Homeschool Stress

I'm helping with the Banquet For Life (REALLY EXCITED about it!) AND the kids activities have kicked into high gear.
Me to my friend Katie, "Do I go through this much of an adjustment every year?"
Sage Katie advice to me, "EVERY teacher and EVERY student EVERYwhere goes through this EVERY year. You'll adjust."

Whew! I'm glad it's not just ME

I have a confession to make

Today I've had several.

• I washed my hair for the first time in DAYS (isn't that terrible???) good for today, though.
• I went to Reconciliation and had to admit that it's been since LENT since I'd gone (I was really ashamed because I'd felt God calling me -- I just wouldn't answer) good for today, though.
• So while I'm making a clean break of it -- I thought I'd fess up here, too.

I...I...I really like...(oh, I can hardly spell the words)...I really like...Notre Dame football.

I DON'T WANT to like it. I want to boycott it. I want everything in my life to be consistent and since I'm sooo unhappy with Notre Dame for honoring Obama I want to be a seamless cloth. But I really like Notre Dame football -- and I'm going to watch it, again today...and .... I'll probably enjoy it. I ...even...root for Notre Dame.

I may have lost a few friends by my shameful admission...but anyone who's friends with me knows they're taking chances in many ways -- this is one more.

Yaya and baby

Nothing makes this boy happier than dancing with his Yaya. We asked him who Yaya was and he replied, "Mine!"
Every kid ought to have a Yaya. Someone who they feel completely loved by and know they have their heart all to themselves.

Nothing like doing school outside...

Quote of the Day

Ds#4's grammar book:
"Write a sentence telling what you like to do in the wintertime."

I can make snow farts

Mama

YOUNG MAN! Did you write this?

Ds#4

I messed up the line, it's supposed to say snow forts.

Mama (suppressing the giggles)

Well, you forgot a period at the end of a sentence.

Labor Day pool fun

Mama loves her book-boys

He's so sweet, does your little guy ever act up?

The Prudent Homemaker

A friend sent this blog to go along with saving money and inexpensive meals.
In addition to saving money this woman makes beautiful meals!
The Prudent Homemaker
She also has a page of shopping wisely that is great!

Prettiest Sight

Dd#2 saw the most beautiful thing and wanted to share it, so she took a picture of it.

It was her own back yard in the wee hours of the morning.
I love that what thrills her is her own back yard and the day that God gave her.

Quote of the Day

Nancy blogged about dirt reminding me of our new rocks.

Dave got a delivery of pea gravel on Friday and moved 4 1/2 yards of it to the back yard on Saturday (and complained of pain on Sunday). The kids are in love and I have some girls who just keep laying in it, boys who keep sitting in it, and a baby who keeps running it through his fingers. When expressing how tired I was tonight, Dd#2 told me,

"Just go out and rub your bare feet in the new stones, you'll feel so much better!"

Whew!

After 2 weekends of sick kids, 3 days of fever myself, and trying to cover a Shakespeare play & 2 encyclicals with Dd#1 (we only got through the play & 1 encyclical -- my throat couldn't do more than that)... I AM WIPED OUT!

Is the kids doing school supposed to be so exhausting for me????

What are some favorite gifts you've received?

My dear friends on the Oro et Laboro Catholic Homeschool message board liked
this story of mine in answer to the above question -- so I thought I'd share:

I was pregnant for my 3rd child and suffering from a severe depression. The doctor and all my friends were insistent that I get on medication. My husband just as insistently didn't want me to. At the time I was just suffering and didn't understand. He told me that I reacted badly to every medication I took and wasn't thinking like myself and begged me to rely on his judgement above everyone else. He also reminded me that I don't even take a tylenol when I'm pregnant for concern over the baby and brain-altering medication would make me question my judgement for years to come every time the baby had a problem. He told me he'd help me get through it and we'd get through it together. I was lost in a mire of muck inside my own head and no one's words touched me. I was just in pain and confused, but chose to listen to my husband. My friends and doctor thought it was selfishness on my husband's part to allow me to stay in so much pain.

We were really broke and I forced myself to go to a baby shower of a friend on Mother's Day weekend. I came home and he had bought and installed a 2' rose stone colored Mary and grotto in our back yard while he'd been watching the 2 & 4 year old. He bought me an outdoor freestanding swing bench and a portable telephone. He encouraged me to sit in front of Mary for the hours he was at work while the kids played in the back yard and keep the phone by my side. He promised to call me from work and I could call him whenever I felt the need. It was still a very difficult pregnancy. I had our first boy (who was supposed to have been a girl) and immediately felt like myself. I could have kissed his feet for keeping me off the medication. In my right mind, I'd wouldn't have ever chosen to take it and he knew me when I didn't know myself.

We've moved since then and took Mary with us. She sits outside my kitchen window and the memory of how she came to us is one of trust and hope in the middle of a pain.

Curriculum sidebar

I took Amy's lead and added links to curriculae we use. We do lots more as supplements to or parts of, but this is the main stuff and consistent through the years. It's waaayyy down on the sidebar below the pope.

Helping your child begin to discern his vocation

We are just begginning this process. During this Confirmation year, we'll be jumping into many "adult" concepts. Homeschooling affords us so many options and my ultimate goal in homeschooling is to help her become the person God wants her to be. I only have a blurry vision of what that person will look like (and my vision is colored by what I wish she could be). I'm hoping that by asking God to reveal His vision for her and directly to her before highschool, she'll be more attuned to His voice when he answers. I thought this article was an excellent place to begin.

Making Ends Meet

This article is an EXCELLENT overview of how a family can cut costs. We've used MANY of these ideas.

My favorite "get my mind thinking" about cutting cost are Hillbilly Housewife's $70/week mealplan or her $90/wk mealplan.

This has great ideas http://www.menus4moms.com/frugal/meals_for_hard_times_1.php

My kids LOVE Clara and BOY does she help you get in the spirit of back to basics. SERIOUSLY educational videos http://www.youtube.com/user/DepressionCooking

2009-2010 Meal Planning

Now that the kids are cooking, they all want something different and are willing to make it. My problem is all the left-overs and waste (not to mention trying to plan for all those people's whims). So even though they complain -- we all eat the same thing for lunch & dinner. Sunday nights may be a free-for all and Thursdays are left-overs, so if they want to do something unique with their left-overs I don't really care. I know it cramps their style to have their meals decided for them, but they can do anything they want when they're on their own. I have to do what's best for the whole family including our budget and my time. Barbara has a great food blog.

This school year will be

• Monday - crockpot (because we'll be gone all day on Mondays starting in Sept.) Nancy also sent me this crockpot site - Thanks, Nancy!
• Tuesday - casserole (frozen ahead - shepherd's pie / sausage & rice bake)
• Wednesday - mexican (Burritos, Mexican pizza on tortillas, Nachos, Quesadillas, Taco, or Taco Salad) - the nice thing about these meals is that they all use approximately the same ingredients, so it's not hard to keep stuff on hand and if someone is desperate to have something different they can do it at the table.
• Thursday left-overs (or frozen chinese veggies stir fried w/ whatever meat is left-over)
• Friday - meatless (tuna & noodles/ raemen noodles & fzn. veg / baked potatoes & fixins / cheese pizza / mac & cheese) or fish 2x/month - it's too expensive to have each week
• Saturday - italian (Lasagna / veggie lasag. / lasag. roll-ups/ spahetti/ ziti bake/ chicken alfredo with broccoli / cheese stuffed shells / meatloaf -is meatloaf an Italian meal?)
• Sunday - we only eat 2 meals on Sunday, so a big breakfast at brunch time and a big main meal (turkey & stuffing / a ham / pork roast / roast)

• We also plan our lunches (mostly packed lunches) & breakfasts because we have 2 days we're gone and it can take too long even when we're home if we're not all eating the same thing.
• Breakfast favorites - Frozen saus. buscuits / frzn. muffins We roughly plan out the sides and deserts. 1 side with lunch, 2 sides with dinner and desert every other night for a total of 90 sides and 15 deserts for the month (example: 1 jar of applesause would last us as a side for 4 meals).

Natue Journal

MODG recommends Keeping a Nature Journal. I know it's very un-homeschooling of me, but I've never managed to get my kids interested in doing this. I've given it a feeble try several times with no results. This is our "do things different" year as far as curriculum and we're focusing on art. I also wanted to get the kids excited about nature journaling. Not that I'm excited. It's actually allergy season for our family so I want to stay indoors as much as possible. But is such a home school stand-by that I wanted to give it a real chance to work.

So, I got the book from the library (there are several by this author) and bought some blank cheap books for the kids and flipped past all the gooey stuff (we love nature because...) and gave them the first assignment. Then the second. In an hour they'd done 2 pages of their 20 page books and they looked GREAT!

I was seriously impressed how well it worked. I just needed the drive (and the focus of a good book) to make it happen.

I'm definately going to do this often for the 3 weeks we have the book from the library.

I may even renew the book if we continue to need it. I was really only interested in the inspiration and it looks like the kids caught that!

My backyard looked like when we first started homeschooling and the kids did school outside all the time. It felt just lovely for an hour.

Yes, my 13yr old is really in charge of all the meals, planning, cooking and shopping for the year.

Yes, my 13yr old is really in charge of all the meals, planning, cooking and shopping for the year.


Background:

I read Little House On the Prairie to the girls when they were in 2nd grade & Kindergarten. In it, Ma left the girls (I think they were preteens) with the baby and the house for a week! They knew how to do all the work AND did the spring cleaning to surprise Ma.

When I first read that, I thought "HOW could Ma leave them like that? There were soooo many dangers in those days!" Then I started re-rethinking what I thought of childhood. I honestly believe we have an artificial infancy concept of childhood. Rather than considering that childhood as the training ground for adulthood, our society thinks children are to be coddled, entertained and considered unable to be functioning, contributing members of society even while they're children. Hmmm.... So if God made children capable of more responsibility, are we DISabling them to not let them live to that potential? Hmmm....


So I made it a pie-in-the-sky goal that each of my children would know how to do every job in the house that I could teach them by the time they were 13. Then at 13 I would teach them to juggle. I wasn't taught how to multi-task or juggle and it's taken me YEARS of motherhood before I felt like I was doing anything but failing. I would like my girls to be a little better off than that.


Each year, each child switches jobs to become proficient in a job for the year. This is the rough schedule of chores as the children progress in maturity:


Age 4 - Set the table
5 - Sweep the floor
6 - Wash the table / Mop the floor
7 - Take out the trash
8 - Empty the dishwasher (each time, and YES I lost alot of dishes on the ceramic floor this way and we ended up switching to plastic for our main dishes)
9 - Laundry (yes, all the laundry in the house)
10 - Mow the lawn - we end up having a "catch-up" year in here somewhere - a kid will prefer a job and ask for an extra year on it before going to the next harder job -OR- they need more practice on a job and get stuck on it for another year until they've mastered it.
11 - Dishes (keeping the kitchen clean after every meal)
12 - Dinner (I plan and they learn to cook dinner each night. I feel like it's such a challenging task to get all the dishes to come out at the same time and on the table hot (or cold) that it takes a lot of practice)

13 - Since Dd#1 has taken over the cooking / list making / and shopping (although I am the driver and looker-overer) I tried to make it as easy on her as possible.

• I consolidated all my recipes in one book that office depot printed and bound for ~$5
• made a master grocery list
• lists for each kinds of meal (breakfast, weekday lunch, dinner & weekend lunch - we add extra servings & sides when Dave is home)
• I have a system in place for meal planning that I can teach her
• I made an excel spreadsheet of the meals I make, how much they cost and the approximate ingredients. She inputs the number of meals into one column and it calculates how much she'll be spending for the month. This is just automating meal planning for her benefit - I did it for years without a spreadsheet. When I put in the approximate ingredients, I didn't put it in the way you cook (4 Cups of milk) but the way you shop (1/8 gallon of milk)

Here are the steps

1. Make a list of which meals she'd like from each category (breakfast, weekday lunch, dinner & weekend lunch )
2. Plug those meals into an actual calendar to make sure she isn't making 3 chicken meals in a week (Dave's allergic to chicken).
3. Compare that list to the actual recipes to make a list of ingredients you'll need at the store.
4. Make a grocery list. (I have her consolidating step 3 & 4 by using the spreadsheet above.)

Besides the blank stares of disbelief, here are the answers to some questions I've gotten about my 13yr old doing this job --

Q: Isn't that too big of a job for a 13 yr old.

A: I don't throw a 13 yr old into this. They want to help stir cookies when they're 3. They learn to use the microwave under supervision when they're 7. They learn to make eggs & pancakes and breakfast stuff when they're 8. They learn to take things out of the oven when they're 10ish (depends on the kid). Doing the laundry for a family of 7 is no slacker's job and it's a big responsibility at 9 years old. For the kids who don't handle responsibility well, I provide consequences, rewards, reminders, timers, threats, encouragement -- and anything I can think of to help them shoulder the responsibility. Not including swiching laundry loads, it takes about 10 hrs/wk for a kid to fold all the laundry. These gradual responsibilities help train them to carry the next set so they're not overwhelmed when they have to run their own lives.

Q: Don't you feel like it interferes with your own spirituality not to serve your family in love?

A: It's much harder for me to let her do it than to do it myself. Yes, she's burned some meals. Yes, some haven't turned out. Yes, I'm taking a risk with our family's budget to have her do this. These are things that cause me to die to self in love of my children to help them become the people God means them to be. I'd rather her take these risks when she's under my tutelage than when she's broke and out on her own with no one to help her when she makes a mistake.

Q: Does she have any time to do anything but work?

A: It does take her quite a while to make meals (2 1/2 hours for a dinner I could do in 30-45 minutes) but she'll get faster. Meal planning takes about 5 hrs for the month using the tools above. Shopping takes about 4 hours for 1 month's worth. Yes, she gets more free time than I do, but less than the little kids. I'm not worried about overloading her with work. I definitely keep that in mind and check with her to see how she's doing with this much responsibility. With responsibility comes privileges (and she's happy for those).

After 13? I have a Life Skills for Teen list we'll be tweaking for each child.

Jenn's Perfect Planner Quest

...and the quest continues. There's been some interest (among my loyal friends who would say I looked pretty even if I didn't) in the planner I designed for our school.

One of the *small* things I don't like about Good News Planners after using them several years (they are one of the best Catholic planners out there, though!) is that when I have it open to the week and folded in half to save space on my desk, I have to keep flipping it upside down and back again to see all the subjects of any particular day. This has been a small thing, until I decided I need a space for Sat/Sun activities and left-over school, wanted more list space (they're the ones who taught me how much I love the list space) and other druthers.

One of the things that has kept me from making my own teacher planner that DOES contain everything I want, is that I really DON'T like 3-ring binders. I have them, I use them. However, I don't like how they sit on the shelf (or with other books leaning on them and I don't like that you can't fold them in half and still have the page you want open - you're only choice in having them smaller on your desk is to close them (and then find your place again.)

But Lady of Virtue with her sewing tutorial on covers and idea of a half-page binder with a handle piqued my interest. I could easily grab it to go room to room. I can take it with me when a kid hasn't gotten their work done to check what they need....hmmmm. Kim's home journal is sooo pretty! So I bought a 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" from Office Depot for about $8 (I wanted the 2" binder so I could fit lots of junk in it.)

I took some template advice from Donnna Young, put the headers in a pretty font, and tried several different template versions (week-at-a-glance on a 2-page spread, 1 day per page) printing them out and filling out a particularly full week of actual lesson plans from last year. I ended up liking the spacing of 1/2 a week on a 2-page spread.

2 days prints out on one piece of paper and folds to fit in my half-sheet binder as one day per page. I'm not sure you can read the snapshot above. The center is the school planner with subjects in bold, kids initials, then room to write (in the English section I have abreviations for the various categories, [grammar, writing (either handwriting or reports), Latin, Spelling, Typing or Reading, Memory items like poetry] and a list for spelling words or things I need to keep track of.

Along the side of the page are places for us to decide meals for the day (so we remember to get the meat out of the freezer and we don't have complaints about kids wanting to fix something different for lunch), Mama's Routines (things I never remember to do that would really help me if I did like setting my clothes out for the next day), Morning Chores & Afternoon Chores, Individual kids chores based on the day (since some kids rotate and some don't). Below is the view of that same page on the bottom.

I've got a section for GRADES that has a grading cheat sheet and a place to record grades based on the specifics of our school done in an excel spreadsheet.

The next section is our ROUTINES. This is specifically for our school routines.

Some of this seems a little silly to make the effort to put into print, but I forget what I think would be good for the kids to do (and we end up forgeting to do any mapwork until I come across it 3 months after the fact). In the heat of battle, I can't keep creative ideas in mind -- so I need them somewhere easily accessible. I also have any scheduling things in this section.

In this section we have our

• Religion plans
• books I intend to use for the year (nothing worse than buying books and not being able to remember what you're even looking for on the shelf because you can't remember what you decided to buy 8 months ago)
• Confirmation plans & notebook ideas (so I don't forget what I wanted to get done)
• Spelling Worksheet
• Book Report ideas
• Prayer Checklist
• Primary Sources Evaluation Checklist
• Vocabulary Ideas
• IEW Checklists and models
• Latin vocabulary and traslation for the year
• Timeline memorization for the year
• Any other memorization items I know we'll want to cover this year
• 5 minute Brain Breaks

Faith - The next section contains ideas I'd like to incorporate for the year. Liturgical Year ideas from A Year With God and A Treasure Chest of Traditions for Catholic Families and all the saint ideas for each day from Elizabeth Foss' 4Real Learning forums - GREAT STUFF (if I can just get it incorporated). I always figure, if I do some of it, I'm better off than if I hadn't done any.

Chores

• Virtue-Vice Chart
• Carpe Diem
• School when Mama isn't feeling well
• Chore list for our house

Cookbook

So we can do meal planning while we're out.

Contacts

All my contact from outlook and an extra copy of contacts from groups or meetings. OFTEN, I'll be out and need to call some obscure person I never call for a particular reason.