Homeschool 2018

So, looking back at my pins on Pinterest, it seems like I've always had a deep interest in Montessori.

Two days into workbooks and Bubbles was saying she hated school. Luckily for her, homeschool can be fliud so here I am, prepping to drop a bunch of money at https://www.montessoribymom.com in a few months.

For now, however, I need to make due with what we have.

Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.
      -Arthur Ashe

She's enjoying the Prodigy app for math so far.

So, I started out introducing Bubbles to the letter A because it's first in her workbooks, but I think a more logical starting place would be ETOAIN.

Beings as Etoain is a collection of the most common letters, I figure word recognition should be easiest if you know the easiest letters first.

We'll do a letter a week. This week is apparently A. Next week we'll tackle E

Simple Goals Part 2

Well, didn't go so well.
Admittedly, last week was rough. We visited two separate family members in the hospital, decided not to buy a car and poor Daddy had to stay up late (he works at night) and watch the girls twice while I went to meetings.


My 4 yr old girl has suddenly become very anti-pants, and none of us have been waking up together.

They are putting their socks on themselves though, so win!

Simple Goals

    So I'm really working on a schedule with my kiddos.

    I have these very lofty goals, which includes a lot more independence than we currently have.

    To start the day off, eventually, I'd like everyone to wake up together. I dream of cozy mornings where we all cuddle, sipping cocoa and coffee while we gradually wake up.
    Further down the list of a perfect morning, my girls would get themselves dressed.

    This is where I'm concentrating for next week.

    I've broken down my goals into mini-pieces and this week I'm working on two pieces.

   Goal 1. By next Monday, the girls all peacefully wake up together at nine.
   Goal 2. By next Monday, my 2yr old puts her shirt on by herself when asked. I'm working on my 2 yr old instead of my 4 yr old because the littler one likes clothes. I think she'll be easier to start with. I feel like the only way to keep clothes on my bigger one would be to glue them on.

    Wish me luck! I'll report back next week.

Schedual

    My childhood was utter chaos, so it's so hard for me to stick to a schedule and I desperately, desperately want to.

    I don't know what it is, but I just can't seem to keep on track.

    Sometimes I can't even wake up to my alarm every day for weeks.

    I don't know how people manage to keep on schedule. I'm trying to just get "all the stuff" done in a day and that seems to work a bit better than when I try 'dinner at five!" "AT FIVE I SAY!"

    Sometimes it's procrastination, but more often then not it goes like this;

   Wake planning on cooking eggs before I wake up my brood.
    Someone wakes up mid-scramble needing an urgent bottle/diaper change/cuddle/muffin? Really? You woke up screaming from a lack-of-muffin nightmare?

    Next, I hope to finish cooking before I have to take my oldest to school.
    Oldest wakes up and goes into detail about her dream where the world is made out of regenerating food, like, the car is a gumdrop and so on.

    I make myself some coffee, dread driving in this March snow and pack the baby into her adorable knitted snowsuit, coat, thing while reminding Oldest that she needs to brush her teeth and hair.

    The muffin-dreamer is back to sleep on the couch or kitchen floor, so I guess she's staying with Daddy while Oldest, Baby and I go to school.

    The eggs remain partly-scrambled, forgotten and abandoned in the pan while I go about my daily journey.

    Sometimes I remember them about noon, when it's lunch time.

    Oh boy! What to do!

Awesome Days

    When I homeschooled my oldest, she was 9 at the time. We used IXL and it wasn't what she needed. I'm sure it works wonders for some kids, but it just stressed mine out and made her cry.
    I personally worked out a curriculum for science, history, we threw in yoga, emotional recognition, recess/organized sports play. That half hour of IXL math and half hour of IXL reading completely ruined the rest of the fun we'd had all day. Eventually, I felt like I was failing her even more than public school, so she went back to public school.
   Ever since then I've been quietly, and waaaaay too slowly, developing a fun online curriculum that hopefully won't stress her out. It's hard to code websites when you have helpers pawing at your legs all day.

    ALL DAY! EVEN WHEN I TRY TO PEE! They're always there. They're always watching... They're always calling "Momma!" 

    My little ones are too little for school. I mean, I suppose we could pay for Preschool, but it just feels like sacrificing my precious mommy-babies time. I suppose maybe two 15 minute blocks of Preschool would be nice, ya know, so I can go potty.

    Anyway. I've been trying to teach them at home. Basically Preschool Homeschool.

    When I homeschooled, I had a schedule I tried to follow. For the first four months it worked out, but mostly, in reality, most of the day seemed to slip chaotically through my fingers.

    Today, though. Today has been one of those elusive "good days" where everything falls into place without a hitch and you feel confident. Today I feel like I could homeschool all my kids, all the time.

Ruthless Kid's Clothes Apocolypse

    We have way, way, way too many clothes.


    Granted, I have a family of 6. However, if I assume each of us has 40 articles of clothes (this is more generous than the standard 37 I see online) there should only be 240 articles of clothes in the house.

    . . . There is probably 20 garbage bags FILLED with clothes, and two very large boxes full.


    So, I went through and pared my own wardrobe down to 40 about this time last year. Mischief and Mayhem, my two middle girls, have minimal clothes. Most of those are up here, not in bags. Teeny Tiny Baby just got a huge box of clothes that I need to pick through, but she has about 30 clothes currently.
    This means that majority of the clothes and clothes and clothes down stairs in those bags and bags and bags are . . . (drum roll please) My husband's and my oldest daughter's!

    Oh, my, dear, god. OMDG.

    It does make sense. I have most of my clothes up here. I have the smallest threes' up here. That leaves Hubby and Oldest.

    20is bags, of two people's clothes.


   GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Slackin Redefined

   Holy crap I've been slacking. Well, slacking on blogging.

    It's probably because we moved into our new house about a month and a quarter ago, and I have a baby who turned 6 months old, three days ago, and my oldest daughter just started a whole lot of counseling and OT for her recent Aspie diagnoses, oh, and my husband is working the night shift now so I've been toting all four of my girls around in the day alone.
    Boy, I need to figure out a way to blog more!

    So here is how my beloved bipolars are doing:
      Sweet husband and I miss each other terribly! He comes home about a half hour before I have to take my oldest to school. Team Tiny wakes up after that and they wind down for bed as he is showering and getting his work clothes on.
    I see him Friday and Saturday. It's kind of lame, but this house is amazing, my husband is already in line for a huge promotion, and this is the first time since about pre-school that my oldest hasn't been complaining about school weekly.


    Overall, I think life is improving for us and it's on an uphill climb!

woo!

Still super tired though.