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Click
here for the latest journal entry.
January
2002: Oh, my goodness, we're into another year
already! Where did the last one go? Since the last
journal entry was for September I guess I better do a catch
up.
Let's
see. That tired feeling I had all year finally caught up
with me, and I finally dragged (literally) myself off to the
doc's in December to discover I was severely anaemic. It's
amazing how a deficiency in something simple such as iron, can
make one feel so bad. Even after being on iron tablets for
a month I really notice if I skip a day. I am feeling much
better though, and I can think now!!! And now that I can
read and comprehend I'm enjoying reading a lot more.
lol. I'm trying to read one classic book a month
now. For January I choose Mice and Men by John Steinbeck,
a nice short one. lol. Apart from the cussing, I
enjoyed it.
After
Jonathon finished his maths exam in late November (I'll tell you
more about that in a minute) I was completely exhausted because
of the iron thing and also because we didn't have a break from
homeschooling for the whole year! I got very burnt out on
homeschooling. We took a complete break for nearly 8
weeks! That's the longest break we have ever had, and we
needed it. I didn't even want to think about
homeschooling. We went on a library tour with our local
homeschool group and that was it. I mostly just sat around
and did lots of cross-stitching. The children managed to
occupy themselves. ~smile~
As I
mentioned Jonathon sat his exam in late November, and
passed!!! I'm so proud of him. This was his first
long term goal that he had set for himself. He put in a
lot of work, usually doing maths for six days a week for months
on end. I thought he would be sick of maths, but no, I
actually heard him telling someone that maths was still his
favourite subject!
Now that we're not using the Correspondence School for maths,
we're back to doing our own thing. (Yeah!!!!!)
Instead of 45 minutes, maths is usually no more than 30, and
sometimes a lot less. We're back to our old schedule of
last year (check out January 2001 entry) and we're enjoying
homeschooling much more.
Jonathon got sick of waiting for me to finish reading The Swiss
Family Robinson to him so he finished it off himself in a couple
of days. So I've started to read Pilgrim's Progress aloud
to him. We're also still going with Kon Tiki.
Alex is
enjoying listening to Charlotte's web at the moment. I
wish I could describe the look on his face when I read the part
of how Charlotte catches a fly. I got a bad case of the
giggles. ~smile~
Now that I'm feeling better I'm managing to do Alex's lessons
every weekday. He's enjoying The Child's Story Bible by
Catherine Vos. (Actually all the kids like it.) I've
switched from 100 Easy Lessons to using the Learning Language
Arts through Literature as I want him learn the phonics
rules. He enjoys reading his little Bob books to Dad
each night.
For maths we do counting, reading the time, some pages from a
workbook and First
Lessons in Numbers which I printed out. At this stage
we do many of his lessons orally. That's the end of his
'formal lessons'. Not the end of his learning of course!
Grace is also wanting to do lessons. She sits up at the
kitchen table while I read The Child's Story Bible and listens
while Alex reads his Bob book, but she kept asking for her
lesson when he finished his. So I purchased Learning
at Home by Ann Ward, Preschool & Kindergarten level, for
her. She is very happy to do her short lessons which
comprise of things such as reading her name, reciting her
address, listening to a story on a theme, and a physical
activity. (Such as walking on tiptoes or on a line.)
Alex likes to join in with her too.
Ethan is
growing, of course. lol. He nearly 9 months old now
and can shuffle along on his tummy. He still sleeps a lot,
every once in a while he sleeps just about all day. Of
course that makes homeschooling a lot easier. But the
amount of sleep he needs has decreased and so I have to work our
homeschooling schedule around his sleep times. I find it
impossible to do anything else after about an hour and a half
after he's woken up so I wait until he's gone to bed before we
start in the mornings. Sometimes it has been as late as
10.30am. I often wonder how mothers with more than one
preschooler and a baby cope.
Terry is
still working away. He's been very busy at work, and then he
brings work home. 8:( I'm hoping we can go
away on a family holiday soon, it's been a long time since we've
been away anywhere. Terry's taking time off next week to
go and watch rugby for a couple of days, but I'm not sure how
much I'll see of him.
So that's
what has been happening around here for the last couple of
months. I'm hoping that now I feel better I'll be able to
maintain the website and give regular journal entries this
year. Thank you to all of you who take the time to email
me, I really love to hear from you. A huge apology to all
those that I haven't replied to because of the mess I've been
in, but I want you to know that I did read them and appreciated
them. ~smile~
May
2002: Wow,
it's been five years since we began our homeschooling
lifestyle! Back then I only had one child to teach, and a
one year old to look after. Now I teach three (Jonathon,
12yo, Alex 6yo, and Grace, 4yo), and have Ethan (1.1yo) to look
after with another one on the way. Even though my days are
busier, it seems a lot easier now. 8:) I still homeschool
using Charlotte Mason's methods (see homeschool
page for good links) and read lots of good literature.
Every year that we homeschool I can see the benefits
increasing. We all love learning, love reading, love
spending time together (well most of the time, haha), and love
the freedom that we have. God willing, we will have plenty
more years of homeschooling ahead of us.
As
I mentioned above we are expecting number #5, due in
October. Since I plan on being busy towards the end of the
year I'm sorting out our homeschool plans for high school
already. Jonathon turns 13 next year (gasp!) and
officially begins high school. We don't really stick to
grades (or years as they are called here in New Zealand), but it
is important to him that he is seen as a highschooler.
8:) I've been using Barb Shelton's book, Senior High
Form-U-la to help draw up the plans. (See www.homeschooloasis.com
for details of her books.) At this stage I just want to
have the goals all mapped out for each year, and the main
resources we'll be using. I still want to be flexible and
include field trips, books, videos etc into our final
transcript, but that's not something you can always plan ahead
of time. I'm having lots of fun putting it together,
although it's pretty time consuming.
Recently
we went to see the Wellington Sinfonia Orchestra with our
homeschool group. They played for about an hour and a
half, showing the history of the orchestra. Alex and Grace
were delighted when they recognised the last piece played,
Stravinsky's Firebird Finale. Apparently it's on the
Fantasia video. 8:) As a bonus, our newspaper took a
photo of us watching the orchestra play. Fortunately for
me they showed my better side (the back of my head LOL), and
only had Grace turning around to look at the camera. The
children weren't too worried about the photo, but they were
thrilled to read their names in print.
Another
trip out was to an Answers in Genesis meeting. I took
Jonathon along for the evening and we both enjoyed it very
much. There was quite a good crowd for our small local
area, and plenty of young people which was pleasing to
see. Jonathon didn't really learn anything new, which in a
way I guess is ok, it means that he has a good grasp on
creation, and knows evolution is being a pretty silly
theory that affects people's worldviews.
Well,
only a short update in our journal this time. We've had
lots of computer problems lately so I have to spend quite a bit
of time updating the rest of the website. And there's
still lots of emails to reply too. I love hearing from you
all, I just wish I had time to reply to each and every one of
you. May God bless you all. ~ Kathleen
December
2002: Well another year gone in a flash! The high
light of this year was the birth of Elizabeth Anne in
October. She is adored by all her siblings and she easily
distracts them from their work. :) I ended up spending
quite a bit of time on bed rest with this pregnancy, so it was
well that Jonathon became a bit more independant with his
work. Often I would give him a list of things he needed to
do and he would just come to me if he had questions and
for marking. Read alouds become almost impossible past the
fourth month of pregnancy as I just run out of breath. So he
finished those books we had started by himself. I left Kon
Tiki to the end of the year to finish reading to him as I wanted
to read the story too. :)
Speaking
of reading, this year Jonathon had to keep a list of the books he
read. To encourage him I did the same, and found it an
interesting exercise. I've stuck my list online.
Next year we'll expand it by writing short notes about our
books. Easy Language Arts!
I
noticed when were putting our homeschool
yearbooks together that our notebooks had really expanded this
year. Jonathon's notebook included sections for Bible,
Copywork, Language Arts, Science, History, Greek/Latin Roots and
Nature Study. Maths is done in another book. Next year
we'll have to divide them into several notebooks as he now has too
much stuff in the one. Alex and Grace are just beginning
theirs, which has sections for Science, Nature Studies, Geography,
History, and Art. They have separate Maths and Writing
books.
One
lesson that particulary stuck with Alex and Grace was a quick
study of lions. They learnt that only the males have a mane,
and that it turns darker as the lion ages. Alex was
fascinated with how the female lions gang together for hunting,
and that the males were lazier and each just hunted for the
slowest animal. We wrote up the facts they learnt and it was
put in the science section of their notebooks. We got out the Lion
King to watch as well. Even though it was a couple of months
ago we did all this they will still tell me facts about lions
whenever they see one.
I'm
finding it easier to teach these two using unit studies. We
still do language arts, maths, writing, and nature studies, but
the rest is more of a study leading off from books, like the lion
one above. One of Alex's reading books just happen to have
lions which got me started on it. Mr Popper's Penguins has
led us to look at Antartica and Captain Cook.
I'm
still working on the planning of Jonathon's highschool
years. Most of it is done, but I'm having trouble with the
history section. We've finished all the Greenleaf books now,
so I'm having to plan it all out with the books we have. We
have Streams of Civilisation II but it seems quite advanced, we
may come back to it later for reviewing. The
other problem I've struck is the lack of resources. I don't
want to spend much money at the moment, and the postage costs from
the US to New Zealand has gone up considerably. What used to
be the cheapest place to order from (www.christianbook.com) has
become expensive due to the 35% of the cost of the order for
postage! Ouch!! So we are making do with what we
already have. :) Unfortunately it means a lot more
planning time for me. I've worked out about half the year
for history so far.
Now
that I'm not pregnant I'm looking forward to next year. I've
got more energy than I remember in ages, and now I have three to
*teach*, with two little ones to look after. It's a wonder I
find time to read books at all, and my writing is almost
non-existent, but the housework and the homeschooling is getting
done, so that's the basics covered. I know that this season
will all too soon be over and I want to enjoy every moment of it I
can. Have a happy New Year everyone!
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