FIVE BOYS & A LADY: homeschool

Although I've been homeschooling my boys since birth, (essentially), this has been our first year of "offically" homeschooling because Eli is kindergarten age. (He's an older kindergartener since he has a Sept. birthday). I'm still figuring things out and love to hear what other families do so that I can learn new ideas or tweak our schedule to fit our family better. Next week will be our 10th week of Friday school with Classical Conversations. Aaaannnnd, we LOVE it! Being a tutor (teacher) keeps me super busy with prep work, but I totally enjoy it. The boys are doing great and having so much fun. Even little Siah repeats a lot of what his brothers are learning. Its a HUGE plus that they have good friends in their classes. I'm so thankful I heard about this program and that it got to be our first experience with homeschooling. I love the classical approach of taking advantage of how God has created our minds to learn and absorb information, process and understand it, then practice and teach it. At the younger level my boys are at, they are simply soaking up grammar-- filling their brains with quality content. Much like how a baby picks up on speaking the language of his/her family- through repetition and recitation, we learn "grammer sentences" for history & science, do skip counting for math, look at maps for geography, sing songs for English grammar & Latin. Yes, they'll eventually learn , Latin!! And the best part is that God is woven into it all. Its all for HIS glory! My four year old Noah can recite the seven classifications of living things... something Jonny teaches his 10th graders. When this cycle repeats in three years and then again in three years Noah will have it engrained in his 10yr old mind! Just think how ready he'll be as a tenth grader to soak in richer, deeper knowledge of the topic instead of spending his time memorizing grammar. I just love that idea!

Our mornings are sometimes totally CRAZY with Noah being sluggish and pretending not to know how to do the task before him and Eli bossing Noah and Siah spilling crayons all over the floor and Zeke being fussy and refusing to take his morning nap but then some are wonderful morning when Noah is enthusiastically doing his work and Eli is being diligent and Siah is happily mimicking his brothers with his own "notebook" and Zeke is taking a nice long morning nap! :) I figure there will be lots of crazy days and lots of wonderful days... the way Mommy responds to them plays a big part too ;) I've been taking lots of pictures this fall because I just love my kids and love that I get to stay home and be their teacher!

Here's what a typical day (Mon-Thurs) in our home looks like:
1.) Morning Cartoons

2.) After breakfast, the boys do their chores.

3.) Next we have about five minutes of reading our bibles QUIETLY to ourselves. Then we put on the armor of God and start school. There are different things we do for school each day... character traits, math, reading, writing, science, geography, history and CC review.

4.) Then we go outside... if its not raining! If it is raining, we get creative with burning energy indoors, like playing hide-and-go-seek or having dance parties. Then the boys have quiet play in their rooms (all separated to avoid fighting which is our biggest annoyance lately) while I make lunch in peace. :) When I call, "lunch is ready!!" they come running!

5.) After lunch, its nap/quiet time.

6.) The afternoons are always a bit different depending how everyone is feeling, how much we got done in the morning, if we need groceries, if we have appointments, etc. We usually do something like more outside play along with reading stories, or looking at Highlight's Magazines or baking or arts/crafts or experiments/activities or sometimes everyone just does their own thing.

7.) On days that Daddy comes home right away, the boys are super excited!! They like to wait out on the front porch for him and then they usually do some kind of LOUD wrestling play while I finish getting dinner ready.

And that's about it.... Of course, sometimes our day looks nothing like this. Sometimes we have to embrace the chaos and just know its going to be a rough day; if reading is all we get done, at least that's something. Other days I can't stand how messy the house has become and I announce, "Its a cleaning day!!" You get the picture. Like everyone else, we do the best that we can and ask God to mold us more into his image because we so desperately need Him! :)

Here's some video of Eli doing school.