A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

Organization

Introducing our Summer Schedule

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It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these so I thought I’d introduce you to our summer routine.  We do tend to homeschool year round, but in the summer life changes. School still happens but often in ways that are not known at the beginning of the summer.

Introducing our Summer Schedule

Our focus is on: Language arts, math and reading.   When the lad and I were talking about our summer schedule I told him my non-negotiables and asked what he wanted to do over the summer (because the how doesn’t always matter).  He surprised me by adding a number of other items.  He wanted to continue with Drive thru History, weekly projects, and more.

Summer Schedule 2018

The reviews that we do will vary depending on what we have on the dock to work on, and our interest in them.  For instance we just finished reviewing a program called MaxScholar that he won’t be continuing for the rest of the summer.   His current plan is to finish reading through the biography section in the fall. 

MaxScholar

Since it is summer though our view is also this.  If we have something better to do, then schooling through books or videos drops to the wayside.   This week he worked through his schedule on Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday was plumb full of foodbank working, trips to Noah’s Ark to drop of yard sale leftovers, followed by a trip to London to shop and visit gramma. 

Thursday the lad did his basics only, we’d planned to do a couple of review things but I wasn’t up to par yesterday so that fell to the wayside.  On Friday we watched a lesson on geology and dinosaurs and then binged watched Drive Thru History.  🙂  That was fun.  The lad also started working on STEM project a model DaVinci had drawn out.  It’s maybe 1/3 the way done. Gave me a bit of time to write some blog posts too that has just not been happening.  Booked an appointment for a job interview and confirmed a doc appointment for the lad and… moved some bricks around.

Watching Drive Thru History

I dragged the lad outside to help me with a project I’ve had in my mind for the past couple of weeks, moving my cinderblocks to a better location and cutting off my tarp holders and putting them in storage.

Organizing our cinderblocks

Friday evening we went to a friends graduation ceremony.  It was really good to go, gave us a good idea what to expect for next year when the lad graduates grade 8. 

graduation

Saturday my lad got his advanced Green Belt.  It’s good to watch all these students increase their skill set. 

It wasn’t what I could call the most exciting week but when one’s health is being irritating, sometimes a lack of excitement is called for. 🙂

Things I Love – Checklists

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Don’t you just love when your children can work on their homeschooling fairly independently?   I know I do!   I love helping him when he needs it, but helping him to be responsible for his own scheduling.. I LOVE IT!   We’ve been working on refining his schedule for the past couple of years and this year it was just a matter of making up a list for him, and then he decides how he’s going to full fill his workload over the course of the week. 

Homeschool Schedule

Trying to figure out how to help him be accountable in other areas of his life took a little more figuring out.  Earlier this year it occurred to us that making a list of everything he was responsible for over the course of a week might be beneficial to him as well.  He’s taken to it like a duck to water… he loves having a list to work off of and to be know exactly what he is responsible for.   We needed to add some consequences initially to help him take the list seriously as up until this point it was “get it done if you can, we’re disappointed if you don’t, but life happens”.   That proved to be too “loosey-goosey” for him. 

Once he realized we were trying to help him build a good routine and to develop skills that will help in establish a pattern of fitting in the important things in life FIRST before doing anything else, he got the picture and starting taking it all much more seriously.accountability chart

NOW he loves it and mostly gets all his work done first thing in the morning instead of lolly gagging about all day and running out of time.  He even explains if he needs to do something on a different day (like taking a shower) due to being busy, or working with dad, or _________.   He has careful reasoning which I love to see. 

Things I love Checklists

What do you use to help your children learn how to be accountable to themselves, to help them figure out what should come first in their lives? 

Others in this series

Kitchen Ease

Homeschooling meets life.



Things I Love – Kitchen Ease

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Welcome to day two of the Five Day Blog Hop from the Homeschool Review Crew.   Yesterday we talked about how Homeschooling Meets Life.  Today I’m talking about kitchen tips. 

Things I love - Kitchen Ease

Like many families we have decisions we make about skills we’d like our children to have before they are old enough to leave home.   One of these skills is knowing how to cook.   I don’t want my lad to end up like my younger brother existing a lot of pizza, take out, hamburgers and the odd roast with taters.   To that end, one day a week my lad is responsible for making supper.  Admittedly he LOVES to do really easy meals like hamburgers, hotdogs, chicken burgers etc…. even if those things require he make the bread/buns.  Occasionally, he’ll say “Mom, I want to make that chicken you made the other day” or “Dad, I want to make the spaghetti dish”.  

To help the lad (and me) I’ve done a few things in the kitchen that I like and will miss if we do have to move.  The lad happens to find them helpful in his endeavors to cook as well.    “I don’t have to hunt for it Mom”. 

I love my hanging fry pans

The lad likes our hanging strainers, pizza cutters, etc.   We use strainers for a  whole variety of things, not limited to pasta. Since the lad is responsible for putting the dishes away, having hanging utensils makes it ultra easy for him and means my drawers stay a whole lot neater! 

We are a family of cereal lovers without a whole lot of space to store our cereal (or the depth to store big boxes).  When I found these storage containers at Costco I knew our cereal storage issue would finally be answered. Don’t they look nice all stacked in a row?  It’s lovely to have variety at breakfast (or lunch… or the occasional supper).  🙂  Makes it super easy if we are making cowpies and want to use cereal in them as well.  🙂

The one small bone of contention we have has to do with this cupboard.   If people put things away properly then it remains organized and ergo everything is easy to find.  More oft than not though, the lad is prone to just shoving things inside and not keeping it organized. This of course results in frustration on both our parts so… it’s a work in progress indeed. 

Do you have things you’ve done in your kitchen that you really like that make your meal making go smoother?
Let me know eh? It’s always good to learn new ways of doing things eh?



Organize Your Lego

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In this house, we like Lego. This weekend we decided to take apart and put our Lego away. We do this on a regular basis. We build things, play with them, store them and eventually dismantle them in order to play again. 🙂  Since we have a fairly massive Lego collection, this created a problem of how to store our Lego without it driving us crazy in the searching for pieces and how to display what we made well.   We tried various options like Rubbermaid bins, in the closet, under the bed and it just wasn’t working for us.   We needed a good way to organize our Lego and have a display shelf.

We’ve organized our lego a few times, each time fine tuning it.  This was the original method we used. 

Organize your lego with display shelfSince our first rendition, we got rid of the tiny bins, and simply changed what went where in our bins.

I use four of those stackable bins that you can find at Walmart or on Amazon.   The ones I use have five drawers rather than the ones you see here.  *images are clickable*
         
I find I can rearrange them as needed too, Sometimes I place them in a square and put a large square of wood on top for when we want to build pyramids and representations of Egypt or medieval or pioneer life.   I don’t leave the wheels on as I’ve learned THAT’s a recipe for disaster.

Below is a city/town that we are in process of taking down as we pack to move.  Gives an idea of how we change our set up once in a while.

Organizing lego with display shelf

Anyways, divide up the Lego however you want.  

Our division tends to be:

  • wheels/wheel part
  • lego build books
  • castle pieces
  • ones
  • twos
  • threes
  • fours
  • larger than fours
  • Large flats
  • Smooth flats
  • smaller flats
  • car parts
  • Axles and round holes
  • unusual pieces
  • figurines and all their paraphernalia
  • Tiny pieces (like flat ones)

Some types of Lego have so many pieces it takes two bins to hold them all.  

Basically pieces that are mostly similar find their home spot in the same places.  (like axles and the legos with holes in them go together), along with crane parts.   Things shift as we gain (and sometimes lose) various pieces.  All my StarGate Lego goes in one bin.

organizing lego with display shelfNo one will organize their Lego exactly the same way, so find a method that works for you and how you  think, and don’t be afraid to change it.  Ours has been revised several times since we started this method, and then as we discovered the joy of moving the bins and making a temporary table and what not. We’ve done the “let’s divide by colour” (colossal failure)  We’ve even transported them as needed to other homes for play dates with friends who don’t have Lego. 

This is our normal set up

organizing lego with display shelf

Organize your Lego, it makes playing with your Lego a lot more fun as you don’t have to spend all your time searching the corners of your bin for just the right piece.  Having a display shelf right with your lego stash keeps it all neat and tidy and off the floor.  

Join the crew this week in organizing your homeschool.

Give us ……

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So this is actually a hard post to write…how do I talk about what homeschooling looks like when we haven’t schooled all week?   It’s the subject of this week’s virtual Curriculum fair hosted by hosted by Susan @ Homeschooling Hearts & Minds.   Last we we talked about our reasons to homeschool.

What does homeschooling look like?   I suppose it depends on the week.

 

Give us a household illness and homeschooling looks like three people supporting each other as we recover from the flu which has left us with no brains and little stamina.

Give us a field trip and you’ll find three people out of the house, taking pictures and making notes as we learn this history of our past, the how-to’s of how a business works, ask questions of how plants grow, experience the wonder of the world God created.

Give us a computer and we learn engineering, math, science, history, language arts, and so much more.  Give us the power of youtube and ant farms are built, history is learned, science is experienced and geography broadened. 

Give us a work book and we know we can move on page after page, writing, journaling, equating, documenting, filling in spaces, learning, growing, becoming someone more…

Give us books to read and our lives are filled with imagination, questions, wonder, knowledge and so much more.

Give us a co-op and you’ll find anger and laughter, learning and teaching, friendship and fun, stretching and growing and being more than we already are. 

Give us a messy house and you will find us cleaning, working, renovating, tidying, rearranging, selling, boxing, and decluttering.

Give us bunnies and you will find us undertaking animal management, biology, compassion, building, carpentry, gardening, growing, blogging and all things rabbity.

Give us people and friendships will be made, toleration achieved, opinions challenges, games played, feelings hurt and felt well in abundance.  Cooperating, challenging, growing, helping, healing, and fellowship deepening. 

Give us a blog and research, and joy, and friendships will blossom. 

Give us publication companies and reviews, reading, sharing of opinions and joy will abound. Frustration and learning how to be nice when something appeals not in the least. Commitments and timetables learned and mastered. 

Give us the world…. and you will be totally surprised where it takes us.  

Give it to us and we’ll fit it into our learning and our lives. 

What will YOU give us?

Do you want some help on your homeschooling journey?

Right now SchoolhouseTeachers.com is on sale.  I KNOW!   AND it’s on for a great price.  You need to use this code NEWYEAR18 for a $90/year subscription or MONTHNEWYEAR18 for the $9.95 /month subscription.   More than 350 lessons for the entire family covering all your homeschooling needs.

What do my fellow homeschool bloggers have to say about their Homeschool Method? Go visit them to find out!

Note: all posts will be live after 8 am EST on Monday, Jan. 15th.

How Our Academic Co-op Completes Our Eclectic Homeschool by Susan @ Homeschooling Hearts & Minds

A Method to Our Madness by Michele @ Family, Faith and Fridays

Finding Our Homeschool Method by Christy @ Unexpected Homeschool

How We Homeschool by Amanda @ Hopkins Homeschool

Give Us…. by Annette @ A Net in Time

A day in our Home by Sarah@DeliveringGrace

Lit-Based Education: How We Homeschool by Debra @ Footprints in the Butter

Overhauling Our Homeschool – Adjusting our “How” to fit our “Why” by Sabrina Scheerer @ Kids, Crunch, and Christ

A Day in the Life of a Homeschooler: Expectation Vs. Reality by Leah @ As We Walk Along the Road

How Charlotte Mason Transformed Our Homeschool by Brittney @ Mom’s Heart

Captain’s Log, Supplemental – Our Homeschool Days by Kym @ Homeschool Coffee Break

How we get it done. by Kim @ Good Sweet Love

How to Organize Daily Curriculum with the School Cart by Jeniffer @ Thou Shall Not Whine

Learning For LIfe by Lori H @ At Home: where life happens

Eclectic Homeschooling: When It All Comes Together by Jen @ A Helping Hand Homeschool

A Typical Day? by Lizzy @ Peaches@Home

This is the Way We Do Our School, So Early in the Morning by Laura @ Four Little Penguins

A Little of This and a Little of That: Eclectic Homeschooling by Laura O @ Day by Day in Our World

Still Classically Educating After All These Years by True North Homeschool Academy

So what exactly is Life Led Homeschooling? by Dana @ Life Led Homeschool

The way we learn ~ 2018 Virtual Homeschool Fair by Jacquelin @ A Stable Beginning

Our Homeschool Routine by Joelle @Homeschooling For His Glory

Homeschool Methods – 8 Tips for the Journey by Kristen @ Sunrise to Sunset

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.

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HEY!!! Happy New Year. Reflections on 2016

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Happy New Year dear readers…

Did you stay up late?  Bring in the New Year or did you find yourself exhausted and head to bed early?   Regardless of what you did… may this New Year be one of growth, enlightenment and the knowledge of God’s goodness in your life  🙂

At this time of year you tend to find a lot of “this is my word for the year” or “this is my verse for the year” posts.   I find those posts fascinating reading.   I really do, they give insight into the person behind the blog you know?   When I find some that I particularly enjoy I will link them up here.  🙂

Some word posts: Life.  Cultivate.  Growth.  Simplify. Restore. Crave.

So my top post of the year on this blog has been

My post on the poem “I think mice are rather nice!”   This poem brings back so many smiles.  

The series on my blog I’ve had the most fun with.   You can find this series here and here.   It is fun to find inspiration for doing art and then teaching classes using those books.  

I looked for how people found me (through my old site it was through my missionary posts and hymns primarily).   I find that information interesting as I don’t get a lot of comments on those posts, it is so good to know they are being used.

On my current site people find me through it was a little harder to determine.  This site was dormant for a couple of years as I had consolidated much of what I did through my weebly site.  BUT when I look at why people visit, the field trips, studies on Ezekiel and hymn studies are getting some attention.   So I have hopes that what I post will prove of some use to people.  🙂   Time will tell eh?

So what is new for this year?
I am trying to decide what book I want to work through a chapter at a time on the blog.
Books that I am considering:

Which book would you be most interested in me going through?   Perhaps we could even get a discussion going?  Or not.  🙂

I am looking forward to a new year writing with the Homeschool Review Crew.   Some interesting reviews are coming up and I hope that I am eligible for them.    Looking also forward to seeing what Raincoast books sends my way.

Oh  before I forget, I hope (since the lad and I are going to take up a studying the history of Canada course) I want to put up a series on books about Canada.   Books the help us get to know her history, her people, her geography and what not.  I hope to find a variety of arts and crafts that will help us in our journey.   Hopefully once a week I can do up something interesting from our studies.   Won’t that be fun?     It’ll be a fair amount of behind the scenes work finding things to do.. but should be good.

Anyways, I’m linking this up at Kym’s blog this week.  🙂


Homeschool Coffee Break