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CelesteMary
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Does anyone put schedules aside and go with the Holy Spirit in their homeschool?
Don't get me wrong, the children have their "core" subjects, reading, writing, arithmatic but when it comes to the beautiful components of our homeschool, they seem to have a way of becoming nice ittle "treats" and not the daily norm. Our baby is two now so maybe it's just that I am finally coming up for air.
We have land so the children, especially the boys spend a lot of time "outdoors" woodworking with Dad, taking care of our chickens and pigs. We often exercise together as I go for a walk or run and they come along with bicycles as I try to keep up.
Classical is often playing in the background, I always plan on getting to poetry and the finer arts, and we do sometimes but I usually wind up ignoring that voice that wants to go a slower pace thinking that I am ensuring that they don't fall behind in their "core" subjects.
I want homeshooling to be fun, darn-it!!!!
How do you fit it all in? or do you do art, music and poetry on certain days and not others? How does this practically look in your homeschool? I really want God's beauty to be the leading force in our homeschool life!!!!
Any suggestions would be much appeciated. God bless.
Celeste
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SallyT
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Well, *I* think there's beauty in arithmetic! :) And grammar, too. But I know what you mean.
Here's what's helped me, just in the last year: the Basket of Readings. It began as a Morning Basket to start the day; by the end of last year it was a Lunch Basket. In it I keep things like poetry books, at least one art book, some other pretty picture book for enjoyment, and anything else I want not to forget, outside the normal daily round of core subjects. I have a loose schedule for the basket -- on Monday there's always a poem, for example. Sometimes we memorize it over the course of the week, sometimes not. But it's there, a 2-minute read. And then I have more books strewn about for them to pick up.
On another day, I'll do some kind of brief art thing, usually a picture study or a double-page spread from an Usborne art book. We haven't done a whole lot of "studio" art consistently, but art supplies are always available for free time and get used a lot.
We listen to classical and other kinds of music all the time. We sing at prayer times. This year I do have a book about composers, with short entries, to add to my Basket one day a week. Again, this is maybe 2-5 minutes' worth of reading, once a week.
The way I see these things, it's not my job to generate the beauty -- it's my job to plant the seeds so that they can see the beauty. If I think of this part of our homeschool as a big task that I have to take on, then nothing will get done. But if I look for a way to plant a seed here, a seed there, that I can manage.
Meanwhile, I do try to remember that there's beauty and pleasure in even what we too often think of as the grunt work of school. Sometimes it just is grunt work, in the same way that playing scales is grunt work compared with playing a concerto on the piano. But even the grunt work is part of the fabric of God's beautiful creation, and one of the things I've come to appreciate about educating my children is that I've had a chance to see that, over their shoulders, so to speak.
Your life does sound very full of beauty, I have to say!
Sally
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CelesteMary
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Thanks Sally. It really IS a beautiful life we lead. I just think I put a lot on myself as far as my vision of the way I think things should go.
All flowers and butterflies, no arguments, you know...then reality strikes. Thanks for your perspective.
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pumpkinmom
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I'm working harder this year to fit in those "extra" fine art stuff. I'm doing it on Fridays and I picked 4 topics, one for each school term. I also don't do history, science, or language arts on those days. We also will do art every Friday. First term we are doing Shakespeare, second term is art appreciation with Monet, third term is music appreciation and I haven't picked yet what we will do, and fourth term is poetry and I will check out books from the library and hopefully find cds to listen to.
I use to always try to fit all of this in throughout the year and it never works. Just focusing on one at a time. It went great our first Friday, but we haven't had school the last two Fridays so I don't know if we just had good luck the first time or this is a workable idea for us. 
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Cassie
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CelesteMary
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Thanks Cassie. That looks doable. You're right, trying to fit it all in doesn't seem to work in one day, at least for me. I will make an attempt to implement the extras as you suggested.
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Martha
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I don't think it as to be either or.
I make sure to do arts first or second thing so they don't get shuffled to the end or never gotten to part of the day.
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CrunchyMom
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I started a rotating list of lessons for the things I want to teach collectively. I have a teensy newborn, so I knew a strict schedule would not work, but I figure if I can cycle through my list according to my ability when we have time, it gives me goals that are flexible enough that I'm not stressed about trying to do art on art day when the baby hits a spurt and wants to nurse hours on end, etc...
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pumpkinmom
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I just wanted to add that we are doing more than fine arts on Friday. It is first our make-up day and we catch up on anything that didn't get done that week, second is math, then third we do the fine arts study, and fourth it time allows we do fun extras like math or geography games and review work for all subjects set up like a quiz game to have some fun competition between my boys.
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SallyT
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This year Friday will be our Shakespeare day, and we'll do that in our regular "English" slot, right after math and dictation. I do like having Friday be a different day, with more fun things happening than in the rest of the week. In other years I've tried doing "Shakespeare tea" in the afternoon, but that too quickly goes by the wayside. I've also done read-alouds of things like E. Nesbit's Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare as part of our basket, and that's been fun. This year both youngers are reading H.A. Guerber's retellings of plays to themselves, an act at a time. I would *so* love to find other families in our area interested in putting on Shakespeare plays, but *nobody* is interested. Rather emphatically. That's totally weird to me, but anyway. I'm thinking we might do some dramatic readings, the three of us, as well. Maybe I can rope in my husband and high-schooler for some evenings.
Thinking aloud here . . . meanwhile, we also like watching Shakespeare plays, especially comedies, on video periodically, though on occasion I have had to cover the computer screen with my hand (alert: the film version of Midsummer Night's Dream with Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Callista Flockhart is a lot of fun, really well done, but I'd forgotten that the lovers get their clothes stolen by the fairies at the end. Oops. Don't look, kids. Embarrassing moment for those poor people . . . can't trust those fairies . . . ). The version of Twelfth Night with Ben Kingsley and Imogen Stubbs is safer, and we've watched that many times. And there's a fairly decent BBC As You Like It on YouTube as well: certainly nothing offensive, though it's also not as funny as it might be. Helen Mirren is Rosalind -- that's how long ago it was! Anyway, that's something to explore if you want more Shakespeare in your life.
If I don't do a poem as our first group read-aloud on Monday, though, it won't happen at all. We have YMCA Gym and Swim on Mondays, from 12:30-2:30, so our Mondays are abbreviated -- kind of a weird way to start the week, with a short school day, but we hit math, English, and religion, with one or two carefully-chosen read-alouds before we have to eat lunch and be out of the house for the afternoon. So poetry actually works well there, because it is usually short and it doesn't get lost in the shuffle of other basket readings. I don't spend a lot of time "teaching" it -- it's just read, maybe recite back as we can remember it, and go.
I've got Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, which has some interesting exercises and is more or less open-and-go -- I may wait another year or so before starting it, because it does seem more appropriate for late-middle-school and up, but I really like her method. I do do a lot better with some kind of spine for art -- if I leave it to myself to wing it, it won't get done. More and more I'm finding that so much depends upon judiciously-selected materials . . .
Sally
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pumpkinmom
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Martha wrote:
I don't think it as to be either or.
I make sure to do arts first or second thing so they don't get shuffled to the end or never gotten to part of the day. |
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I admire this! I can't seem to bring myself to do it first. I get worried that we won't get everything done and I do the core stuff first to make sure it gets done. Of course, most days I get tired in the afternoon and put off the finer things. Actually they are pretty much just as important and should be first in our day because of the beauty of them. Perhaps one day . . . . .
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Martha
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CrunchyMom wrote:
| I started a rotating list of lessons for the things I want to teach collectively. I have a teensy newborn, so I knew a strict schedule would not work, but I figure if I can cycle through my list according to my ability when we have time, it gives me goals that are flexible enough that I'm not stressed about trying to do art on art day when the baby hits a spurt and wants to nurse hours on end, etc... |
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This. I have a checklist of things I want to get to each week and how often. If I don't get to it today, then it's what I start with tomorrow. For me, a routine is more important than a schedule for the young ones.
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Martha
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Martha
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pumpkinmom wrote:
Martha wrote:
I don't think it as to be either or.
I make sure to do arts first or second thing so they don't get shuffled to the end or never gotten to part of the day. |
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I admire this! I can't seem to bring myself to do it first. I get worried that we won't get everything done and I do the core stuff first to make sure it gets done. Of course, most days I get tired in the afternoon and put off the finer things. Actually they are pretty much just as important and should be first in our day because of the beauty of them. Perhaps one day . . . . . |
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Try rotating. You have a list of items and you go through them one by one and pick up where you left off the next day. So you might not arts every day, but you'll certainly get to them a couple times a week.
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Martha
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CelesteMary
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Ladies,
Thanks so much for your replies. I have been reading and re-reading. I love the suggestion Martha had regarding putting the finer things first. As a side bar, I go back and forth between adding the rosary first thing or last thing. First thing, I know it will get done. At night, sometimes the toddler looses it becomes more of a struggle, everyone tired and all.
My children are on auto piolot regarding their "seatwork." They know what is expected and can do that without my help, meaning I could have them do those subjects, mainly arithmatic, cursive and manuscript in the afternoon while the littles nap and do the finer arts in the morning.
I also tend to go long in my lessons and was pleasantly reminded that these extas really are not necessary much longer than fifteen minutes or so for each. It is the variety that adds the spice. I like that. No pressure.
Thanks so much. It is really helpful seeing the different perspectives on this for me.
God bless.
Celeste
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SallyT
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I like Martha's distinction between a schedule and a routine -- I'm definitely a routine person, as opposed to a schedule person. And I love the idea of the rotation, so that things come up on the "wheel," and you do them.
It's also worth considering that in many ways these "finer" things are also part of the core subjects. If you do Shakespeare or poetry, you've done English, as surely as if you've done a grammar lesson. There's a lot about art that's mathematical or scientific (just observing something closely and recording or discussing observations is engaging in a scientific method). So if you have decide how to use a limited block of time, and you decide to lean toward something more "artistic," bear in mind that you haven't dispensed with the meat of education. Even as you do what may feel like a "fun extra," you're still touching on those core disciplines in one way or another, in such a way that for that day, you might not even do whatever the corresponding discipline is (e.g., if you did poetry or Shakespeare, you wouldn't *have* to do any other English that day . . . that kind of thing).
Just more thinking here. I'm finding this a very helpful conversation, and I'm glad you brought it up, Celeste. It's making me rethink our days as well. So thank you!
Sally
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MaryM
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Just a note saying I moved this topic here to Living Learning - because it fits perfectly - how our learning and homeschool style fits into our lives. I am enjoying the discussion.
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CelesteMary
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This is great, Sally. I find this feedback invaluable as I love the idea of living learning but needed more examples of how this works in a day to day, practically speaking.
I also feel like I needed a little shot of confidence just implementing it and thanks to you all, I feel like I can add these minor but fun changes into our day, really enriching our homeschool life.
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SallyT
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Good resources make a big difference, too. One book I own, which I don't get down that regularly but manage to use a few times a year, is Barron's Math Wizardry for Kids. It's fun with math concepts, including art projects, poetry, and other things. I've had it for years, and always meant to sit down and really take inventory of it so that I can could plan to use it more regularly, and still haven't done that. Maybe that'll be tomorrow's project! It is a book I pull out when we just need a day off from our regular math routine -- it's like stealth math that feels like an art lesson. Or a poetry lesson. Or whatever.
I know we list art resources a lot, but my brain is going down this "integrated" road right now . . .
Sally
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CelesteMary
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Thanks Sally, I will see if I can get my hands on a copy of this book. It is true that so many of our subjects are combined, hitting a few subjects in one. I'm starting to see it differently now.
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CelesteMary
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BTW, the children and I spent the afternoon at the library and I found some great children's Shakespeare books. I am so excited that I plan to give the children a "preview" tonight. Just mom and the older children taking turns reading to start.
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: Does anyone put schedules aside and ...
