Thoughts and link

I'm trying to get going, finishing our history/geography curriculum and cleaning and scheduling before we start. I found this on Pinterest today:

http://www.myjoyfilledlife.com/2015/04/10/4-reasons-not-homeschool-room/

Good reasons! 

End of Summer Blues/Panic/Insanity

It's August! AUGUST. That means our school year starts a month from now. We're waiting until September (or August 31st because it's a Monday; I haven't decided yet). I have my list of school materials priced and as the deadline looms for what I've been seeing as the beginning of my "official" homeschooling job, since we're starting Kindergarten, I'm tempted to pitch it all.

I want to start the year with shiny new supplies, with crisp books, with everything ready ahead of time. I want to.

But I'm also having second thoughts about committing to curriculums, to buying stuff we might not need, etc. I have a hard time, often, distinguishing between what is a worthy cause-- then I end up spending money on stuff we don't need and never getting things that would have been immensely helpful.

I've been listening to podcasts about homeschooling this summer and really thinking about what I want our school to look like, how our days will work. Some of my summer goals didn't happen. We've gotten behind or slack in areas I didn't even anticipate.

I want to have a good and right focus and I feel like it's so tempting to focus on the peripheral stuff at the expense of the core things, because the core things are simple and less shiny. Right now, the only thing that's even making focusing on the "core" stuff sound "exciting" to me is just purely the challenge of minimal living.

So, I'd love your thoughts on what's necessary and beneficial in a school day.

My pricing list right now includes:
a big world map
an Usborne History book
handwriting curriculum
next two volumes (one year) of math curriculum
Bible study
golf-size pencils

We already have: popsicle sticks, pebbles for counters, plastic bear counters, binders, tabbed dividers, rest of kindergarten math curriculum, some Bible study stuff, crayons, reading curriculum, a library card.

I want to have things "perfect" before school starts-- organized and orderly and new.

My boys have some motor skill delays-- some drawing is an option, but the Charlotte Mason "sketchpad and pencils" method is appealing to me without being great for them right now. They'll draw, but asking them to draw something in front of them is going to be a huge exercise in frustration I think, especially if we're already doing handwriting/letter forming practice.

If I scrapped my school list, which I already recognize is pretty minimal, I'd probably skip the math curriculum until we needed it and just start the year with the rest of kindergarten instead of rushing them through it in August or skipping it just because the material is repeated/reviewed in the first grade stuff. This sort of screws over my hours of work carefully plugging in math lessons in my weekly planner, but eh, those are just numbers. It's not the end of the world.

I think the thing I'm butting my head against is the forced realization that just having more detailed "to-do" list for the day doesn't mean I'm actually better at doing it. It's not a substitute for discipline. It might help a little bit, but having "lesson 57, page 109, activities 4-9" in a planner is not more helpful than just "math" when the book is already open-and-go anyway. If I was lesson planning from scratch, sure, I'd have to do that prep. But on some level, a check box is a check box, yo.

So instead of "Perfect School," I'm examining some of the things we need or want to focus on this year:

learning to read
character-building Bible study/memorization
fine motor skills (forming letters/numbers, holding a pencil, cutting with scissors)
continue to advance in math
interest-studies (human body, planets, animals)
listening to read alouds

We have our reading curriculum. If I do a little work, I could probably find topic-based Bible studies for free and we have a printer and ink. We have another six to eight weeks, probably, of math. We have bazillion books and a library card.

My dilemma right now is finishing my history/geography curriculum and deciding about handwriting. Do I get handwriting books? Or do I just get plain notebooks and work on the alphabet one letter at a time? Either way, I'm going to have to help trace or correct pencil hold, I know how to have them practice straight and squiggly lines, I can make decent block letters.

This is long and rambling. Thoughts?

Two cups of coffee kind of day

Today has been a day of cleaning and cleaning and still not looking like much has been cleaned. It's not obsessive cleaning, but too-long postponed deep cleaning and purging and it will keep going. Taking a little break right now while a certain toddler plays in the baby pool-- it's lovely, with a bit of a breeze and spots of shade. I had to get up off the blanket we laid out because I was drifting to sleep. I'm just noticing the horizon today, the tree-covered mountains to the west and the clear blue line in the east. It's lovely here. We had ice cream cones after lunch and the baby pool was my method of cleaning off-- it's not entirely effective. 

Our tomatoes are growing (or at least alive kind of) in spite of me. 

Days until school: thirtyish? 

Focus today: making the house feel liveable and not a collection of clutter. Sick of clutter. I'm resisting the urge to just throw everything away. The hard work isn't getting rid of stuff, for me, it's taking the time to sort through it properly and follow up on trashing, restoring, giving away, and putting away. It'd be easier to just toss it all. But that's not any better than just letting it sit around, really. 

I just know that this house is starting to feel too small and 90% of that feeling is coming from STUFF, not people. 10% is probably having only one toilet, heh. 

Ideals and Reality

I didn't actually sort any books or work on the study yesterday. I really need to. I need to just start instead of distracting myself or waiting to feel like it. Usually, wanting to do something coincides with the baby waking up and then I'm kicking myself for using all the nap time for something pointless or wasteful. 

I've been thinking a lot though, before I start, about ideals and reality. I have an ideal, maybe just half formed, of what I envision a minimalist school to look like and then I have to match that to the reality of what we actually need. Sometimes we might need stuff that we have to work hard to keep from cluttering our space and that work is part of the process. Sometimes I cling to things because I think they match my ideal but they're actually just taking up space. I have to have a good idea of my motivations for keeping or discarding different items and this, hopefully, will also streamline our school spending-- we won't be buying duplicates of things we have or spend money on stuff we think we need just because it's a good idea. 

One thing I know will go is some of our art/painting supplies. We just don't use them and I have little desire to. I'll keep some though, even though I'm not a fan of messy projects, because I know the kids still need those experiences even if it's not my favorite activity. 

What things do you find yourself keeping because you feel like you HAVE to? Is it a good "have to" or a false expectations one? How do your ideals help you and how do they cripple you?

little words

Apparently, "Can I have a rest time with books?" is code for, "Can I strip down to underwear to lounge for a bit?"

Also, Sam asked today to watch the "penultimate episode" of Octonauts and he was using the word correctly.

Sorting Through the Mess

We're getting ready to start kindergarten this fall and as of right now, the house/school (homeschool, haha) are not at all where I want them to be. We have clutter everywhere and I'm going to work on paring down books and supplies so I can have easy access to the essentials. I'm going to work on an essentials list as I go and maybe alter it throughout the year. Right now, I'd like to depend a lot on our library (we have a great system here) and not try to store so many children's books.

I'm going to track my progress, partly as a way of planning out how I work and partly as a way of preventing me from impulsively buying stuff we "might" need. I like having clear spaces, clear desks, and the best way to do that is to not try to store or own so much. I also have a theory that kids need far less than what we think they do to learn effectively and the more stuff we have the more cluttered learning is, as well.

Right now, my goal is to clean up books in our study (which is also my husband's office) and clean out my art/school supply rubbermaid cabinet. I want it to be easy to get to important papers and supplies instead of a balancing act with lost or duplicate items and things prone to falling.

My ideal is good quality multi-use items, but I don't want to just buy "good" stuff when I have things here that might work, and I don't know what I have because I can't see it all.

Countdown to school: 36 days!