At the end of last school year my husband and I decided that it was time to dive into homeschool. The thought had been floating around in our heads for a while, and when I finally said I felt like I could do it my husband indicated that he'd been wondering how long it was going to take me to just settle down and do it. When I told my best friend, she told me she had seen me as a homeschooling mom who just wasn't homeschooling yet. So evidently this was something that was a long time coming.
We took the kids out of public school in April and let them finish the school year using a website called time4learning.com, which we all loved. It has math, English, science, and social studies and it's presented in a way that's really fun for young learners. I was glad I had this resource, because I was teaching seminary (early morning scripture study) 5 days a week and just did not have the time/energy to prepare lessons for that, plus school, plus my Sunday school class. It was just a bit much. However, this year I've buckled down and I spent the whole summer planning and I got my diggity-dang ducks in a row! I have - TA-DA! - a curriculum!
Seriously, the amount of time I spent trying to decide on this was insane. Ridiculous. Unhealthy. But I really do think it was worth it, because this week has been so so so good. I'm pulling from a lot of different places. English for all three kids is coming from http://www.lessonpathways.com/Splash plus extra phonics and reading for the girls. Math for the girls is from http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mep/default.htm and Aiden is still using http://www.time4learning.com. For science, we're using Sassafras Science Adventures: Zoology, and history is from a website called Pronto Lessons - they have fully scripted lessons for both history and science here http://www.prontolessons.com/index.html. We're also doing geography once a month from this great book from Knowledge Quest; each month will focus on a different country and we'll do a craft and make a recipe from each one.
We started on Monday, and I was so excited. I had printed all the books I needed (the geography book, parts of the science book, the girls math books, and various other things were downloaded), I had purchased binders galore, I put everything together, the kids had notebooks and pencil boxes, we had crayons and markers and glue and everything. I was PREPARED, I tell ya. We gathered in the living room to start with yoga - the kids LOVE Cosmic Kids Yoga on YouTube, so that's how we start every school morning. After yoga, we moved right into history. My plan was to do history, then English, and then have lunch and play at the playground and then come back home for math and science. History was grand. English was fantastic. We had lunch, hung out in the 95 degree heat at the playground for a few minutes, and by the time we came back inside I had lost them. Totally. There was no chance of them focusing on anything at all. So I gave up - they had naps (the girls both still sleep for a good 2 hours every day!) and I insisted that we finish math and science before dinner.
Tuesday I started with a difference plan. Yoga - done. History - done. English - done. And then straight through math and science as well. We just plowed through everything, and were done by noon. So that's what we've done all week. As long as we take only minimal breaks (just grab a quick snack), we can all stay focused and on task and when we finish we are all happy and pleased and feeling productive.
Here's a shot of my school closet - I'm just starting, so I only have a few books.
And here are the girls, using my favorite school tool so far - our sliding glass door. They use it to write their ABCs and sight words, as well as math problems and whatever else comes to mind.
I've thought about using the study for school, but things seem to be working fine out in the living room so far, so I guess I'll leave things the way they are until/unless we find a need to change.
Also, the name of this blog - Capture Kairos - is taken from this amazing blog post (here) about noticing the few, precious, perfect moments rather than feeling the need to take wide-eyed, joyous note of EVERYTHING your child has done (or broken or peed on). It's okay to just be Mom. And it's okay to just BE, mom. Be here. See them. It's okay if the walls aren't clean. It's okay if your hair isn't done. It's okay if the floor is a mess. Again. Or still. Because you know what? Sometimes you get to build fairyhouses with your daughters, or have weirdly insightful discussions with your sons, and THAT is capturing kairos.
