A Little Rebellion Every Now & Then

After approximately a year of trying to use the “open” upstairs room as a combined schoolroom/office for me, we’ve thrown in the towel.

While the plan was a good one, it failed to consider one very important factor. Namely, Jacob. He’s not good at playing alone, and putting him in the playroom adjacent only result in tears and screams. I would attempt to teach or read over the noise.

The end result of that was not doing school at all.

Then I merely brought the books down and went back to doing much of our work at the kitchen table. The problems with that, however, were exactly the same as they had been before we moved the schoolbooks up the stairs. I had school papers and books on the table at mealtimes, I had them taking up room on the counter and barstools, and I even had them on Sam’s chair, still, at dinnertime. Worse, the chaos of it all meant that both of us were in a hurry to get school done quickly, ignoring all subjects I could possibly consider non-essential.

Now we’re finally doing what I initially wanted to do when we moved into the house. For whatever reason, I couldn’t see how doing school in the sunroom could possibly work. Now I feel like it’s the only thing that possibly can.

I made a list last week of all that had to be done, from the very obvious (move desk to sunroom) to the not as obvious. The list is not complete, but it’s complete enough that with some work tonight and tomorrow, we should be able to do school in the sunroom beginning on Monday.

Why the sunroom? The sunroom has Jacob’s water table, which will keep him entertained. The sunroom is just off the dining room and kitchen, which will let me give Gillian an assignment and then go to wash breakfast dishes, prepare lunch, or finish other kitchen chores. The sunroom also has the easel, which has a chalkboard on the reverse side, which will also keep Jacob entertained. Will it be easy to keep Jacob entertained, even with those factors? No. We’re going to work on his ability to play by himself, as well. (The goal is thirty minutes by September, plus Fridays I’ll be taking him to the Y for Parents’ Day Out from 9am to 1pm, at least some of the time.)

The peculiar form of masochism, however, is that this involves moving books. The homeschooling books had completely taken over a small, three-shelf bookcase in the office, as well as two shelves of tall, five-shelf bookcase. The tall, six-shelf bookcase in the sunroom held yearbooks (mine as well as Sam’s), one double-shelved row of children’s books, three plus rows of pregnancy, birth, and parenting books, as well as art supplies, API materials, LLL materials, and ALACE materials.

No, I’m still not sure where everything is going to be once we’re done moving books.

The good news is that I should have more than adequate shelf space for the homeschooling books, especially since I commandeered the drop-leaf dining table that acts as a sofa table in the sunroom. I made it into a shelf with bookends.

I still think this is all a form of masochism.

I’ve been on a new curriculum buying kick for the past few weeks. It started with Growing With Grammar. We’ve been using First Language Lessons since the beginning of our kindergarten year, and just finished it. I know that the follow-up book is due out in July, but I had essentially already decided to use Growing With Grammar instead, especially as the publishing schedule is very real world-friendly (at least one new book per year, so a child who started with the third grade level will have his/her fifth grade level in time for this autumn). I did consider going ahead with third grade level for Gillian now, but that’s really a big jump, especially in terms of the writing required, so we went with the first and second grade level. We’re steaming through the initial (first grade) portion at a rate of two lessons per day, four days a week. She seems to like it and I like that it’s essentially self-directed.

Then I purchased The Complete Guide to Teaching Spelling. We haven’t actually started it yet, as it arrived on Friday, but I’ve read over it and I’m pretty excited about it. I think it will really help Gillian to spell. I would say spell better but the simple true is that basically she cannot spell at present, so let’s just say it will help her to spell, period. My only complaint is that for having to pay $9.95 for the letter tiles, I shouldn’t also have to cut them.

Finally, after around two years of periodic contemplation, I went ahead and bought Managers of Their Homes. I resisted for a number of reasons previously. Firstly, I don’t have a large family. I have two kids, and even when we add a third, that will likely be our last. (The current plan is to have a third in the autumn of 2008, which would mean that I wou ld have, for example, a twelve yo, a seven yo, and an almost four yo at the beginning of 2012-2013 school year.) I don’t and will not have the issues of a baby and toddler simultaneously, nor of having four, five, or more children under the age of ten or twelve. Second in my list of reasons for not purchasing was the very fundamentalist bent that it seemed to have from both samples and the talk of those utilizing it. Finally, I resisted the idea of a rigid schedule. A routine was one thing, I thought, but an actual schedule couldn’t be a good plan.

Except, of course, that the world runs on schedules. It took being “flexible” for most of this first grade year to impress upon me the need to work out a better schedule. And even though I don’t have a baby and a toddler to entertain simultaneously, my lack of other children for Jacob with which to play while I school Gillian has represented a huge hindrance this year. Finally, while I tried having a cleaning service, I haven’t been able to find another one, and beyond that, certain tasks cannot be left to a cleaning service. The clutter is still owned by us as a family; the dishes must be washed, food prepared, trash taken to the trash can, and so on.

So I decided to buy the book. I haven’t actually finished it yet, much less started using the Scheduling Kit, but despite the heavy-hand fundamentalism in parts, I think this is going to be a big help. I don’t think I need to submit to my husband’s wishes (more like he needs to submit to mine, if anyone’s doing any submitting - which they aren’t), and so forth, but there is not much difference between Teri Maxwell’s prayer and time and what I would call meditation and ‘percolating.’ The intent behind both behaviors is to clarify priorities.

So I’m happy with all three of these purchases, so far.

Even though no one is actively reading this, this is public and as such it’s a useful tool, when I choose to use it, for accountability.

I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re getting back into the swing of things, only better than ever. That’s the plan, at any rate!

Today’s accomplishments include recitation, three pages in Developmental Math Level Six, a Calculadder drill sheet (time: 2:30; she’s getting close!), a supplemental Latin worksheet as well as an activity in the Latin activity book, two lessons of grammar, handwriting practice, copywork, and skip counting practice.

Additionally, I’ve readjusted plans for recitation through next year, as well as plans through the summer months for mathematics. We’re going to (finally) go to using two math programs daily. Math is a priority and our time expenditures need to reflect that fact.

What we haven’t done at all lately is history, but I plan for us to rectify that situation either tonight or tomorrow. We haven’t done classical studies in quite awhile but I want to save that for summer work; similarly, we’ll really concentrate on science over the summer.

I hope.

Read: Kaya’s Short Story Collection.

Completed: Two pages in Developmental Math Level Six; two lessons in Growing With Grammar Grades 1 & 2.

Ordered: The Complete Guide to Teaching Spelling.

Planned: Calculadder Math Drill; review of this week’s Latin vocabulary and grammar page, plus worksheet.

This school year is much, I think, like this particular blog: stuck in the past. It feels as if we’ve made little to no progress since the beginning of the year in many areas. Gillian still doesn’t have her addition facts memorized; Gillian still cannot recite the entirety of Sara Coleridge’s The Year, despite months of work; I still have not organized the school area of the house. Life and time keep flowing past us, causing me no little bit of distress. There are the successes, yes, but they are not many.

If one can be said to have failed a year of homeschooling, then surely I and this year so far do qualify.

However, like this blog, it can be restarted. Like a smelly old sock, we can wash out the grime, dry it, and begin again. Gillian is young and resilient, and time cannot be brought back, but it can be made up.

At least that’s what I keep telling myself.