Sound like it might get a little stressful? It did.

So it was a moment of joyous excitement when we found out that Miss A had been accepted into a local charter school. We had hoped to enroll her there for junior high (after homeschooling her through 5th grade, but decided since the chances of getting in the school were so slim, we should start trying now).

Well, the stars aligned and things worked out in just such a way that a spot became available for her this year. We jumped at the opportunity, and I’m so glad we did.

Adjusting to life  in “regular school” (though this school is so far from regular, I don’t think it can really be called that – which is one of the reasons we like it so much) took some work for both Miss A and myself, but overall I have to say I am very happy with the switch.

One of the “benefits” of no longer being Miss A’s teacher for everything, is that now I can join the ranks of all the other moms who get treated to special surprise school projects on Mother’s Day!

Miss A made me a lovely Mother’s Day painting in art class, a card with a picture of the family and a poem written inside…

and a really neat card with a note written in Spanish!

She was so proud to present me with all her surprises, and I was so proud of her.

To all mothers – while we are the ones being appreciated today, may you appreciate your home, your family, and your life everyday (and take advantage of your special day in every way you can)!

Miss A and her homeschool buddy Mr. J (whom you may remember from the Hawaii proposal) were the first to get behind the mic. These two are anything but shy: both loquacious and precocious, it was sure to be interesting.

My favorite moments (aside from their unsolicited commentary on Michael Jackson) included Miss A singing Feliz Navidad, and Mr J blowing the d.j.’s away by spotting Bob Rivers’ name on their title screen.

Here it is: On the air with Miss A and Mr J!

I apologize for the shaky video at first, I’ve only used my new Flip (thanks Joyce!) a few times and am still getting the hang of it it gets better later on!

And click HERE for an audio clip to skip all the extra stuff and just hear how they sounded on-air.

One of Miss A's craft projects from last Thanksgiving.

One of the wonderful things about homeschooling is that it gives me an excuse to make all the fun little crafty things I used to love creating when I was a kid. From cotton ball Santa Beards to handprint turkeys, I really enjoy making holiday craft projects with Miss A (and Lil’ G is starting to want to get in on the action too, now).

If you enjoy all the messy fun of glitter and glue, construction paper and crayons, popsicle sticks and googly eyes – and you don’t mind your holiday decorations consisting of freakishly odd shaped turkeys and pumpkins, then you’ll appreciate the following resource: a really neat little craft website, Crafty Crow posted a wonderful collection of Thanksgiving craft ideas all in one spot; go see what kind of Turkey Crafts you think you would enjoy, and have some gobbley-good fun (yes, I just typed that).

KCW is a delightful site that creates free newsletters full of all sorts of crafty goodness and great ideas for projects you can do at home with your kids. Based out of Australia, the site is always a fun place to visit.

I just discovered KCW earlier this year, so this will be my first time trying the card exchange. Site creator Amber does a much better job explaining the details so don’t waste your time here - go check it out! The deadline to sign up for the exchange is November 18th.

I am a fly by the seat of my pants kind of writer – and this story is taking me in all kinds of places I wasn’t expecting. It’s exciting – and only happening because I am making an effort to write every day.

SO that’s it really – I want to teach myself some discipline – to get into the habit – to make it a priority – to have it be a part of my life like I know it should. And the freedom of NaNo – the wild crazy literary abandon that seems to come with this project, is incredibly inspiring and just plain good for the soul.
If I end up getting a book ready to submit at the end of this, it will be icing on my cake.

But, as I said this isn’t a post about Nano (or wasn’t supposed to be at least).

Over at my idol’s website (you know the one…PW herself) a longtime homeschool contributor OMSH (Oh My Stinking Heck) ran a wonderful post about the writing activities she has her first grader do. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to try tbis with Miss A. I say “try” because Miss A can be extremely difficult when I ask her to just try something and see how it goes. She likes structure and order and a clear list of expectations (personally, I think so she can know exactly what to complain about). So I was worried how she would react when I handed her a blank page and told her to just go for it.

The activity is to draw a picture of anything your little heart desires, then write a few lines talking about the picture. I told Aishtyn I would not be checking her spelling, to just write the words as best she could and it could be like a mystery for me to solve if they weren’t “just right.”

I have to say, she did awesome! She was thrilled when I could actually read 99% of what she had written. I’d love to show you her first effort, but my scanner is still in limbo until the husband re-intalls everything (remember my terrible horrible no good very bad day?) As soon as it’s up and running, I’ll add it in. Or maybe I’ll just take a picture of it and add it that way.

The activity sheets are available for FREE at this very cool little site (where a variety of other cool writing pages are also available). I am adding this to my weekly homeschool repertoire: along with Fractions Friday, we will now have FreeWrite Friday. I look forward to all the wonderful glimpses into Miss A’s mind…and the improvement in her reading and writing too of course!

Thanks again to OMSH for such a great idea!

ETA: Here it is, Miss A’s first Friday FreeWrite

“This is me on the viper. My first time. What is it like? said me.”

(On the last day our local theme park was open, she was finally tall enough to ride some of the bigger rollercoasters, it was a great way to end the season!)

Actually, I believe the reverse is true: I think homeschooled kids get more physical activity than the average “regular school” kid.

Take Miss A, each week she has Irish dance lessons, gymnastics, at least 1 or 2 park playdates, and nature walks. In the past few months we have also added running to her schedule, in preparation for her very first race. We’re not talking serious training here, Miss A is only 6 after all.  Just a few times a week she’d come out with me for a mile jog…the goal at first was for her to run the whole mile without stopping for a walk break – then we started to increase speed just a little bit. Along the way Miss A learned how to keep her arms close to her body, to straighten and lengthen her stride, and to control her hands so she had better balance.

Before we knew it, it was race day! One of Miss A’s best friends (also a homeschooler) was racing with her.

First the girls did the 100  meter dash – which was specifically for their age group (5-8).

Miss A is pretty easy to spot in the front…red hair is convenient that way.

Then came the race we had been “training” for – the 1 mile! Miss A did awesome – she picked up the pace and was able to maintain it the whole race.  I was so proud of her.

Her buddy placed in their age group, and it was so cool when it was announced that Miss A had placed in the overall group! Of all the girls racing (up to 14 years old) Miss A had managed to score 3rd place.  She got a medal and, even better – a pumpkin.

Miss A is a natural runner, even when I pushed her to go faster, she was always able to keep up a constant stream of chatter. Combined with her long legs (she can thank her Dada) and her desire to always be first – I have a feeling she will be leaving me in the dust all too soon.

And you know what? I’m ok with that.

In reality, we are more often than not “doin’ school” at the kitchen table, and most of the books are squished onto a few shelves.  For the start of this school year, I sacrificed the sanctity of my “formal” living room to add an Ikea-shoe-bench-turned-homeschool-textbook-organizer-and-impromptu-desk. In a slightly less than perfect world, Miss A would sit at the bench doing her schoolwork while Lil’ G happily played nearby with her toys, and I’d hang out on the couch and catch up on some magazine reading time.  It actually happened like that…for about 2 minutes. At which point Lil’ G decided it was more fun to rip all the workbooks, papers, and folders out of their neatly organized cubby holes, Miss A didn’t like sitting on the floor, so spent the next 20 minutes or so arranging a chair so it was “just right” and I tried to visualize myself at Starbucks lounging on a leather chair, thumbing a book, sipping a cafe mocha while jazz music crooned softly in the background (while I cleaned up toys, reorganized books, and stacked unread magazines that were now ripped thanks to a certain little redhead.

In a perfect world, Lil G would nap and/or play contentedly with her toys during designated school hours. But she has decided that such activities are beneath her…not when big sister is having so much more fun with paper, pencils, crayons and what not. I suppose this will turn out to be a good thing  (her dexterity with crayons and pencils is amazing) but at the moment it is nothing short of frustrating.

So I have given up having school in the living room, and we’re back at the kitchen table.

This looks like a nice little scene, doesn’t it?

Lil’ G is enjoying some “big girl” time.

Everything looks to be in perfect harmony – everybody happy and doing their thing…so what’s the problem?

About 10 seconds after I took this picture Lil’ G fell off that chair and I almost had a heart attack. Turns out I can’t help Miss A with her nouns and keep an eye on Lil’ G at the same time.

So if she wants to do school, it’s while strapped into her high chair…which she doesn’t enjoy as much.

Which means nobody is enjoying much of anything…not for long anyway.

I am constantly wondering how families with several kids (many under the age of 4) manage to homeschool with their sanity intact…

maybe that’s it…

they gave up their sanity long ago.

So this year I created a plan that would cover the math bases I wanted for Miss A while keeping things diverse, interesting, and hopefully moving in a forward direction.

I set up a weekly breakdown of math sub-categories, allowing a day for each:

Money Mondays

Time Tuesdays

Weights & Measures Wednesdays

maTHursdays (adding, subtracting, fact families)

Fraction Fridays

Then I went through all the different math workbooks and bookmarked the various sections covering these areas…so on Fraction Friday, for example, she might do 6 pages of fraction work from several texts. This week we covered “1/2″ and started on thirds, when we come back to Fraction Friday next week, we’ll continue working on thirds, and probably move on to quarters. If we were working straight through a book, Miss A would do a page or two on each of these, moving quickly through the concept without a lot of practice time for mastery…then when we started a new text, she’d have to start the concepts all over again. With the new method, we spend more time on each level within a concept, and avoid the “starting over”  cycle.

It seems to be working quite well:  Miss A gets some variety in her school week so she doesn’t feel overwhelmed and bored with days upon days of fractions (or adding, or whatever), I have the satisfaction of knowing we are covering all these areas, and won’t somehow overlook or neglect a section simply because we never seem to get to it, and by combining all the similar sections from each workbook together we avoid that “going in circles” feeling we get when we finish one workbook and have to start back at square one when we start another.

Anybody else have ideas or suggestions for keeping things interesting while staying on track?

But first grade is fur reals man.

First grade is like, serious business.

So I decided we needed a bit more stucture and organization this year: the old, “Fail to plan, plan to fail” mantra, y’know.

Yet, I am also realistic and don’t plan (or want) to turn my house into some evil child labor scene from a Dickens’ novel. So the schedule is intended to ensure there is room for downtime – bits of chillin’ out that will bring balance to our hectic day (and hopefully keep my stress level from rocketing past Jupiter).

One of the nice things about homeschooling is that we can skip the manic morning rush so many households have to face each school day. We can stay in our pj’s for a few hours while breakfast is eaten, laundry and dishes are done, a bit of tv is watched, and email is caught up. In other words, we can ease into our day. From 7-9 am Miss A has time to eat breakfast and watch some tv. She also needs to get dressed and brush her teeth during that time, but I think 2 hours guarantees she won’t be feeling rushed. During this time I too will have breakfast, check e-mail, do some chores, feed and dress Lil’ G and generally prepare for my day.

Nice, huh?

However, Miss A and I both need to earn our morning time (I  don’t know where this Puritan work ethic comes from, I just have it), and simultaneously get a jump on the day so it feels more productive from the get-go: I get up at 6am to make the husband’s coffee anyway, so I will spend 30 minutes either on the treadmill or doing yoga, then if I’m lucky, I’ll spend 10-30 minutes free writing for my WIP. Miss A is usually up between 6:30 & 7am (a big improvement over the 5am wake-up call she insisted upon from birth to 4 years old, in which she would scream…or, when she was old enough to talk, lay in bed and yell “I’M AWAKE!”) – she can have her chocolate milk right away, but breakfast and t.v. have to wait until she completes a few quick worksheets.

I did this last year for her with Kindergarten too – I’d leave a worksheet on her desk each morning for her to do when she woke up. I’d usually pull something from one of her current workbooks…but often I would forget, or not find something I really wanted to use as a “quick start” activity. And more often than not, the morning worksheet just didn’t happen.

But not so this year.

This is first grade, remember? The Big Time.

No excuses, no forgetting.

Which is why I was so tickled to find this line of workbooks at a local teacher’s resource store the other day.  Created by Weekly Reader, they are a series of workbooks designed to provide daily  quick activities that are organized to build skills, integrate core knowledge, and encourage critical thinking. I got both the first and second grade math books (Miss A is like her dad, and has mad math skillz) and the daily language practice book. The worksheets are broken down into units, with a sheet for each day of the week, plus weekly and monthly reviews.

See, no more excuses! Each morning Miss A will have 1 language and 1 math practice sheet waiting for her. (She earns stickers and stuff for doing them, so it’s not a hardship for her). In the evening, she’ll do a second math practice sheet with Dada while dinner is getting ready. Yay for routines that work!

Visiting their website, I see they offer some of their books in e-format…which is like made of awesome, since then I can print out the pages and use ‘em again and again if I feel like it (for Lil’ G when it’s her turn, or if Miss A messes up and throws a fit that her page “Doesn’t look right!!!”) They also have some map and geography workbooks for 1st grade, which I’m curious to check out.

I’m ordering their catalog now, I’ll be sure to let you know if I find more I likey.

If you’ll excuse me, I need to get the first week’s worth of morning worksheets ready.

Thanks to Weekly Reader, it will take me like 5 seconds.

For the inaugural Weekend Homeschool Report (which we will refer to as WHSR from now on, k?) I want to focus on that which makes the day to day  life of a homeschool family much easier…well, there are many things that do that – and check back each weekend for more on each and every sanity-saving piece of info I have – but for now, I am referring specifically to that wonder of wonders: the Internet.  The plethora of lesson plans, craft ideas, field trips, textbook sources, suggestions, tips, ideas, advice,  and general STUFF available on the web is wonderful…and a tad overwhelming. The Internet is certainly not my only source of teaching material, as I will delve into further in later posts – but it is a great tool to help supplement everything from basic reading curriculum to science fair project ideas to printable craft projects.

As anyone who has ever googled for anything knows, there is a lot of well, crap, on the web. Homeschool sources are no exception – there is plenty of crap available out there, and yes, it can be frustrating to try and sift through it all, but when you do come across a useful website – bookmark it, and share it with everyone you know (well, not your single friends, they could probably care less about a State Flag coloring website).  Taking my own advice, let me share with you now: on the side bar you’ll see a section called “Teachin’ Mama” – with links to various homeschool friendly teaching resource sites I have found useful.

A big thing for me is FREE. I feel squicky about websites who are looking to make a buck from the second I click on their page – so I don’t stick around. Some sites. like StarFall, have the right idea: they have lots of various curriculum items for sale, but also make a great deal of their material available on-line for free (and I love it!).

If you like free too, you’ll want to visit this site and join their e-mail list, every week, you’ll get a list of free sources to download from their site (the key is you have to visit the site each day, every free source they offer is only available for 24 hours). Overall, I have been very pleased with the variety their site offers; it’s a Christian based educational site, so sometimes the sources may not be exactly what I’m looking for under the heading “Education,” but nobody is forcing me to download it, and if I want to skip a source…well, um, I skip it. Easy, no?

So if you’re a Homeschooler, and you avoid using the internet because you feel (like I did when I refused to buy any Cliff Notes while taking that Chaucer class where the text was in Middle English) that it would somehow lessen the authenticity or quality of the education  – well, knock it off and join us in the 21st century. (And for the record, I was an idiot for not using the CliffNotes…I could have saved many, many hours of my life had I lowered my bizarre personal code of scholary ethics).

Keeping with the Free theme, in the next WHSR we’ll cover Homeschool on the Cheap: Garage Sales.