A Net in Time

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Five Day Blog Hop

Five Things We Enjoy: The Joy of Staying Home

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 Ah… it’s been fun this week eh?   Exploring the things that we like most about homeschooling.

My son admittedly surprised me with today’s topic… He phrased it as “I get to stay home.”.

My son is BIG into time management.  He watches the clock, figures out how long it will take to do something, and calculates it seems… down to the nano second.  The fact that sometimes he over-estimates his time is neither here or there.

Living next door to our neighbours, a family with two children that attend public school.  The lad sees them leave and come back and wonders when they have time to do what they want to do.   He only sees them out having fun in the summer or on Saturdays.

He’s asked me in the past “What do they do on the way to school?   Do they just walk there and back again?”  

He sees how quickly he can go through his math at home, or do his art, or talk through our history and asks me how long it took when I was at school.   I tell him and he just doesn’t understand it.  How can learning history take a whole hour?  How can a math class last a whole hour?   

Then he starts to understand when I tell him that he has LOTS of time to do what he likes to do.   He gets it when he’s able to do his math in the car on the way to an event, he understands when we combine science with our study on Canada, and do art as a way to understanding the Pacific Coast First Nations people better.   It makes the school day go faster you know?

He can start his school day first thing in the morning, and work at his own speed, pursuing the things he loves to do,and meeting people he likes .

Knowing that most of his days are spent ordered in a way that works for him helps him to relax when we do get out and about.   Being able to recharge his batteries pursuing the things he loves the most, and yet having the freedom to leave home when needed.  It’s very good in the eyes of a boy.   

Friends, family, co-op days, field trips, vacation, learning adventures, pokemon go-ing and so many other things drag him out of the house, but… he can mostly stay home where a boy likes to be.

What about your children?   What do they enjoy most about homeschooling?

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Five Things We Enjoy: No One Makes Me Get Out of Bed Before I Want To (respect)

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 Welcome, welcome to day four of  things we enjoy.   The Homeschool Review Crew is having fun this week sharing knowledge, joys, sorrows and encouragement.

Day one: The Joys of Working at our Own Pace.
Day two: Miss Natalie and her support  
Day Three: Studying what interests you

Today my boy wants me to tell you about how much he enjoys that NO ONE makes him get out of bed before he wants to.  🙂

Mind you…. we normally don’t have to as he’s up and busy often before I’m even functional.  🙂

Allow me to tell you where this stems from:  When I was young my parents would wake me up simply by staring at me.  I have a huge startle reflex and they used that to good advantage.  I would wake up startled and frightened…not that they were INTENDING to scare me…but shaking me awake would be a good way to get inadvertently whacked.  So staring from a distance worked really well.   I am unfortunately still like this…  really… don’t wake me….just don’t do it.

Anyways, since I have bad memories of being woken up, I don’t wake people up unless I HAVE to.   When the lad was younger occasionally I’d need to get him up, but not often and never without having a good reason. Now that he’s older I just say “I need you up at ____ time, and yes, if you aren’t up, I’ll give you a call or send the cat in to greet you.” Admittedly…there is the odd time when the lad stays in bed late on purpose just so I will send the cat in to get him up.  🙂  (You can always tell because you’ll hear moans from his room, “Oh, I’m so tired, I wonder if mom will send Milo in”.  🙂

My son LOVES this.  He loves being able to have a lazy morning if he wants to (it rarely happens but…when it does…we are usually ALL being lazy).  If he’s tired he’s up around 830, but normally 730 and he’s off schooling, doing chores, catching a quick game of Clash Royale or more likely watching science videos.

In fact, I am positive that my son learned this fact from some science video. For when the lad and I talked about why this was important enough to put into his five favourite things, he said:  “It is better for people to wake up on their own, to ease into wakefulness, than to be startled awake.  Some people have problems with their heart and breathing if they are woken up.  It shortens your life to be woken up all the time.”   

He then added “thanks for not shortening my life mom.”
 
Being the mom that I am, with a logical child, I use this respect of his need to rest as a training tool.  When he does get up early (and like me once he’s up, he up chatting, I can say: “SHUSH be quiet.  When you talk first thing in the morning, you wake everyone up, so SHUSH, I don’t wake you up, so you don’t wake me up.”  It makes sense to this logically minded lad.  It’s a way to teach mutual respect.

Respect for each other.
I listen to you, you listen to me. 
You ask for help instead of getting angry, I ask for help instead of getting angry.
You tell me your goals for the day, I tell you my goals for the day and together we work to see those goals met.   
Respecting each others needs and wants, it’s one of those important things in our home.   Mutual respect…It helps us to give way when it has to be done eh?

When we know that the mutual respect is there, the communication comes easier, you know?   What is one way you use to teach respect for each other?

It starts, in our house, with respecting a child’s need to wake up when he wants to.  (and I end up not shortening his life). 🙂

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©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Five things: Study what I want to

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Hello!  Welcome to the Homeschool Review Crew’s Spring Blog Hop.  We’re getting together to provide encouragement, support, ideas, and information.

Day one: The Joys of Working at our Own Pace.
Day two: Miss Natalie and her support  

Today we are talking about the Joys of Studying what you want.  I have to tell you how much the lad love this. 

He has choices.

1. If a curriculum isn’t working… we change it.    That doesn’t mean that whining pointlessly about a program gets him out of doing the work, but seriously.. if a program or a way of doing things isn’t working… It’s a reason to talk about it and see what we can do to change it up.  If that means using another program or changing HOW the program is used, why not eh?  Doing schoolwork shouldn’t be the cause of stress in the household.

2. If he wants to study something… we do it (this past year his love has been astronomy).

3. If we want to use a subject as a basis of study, we can do that.
  For instance we are using Canada this year.  We aren’t working through our Canada History book quickly as we keep getting sidetracked by videos, and art, and research projects.  🙂   We delight in doing mapping to for actual Canadian journeys, learning about totems from our own First Nations people, and so much more.  It’s good to learn about our own people eh?

4. If he wants to choose what he wants to do for a research project..he can do that.
    He’s gotten hooked on Cacti at the moment, and Carnivorous plants (like the venous fly trap).  So he’s doing all sorts of research on them.  He’s also working hard on a pictorial tutorial of doing minecraft papercraft. 

5.  Time to discover new joys…
Today my lad and I were doing some gardening today.  After supper my lad came and asked “Mom, do you have more gardening that will need to be done?   If you do, can I help please?   I like doing that today.”   So I’m thinking later in the week, rather then doing the rest of the gardening myself, that I’ll have my boy lend a hand and we’ll talk plants and why we grow them.  🙂

 
It’s good you know, to be able to make things work, to watch a boy all excited about the things that he is learning, and giving him the freedom to pursue those passions.   His passion for his cacti and his other research projects pushes him to complete his schoolwork all the faster. 

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Five Things We Enjoy: Miss Natalie

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 Welcome to day of the Homeschool School Review Crew Five Day blog hop!  It’s so nice to have you come for a visit.

On Day One we talked about The Joy of Working at Your Own Pace.

Today I want to talk to you about one of our favourite people.

Miss Natalie.

Oh… we like Miss Natalie.  I’ll actually going running out the doors sometimes in my stocking feet to say hi to her. 🙂  (She ALWAYS scolds me for doing so).   She usually has a ready smile and a willingness to pass the time of day (until she needs to get going again).

You know what she does for us?

1. She talks happily with my lad.  Listening carefully to him.  She is kind to my boy.. he likes her and willingly talks to her whenever they meet.  She’s a grandma and I often read posts on facebook with her spending time with them, and sometimes they tag along and play with bunnies when we’re away.  

2.  She brings us books!   Lots and lots of books!!!   Many that my lad likes as well, so Natalie is a favourite around here.   Here’s one she brought recently the lad and Dad will be working through together this coming year.

3. She cares for our critters whenever we are away.   Caring for the lad’s snake, fish, plants, mice and cats.   Taking care of my bunnies.  Watering our gardens.   Without her we couldn’t do our vacation time, do extended field trips or many other things.

4. Peace of mind.  Oh my.. Natalie is an easy lady to talk to, she shows her care in her easy smile and her honesty.   Her care for our mail packages, our critters, and us, causes us treasure her dearly.    

5. Of course you need to understand something, over the past years of Natalie being part of our five day a week life, of her lending a hand here and there, she is not just our mail lady or our vacation/field trip allower, she has become a part of our lives.  She’s a dear sweet lady and I am grateful to know her.

We owe this lady a debt of gratitude.

A Net In Time Schooling

A Net In Time Schooling

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Five Things we Enjoy: Work at Your Own Pace

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Did you know that my son suggested this series to me. I was asking him what homeschooling theme I should write about and he tossed out “Why don’t you talk about what I like mom?” I thought that was a great idea so here we are. 🙂

The VERY FIRST thing he said was “you should tell them how much I like working as fast or as slow as I want to mom”.

When I asked the lad why this was important he said “I’m not rushed or slowed down.   I don’t have to worry about rushing or slowing anyone else down either.” 

This is very important to my 11 year old “I want to keep people happy” young man.  Being able to work at his own speed (with the odd reminder) is extremely important to him.  He can take a break when he wants to and play with a mouse.   He can work extremely hard and be done by 11-12, or be more leisurely and finish at 2.  It’s all good in my book.  Applying outside pressure has an adverse effect on him.
I have to admit that I am sometimes flabbergasted at how quickly, a highly focused lad who has plans for the afternoon, can get his schoolwork done.   He’s going to sew, work with his cactus, go pokemon going with Dad or just whatever catches his fancy.   

It makes me think of how last year I would ask him (as we daily planned out our day) what goals he had for the day.  It helped keep the air clear of the unknowns and gave him a goal to work toward.  I would help him meet his goals and he would help me meet mine…and together we learn that tomorrow is always another day.

But then we have days when … it seems like we’ll never get done.  Everything is a problem or a distraction or too hard or just wrong.. you know those nit picky things in programs that just drive you nuts. … and suddenly that molehill has become an insurmountable mountain.   Those days are harder to manage so we learned a new rule.  If we are not done by 2 (if a lad has been working all along) then we are simply done. 

He works off this

He puts X’s beside what he’s not doing (after consultation with mom) and check marks beside what is finished.   This is just our basic schedule and we change it around a bit depending on the week.. like this Thursday I’m hoping to go to the market.   So we’ll “X” out a bunch of things OR I’ll simply delete them from the schedule… HE LOVES those empty days.  🙂

I’ve tried to do fancier schedules but he gets aggravated or discouraged when there’s too much detail on the list.  He hates using a book.  So a simple print off schedule that he can mark up to his hearts content works for him (and I have it saved to the computer for easy tracking).

So what is it like in your schoolroom?   Do you find that your children work best with a basic schedule and leaving them to it?   Or do they work better using a different format?  Tell me about it if you don’t mind.

Easy way to visit using the linky below:

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Five Day Blog Hop – Things we Enjoy

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Hey folks…. you know how we homeschool right?  Homeschooling presents us with all sorts of good things, and I know my thoughts on it, but the other day I asked my 11 year lad what he liked about homeschooling.

This is the list he came up with:
 
 

1. Natalie … I know..you’re wondering about this but you’ll have to wait. 🙂

2. Get to stay Home

3. Work at my own pace.

4. No one makes me get out of bed before I want to.

5. Get to study what I want mostly.

I am not going to tell you all about this today though, I am going to ask you to visit the blog next week and find out why these things are so important to him.  🙂

The Homeschool Review Crew is doing a five day blog hop and I hope you will join in the fun.     Running April 17-21.   Come visit, won’t you?

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/