These are the chores the children are assigned now. If you'd seen the chore list before, there was something missing...bathrooms. The kids caught it though and I fixed it. The only reason HJ has a longer list than the boys is because the dogs only take a few minutes. JL has dishes to wash which usually takes measureably longer than the other chores to be done. His major time to take care of the dishes is after dinner since it is the largest meal of the day. Naturally, there are more dishes. I've discussed with him the importance of getting everything finished at night so that he can gather, sort and start laundry in the morning.
From the list above, one might gather that my husband I sit around doing nothing, letting the children take care of the daily cleaning. To the contrary!
Below you will see my calendar.
Along the left side, you'll see the room of the week. Each day's job for ME is listed across the bottom. I'm "The Detail Lady". Pun intended! LOL I take care of all the details in the house. If there is something that has been missed, it is my fault. ;)
For this week, today was windows, but with the temperatures currently at 0*F, the Windex would freeze on contact. So, with this week being the Living Room, I take some extra time doing the dusting. I made it around 3/4ths of the room on Monday. Today, I was on the phone with technical support trying to get SOS working on the computers, so my window wiping time went by the wayside. No losses there. Tomorrow I wipe things down...which when in the Living room entails....an extra day to get the dusting done! Hooray! :) Thursday morning we're getting the Christmas decorations taken down, then in the afternoon we'll carpet scrub. In between all of that, we'll do school. Friday is delegated to decluttering, if we're home, but if we're running errands, we'll do it on Saturday.
If you'll look along the right side of the calendar, you'll see my baking schedule. This is the "goal". My Bosche broke right before Christmas, so we haven't been following this schedule. I look forward to the day when we can. :) I most likely will revamp lots of different things on there. We currently do what is needed when it is needed. It's all good though.
Today is Wednesday, which means wiping things down. I wiped down the bay window, the computer desk, the heater registers, and the baseboards. I also asked the strong children to pull the couches out for me to vacuum behind and wipe the baseboards, so I figured it was time to vacuum under the cushions as well as teh cushions themselves. It took me a little while because I had to take a break due to the dust in the air. I figured I'd better take a break or need my puffer. The break was a good thing. :) I finished all that up with the help of my kids and then took a nap. I told them they could go out and play in the snow. Yippee!
Back to work in earnest this week has meant the children getting all of their checklists done. This means not just the bare minimum of schooling, but all of it. Here is a close-up of their daily checklist. Please keep in mind, their daily chores only take them 15 minutes to do.
This year, we've used Plants Grown Up and Polished Cornerstones from Doorposts as our guide for the children's Bible memory verses and Bible copy work. If you click on the links, Doorposts supplies exerpts from each book as well as a table of contents for you to see their product. We really appreciate this tool and use it daily as a guide to raise up our children. What a blessing it has been for us.
For Language Arts, we've enjoyed the "all encompassing" curriculum of Alpha Omega Lifepacs for years. However, it became so very labor intensive for all of us and trying to keep track of all the work books was difficult. We switched everyone over to Switched on Schoolhouse and found after a while that for Math it wasn't the perfect fit for the boys. They needed something else. JL needed to be completely away from SOS so we switched him to Sequential Speller, Victory Drill Book and Easy Grammar. He has made such great leaps and bounds in his fluency and comprehension this year by making that switch! Praise God! The two older children still use SOS for Language Arts, but also have been doing Sequential Speller to fill in some gaps where the Lifepacs Language Arts program didn't fill in.
I'd like to take a moment here to broach the topic of gaps in learning. As home schoolers, we have the ability to stop where we are when we find gaps in learning to address them, then move on. This at times means taking our children and putting them in to a grade level of curriculum that they're truly not "in", but truly capable of doing more. We've done this with our oldest son. He's capable of college level comprehension, but has some rudamentary skills that he needs to show proficiency with before moving on. Does this mean we're "dumbing down" our curriculum? To the contrary, we're filling in areas where he needs filled in and giving him extra to do in areas where we know he excells. This truly is a tailored system that we use for all of our children. They're growing and striving for new heights. I know without a shadow of a doubt that all 3 of my children would not receive this type of education in public school. The public schools wouldn't be able to keep up with their needs.
On to Math! We started off using Lifepacs for Math in the very beginning, after trying things for a year. It did a very good job using the spiral method of learning. What this means is that for a few pages, the child would review already learned concepts and the next page would introduce a new concept with a bit of work, but not a lot. The next few pages would move on to another concept that the child already knew and perhaps add a little bit to it, constantly and consistently building little-by-little to the child's understanding. We liked this way of learning for the children. However, they outgrew it, didn't like to have to constantly and consistently review concepts they'd already learned. We switched all 3 of them to SOS Math which used somewhat of the same method, but not really. All the lessons on fractions were in one unit (much like Lifepacs, but different). All of the lessons on division were in one unit, instead of constantly and consistently built upon throughout the entire year. I didn't like this, neither did my boys. We switched them to Math-U-see and they've been doing so much better ever since! (I wish we would have started with Math-u-see years ago!) HJ has requested that she's allowed to stay on SOS Math. I foresee, however, a time when she'll need to switch to Math-u-see as well. She'll need to decide when that is.
Our Science Curriculum comes from 2 sources. This year, due to a Creation Science class offered at our home school group, HJ is using The New Answers Books 1-3 by Ken Ham. She is truly loving this class and it counts toward her High School diploma requirement for science! :) DA is also enrolled in a Lab class at our home school group for Chemistry. They are using the Exploring Creation with Chemistry books. We love both of these programs for our children because it keeps our focus where it needs to be--on God's creation. Yes, each of these courses teach the children the falacy of evolution. Focusing on THE Creator in their education has proven to solidify their faith in an AWESOME God. Why would we do anything else? ;)
This year for History and Geography, we're studying the Holocaust as Seen Through Children's Eyes, the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence as well as the Civil Rights and Women's Rights Movements. We're currently studying the Constitution and will move in to the other areas as time passes. We plan to study the signers of the Constitution, their lives and contributions to society and how that affects how we live today. We use real books, not Kindles or Nooks. We believe it is more important for the children to be holding a book in their hands. However, that said, I do understand when someone's eye sight necessitates using technology to be able to read. A friend of ours has this concern.
For music, the children take piano lessons and practice daily. For art we just have them take art classes through our home school group for now. Occationally classes are offered through The Sawmill for them to take. Last year they took an oil painting class. We plan to enroll them in more of these types of classes as time allows and as their interests dictate.
We have yet to fully delve in to whole courses for foreign languages. We speak Spanish and use American Sign Language with the children already. I know that I've lost a lot of the Spanish I'd learned while in San Diego, but I've kept up with the basics. I do need to get in to more verb conjugation.
This is what we've been up to this week. What have you been up to?
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