Home-school Mondays, Finding a schedule that works

I remember when I use to do daycare I had a schedule. I followed that schedule precisely, mainly because it worked for the kids. I look back now and wonder why it seems as though it was easier then with six kids ( including grocery store trips with all in tow) then it is now with 3! And then in a moment of clarity I realized that I don't have a schedule now. So what? Who needs a schedule. I don't have state workers (since I was state licensed) dropping in at what ever time they wanted. I don't have parents coming in for interviews and my kids know what they can play with and cannot.
So why is it harder?

Back then I was dressed and the house was ready by 7:00am the latest, every morning Monday through Friday.

7:30 Breakfast cooked
8:00 Breakfast clean-up and wash kids hands and faces, check diapers
8-9:00 Free play
9-10:00 story time and talk about or act out the story
10:00 snack
10:30 clean up like before and then outside to play in the back yard till lunch time
11:30 Lunch
12:00 Clean up and get ready for nap time
12:30(45) - 3:00 Nap time
3:00 Change diapers, brush hair and play inside
3:30 Snack again
4:00 Free play or watch tv till parents come to pick them up

See, scheduled. And it worked. It was amazing. I look back at it in awe at how well those kids behaved. So why can't mine have days that go as smoothly? I don't have a schedule. A schedule is important not only to me but also to my kids. Kids thrive on a routine as well - it is comforting for them to know what’s next in their day, even those things they don’t like.

So here is what I am hoping to accomplish as a schedule. Lots of things can run us off the road so to speak. So now I am going to attempt to drive myself out of the ditch.

6:30 Get up and shower
7:00 Get Pumpkin up and have her get dressed and feed the rabbit, wake up
rest of kids
7:30 Breakfast
7:45 Make sure snack is packed for Pumpkin
8:00 Take Pumpkin across the street for pre-school
8:15 Get Princess and Peanut started on chores for the day while I clean up the kitchen
9:00 Start third grade home-school or have Princess start on her "Daily works" folder if I am not ready. This consists of at least an hour of work she can do on her own. More on that next week.
10:00 Snack time, they just think better if they stay fueled
10:30 Home-school lessons till it is time to go and get Pumpkin
11:30 Walk across street and get Pumpkin
12:00 Lunch time
12:45 Peanut and Pumpkin go down for a nap
12:45 Princess continues home-school, I clean up from lunch then go and help her/teach lessons
2:30/3:00 Peanut and Pumpkin are awake
3:00 Outside to play or a trip to the park to play and feed ducks
5:00 start to make dinner, kids are done for the day


I think this is do-able. I am following pretty much what we do. There are just some time constrictions. Also this helps me to see when two activities are to be done at the same time so I remember to tell Princess to go and work on school work. Ideally she would just know and she would remember to do it on her own rather than depending on her pregnant mom. Alas. She is a kid. lol

So what is your schedule? Do you have one? Share it. Maybe we can help to make each other's more efficient.

Home-school Mondays I love cable

I have limited the channels that my kids can watch and where they can watch them and for good reason. Once what were safe children channels are now popping up with crude music videos with crude language between shows ( I kid you not!).

So why do I love cable? Because there are shows there that teach. Shows such as 'How it's made' and 'Rhino Rescue'. Currently we are watching Rhino Rescue together. It is heart wrenching and sad and happy all at the same time. More important it gives my kids a sense that there is more than just them and their immediate world, and to help where they can. They become aware of the just how lucky we are to live in America. Of the importance of following rules and the devastation that can occur when rules are not followed such as with poachers. It is a good lesson. It helps them to grow. It helps to further teach compassion and want to make a difference. That is why I love cable. Even though you will find my tv off more than it is on during the day. :)

Home-school Mondays

With this pregnancy, more and more I am learning to slow it down. So what does that have to do with home-schooling? Everything.

More often then not our studies can get rushed and that really benefits no one. Not my patience, not her patience, not the attention that my other two girls need, and certainly not her retaining what she is learning. Life when she leaves me will be fast paced enough. This pregnancy has hit me with morning sickness as it is well known if you have read my blog before. But I am grateful for it. Yes, you read that right, grateful. It is making me slow down and since I have things have gotten much easier. Easier to clean the house, home-school two kids, run my business and visit the family I should be visiting more often while I can.

So that is my home-school tip for the day: Remember to slow down and smell the play-doh.

Home-school Monday's

My princess sometimes has a hard time with reading sometimes. By accident we discovered that she enjoys reading tremendously as long as she can have her rabbit, Handsome, with her. I must admit that at first I did not believe she would pay attention and would be messing around. What a wonderful surprise to see that this helps to keep her keep her concentration not to mention Handsome loves the petting and being read out-loud to.

Home-school Mondays Using what interests them

I write this as Pumpkin pictured above is recovering from pneumonia so it will be short. Every parent knows that bribery can be a great motivator. Some have mixed feelings about using it. I was the same way. My kids were just going to do what I asked of them because I asked it. LOL. Yeah that worked so well.

I like to use 'earned time' for getting tasks done. For example my eldest daughter who is 9 has a hard time staying focused in her studies. I write out the weeks lesson plans ahead of time. She gets to mark off the subjects completed for visual satisfaction and for every page completed front and back she earns 2 minutes of computer game time. So far this is working, for how long is any one's guess. Her rewards have changed over the years as we have schooled. Use what interests them and you will have success!

Home-school Mondays One fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Home-schooling is fun!

For my 4 year old we bought some rainbow goldfish. As you can probably guess from the title they are perfect to teach some skills with.

Sort into color groups
Count
Add
Subtract

EAT!

Finding things to make home-school fun makes it easier on everyone. Think outside of the box. Have your kids come up with ideas. They may surprise you on what they come up with as tools.

Featured on a blog

I have been featured on a blog! How exciting. I would love if you all could go and check it out. She is a fellow Cast Team member on Etsy and has a wonderful store herself. Here is the link. http://suerunyondesigns.blogspot.com/

Cooking with the kids (Monkey bread)

I like to tell my kiddos that they are monkeys. Some days this seems true with them running around and bouncing off furniture. So naturally when my sister shared the recipe for Monkey Bread with me, I had to make it with the kids. I changes it some from the first time I made it and I will include that here. Monkey Bread Time: LOL, you know where I stand with that and cooking with kids Ingredients: 1 Gallon size bag (food storage or ziploc will do) 1 (12 ounce) package of refrigerated biscuit dough I found a 16 ounce of Pillsbury home style biscuit dough in a can

1/3 cup white sugar ( I used the next size up 1/2 cup and left it out to add more later )

3/4 Teaspoon ground cinnamon ( I used 2 tsp and left it out to add some more later)

2 tbl. spoons and 2 tsp of margarine/butter

1/3 cup packed brown sugar ( I used 1/2 cup)

Something that is not in the original recipe that I used it vanilla extract. I use a generic store brand. I use this because the first time the outside of the dough tasted good but the inside was bland. I cut up the biscuits into fours and poked holes in them. The I let them sit in some vanilla extract. I did this first so there was enough time to soak.

Cooking:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease one 9 or 10 inch tube pan. I used my bread loaf pan, never actually measured it and it turned out fine.

2. Mix white sugar and cinnamon in plastic bag. Take your quartered biscuit pieces now. Out 3-4 in at a time and shake them (kids loved this!) Arrange pieces at the bottom of your pan. The sugar and cinnamon coating started to get pretty weak towards the end so I added more in. Just eye ball it. You know what your family likes.

3.In a small sauce pan, melt the margarine with the brown sugar over medium heat. I can be impatient so I used high heat and stayed there to stir it. Boil for 1 minute (this is when I turned the heat down some). Pour over the biscuits.

4.Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a plate. I put the plate on top and flip it all together.

DO NOT CUT! Take all the fun out of it for your kids to pull it apart. This will stay delicious for 2 days. I kept mine in the microwave and when we wanted more, I nuked it on high for 1 1/2 mins.

Lessons learned: As I home-school I think there is a lesson in everything. Here my kids first learned how to take turns. The older ones also learned compassion with the fact that there was also things that their little 2 year old sister could do. They learned some more math skills with measuring out the ingredients and home-economics with using the stove top (with me watching and ready to take over if needed) and the oven. You could even teach how to estimate here. Have them guess how many pieces there are in all and with that you could also do fractions. See lessons just start coming out! Of course there are times when the only lesson that needs to be taught is spending time together and the memories made. My best childhood memory is making popcorn balls with my mom and while we waited, dancing the tango in the kitchen.

Home-school Mondays

MIA

Today's normal post for home-school Monday's will be MIA. We are on a lovely field trip to the Birch Aquarium. I have taken the camera and I am hoping to be able to share photos of our trip with you all in a Tuesday post. Until then, take a gander at a favorite of this house, Alphabet pancakes. They are a lot of fun and with the hands-on factor, it really help kiddos get into the spirit.

A popular web site lately for our pre-preschooler as she is starting to really master both upper and lower case letters, Starfall. I appreciate how it also includes the letter sound and is very user friendly. It is used as an award for pumpkin. Once she spends 20 or so minutes on upper and lower case flash cards, 1-10 number flash cards and the days of the week song, she gets time on the website. She has yet to grow tired of it.

Home-school Mondays It's more than just books

I admit that at times it seams like we do a lot of book work, at least that is what my 9 year old says. So when she starts to get overwhelmed we switch to home economics. Some days it is cooking, like with the Cherry Chocolate Fudge and other days it is making things for Barbie! You can see by the smile on her face that this is really fun. Luckily I have an online store that I sell items I sew. That makes for plenty of scraps of fabric. Perfect size for a young seamstress to create with.

There will be days when you will need to get the work done. Just make sure that you leave a little time in there for something else too.

Making a web banner using your own pictures

** Picasa will not let you resize to 100. Only the 760. I would recommend that you resize your picture(s) that you want to use to 100 before hand. You can do this by using picnik.com , keep proportions when you do this so that picnik will not distort your picture(s).

Another way you can do it is to keep the Picasa window open, insert your banner to your shop. If if need to be cropped some more to fit then go back to Picasa and do that. The former way seems like it would be the easiest to me but there are your options.

Good Luck

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is something that I have always wanted to do. However I did not have the fancy expensive programs to do it in. And with this economy, I would rather try to do it on a free program. If you have read my blog for anytime you know that I have an Etsy store. I wanted to make a banner that used my products and looked nice and sharp. Here is how I did mine.

First download Picasa. It is free and it is here.

Here is the banner I made.

First step is to select the photos you want on your banner. When they are all collected in the selection tray (you can just click on them and they should show up there), click the collage button in the tool bar at the bottom to your right. Make sure to select the ‘Picture Pile’ type of collage so you can drag the photos into just the right order. Don't worry about them being the same size as you will be cropping them. Just make sure that you have them how you want them. Another cool thing with Picasa is that if you wanted one to be crooked you could do that.


When you finish, hit create collage and close your collage. You have a new picture. Next is to crop it, using the ‘manual’ size setting, into a banner, short and wide. Hit Apply when you have it cropped how you want. Now you can add writing if you would like also.


Here it is after cropping and adding some writing. Last step is to go under File and Export to folder. This will make a Folder in My Pictures just for your banner. When you export it make sure to size it to 760 for Etsy.


Your done! Aren't you proud of yourself?

An apology

I have been lacking in posts lately. I hope to be able to post at least 3 times a week.

This last week has been challenging. This last Sunday my 4 year old swallowed a connect four piece, still pending on if it will come out without surgery. There was an ambulance ride were I was able to reconfirm that yes, I do get severely motion sick. At least the gurney was large enough for my daughter and myself when we got to the ER.Then my husband caught a stomach bug and we were back in the emergency room ( without the ambulance ride) for dehydration. I am sure that the hospital is in love with our insurance company. Just wanted you who read to know I am not purposely flaking on posting and that next week shall be better. Until then, I have two sale sections set up in my store. One is 40% off and the other is 50% off. Check them out here.

New Items

I love how these earrings turned out. Earrings are a new thing in the shop of Rachel's Aprons. Resonably priced with excellent workmanship so that you can get something for yourself or a little gift without breaking your wallet. It really cannot get better than that. I am excited to be adding them. I hope that you enjoy them.

Home-school Mondays Thinking outside the box

Thinking outside the box.

While I was doing a Geography lesson with my 3rd grader I noticed the 1,000 mile stare coming from her. Not only that but I had two little ones that were being anything but quiet. Being as they are not big fans of T.V ( I am probably to blame, I don't watch to much of it myself), watching a movie was out of the question.

And then it hit me. We HOME-SCHOOL! Duh I know, but seriously. Who says we have to look at the pictures in the book. So we made the lesson out of blankets, some strategically moved couches and chairs and a fold out table we use when camping. Not only did we get rid of the boredom but we also were able to include the little ones. I was able to see what my eldest was learning because she was teaching it to her 4 year old sister. They were learning and they did not even know it. I love home-schooling.

So don't be afraid to think outside of the box. If you are new to home-schooling then break away from the traditional teaching done in the class room. Make it fun. Do crafts to teach the subject or find a way to lead it to something they love. And they do not have to be expensive supplies wither. Markers, crayons, glue, and some huge thing of construction paper from Walmart will make them happy. For example, my 3rd grader loves sharks. The whole gory mess of them, eww. But it was a great way to do math drills. Addition, add sharks. Subtraction, have sharks eat other little fish. You can draw pictures of it if you want but for her it was enough just to think of those numbers as sharks and this is something that we are carrying in to multiplication and division. While multiplication will take longer for her to retain she loves division.

Want something free?

Schooling at Home Estians is having a great blog giveaway! Easy to enter and you get to help support others who home-school. Come and enter, you may be the lucky one!

http://sheetsyteam.blogspot.com/