I try to get my kids outside regularly to play, to be active, and to appreciate both the vastness, and intricacies, found in all of God’s creation.

One of the things they love to do is take grocery bags out into the backyard, and collect things they find interesting.

This week we found a way to incorporate this fun activity, into a Thanksgiving craft.

We gathered our supplies such as paper, nature journals, pencils, grocery bags, and Elmer’s glue. We packed them all up in a bag, and headed into the back yard. I told the kids that this time we were going to create a collage of a Thanksgiving Turkey, with whatever items they found, so to try and imagine the feathers, eyes, wings, feet, beak, and gizzard, as they looked for items to bring back.

I set out some blankets to sit on, and the kids set off in collecting whatever bits of nature interested them for the project.

It was so great to watch them, and listen to them work together to decide what parts of a turkey would be best represented by the things they found. I just love what they came up with.

This could be a really great activity for kids at a Thanksgiving Day celebration. Send them all outside with bags, and let some of the older kids or grown ups help oversee the assembly of a turkeys with glue and paper, cardstock, cardboard, or on paper plates.

Visit Tip Junkie for a list of 36 Thanksgiving Activities and Crafts to do with your kids.

This nature collage idea came from #28 on her list and we loved doing it! I’m sure we’ll do this activity over and over again, creating all kinds of different pictures, corresponding with other holidays and educational activities.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This post is linked to: Fireflies and Jellybeans, TidyMom, Finding Fabulous, Fun to Craft

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This week there’s a buzz going around in the home school blogging community, because it is time for the annual home school blog awards!

If you are here visiting from a link on the Home School Post nominations page, WELCOME! Thanks so much for stopping by to check out my blog. I’m so excited about connecting with more bloggers in the home school community through this event. If you are a home school blogger, please, please, please leave a comment on this post so that I can come by your blog and meet you! I will visit EVERY ONE who comments on this post!!!

This blog is listed in the home School Post nomination category for Best NEW Blog, and you can find my very first blog entry ever written, from one year ago, HERE. Please take a look around my site, and if you like what you see, throw a vote my way! If I win in my category, that will help me to find and connect with even more home school families, and bloggers online. The prizes are pretty awesome too!

Vote NOW! Click Here.

And now… let me tell you a little about myself and our home school.

I’m Rachymommy. You can read all about how I grew up, and who I am now, HERE.

In brief, I’m a Southern California stay-at-home, home schooling mom, with three little kids. I’m married to a Software Engineer, and we all live together with my in-laws. Sound crazy? It is… but it’s also a lot of FUN! To read about our family full of characters, visit HERE.

When my firstborn son Leo was two years old, he started reading. By the time he was four I realized a typical kindergarten just wasn’t going to work. You can read more about how I made my decision to start home schooling, HERE.

This is my fifth year of teaching home school to my oldest son who is now in fourth grade, and this is the first year I am officially teaching two children, at two different grade levels, with my daughter now in kindergarten. It’s a challenge, but day by day, I’m figuring it out.

If you want to read more about why in the world after five years, I’m still sticking with home school, visit HERE. The short answer is… I love it!

I favor a Classical Christian Education model but have also been greatly influenced by Charlotte Mason, and a Thomas Jefferson Education approach. I’m laid back in my style because I’ve learned a very, very important principle which is: life has seasons, and with each season comes change. My home school motto is: “Inspire and Require”. I mandate that my children learn the basics, and I strive to passionately lead by example through my own love of learning.

I use Singapore Math.

I have some opinions about Shakespeare.

Along with all the hard work and serious stuff, in our home school I love to have fun, joke around, and be artistic.

Laundry is my nemesis!! It is evil. But… I will never surrender. There must be some way to home school and get all the laundry washed, dried, and put away before the end of every day. If you’ve already conquered that one, please, please, please become my Facebook friend and mentor me through the process. I need help!

One thing I did finally get a better handle on this year is gardening. It didn’t come easy though. I have a deep dark past filled with murdering many, many plants. However, things have really turned around for me in the last few months while working on a garden with my kids. We actually managed to cause a few things to grow.  You can read all about our KinderGARDEN adventures HERE.

There’s a lot to see here at MommyTopics.com. I have cupcake recipes, ideas for family fun, shopping guides and product tips, bits of my love story, and even a MommyTopics Amazon store filled with products I recommend for home school, baking, family game night, and much, much, more.

I hope you enjoy your time here, and I hope you’ll come back and visit again soon!

Don’t forget to leave a comment, so I can come and visit you too! And don’t forget to vote!

Pass a link to my site, on to some other home school families you know!

VOTE here !

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I’ve been through morning sickness three times while home schooling my oldest son through his elementary years. Two of those stages led to continued exhaustion as a sleep deprived Mommy with a newborn. The most recent stage of morning sickness led to several weeks of recovery both physically and mentally from a miscarriage.

I’ve had days during these difficult times, when I couldn’t do much more than make sure my little ones were safe, fed, and somehow entertained, as I lay on the couch trying to hang on until daddy got home. All this while I was supposed to be home schooling.

As I lay there unproductively on the couch, guilt and worry would take over my mind…

“What was I thinking deciding to home school? Clearly any teacher could do a better job with my child than I am right now.”

“My son’s entire education is hanging in the balance, and if I don’t get up and teach him something, he could be set back for life.”

“How could I have been so selfish thinking I was capable of home schooling? I can’t even get off the couch!”

“This is child abuse and neglect.”

“I’m a terrible mother.”

By now I’ve finally tucked one of the most important bits of scripture needed by a home school mom, into my heart, and am able to pull it out and stand firmly on it, through such difficult times.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven – Ecclesiastes 3:1

Three children, one miscarriage, and five years of home school later, I’ve learned not only how to survive the difficult seasons, but even how to allow our home school to thrive in them.

Teaching our children at home does not always need to include mentally strenuous lessons, hours of preparation, and teaching from a standing or even sitting position. Slower seasons spent together cuddled up on couches can provide healthy amounts of laughter, wonderful opportunities for free and spontaneous discussion, and a season of less progress through chapters of curriculum, and instead more intimacy between the honest souls of mother and child.

Here are some of my recommendations on how to confidently progress in your pre-school and elementary home school, on those days when you just aren’t feeling yourself.

1. Get books on tape from the library, to listen to together, as you lay down. Choose age appropriate classics that will captivate your children, while introducing them to valuable treasured stories about virtue, honor, and responsibility (Classic Bible Stories, Mother Goose Rhymes, The Tales of Peter Rabbit, The Trumpet of the Swan, Farmer Boy, Little House in the Big Woods, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the original Pinocchio, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe).

2. Play games that eliminate the need for any prep time, and allow you to sit still, but which continue to help your little ones in working on counting, spelling, calculations, and strategy. (Candyland, Sorry, Go-Fish, Rat-a-tat-cat, Uno, the Allowance Game, Monopoly, Quiddler, and Scrabble) Make sure to allow older children who are capable, to be the bankers and the score keepers, working on their math skills and penmanship.

3. Play Mad Libs, while you lie down on the couch, allowing your child to ask you for parts of speech and work on penmanship, reading, and spelling, as they write and read the nonsensical stories back to you.

4. Let them build with blocks and Legos.

5. Let them paint on their own with watercolors. It’s easy for them to set up themselves even as young as four years old, and it’s easy to clean up with the quick swipe of a towel, if they spill or make a mess. (Much easier to clean up than Play-doh in my opinion!)

6. Provide tracing paper and allow them to copy and color favorite pictures from story books.

7. Watch YouTube videos together that answer questions they have, such as: “How do Bees make honey?” “Where do dump trucks take our trash?” “What is lightning?” “What do tarantulas eat?”

8. Let them read stories to you, and for younger ones who can’t read yet, ask them to tell you stories from books based on what they see in the illustrations.

9. For children who can read, get some fun workbooks that include all kinds of skills he/she can confidently do on their own, and that they will enjoy. Independent time in workbooks like this will continue to strengthen their ability to read and follow directions, penmanship, math, etc.

10. “First Language Lessons” and “The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading” are excellent reading and language arts curriculum, to take your child through using one short lesson per day. They are written in an extremely “parent-friendly” manner and require no prep time on your part. You simply read through the lesson together with your child in about fifteen minutes.

I’ve very successfully used both of these books as the central resource for teaching my son reading and grammar, and his state test scores have always been well above average. He’s a smart kid to begin with, but his scores are also a testament to the proficiency of these very-easy-to-use books.

11. Bob Books are great sets of early reading books for small children just beginning to learn phonics. They are easy to read together while laying on the couch.

12. Allow young children to watch one or two educational television shows or DVDs each day, such as Word World, Super Why, and Leapfrog Math Circus and Letter Factory. For older children look for science series from Discovery Kids such as Crash, Bang, Splat, and Popular Mechanics for Kids.

13. Allow your children time to develop simple computer skills as well as fundamentals in matching, phonics, math and more, by supervising their free time on websites like Nick Jr., Playhouse Disney, Kaboose, Brain Pop, and others.

14. Get the books, “What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know,“, “What Your First Grader Needs to Know”, etc.

Referring to these books will lighten your load of guilt as you realize how proficient your child already is, in several of their grade level requirements. Being provided with an overview of what still needs to be covered within the year, can help you to confidently pick and choose the things you can cover more easily when feeling ill or tired, and make you aware of what subjects must be covered as soon as you’re feeling better. You will gain assurance that your children are moving forward in their educations, even through a more restful season, and you‘ll have a mental game plan as to how everything will get done, by the end of the year, regardless of the order it is done in. Ahhhhhhh… sweet peace of mind!

MOST IMPORANTLY, don’t beat yourself up!!!

You can do this.

Just take things one day at a time and give yourself credit for each educational experience you are able to fit in. Your kids will be fine, and giving them a sibling is one of the greatest gifts you can offer.

This is only a season!

Pass this post on to a Home Schooling Mom who is pregnant, caring for a newborn, or struggling through some other type of wearying season.

To purchase items recommended in this post, visit the MommyTopics online store.

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A Guest Post by Lisa from Tales of A Soon to Be Soccer Mom

Lisa has just begun her first year officially teaching home school to her oldest daughter Chloe who is now in Kindergarten. Lisa also has a daughter  Ava, who is three, and a baby boy Silas who is six months old. You can read more about her family and home school adventures on her blog.

Whenever I read home school blogs or spoke with other home school moms, I always asked how they teach with younger siblings around. I hated the “Oh, it just works out….” answer. I wanted to hear specific ways “It just worked out”.

Here’s the secret we have learned after three months of homeschooling…..Ready??

Involve them.

Make younger siblings a part of your lessons as much, or as little, as they’re interested in being involved.

Five in a Row, makes that so easy.

The idea of homeschooling has always been appealing to me. Keeping my little ones with me, providing life-learning as well as traditional learning in our home environment, growing close sibling relationships, and building a strong foundation on Christ, were all reasons we decided to begin our oldest daughter’s education at home. But a few of the biggest unknowns to me, were what curriculum to use, how to do it with other younger siblings around, and how to make sure my children are developing a love for learning. So, when I began my curriculum research a few years ago, I was delighted when I stumbled upon Five In A Row.

FIAR is a literature-based unit study. Using a different piece of wonderful children’s literature each week assigned by the curriculum, you are provided with corresponding lessons for five days. Mondays are Social Studies, including geography and history, Tuesdays are Literature, Wednesdays are Art, Thursdays are Applied Math, and Fridays are Science. It is recommended that you supplement with other phonics, printing, and math curriculum

Each week uses a different children’s book, and FIAR has picked some wonderful ones.

My kindergartner has actually cried a few times when it was time to return one of the books to the library.

My three year old often joins us for the reading of the story, and loves doing geography with us on Mondays. We have two huge maps on our school room/play room walls and we put a sticky with the book’s title on it, wherever our story takes us that week. And let me tell you….three months in, and we’ve been all over the world!

We do our story and that day’s FIAR core subject lessons, and then we move on to our supplemental curriculum. Usually my three year old will stick around and do phonics memory with us, Play-Doh, count, sort and graph Skittles, or after her naptime, head out to the garage, and finger paint a picture similar to the ones in our FIAR books.

We’ve expanded many of the FIAR lessons during the week. We will use words found in the story for spelling, or point out words that have the endings we’re learning in our phonics book. We recognize flags from the countries we’ve “visited” when we’re out running errands. When we’re at the library, we’ll see another book by an author we’ve already read, and my kindergartner gets so excited. All in all it’s become a lot more “real life learning” than I had anticipated. But it’s helped my daughter to really understand and absorb the information I’ve taught her.

FIAR is the type of curriculum that you can take at face value, or expand it as much as you want. I feel like for younger elementary age children, this curriculum has so much to offer. It gives enough guidance that I’m not scrambling for information, and ways to incorporate fun activities, but it also gives enough freedom to adapt and change lessons, to suit younger learners.

For example… I’ve found much of the Literature activities to be a bit difficult for kindergarten. (I feel like they would be perfect for 2^nd-3^rd graders.) But it’s easy to find something in that lesson to focus on. Often times its learning who the author of the book is, where he/she is from, and the background they took from in writing the story. We’ve also memorized terms found in the Literature lesson such as “personification”, and “alliteration”, and thrown in a lesson on rhyming, using text from our book. While my four year old doesn’t have the ability to do her own writing assignments using personification, she can now identify it in a story we read.

FIAR has other curriculum in the Five in a Row “family” as well. There is “Before Five in a Row” (ages 2-4), “Beyond Five in a Row” (8-12), and “Above & Beyond Five in a Row” (12 and up). The literature used in FIAR is not religious in nature, but it does provide examples of good values and morals, and it does not contain any questionable subject matter. However, if you are looking for a specifically Christian curriculum, FIAR does offer a supplemental Christian character curriculum.

We are loving home school and with using the Five In A Row curriculum, so many of my questions about how to home school have been answered. My kindergartener is thriving, my younger ones are involved when they want to be, and the whole process for us now seems to… well… let me tell you… it just works out.

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This is my fifth year teaching home school and I now have a fourth grader, a kindergartener, and a toddler. The schedule and process by which our home school runs has to be rethought and re-plotted each year depending on the ages and stages of each of my children. Our daily schedule now runs very differently than how it ran when I first began this journey of home school, with simply myself and a four year old.

Preschool – While doing preschool at home with my first born, it was just the two of us. I managed every day with very few distractions or obligations. We did playful learning activities and outings constantly, whenever we felt like it, without interruption. This one on one time with my first born gave me a fantastic opportunity to get ahead with his learning which I had no idea at the time, would become a tremendous advantage over the next few years as I continued teaching him at home, while also taking care of my added newborns and toddlers.

Being sensitive to my son’s early cues for readiness in reading and math during those pre school years really helped me to start Kindergarten and First grade ahead of the game. When I had days or weeks where I was suffering from morning sickness, newborn induced sleep deprivation, a toddler discipline issue, potty training time, or a house in such disaray I could no longer take it and MUST devote an entire day to getting caught up in housework, I didn’t feel huge pressure to keep chugging forward or else we’d fall behind. I didn’t know how much I was helping myself out at the time, but starting Kindergarten with my first born already able to read with comprehension, count, add, and subtract, created an atmosphere that has carried over to this day, where I always feel ahead and able to take time out to focus on heart issues, pressing discipline needs, or sometimes just plain old much needed rest or fun.

Year 1 – The year I began teaching Kindergarten at home, included the addition of a newborn into our daily schedule. Once I got the hang of things, I nursed, rocked, and changed diapers while I taught and read to my kindergartener, or listened to him read to me. We studied a lot about animals in books and visited aquariums and zoos. For math we played a lot of games at home like golf, bowling, and cards, where he would be in charge of tallying up (adding) our scores. Three days a week we did curriculum based lessons in math, handwriting, and phonics in the mornings, midday naps for everyone including a very tired Momma, and more relaxed educational games, activities, crafts, and play time in the afternoon. The extra two days a week were used for running errands, housework, and field trips.

Year 2 – Our second year of official home school, as my firstborn entered first grade, included my now needing to supervise a very mobile toddler, and in the spring doing it all while managing three months of morning sickness. Once again midday nap time for all, including me, was strictly enforced. Housework? Ha! It happened, but this was the year I came to terms with the idea that our lives function in seasons, and some of those seasons are less tidy than others. I made the commitment to making the shepherding of my children’s hearts and educations, a consistent priority over the appearance of my home. As long as things were clean enough to be safe, healthy, and functional, I allowed toys, laundry, and clutter to linger longer than some (non-home schooling mothers) might approve of.

Now that I have an eight year old and a four year old, we get a lot more housework done each day as a team… Although, that hasn’t exactly made my home more clean or organized because now I am completely outnumbered by mess-makers… but that’s another story. And have I mentioned the additional laundry that comes with a family of five? Don’t get me started. I’m trying. I really am.

In those early days however, when I had two little ones and another one on the way, I put tidiness on the back burner, out of necessity, and told myself repeatedly, “It’s only for a season.”

Year 3 – Our third year of home school involved the birth of my third child, two weeks into our second grade school year. The balance of caring for a newborn, while trying to discipline and train a very active toddler, and teach second grade, once again took some adjustments, and getting used to. The year began with the continued focus on the strictly enforced napping schedule for ALL, still including me, for mere survival. I taught whenever, wherever, and however I could fit it in. Some nights I slept, some nights I didn’t, which meant some days I taught, and some days I didn’t. But I set goals within our curriculum regarding how far I needed to be by the end of each month, and the school work always, somehow, got done.

By the spring semester, once my newborn was mostly sleeping through the night, I dropped naps for my oldest and myself, and we were using that time alone while the other two were napping, to get a bulk of our daily lessons done. When the little ones were up in the afternoons, my second grader had started to become independent enough to use that time to do math assignments, writing, studying, and reading on his own, while I did housework and played with the younger two.

Year 4 – Last year I taught third grade to my oldest while adding preschool activities for my three year old and entertaining my baby. Our home school schedule had gone through a complete conversion from how it functioned during our first year. Mornings were now used for play and housework, then lunch, then naps for the two little ones and for my third grader, nap time was when our lesson time began. After nap time my third grader continued in his work-alone school assignments and reading, while I played with the other two, and tried to do more housework.

During the second half of the year I started integrating my three year old into table time with workbooks, after her nap, as her interest in being part of school increased. Mondays were reserved for the bulk of my weekly house cleaning, while my oldest attended a full day of enrichment classes with peers outside our home, and my two little ones played and watched tv or videos. Thank you Leapfrog DVDs, PBS, Nick Jr., and the DVR!

Year 5 – This year we have morphed the entire daily structure once again. We are using mornings for an all inclusive family lesson time in Bible, history, and geography. We take a two hour mid day break which includes lunch, chores, and play time. Then when my toddler goes down for a nap, my kindergartener works on phonics, math, and other kindergarten skills by herself on the computer, while I teach math, grammar, and creative writing to my fourth grader. After an hour we swap, and my fourth grader does his independent work and reading, while I teach lessons in phonics, math, and handwriting to my kindergartener. At the end of all of that, I usually have about an hour to do housework before I have to start making dinner and getting everyone ready for their evening sports or church activities.

The key for me has been to be flexible and to be willing to change and adapt my schedule to the immediate needs and priorities of each season. And my heart’s desire is to always keep the mothering of my children’s souls at the forefront of my priority list. After all, they are only little for a very short while. I’ll keep a sparkling home in my fifties.

Next week I hope to fill you in on more details about how I am now, and will continue to be able to teach multiple grade levels, in one home, with one teacher, every day, and how I decide what to teach my children each year.

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Last week I had a familiar conversation with a Mom at a birthday party that I’ve had at every birthday party I’ve gone to over the past four years. It goes like this…

Mom: So what grade is your son in?

Me: Fourth.

Mom: Oh, mine too. Where does he go to school?

Me: (okay, here we go…) We home school actually.

Mom: (awkward) Ohhhhh… (Pause… silence… looking wildly around the room for escape… need to fill the silence…) …I could never home school my kids. I don’t have the patience. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Me: (awkward) Ha, ha, ha, ha. Yeah… well… I didn’t have it either before I started.

Mom: So do you have a background in education?

Me: No. I don’t. (if only she knew I didn’t even finish college… think I’ll keep that to myself at this point.)

Mom: (afraid for my children) Ahhhh. Wow. Huh.

Me: (silence… staring at my shoes)

Mom: Do you have some other home school families that you do activities and things with? (Please tell me you are socializing your children) I have a friend that home schools her kids, and that’s what they do.

Me: Yeah, there are all kinds of great classes and home school groups we’ve been involved with in the area.

Mom: (so even though they’re probably going to be socially retarded, ideological zealots, and limited to an elementary school education for life, at least she isn’t keeping them in cages.) That’s great. That’s really great. (searches the crowd for her son, pretends to notice something that needs her attention…) Oh Dylan! Hey Dylan! I’m sorry, if you’ll excuse me… (wanders away)

Though uncredentialed mothers home schooling their young children has been a traditional form of education the world over, since time began, these days in America a large group of mothers and educators are appalled by the idea.  By today’s standards, most American adults view anyone who is uncredentialed by an institution of higher learning as “unfit” to properly teach their own children beyond the age of five, without assistance from a professional. Those of us who are teaching our children at home, know as well as the matriarchs who taught their children before us, just how false this line of thinking can be, and what kind of wonderful success can be achieved through passionately and purposefully choosing to teach our children at home.

It is abundantly clear through the repeated conversations I’ve had with Mothers and educators of public school children, who question my decision to home school, that they are confused by, and sometimes even disgusted with, this decision we’ve made for our family. I think this mostly comes from people who know very little about home school and all that it means and entails. Part of the opportunity that can be shared through this blog, and so many like it written by home school mothers, is to open our doors and offer an honest transparent look into how and why we home school, the privileges and obstacles of the choice, and what goes on in our little residential classrooms. Hopefully such openness and communication will be a contributing factor in what should quickly be becoming a more widely understood and appreciated education option in our society.

I am an advocate of home school because so far it has worked wonderfully for our family, and many other families I know. But what I’m also a proponent of, is a “Parent’s Choice” in the education of their own children. I have the greatest respect for parents who have spent a lot of time getting to know what educational options are out there, and have used that information to make a very wise and purposeful choice as to where each of their children will spend a great majority of their adolescence learning. If your children are in a public school, private school, or home school because you are trying your best to ensure they get an excellent education with excellent mentors who are passionately investing in them, and inspiring them to greatness… I applaud you.

I in no way adhere to the idea that home school is the best choice for all families, just as I in no way adhere to the idea that public school is the best choice for all families. Each child, each parent, each family, and even each season of life has specific needs and priorities which dictate the details of what educational methods are the best choice for that particular time in a child’s life. Thankfully these days, in most areas of the country, parent’s have a fantastic number of educational options to choose from for their children amongst public schools, private schools, charter schools, online schools, and the traditional home school method.

And to open up the dialogue and give you a glimpse into why a mother like me would choose to home school her children, here is a growing list of reasons why home school is the right choice, right now, for my family:

-          I have been given the tremendous privilege of being able to stay at home with my children and not have to go to work, therefore I have the time and opportunity to invest in guiding their educations.

-         It is paramount to my husband and myself that our children understand every aspect of this world, and their lives, with the Bible as their foundational line of truth by which all other information is compared and tested. Home schooling provides a greater opportunity for instilling and reinforcing that worldview as it pertains to each academic subject.

-          I love the quantity of time my children get to spend building strong relationships with each other as siblings, playing and learning together daily.

-          There are so many positive opportunities for social interaction with peers for my children, through our church, family friends, recreational sports leagues, and community home school groups and I like the separation between academic time, and social time, as opposed to a distracting convergence of the two.

-          In public and private schools, curriculum, teachers, headmasters, and overall school philosophies change often, which can create a very choppy education with huge learning gaps in the spectrum of content covered.

-          I like being able to set up a comprehensive learning plan for kindergarten through twelfth grade for each of my children and to administer it knowing they will get a congruent education that wont leave gaps in their learning.

-          I love being able to provide my children with an education that has it’s foundational cornerstone starting in kindergarten, in the study of God, man, and history. It is not as important to me to enforce the memorization of dates and facts as it is to understand the stories of heroism, honor, villains, tragedy, loss, hope, service, sacrifice, goodness, and so on, so that my children’s education is about learning from the past and making excellent decisions for the future.

-          The opportunity to provide an education which caters to each of my individual children’s gifts, strengths, weaknesses, and interests.

-          I love to teach and doing so comes easily and naturally to me.

-          I love to continually expand my own education and I enjoy learning about how to best educate my children.

-          I like having the opportunity to discuss history, literature, philosophy, politics, science, and religion with my own children each day through what they are learning, as opposed to allowing such an engaging time with them to be enjoyed by an outside teacher.

-          In a private or public school I have no control over who my children’s mentors will be each year, including the teachers and the textbooks.

-          I love being able to hand select excellent, passionate, and inspiring mentors who have chosen exceptional curriculum and whole books as their teaching tools, to teach my children in the subjects I cannot personally cover with them adequately.

And don’t get me wrong… the decision to home school is not without it’s obstacles. For example:

-          While there are social benefits to choosing home school, such as limiting things like negative influences, peer pressure, peer induced materialism, bullying, and social distractions during the academic school day, it has been a challenge to provide opportunities for strong peer relationships. There are plenty of activities my children attend with other children their age, but the lack of repetitive free time with the same children each week has made it more difficult to find a “best friend.” We finally found one great family with many similarities to ours, and children with equivalent ages who we were spending regular time with each week, and then they moved out of state. Now we are back at square one in trying to find other families with young children to form strong bonds with. We are accepting applications. (That last part about the applications was a joke.)

-          It is a challenge keeping home school kids physically active. They are not walking distances from class to class each day, running around on a playground for an hour with peers at lunch, and attending an entire period of P.E. While my children are actively involved in community sports, they are still behind in the number of hours each week spent involved in vigorous outdoor activity.

-          If either of my children ever become personally passionate about a particular team sport they desire to pursue competitively into high school, we will have to consider whether putting them into a public or private high school for the benefit of a sports team becomes a priority.

-          Competition, creativity, and social awareness are all aspects that create refinement in individuals through the constant contact with and emersion into social groups. It remains to be seen in our household if the depth of interaction needed to create well adjusted young adults, can be attained through a more limited exposure to peers, than the “dog eat dog” social structure of cliques and competitiveness, experienced in a typical American school, which is in some ways preparatory for life in the real world.

These are the kinds of obstacles we home school moms face, and lose sleep over at night, as we ask ourselves, “Am I doing the right thing?” I am confident that every mother, no matter what type of schooling she has chosen for her family, faces her own list of gray-hair-inducing obstacles that she worries about for her children. For each of us, in this way, the struggle is the same; to set priorities and pursue the best options we can, to meet the most important needs of our children first, and work as hard as we can to overcome the obstacles they include.

What form of education have you chosen for your family, and why is it best for them? What are the benefits and what are some of the obstacles your children face in their educational environment? What keeps you pressing on in the path you’ve chosen?

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We officially started back to HOME school this week. It’s my first year teaching two separate grade levels in the same home, each day. This year my son who I’ve been homeschooling for four years is going into fourth grade, and I’ll begin additionally teaching my daughter who is entering kindergarten.

I have a plan.

And, if I’ve learned anything over the past four years of home schooling, it’s that our real lives never go exactly according to plan. But, just for fun, and for the sake of being honest with you about the home school process, I’ll tell you all about my plan, and then at the end of the year I can tell you all about how we’ve deviated from it.

For now however, I’m still getting organized. Curriculum and supplies are still trickling in. The bookshelves are looking better, but there is more to be removed, and there are some things to be added. I’m still working on our calendar and memory work board, and most of our elective classes and activities that the kids will be attending outside our home, haven’t started yet.

So, for this first week, while I get organized, the kids are doing self led school. That means the TV is off, video games are not an option, but just about everything else in the house is at their disposal.

Oh… and one more rule. Momma’s involvement in whatever you choose to do will be limited. Momma will be in the same room with you, but Momma is working. Momma is organizing, plotting, planning, hole punching, bindering (so not a word), filing, printing, reading, scheduling, etc. Whatever you choose to do with your time, you will need to be able to mostly do, without me.

Now I know that some of you reading this might be freaking out right now and shouting, “See, see! I knew it. Those crazy home schoolers.  They’re not really learning. They’re just hanging out, making stuff up, and calling it school. THEY MUST BE STOPPED!!!”

But, I assure you that #1 – While I love integrating some self led school time throughout the year, just to see what kind of creative thinking and activities my own kids will come up with when left to their own devices, most of our academics throughout the school year are quite structured.

#2 – Growing up, I rarely learned anything, or did any real academic work in the private schools I attended, during my first week back to school each year. In fact while I was at Costco tonight I overheard a high school girl telling her mom that only four kids out of thirty six in her new history class, had their textbooks with them today, so the aggravated instructor just let the students talk and hang out for the entire period. Sounds familiar.

And #3  - My kids really do learn some neat things when they are allowed to learn about whatever they want.

So far over the last two days amongst many varying activities, my fourth grader has:

- observed, analyzed, and discussed the differences in our pumpkin flowers growing in the back yard

- observed and discussed a grotesquely large garden spider we unfortunately found, and luckily captured, in our living room

- read a chapter in a science book about Leonardo Da Vinci and built a parachute as an accompanying experiment

- folded and tested several different paper airplane styles as well as learned how to fold from paper, a hat, boat, and water bomb

- read a library book about the Amazon and the legend of El Dorado

- read a library book to his sister about clouds and their different structures

- read a chapter of C.S. Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader

- meandered through the Art Fraud Detective

- read several Aesop’s Fables to his sister and then worked together with her to construct animal masks out of construction paper, so they can act out the stories together, later this week

And, as you can see, my kindergartner has been far from neglected.

In addition to what her brother has voluntarily been including her in, she has also:

- read a couple of Bob books to me

- helped me put our new calendar together and discussed the names of the days of the week, and months of the year

- started writing her own name so she can sign it on her school assignments… when she gets them

- diligently been trying to teach her two year old brother to count to ten… with some success.

One of the things that is vastly important to me and must be part of my children’s educations, is making sure they become life long passionate learners, who don’t wait to be taught, but rather seek out new knowledge and understanding, for themselves. There are a lot of topics and skills I am most certainly requiring them to become proficient in through our home school, but I’m also really interested in finding ways to inspire them to experiment, and learn on their own, simply because they’re curious, and equipped to seek out answers.

I promise we’ll hit the curriculum next week.

And, whether you keep your kids home for school or send them to school, you must check out anotherlunch.com. I’ve been ogling the site for weeks now hoping that some of the creative healthy inspirations will rub off on me.

So far our home school lunches have comprised of PB&J with Pringles, and $1 Lunchables from Walmart. My kids aren’t complaining, but I can’t go on this way for the next 160+ school days.

Thanks to anotherlunch.com however, it looks like with the purchase of a few handy little tools, and some more of this creative inspiration, this year could be the year I become a Rock Star lunch maker!

I’m looking forward to it!

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I’ve completely neglected our school room for the past three months.

Next week we start back to home school and I have plenty to do this week, to prepare.

We had a ton Family Fun all Summer, and I got just the amount of rest and change of pace I needed, in order to head back to teaching home school refreshed, and with new passion.

Leo was loathing the idea of being cut off once again from the amount of TV and video game time he enjoys during the summer, until we took a trip to the school supply store yesterday. After picking out several new books, supplies, and arts and crafts things, both kids we’re begging to start back to school as soon as we got home.

But Momma isn’t ready!

I need this week to clean and reorganize the school room.

I’m also waiting for shipments of supplies and new curriculum to arrive.

I need to box up what we’re done using for now, and make room for all of the new things.

Though I have gotten the hang of homeschooling from year to year, and know a lot about what to expect, each year is also a new adventure in that I’m always teaching a new grade level. The dynamics of our daily schedule also changes every year, depending on what ages and stages each of my kids is at.

This is my fifth year of teaching home school, but it’s my first year of teaching two students at two different grade levels… kindergarten and fourth grade, with a two year old who will be toddling around us.

I’m excited! We have a lot of fun things planned, which I’ll share with you over the next few weeks and months. If you’ve ever wondered things like…

- What kind of books do home school families use?

- What kind of schedule do home school families follow?

- How do home school kids get socialized?

- How does a mom teach two different grade levels together?

- What does a home school Mom do with a baby or toddler while she home schools?

- Why on earth does any Mom choose home school?

- How expensive is it to home school?

- How is an un-credentialed Mom qualified to teach her own children at home?

The easy answer is… every family is different.

But, I will be sharing my answers to all these questions throughout this year. The good, the bad, and the ugly truth about how, why, when, with what, and how we home school.

But for now… I’m off to place orders, and organize.

I’m sure by the end of the week I’ll have everything alphabetized and color coded beautifully, just like this.

Not! (Is that still cool to say? I don’t think it is.)

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I’ve never used Saxon Math which seems to be the home school standard and even more specifically the Classical home school standard. But one of the things that I’ve heard about it, is that it gives tons and tons of problems to solve on each concept.  Based on that information alone I knew Saxon was not a curriculum I would be passionate about using.

One of the things I like about home schooling my children as opposed to sending them to a public or private school is being able to cater their educations to their specific gifts, talents, interests, passions, and callings.  I’m a firm believer that everyone is made to serve different purposes with their lives and should therefore not be made to read the same books or learn things in the same way.

Another thing I like about educating my children at home is being able to spare them from wasting precious hours in the day doing busy work.  I hated it during my own schooling years when teachers would assign 100 math problems on one concept.  Once I got the concept down by problem 34 the rest of the assignment was busy work.  This type of thing occurred in my learning throughout all subjects.  The worst part was when I had several different teachers assigning busywork in each of their classes, none of them of course speaking to each other or taking in consideration how much work each of them had assigned.  Then I would be stuck with hours upon hours of homework on concepts I already understood.

What a waste of time.

Now don’t get me wrong… there is certainly a point to learning a concept and practicing it until you can do it with ease.  The problem is that for each child and in each subject the amount of work needed to be done in order to arrive at that place of ease is different.

I am only home schooling one of my three children at this point.  Remy and Llany are not yet school age and are still working on pre school core concepts like numbers, phonics, shapes, and colors.  Leo however, my oldest and therefore my home school guinea pig, is just finishing up the third grade. His advanced learning abilities are what caused me to begin home schooling in the first place.  You can read more about that here.

When I set out to begin home schooling I didn’t want to just be doing school, at home.  I wanted to take advantage of being able to handpick curriculum and teach each subject the best way possible.  I didn’t want to just get a box of assigned curriculum and start plowing through it.  I wanted to know what was out there and make a decision about what sounded best for my son’s abilities and my teaching style.  One of the books that was instrumental in helping me do this was “The Well Trained Mind” by Susan Wise Bauer.  This book breaks down some of the different curriculum philosophies and explains their strengths and focuses.  When looking through the math section of this book, Singapore Math was the curriculum that appealed to me the most for three reasons.

1. I’ve always heard that Asian countries have a reputation for high achievement in math amongst students, far higher than the abilities of American students, so a curriculum from Singapore sounded like a better idea than an American curriculum.
2. The focus in Singapore Math is on Mental Math and that is something I wish I had been taught how to do better… I’m still tempted to count on my fingers.
3. Singapore Math does not require incessant amounts of problems to work through in each chapter.  This is perfect for an advanced learner like Leo who picks up new concepts with great ease and grows bored quickly if not challenged with moving forward. There are however additional “Extra Practice” books available at each grade level for when extra practice on a particular concept is needed.

I figured if the curriculum seemed to move too fast or leave out fundamental elements, we would go back to something like Saxon or Math U See. I’m glad to report however that we haven’t needed to change our Math curriculum at all over the past three years, and we will continue with Singapore Math again next year for fourth grade because we love it!

Leo continues to score WAY above grade level in Mathematics. Last year his National Percentile Rank (NPR) for the California State STAR testing in Math was in the 98th percentile.

Now again I will state: the same books and approaches to learning are not equally effective for every student, nor are they equally friendly for every parent or teacher’s, teaching style. I have overheard parent conversations ranting and raving about how much they hate Singapore Math, so I know it doesn’t work for everyone.

But… it works for Leo and me, and here’s why:

An Emphasis on Mental Math

I used manipulatives in pre school with Leo while we were learning to count, add, and subtract. I didn’t order some fancy color coded set of manipulatives and curriculum for this. We simply counted fish crackers, legos, cookies, jelly beans, and whatever else we were playing with or eating. Once we started with Singapore Math we didn’t use manipulatives at all anymore, but instead moved easily into the intermediary pictorial stage.

In Singapore Math at the elementary level, there isn’t a big emphasis on using  manipulatives.  Being someone who still depended on her fingers for counting well into adulthood, I liked the idea of being able to find a math program that would force my son, from the beginning, to see numbers in his head and be able to do tricks with them in order to solve problems without the crutch of manipulatives.

Illustrations with a Purpose

Singapore math books don’t look like the typical math texts we grew up with. They are filled with cartoon type color illustrations that I love. I don’t know about you, but just opening up a Saxon text book with a white page filled from top to bottom with as many little black numbers as will fit on the page, makes me woozy. I can’t imagine how it must make a six year old feel!

When I ordered our first Singapore Math book for Kindergarten with Leo when he was four, he picked up the books himself and asked if we could get started because to him they looked like a lot of fun. But Singapore Math’s illustrations are not purely for entertainment, there is a very logical and helpful purpose behind them.

One of the problems with other math curriculums in the U.S. is that they leap from using concrete objects or manipulatives in the early stages, right into abstract mental math calculations. Many students struggle with this leap as I did, and therefore continue to secretly count on fingers or calculate with physical tapping, in order to keep up, never developing true mental math abilities.

Singapore math textbooks include an intermediary pictorial stage. By looking at pictures of concrete objects being divided equally, students form a mental image of what adding, subtracting, multiplication, division, and other mathematical processes look like. When they finally get to abstract calculation, they have already internalized and visualized the process.

Additionally, the illustrations are so helpful that this year at age 8, while in the 3^rd grade, my son was able to teach himself several of the lessons without any parent involvement at all, and that is a BIG PART of my goal in choosing to home school – to teach my children, how to teach themselves… for LIFE!

Also as a home school parent, while being supplied with such great illustrative examples of each math concept, I have never needed to do any prep work in order to take my son through a Singapore math lesson (except for gathering some measuring supplies when learning about length, weight, and volume.)  And that fits my teaching style to a “T.” Very little prep… lot’s of hands on learning, questioning, and finding answers together. The Singapore Math lessons are easy to just sit down and go through together at any time. (And… they’ve really helped me to improve in my own mental math abilities.)

Introducing Mathematical Concepts Early

At the first grade level Singapore Math introduces addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, algebra, fractions, time, length, geometry, and on and on the list goes. Instead of waiting to introduce mathematical concepts at later stages, Singapore Math introduces nearly all basic concepts in the same year, and then each year of study advances the child’s understanding and ability in each area.

As a home school teacher I can’t comprehend how you teach addition but put off teaching multiplication for later years when all it is, is a way of adding groups quickly. Or why you would teach division but keep fractions a secret until fourth grade. Or talk about shapes and their names at age four, but wait to talk about the different names of triangles until middle school. Or how you teach any of if without introducing the algebraic concept of solving for “x” which is what we are all doing every day when we use math in real life. All of these ideas can be taught to a first grade student when done with simplicity of small numbers and done in the context of real world problem solving.

Word Problems

Isn’t the real reason we learn math for problems like, “If I’ve made 24 cupcakes in the last hour, but I need to make 700 cupcakes for the school play by tomorrow morning at 11am, and Johnny only gave me this AWESOME news ten minutes ago and it’s 8pm, how many hours and how many ovens will it take me to make the rest of my cupcakes and will I get any sleep tonight?” So why do other curriculums make this kind of math question a side-note instead of a central theme?

Singapore Math puts a huge emphasis on what we call “Word Problems,” and it doesn’t push off learning word problems to the end of lessons or for higher grade levels. In Singapore Math, word problems are part of the core curriculum in every chapter of every year of math study… and there is an extremely GOOD reason for this! What we should really call “Word Problems” is “Life Problems.” And aren’t “Life Problems” a huge practical reason for learning math in the first place?

Each grade level of curriculum not only includes word problems in the chapters, but also an additional optional “Word Problems” book made up entirely of just that… Word Problems. Also included at each grade level is an optional Extra Practice Book to reinforce math processes, and a Test Book that can be used for extra practice or quizzing students. With all of these extra optional resources that can be used, you can’t say Singapore Math doesn’t offer PLENTY of individual problems in order to master concepts. But…the fact that these problems come in separate books allows them to more freely be optional for the students that need them.

Extra practice books can be

1) Used with chapters that need more attention in a challenging area of study and

2) Completely ignored with chapters where concepts were easily mastered in the main text

Conclusion

Cracking open a Singapore Math book is something both my son and I look forward to and we have a great time going through the lessons together.

One of the greatest things about teaching home school is the fact that you get to choose what works best for you and your family so I’m not plugging Singapore Math as the “Be-all, end all” of math curriculums. It’s simply the one that works for us, and if you are looking into teaching Home School or are already home schooling, but haven’t yet found a Math curriculum you and your children love, consider giving Singapore Math a try!

To learn more about Singapore Math and to read a fantastic Blog post written by an American public school Math Teacher who has adopted Singapore Math, and see a YouTube video about other public schools adopting the curriculum, click here.

Also, visit the Singapore Math curriculum website where we order our materials.

And if you’ve used Singapore Math, whether you’ve loved it or hated it, tell us about it in the comments, and tell us “Why?” More input from more sources is welcomed and appreciated here!

Be sure to check out MY post about the importance of overcoming your own personal Math hangups and shortcoming, in order to better encourage your children to succeed in all areas of academics and in life – How Is Your Child’s World Being Framed?

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