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rm4mrfrus
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| Posted: July 02 2006 at 9:05pm | IP Logged
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I have just finished reading REAL LEARNING for the 2nd time (had to get it ILL from Bangor Maine!) and even reading some of it out loud to dh who enjoyed it very much! Now I am trying to see how to actually put it into practice and I am just not seeing it clearly enough.
Maybe if I write out how we mostly did school this year and with what ages it might help you to help me! 
We mostly used CHC for 4th with ds10 and 3rd with dd8. I have been working through 100 EZ Lessons with ds6 and that is pretty much it for him.
So, in the morning, we started with a morning offering and reading about the saint of the day. Then a lot of times the 2 older ones would work on their ind. work (MUS, Grammar, Handwriting, Spelling, read for an hour by themselves). While they were doing this I would work with ds6 and read to the younger ones, etc. I would just go to whoever needed me and work on whatever they were working on. We stopped for a snack at 10:30 (carried over from my gest. diabetic days) and then I might help them with science (CHC's Behold and See) or Catechism. Then we head out the door for noon Mass and home again for lunch at 1. Then after lunch I have the little ones lay down and I read them books and the older children finish anything that they need to and/or I help them with whatever they need. Then snack (which will be renamed 'tea') at 3:30 (more from GD days) and then we are pretty much done.
Now I can't see how to put it all together. How do I do the CM type things with all of them together? I am used to either individual or independent work. Do you have a math time, then a dictation time, then a history time, etc? Is anyone willing to break this down even farther for me?
I hope my question makes sense. I am trying to plan for this next school year and while I really am excited about it, I can't "see" it in my head.
thanks again!
Hollee (who has not been able to set up a signature yet!)
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aussieannie
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| Posted: July 02 2006 at 10:16pm | IP Logged
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Very good idea Hollee,  I was only thinking the other day, "What do other people do? It might help me in my direction and the crossroads I am at present over things, if I had some ideas to ponder on, in that very practical look at the day to day working of things."
I hope you get alot of responses and I will very keen to learn from it all too. 
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Erin
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| Posted: July 03 2006 at 6:44am | IP Logged
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rm4mrfrus wrote:
| Now I can't see how to put it all together. How do I do the CM type things with all of them together? I am used to either individual or independent work. Do you have a math time, then a dictation time, then a history time, etc? Is anyone willing to break this down even farther for me? |
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Hollee,
I guess the difference from what I do to you is that we don't have individual books.
Like yourself we start the day with prayers, saint of the day, a hymn etc. What we do next can vary at times depending on what I find is working for that 'season'.
We start the day with religion, some days this could be a Baltimore Cathechism lesson that we read and discuss, another day it is a Friendly Defender card (apologetics). Then sometimes we may be reading our way through Bible stories, or a saints story or something like Maria Montessori's 'Mass explained for children'. I try to rotate things so that over the year we cover a range of areas. At present I also have a child preparing for his FHC but I tend to work with him once the others have gone out for morning tea.
Next is seat work, the children all sit at the table together, and work on their maths texts (Singapore maths) I sit with them so I'm available to whoever needs help. Then we do Language Arts we start with copywork, this is a choice of a Bible selection, a poem or a selection from quality literature. Last year ds11 choose to do Lord of the Rings poems.
Then the children do their studied dictation. I choose a literature piece for the boys, dd likes to do poems. Somedays we also do some spelling as the children enjoy this, they like me to give them lists. We also try to do some of Emma Serl's Language Lessons a few times a week. Whilst the older ones are busy with their copywork I listen to the younger ones read.
Morning Tea follows seat work.
During the period between morning tea and lunch we work on our 'unit topics'. This consists of lots of read alouds of whatever topic we are studying. We use mainly living books and some reference books occasionaly. During this period they will also do hands on activites, art etc relating to the unit and notebooking and narrations all pertaining to the unit. Sometimes we will do a literature read aloud here sometimes that happens in the afternoon.
I found that trying to do a science book, then a history etc all in the one week didn't work for us. I found it too schooly and we were rushing to complete and not enjoy what we did. So instead I tend to rotate the focus of our unit topics so we tend to cover all areas in the year. We tend to do a unit about every five weeks, for example one time we will do middle ages (history) another time we did Antartic animals(nature studies/science) another could be Early Settlement (Australian History) and so forth.
After lunch I rest  The children play or they may sometimes watch a video so that they don't disturb the toddler's sleep. Around 2pm/2.30pm we try to do a different activity every afternoon. One day we may cook, another day we do craft, art etc. To be honest this hasn't happened as often as I would like in late pregnancy.
I'm not sure of the ages of your children but I hope this helps.
rm4mrfrus wrote:
| Hollee (who has not been able to set up a signature yet!) |
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Go to settings at the top of the page, then choose edit profile.
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Erin
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Elizabeth
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| Posted: July 03 2006 at 6:57am | IP Logged
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Erin wrote:
Morning Tea follows seat work.
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Morning Tea! This is absolutely brilliant. Ever since my children have begun to play sports and dance in the after school hours, it has been increasingly difficult to get that tea time in. Morning tea is a great idea--and then I can push lunch until a little later. Oh, Erin thank you so much! Now, go have that baby!
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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rivendellmom
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| Posted: July 03 2006 at 8:12am | IP Logged
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We have an unusual approach in that my boys are night owls, and my daughter and I are not. Ideally I'd love to have everyone working together early in the morning, but that just doesn't work for us. I usually am up with the baby at 6am. Mary Katherine gets up next. We'll have breakfast and start in on her seat work. We used to go to Mass, but the baby is really loud and wants to crawl all the time, so we've been skipping daily Mass for a while.
Mary is starting 2nd grade so her seat work includes: PLL,Math,and we do a phonics/reading lesson. If the weather is nice we walk to a pond that is near here, but mostly she plays with the baby and I do laundry and read blogs.
Between 9-10am I start cooking second breakfast, the big breakfast for the boys. When it is ready I wake the 2 oldest. They eat and do chores until noon. My 10 year old has a seizure disorder and is always allowed to sleep until he wakes up on his own. Basically if he is sleep deprived at all he will have seizures that day. So- he sleeps- and it is a huge offense in this house for waking him too early. He will sleep until noon most days- after going to bed at 9pm.
At around noon Mary and I have had lunch, the baby is down for a nap, and we start group work. Our oldest is enrolled in the American School program for high school, but he still does group work with us, and his book work in the evening. We do Science,History,and Religion as a group. For science we are using Apologia's General Science, For History we are reading Seton's Catholic World Culture (with picture books too), and Religion is a mix of books-We'll do a lesson from Seton's Religion and we'll read a Vision or Bethlehem book aloud. Mary is working on her First Communion scrapbook, Garrett (12) is working on Confirmation prep.
We always get outside by 2:30pm and either do a nature walk, or just run around and lose some energy.
By then the baby is up so the 12 year old will watch him while I work with the 10 year old on his seatwork. He has a lot of memory issues due to either the seizures or the seizure medication ( no one seems to sure which is the culprit, but we can't take him off the medication so it doesn't matter)he is also using PLL, Singapore math with 10 minutes of drill, and I usually keyboard a story for him or listen to him read aloud.
Then the 10 and 12 year old switch and I work with the 12 year old and Setons English 5 and Math 87.We've given up Phonetic Zoo and are trying the Megawords program for spelling. He does any assigned reading (usually a book on cd) at night when he paints in his room.
The oldest (15) is doing his American School stuff in his room at night usually. He only works on 2-3 classes at a time. He has Biology,Math and English now. He yells for help when he needs it, but he is basically on his own.
At some point I get dinner,and then we head out the door with some or all of the kids for soccer, boy scouts, or Games Workshop.
After dinner we follow a bravewriter inspired schedule. Every day has an event:
Monday: Movie (sometimes just for fun-but usually connected with a rabbit trail)
Tuesday: Tea (with art and Music appreciation)
Wednesday: Library night
Thursday: Family Project night (could be a game, but usually includes weeding the garden or straightening the garage/basement)
Friday: We watch whatever we had the DVR record that week. DH travels all week so we all relax on friday nights and hang out with him.
Mary and the baby have baths and are in bed by 8pm. The 10 year old goes to bed by 9pm, and the 12 year old goes to bed when I do at 10pm. My oldest stays up with my DH (when he is home)and does his book work at night. I'm not sure exctly how late he is up, but I'd guess its late. Our internet and TV's are locked after 10:30pm.
All the kids have their own hobbies so if they aren't shadowing the lightening fast baby- they are working on them. Garrett and Reilly (12 and 10) are in scouts and paint LOTR games workshop guys. Garrett also makes and sells chain maille to friends. Reilly always has a science experiment going. Connor is always fishing or tying flies. Mary loves drawing and soccer. Some things that didn't work for us:
Latin (in any form)
Any curriculum that involves a lot of physical writing by the student.
In the summer(june-Aug) we camp a lot and the kids just have 1 subject of seat work, but we don't do any group work after lunch. We keep to the rest of the schedule intact when we are at home. I think we've finally achieved a good balance of real learning in our home.
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Jen in suburban Chicagoland Mom to Connor(91), Garrett(93), Reilly (95), Mary Katherine (98), Declan (05), Ronan in ^i^ 6/28/08
visit our new blog: http://recreationalscholar.blogspot.com/
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Bookswithtea
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| Posted: July 03 2006 at 9:51am | IP Logged
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Erin...can I come and watch you school for the day?  I'm sure I'm only several thousand miles away...
I noticed your oldest was born in 93. So was mine. I have the *worst* time doing school together as a family (mine are all several academic years apart). Seems like we can never keep everyone even close to the same page. Do you have some sort of master list of topics you want covered by the time they start high school?
I'm printing out your post and I'm going to be musing on it today.
Thanks for sharing!
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mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and  due 9/10
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Sarah
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| Posted: July 04 2006 at 8:41am | IP Logged
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Erin wrote:
Morning Tea follows seat work.
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Erin, if you are up to it, could you explain a little more about morning tea? It probably seems obvios to everyone else, but I'm just wondering what you'd serve.
We can NEVER make it to lunch without getting insanely hungry! I remember when I was a child at school and I would be SO hungry for lunch.
This Morning tea might be our answer.
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Six boys ages 16, 14, 11, 7, 5, 2 and one girl age 9
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momwise
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| Posted: July 04 2006 at 9:21am | IP Logged
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rm4mrfrus wrote:
| Do you have a math time, then a dictation time, then a history time, etc? Is anyone willing to break this down even farther for me |
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Hollee,
I have had one or more dc in CHC and will have 2 this year plus 2 in high school, and possibly one high schooler in a program for homeschoolers that meets Fridays. I am still up in the air about that but it may give us free access to community college classes for h.s. and college credits (I hope!).
We do not do all the daily work required for CHC. I guess the main idea that helps me to make time for CCM style learning is that almost nothing needs to done every day, or even in the mornings. Our most recent nature walk was on a Sun. night and we'll probably make time to do the narration on a holiday (today! ). We really don't do the CHC science program, except in 4th the human body model is fun. But to round that out, we'd do library books, 4H projects, websites and sitting in on the older dc's dissections, etc.
Most weeks we do copywork only 2-3 times, narrations twice, math games and workbook 3times a wk., spelling 2-3 times, etc.
I figure out by trial and error the best times for real learning type things. For instance Tue. teatime has worked out for our music and art studies. If we have 4H or field trips or library classes, that is counted as school time for that day; not added on to school time.
Also, my dc don't do independent reading during the mornings for the most part. 10 yo ds might read 15 min. in the afternoon and 15 min. at bedtime. So any reading during the day is usually read alouds about history, science or religion. We don't do the readers in the CHC plans, and we don't do a seperate subject for reading comprehension. We just narrate whatever history or religion book we're reading, that way we're doing things once but in a CCM manner.
If it sounds like I'm not really using CHC much, that might be true because it is more like a spine to me. I use the supplements heavily and the Lang. arts workbooks as needed.
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Gwen...wife for 30 years, mom of 7, grandma of 3.....
"If you want equal justice for all and true freedom and lasting peace, then America, defend life." JPII
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rm4mrfrus
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| Posted: July 04 2006 at 9:23am | IP Logged
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thank you all so much for letting me have a peek at your days! I think it is helping me put something together!
Sarah, I am not Erin but we do a morning snack (we call it snack but I think I will change the name to tea as Erin does. My dc will LOVE that!) We started it when I was diagnosed this last pg with gestational diabetes and I visited the diabetes educator/nurse. She told that the healthiest thing for our bodies is to keep eating about every 2.5 hrs. Not lots every time we eat but just to keep fueling it. With my age and weight and being pg she had me taking in a specific number of carbs at every meal. So she put me on a schedule of breakfast at 8a.m., snack at 10:30, lunch at 1, snack at 3:30, dinner at 6, snack at 8:30 and a last snack at 11 pm. We put the kids on the same schedule with some changes to the bedtime snack. Now baby is almost 9 months old and we are so accustomed to snacking and our eating schedule that we still do it.
In the morning we just put together a small snack (the nurse also told me to always eat a carb with a protein so we aim for that as well.) Some snacks we do are: cheese and Triscuits and pepperoni, yogurt with granola mixed in, cheese stick and muffins, granola bars and a glass of milk. We sometimes take it out on the front porch and sit for a while and sometimes we eat while still doing school. After reading about everyone's days I think I will read 2 pleasure read alouds during each of the daytime snacks(teas) which will leave me only one to find a spot for during our day. Then I can do the subject read alouds during other times during the day.
Thanks everyone for helping me figure out our school!
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rm4mrfrus
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| Posted: July 04 2006 at 11:48am | IP Logged
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Gwen, thanks for showing me how you do it. We must have been posting at the same time because I just now saw your post!
I think that how you do it may be the closest to how I can do it as well. We have never used all of CHC's plans....I just never thought before that I was using it as a spine but I guess that is what I am doing! We don't use their readers for learning to read or their math suggestions. I also am not going to be doing their handwriting or spelling anymore I think. Well maybe their spelling for dd(8) and ds(6) but not for ds(10).
We are still working our way through the Behold and See and I am having both ds and dd do it and we are adding stuff in. I think we will do the Body part of it beginning with this next school year as it does look fun. I really didn't like their science for 1st grade so didn't really do anything when my older ones were in 1st.
I guess I need to get out of the mindset that each subject needs to be done each day. I know that is a big "thing" for me and I think I am just realizing that it is NOT essential! That will free up some time to do other things won't it?
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Hollee married to dh in 94,
ds(96), dd(97), ds(00), ds(02), ds(03) and dd(05)
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: Would you share a glimpse of your day?
