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momtimesfour
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| Posted: April 07 2008 at 5:33pm | IP Logged
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I think all the years of sleep deprivation have taken a permanent toll on my bird-brain.  For the life of me, I just cannot seem to think through Real Learning/Charlotte Mason principles and practically apply them to my family. I feel a bit paralyzed, mapless, and very afraid of leaving giant gaps in their education. How to cover information age-appropriately, how to schedule everyone's routines, how to bunny trail without getting lost in the desert. I've done Sonlight in the past and still gravitate toward it... but in all honesty, the age span of my kids makes even that option an overwhelming one. Plus, I don't relish the thought of tweaking it endlessly to deal with the Protestant/Catholic differences.
Right now our children are: 12yo boy, 7yo boy, 3yo boy, and 1yo girl. The 3yo has recently started special ed preschool to work on a severe speech delay. (This affects our whole family and is rather draining - the delay & associated behaviors, that is.) So I've got a 7th grader and then a 1st grader, but I have to keep the littles occupied and safe. How to teach the older two efficiently, AND, how to keep track of what we do for recordkeeping and then for when the littles are older (I'd like very much not to reinvent the wheel every single time I have a 1st grader.) On top of this, I do work from home (or at least, I am supposed to!).
I am not a person of boundless energy. I easily get overwhelmed. Organization is so enticing, but it eludes me. The appeal of something like Sonlight is that it's all right there - good books, some directions, etc. But I KNOW I will tweak, tweak, tweak... and eventually end up in survival mode. Again.
I would appreciate any insights and recommendations from y'all. This really is where my philosophy on education lies... I just don't know how to DO it. (Darned public school did NOT prepare me for this,  )
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marihalojen
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| Posted: April 08 2008 at 8:20am | IP Logged
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I just linked this on another thread, and since all I have to do is hit paste...
If you're drawn to Charlotte Mason, I found the Tanglewood Corebook to be helpful in planning out a CM Term. It has the space allotted for Copywork, Nature Walks, Poetry, Artist and Composer Studies that I always had difficulty in cramming it all into a little Language Arts block, or Science block, in a traditional planner. I found it was the best $5 I spent that year.
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~Jennifer
Mother to Mariannna, age 13
The Mari Hal-O-Jen
SSR = Sailing, Snorkling, Reading
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lapazfarm
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| Posted: April 08 2008 at 11:51am | IP Logged
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Hey, your kids are about the same ages as mine!(12, 6, 4 and 2).
It's a wild ride, isn't it?
Come on over to my blog if you like. That will give you a feel for how I do it. Maybe that will help. Or at least give you one more option to eliminate!!LOL!!
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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
LaPaz Home Learning
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momtimesfour
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| Posted: April 08 2008 at 7:42pm | IP Logged
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marihalojen wrote:
I just linked this on another thread, and since all I have to do is hit paste...
If you're drawn to Charlotte Mason, I found the Tanglewood Corebook to be helpful in planning out a CM Term. |
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Aha. That looks interesting. I'll have to look at it when my eyes will stay open. The littles have run me ragged today. thanks!
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momtimesfour
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| Posted: April 08 2008 at 7:43pm | IP Logged
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lapazfarm wrote:
Hey, your kids are about the same ages as mine!(12, 6, 4 and 2).
It's a wild ride, isn't it?
Come on over to my blog if you like. That will give you a feel for how I do it. Maybe that will help. Or at least give you one more option to eliminate!!LOL!! |
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Oh, that IS a very similar spread. That you never sound as loony as I feel (at least in posts!) is encouraging. I'll peruse your blog, most definitely.
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lamamaloca
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| Posted: April 16 2008 at 11:46am | IP Logged
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*waving*
Fancy meeting you here! I was here briefly quite a while ago and didn't have the time for it, but decided to come back to get some more homeschool support as the kids have gotten older and we're actually doing some amount of "schooling."
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Becky
Mom to Pauly, Roger and Rosemarie
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Leonie
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| Posted: April 16 2008 at 5:52pm | IP Logged
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momtimesfour wrote:
| I am not a person of boundless energy. I easily get overwhelmed. Organization is so enticing, but it eludes me. |
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When I am feeling overwhelmed ( too much to do) I have found I need to sit down, perhaps when kids are asleep or watching a DVD, and put thoughts on paper. Getting it all on paper, in a notebook or journal - or blog , clears my head.
I also write up rough schedules - yes I am an unschooler but I need to see that it *is* possible to fit everything into my week! Or where I can simplify. OCD or something.
Of course, we have never follow these schedules but having them helps me feel better. I know it is possible to fit everything in....
I also make up meal lists and ideas lists for spending time with the kids and any formal work. Can you see I am a list maker?
And I remind myself, when I feel that we are in survival mode, that I am getting the most important things done, that I am after progression not perfection, that there is time to do everything God wants me to do, don't rush it, take time to enjoy it.
These litle mantras keep me going when I have a tendency to feel like I am just treading water or always playing catch up.
And I really like the look of that Tanglewood book - thanks for the link, Jennifer!
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Leonie in Sydney
Living Without School
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SallyT
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| Posted: April 17 2008 at 11:19pm | IP Logged
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Ooh, I'm going to go look at that Tanglewood book! I was looking at the Simply Charlotte Mason planner, but it's pricey, and I dunno . . . Right now I use the very simple lesson plan boxes at Homeschool Reporting Online, where we keep grades, attendance, etc (we use this service through our state-mandated umbrella school, but I've learned that I can subscribe as an individual after we move).
My kids are a vaguely similar age spread -- currently 14, 10, 5 and 4 -- at least, I've got bigs and littles going on at once, and I hear your frustrations. Right now I'm trying to put together reading lists for each week, usually several weeks out, just so I won't forget about books I know I want us to read. We tend to be literature-based and otherwise pretty unschooly, though my oldest does do fairly structured high-school coursework on her own and with a day of co-op classes.
At times when we've had to spend a lot of time in the car, we've leaned heavily on books on tape, or simply on classical music on NPR (music appreciation while you drive! my kids like to listen to all-night classical music when they're falling asleep, too). Otherwise wasted time like car time is a great opportunity to get in some of that CM-ish "appreciation" stuff in a way that's informal (you don't necessarily have to have a "lesson") but often very rich, and has the effect of cultivating all those good impulses toward the beautiful.
Otherwise, we just really are very literature-based. We read a lot, and that's it. I heard Maureen Wittman speak at our homeschool conference last month and felt really validated -- she's written a book called For the Love of Literature, which essentially just lays out a reading list for all ages by subject. The gist of her talks at the conference was how much children learn and thrive on being read to (she had a lot to say about test scores going up after a summer of nothing but reading, that kind of thing). I've been planning out next year as a series of booklists, using FTLOL as a guide, and it's been a tremendous help -- I never thought I'd find a curriculum guide which spoke to what we really do as a default mode!
If you're interested and it's not all too overwhelming, as reading many blogs can be, you can check out my homeschooling blog to see how we do things. I'm not going to say that we're geniuses at all this, but I do feel that things are starting to fall into place, after five years of experimentation! And I will also say that the kids do not seem any worse for the wear after five years of experimentation, either. My 14yo has had a demanding but very good 9th-grade year this year, and though algebra has been a big struggle, she has really risen to the challenges and done quite well, despite my not having laid a particularly coherent groundwork from the time she was 9 until now. Seeing her perform well for, say, the parish priest who teaches her Henle Latin class, in a group of kids who have largely done far more formal-curriculum work than she has, has given me a lot more confidence to plow ahead with what we do.
I really do hear you. I'm not an organized person, either, and I'm always struggling to balance a number of disparate things in my days, including also freelance-writing work, which I do more erratically than I wish I did (though this is just the way it goes for now). The listmaking really helps -- Homeschool Reporting Online really helps by making it easy for me to keep records -- reading aloud is a Godsend (all my kids have been listening to my 10yo's "geography" book, Richard Halliburton's Royal Road to Romance, which has been very good fun). Otherwise -- well, there really isn't much "otherwise." Oh, and blogging about it helps me to keep a record of how we did what we did, so that hopefully I can access it next time around -- whether I actually do things that way again or not.
And I think I need to go repeat Leonie's mantras!
Sally
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Leonie
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| Posted: April 18 2008 at 2:19am | IP Logged
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SallyT wrote:
Ooh, I'm going to go look at that Tanglewood book! I was looking at the Simply Charlotte Mason planner, but it's pricey, and I dunno . . .
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I got the e-book of the Tanglewood Corebook and am going to see how I can tweak it to fit in with our unschooling CM. 
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Leonie in Sydney
Living Without School
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momtimesfour
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| Posted: April 21 2008 at 5:31pm | IP Logged
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SallyT wrote:
Right now I use the very simple lesson plan boxes at Homeschool Reporting Online, where we keep grades, attendance, etc ....
My kids are a vaguely similar age spread -- currently 14, 10, 5 and 4 -- at least, I've got bigs and littles going on at once, and I hear your frustrations. ...For the Love of Literature, which essentially just lays out a reading list for all ages by subject. The gist of her talks at the conference was how much children learn and thrive on being read to (she had a lot to say about test scores going up after a summer of nothing but reading, that kind of thing).
If you're interested and it's not all too overwhelming, as reading many blogs can be, you can check out my homeschooling blog to see how we do things. I'm not going to say that we're geniuses at all this, but I do feel that things are starting to fall into place, after five years of experimentation!
Sally
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Sally,
Thank you for all of the information! I will check out that record-keeping link. I've used the freebie version of Homeschool Tracker with some success... but by the end of every school year I give up.
I did find that we had 2 years of "the bare essentials" of reading and math. That was it. And my boys eased into the brick-n-mortar school year quite well last year. (That's a whole 'nother story.) I think I'm leaning toward being very literature based and throwing in more structured math & science. It's all still very overwhelming.
I'll definitely read your blog. I love blogs. :) I love them a bit much, actually.
The balancing act is a trick, isn't it? Thank you for your help!
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: Practically speaking, HOW do I do this?
