This Week at Our House # 32 First Week of School

We are now one week down with 15 weeks to go until our next vacation!! That is if we manage to get all of our work done. I have arranged the 2019/2020 school year so that we have 16 straight weeks with no days off, 6 weeks of holiday vacation time, then 16 straight weeks with no days off. If we can do it, we will end after the 3rd week in April. If it gets too hard, I will give us a week off in October and a week off in March, then we will have school the first week in December and the last week in April. I am hoping to do it straight, though.

The first week of school, in my opinion, went very well. I designed the curriculum for Adam, Rachel, Anya, and Joseph in a way that they would be doing a lot of independent reading and learning, and that they would be required to read a certain amount each day. I also made it so Monday is the hardest day with each day following getting progressively easier. I thought that by doing so, they would not tire out too much by Friday. The large amounts of assigned reading are mainly to get Adam to read faster and become an independent learner.

I have Adam, Rachel, Anya, and Joseph  with 6, 45 minute blocks where they rotate through subjects

I asked Adam to take pictures for my blog and they are all awful

and one half hour block where they all work together. If they do not finish their reading, then they have to finish it at the end of the school day, as if it were homework in a regular school. That is so we get through all of their books this school year. 45 minutes should be enough time, generally, though, because they usually have between 10 and 15 pages to read, and never more than 20.

My plan for Adam seems to be working. On Monday, Adam read his normal very slow pace and had to finish his reading at the end of the school day. On Tuesday, Adam read almost everything in the 45 minute time slot. By Thursday, Adam was finishing his reading in less than 45 minutes and moving on to his other subjects, so he could have more free time.

Rachel did better the other days of the week. I had to get after her. She struggles with the fact that she is older has to take on more responsibility in the home, with school, and how she behaves. By Thursday, Rachel was doing better.

Joseph is the fastest reader of the 4 kids, so he finished his stuff the fastest. Anya seems to enjoy the learning the most. She is genuinely interested in a lot of different things.

My plan of making the school week progressively easier worked for this week. The kids were pleasantly surprised and kind of wondering what to do when they had less work each day.

Joshua and Arwen have a full day Monday through Thursday. Their days do not get easier, but their

assignments are easier and they usually finish off their day about an hour earlier than the older kids. Arwen and Josh both have a lot more reading this year too. They have to read scriptures, a chapter in their reader, and lists of words to me. Then they have to read a few pages in their individual chapter books, and a chapter in the New Testament Scripture Stories on their own. Arwen is doing very well with reading. I have them read word lists and time them. When they can read all the words in under 20 seconds, they move to the next list. Arwen is really good at this. Josh is not so good, so Arwen will move up ahead of Josh quickly. I think the word lists are exactly what Josh needs to help him read more quickly and fluently. This year is the first year that I have started Spanish, History, and Science with them.

Josh is in 4th grade math and doing very well with it. He is actually working from 2 books, so he is learning different things, but he is enjoying it a lot more than when he had to memorize his math facts.

I bought the Good and the Beautiful Language arts curriculum for everyone except Adam and Rachel. I have been pleased with it so far. For Susan, it has given me good ideas that make learning fun. I love that it incorporates some religion, and I especially love that I can trust that there is no propaganda trying to teach my children homosexuality. It is getting harder to find curriculum without a little of that popping in here and there. That is the reason I chose the Good and the Beautiful.

Susan is now learning her alphabet. She does a little with numbers, a little with drawing, and a lot

with the alphabet. Then I read to her and she reads to Sam. I am trying to make it fun for her. I let her use the computer for starfall, and she likes that a lot. She is also doing drawing hub for kids videos. I have found that if a kid can draw a little, then it makes it easier for them to write letters and numbers. Susan likes the time I spend teaching her. She seems to look forward to it each day.

When Ruth, Kate, and Johnny started school, kindergarten was simply learning the alphabet and the sounds and numbers to 20. They did not even attempt teaching the kids to read until the first grade. I liked that better. I wish I had done that for Josh. I think he would be doing better now if I had. I am going back to the old method for Susan. Kindergarten will be learning the alphabet and first grade will be all about reading. So I bought Susan the preschool curriculum this year and I will buy her the kindergarten curriculum next year. Ruth, Kate, and Johnny all ended up at the top if their classes with this method.

By the end of this week, I was very tired. It is a lot of work maintaining the house, continuing the repairs, caring for a baby, teaching and directing school, and cooking and cleaning, all while having a baby that still gets up to eat several times each night. I will get used to it, and I hoping that eventually we will finish all of the house repairs and extra work will slow down. We will see. We bought a construction project and it has been very good to have such a cheap house. I know that when it comes to buying a house again, we will buy another construction project.

Sam handled back to school very well. He sat and drew pictures and played with playdough and built

with blocks. He did not go off and get into everyone's things. In fact, I think this week Sam was the best behaved that he has been in a year. I think the scheduled day helped him a lot, even though, he has nothing scheduled other than scripture reading and story time.

Gideon had a much harder time, not having the same amount of attention paid to him. I began putting him down for naps in his own bed, in the little kids bedroom. He has a porta crib for a bed, so we can move it around. I don't want him waking the little kids up in the middle of the night, but he needs a quiet place to sleep in the day. The nap seems to help because he usually wakes up happy. I have also been letting him play out on the deck or in the

grass while I hang the laundry. He really likes that a lot. He plays with the plants and we have one cat that always goes and sits next to him. She either curls up around him and goes to sleep or she plays with him. She even lets him grab her face. I never put her next to him, but she always goes and sits by him. Gideon really loves to be outside. If he cries and cannot be consoled, I can set him down on the deck outside and he stops crying and looks around and calms down. The time that I spend outside hanging the laundry seems to give Gideon a reprieve and he can go back in and handle school time again.

Nothing changed for Ruth, Kate, and Johnny because they never took vacation time. I even have a hard time getting them to take Saturdays off and just hang out with the family. They work hard on their various projects, and studies.

John has a store on zazzle to sell products with images that he has generated from his math research. That sounds weird, but they happen to make very pleasing art. I think we need to go further with this and start manufacturing our own products and selling them ourselves. Zazzle is just too expensive and you lose a lot from silly things such as not using your own website. I need to contact a few people I know who have had products they developed and then had someplace manufacture them. I think we can do more with this than what we have done.

Kate and I are also talking about opening up some sort of from home catering business or bakery or pizza shop, where we would deliver. There is a lot of red tape to jump through with such an endeavor, so right now it is an idea and not something we are really working on other than making our own recipes. I think that I need my kids to be older before I jump into something like this, though, we could do it as a part time side thing as part of homeschool.