival skills, leadership skills, cooking, first aid, home repair, etc. I sat down with his Boy Scout experiences one day and the state requirements for graduation, Boy Scouts gave him more elective hours than he will ever need. As a matter of fact we filled a page with the electives Alex has so far. Wednesday at McWane is Chemistry Lab classes for Alex and science exploration for Bri. Karate is physical education and self defense twice a week. Art classes are, well art. Art appreciation at the museum, is well Art Appreciation which is an elective. At first Alex did not want to take this class at all, but now he likes it and says he sees art in a new way, in a way he never had thought of looking at it before.

Field trip outings are learning in a more hands on experience it way. For example Aldridge Garden's yesterday was plant study. We had a field guide of trees and we identified the trees there and we looked at the plants and learned the names of the trees and plants in Latin. We also learned that we will most likely always know them by their more common American name. We found a plant that actually has an X in its Latin name. We had a scavenger hunt and had to find things in the garden that started with each letter of the alphabet. The kids had to make a food chain with the things on their list. They had to list the number of animal kingdom finds and plant kingdom finds. Turkey Creek was all about the history of Alabama and that area in particular. They also touched on the snail darter and the depressed musk turtle that are only found in that area. CHOM was a fun filled day of learning about soda fountains, how banks used to look, barber shops long ago, and shoe shines, and who gets that anymore, the one room classroom. The Japanese house, did you know they took their shoes off before entering the house? Our field trips are also about socialization which so many people worry about for homeschoolers. Trust me these kids socialize a lot! There were around 50 homeschool kids yesterday and the younger crew played hide and seek and chase, the older kids hung out and talked. Park day is another social time and playing is also physical education.

All in all school work takes place anytime, all the time, its just changing your mindset and looking at things in a different light. Bri has been known to be doing her math, science, history, English, or spelling while I cook. Which means I go back and forth between the two, but it gets done. We just don't have a set time all the time. We have a schedule of set events and everything else just falls into place around that. I hope this helps you see our school life in a more understandable light. Things are often crazy and hectic, but I have learned that is just homeschooling at its finest! When God led me on this journey I was really not sure about it. Today I could never imagine my kids going to school all day. This lifestyle is as natural to me as breathing. The kids themselves have no desire to go to school all day. In Alex's words, "been there done that, no way do I want to go back!" Alex loves being able to move at his pace and not sit and wait on someone else to catch on to what he learned the first time. I hope I've explained it to you better, its just so diverse I may have left out some things. If you have more questions please feel free to ask and I'll try to explain it.