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.

Gillian’s been having, for lack of a better term, behaviour issues the past few weeks. It started about two weeks before Kelly arrived for her visit. We were definitely busy during that time and had several activities, including two different weekend events for Girl Scouts. I tried to make sure she was well-fed and well-rested, and was determined to wait it out.

Of course, between Kelly being here (deviation from routine #1), Jacob’s birthday (deviation #2), and Jacob’s party (deviation #3), things didn’t really get back to normal like I’d hoped. Now that Jacob is walking even more and getting into everything in sight, it seems like we’re not going to be getting back to normal, at least not how Gillian conceives of normal.

She told my mother this weekend that sometimes she gets lonely, and sometimes she gets bored. I could see where both of these could happen easily. I’m not the most social person in the world, and I don’t like driving for miles just to go to a park where some people may or may not show up to play. As far as boredom, while we ‘do school’ in a fairly structured way, it doesn’t take up a large part of our day. If we start by nine, we’re done by eleven; if we start by eight or eight-thirty, we’re often done in even less time - between nine-fifteen and nine-forty-five. Sometimes we’re quite busy during the day, but in practice, we have one La Leche League meeting a month (down from two; the one that stopped was the ‘better’ one, and had older kids for her to play with while there), one API meeting a month (it remains to be seen what age range will be present there), and one park day per week. We also have Girl Scouts every other week.

I’ve come up with a few thoughts that could help alleviate both both boredom and loneliness. The first is the easiest to implement. Gillian is very interested in learning Spanish, and we already have several resources for learning it. I think we’ll start (again) with La Clase Divertida, use the Teach Me… tapes and other CDs, and try to find other interesting resources through the library. It will definitely be an extended unit-study type thing, only without labeling it ’school.’

Tomorrow we’re going to a park date with some other MDC mamas. Ideally, I’d like to expand it and make it a weekly event (maybe even post it as an event on the CHE-NGA list and the SecularHomeschoolersinGA list). That would give her a reliable opportunity for interaction with other kids, and hopefully she could build some friendships.

I want to discuss with Judi the idea of having a playdate with Eva-Marie on the ‘off weeks’ from Girl Scouts. Gillian & Eva-Marie could easily play from the time Eva-Marie gets out of school until five o’clock (when Girl Scouts would end), which would be around two hours, allowing for transportation. That would be another regular contact.

I think I also need to re-read some information on eclectic homeschooling and unschooling. Part of homeschooling is having the time after ’schoolwork’ is done to explore those other areas, and I need to make sure that I’m helping her to do that as best as I can.

Other ideas?