Relaxed homeschoolers, Sept. 2013 check-in!

[momto2Cs]

How are my fellow relaxed homeschoolers (I'm assuming there are still some of you out there) doing so far this year? Any great projects/interest-led learning going on?

 

We have daily work that is a must, namely writing (ds12), reading practice (dd10, who is dyslexic), math, and listening to a chapter of SOTW on audio book.

 

Ds12:

Doing a lot of work with soft body physics on the computer. He's reading through the Dark is Rising series (Susan Cooper). We're starting to study for the National Mythology Exam, and are folding dd10 in this year, since she wants to take it too. Ds is also reading through The Way Things Works, and is planning to start working his way through Stop Faking It! Force & Motion. His writing alternates between Write With the Best work, and Brave Writer lifestyle bits. He is building several contraptions from craft sticks and hot glue as well... bridges, a cabin, etc. Current favorite TV shows include: Cosmic Collisions, Eureka, Merlin, Once Upon a Time, and Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking. Still going to fencing practice twice a week, and is participating in an in-house tournament this upcoming weekend,

 

Dd10:

She's writing a [very] short story every day or two, usually about animals (her passion in life). Together, we're reading through The Story of Dr. Doolittle, and she's practicing her own reading skills with various readers from the library. She's very much into sculpture and painting right now, and nature journaling. She watches a fair number of animal documentaries too, mostly David Attenborough ones (as well as Eureka, Merlin, and Once Upon a Time), and she helps cook dinner every night. She's learning sewing with my mom too, and jam making/canning. She's practicing hard at roller derby, hoping to move soon from the junior-junior league to the regular junior league.

[2_girls_mommy]

Well, we fit into this category this year, though I wouldn't usually categorize my style as relaxed *though I think in general, hsing is relaxed, as in flexible.*  But I may think differently than some.  I do have friends that I would never consider relaxed (mostly Abeka workbook is school, no exceptions..) I am not that kind of unrelaxed normally :)

 

So life has been challenging for the last couple of months and I have had to be more of a go with the flow type than I usually am.

 

dd11 has been doing latin and a bit of Spanish.  She is taking an art class at co-op and we often read more about the artist they are studying there.  Last week it was Van Gogh, so she is right now doing a self portrait, trying out our new oil pastels for the first time. She is keeping up English and spelling the weeks we have less going on outside the home.  She has joined a Robotics team and is doing research there on natural disasters, getting ready to start working on an invention.  So that has been a lot of her research, notetaking, and science work for now.  We have visited several museums lately, of all varieties: science, art, western, and history and living history.  She is reading historical literature and a bit of history non fiction.   She is also active in dance and will start pointe soon.  We plan to start back to outlining weekly and summary writing weekly for history and science, but I have had to be relaxed on this for now, w/all of the outside classes. 

 

dd8 has the most trouble w/spelling and English.  So we have been making sure to keep up her English and spelling practice pretty much daily.  She does latin to a lesser degree.  She is in gymnastics this year and is loving it.  We have been reading through SOTW w/no additional work for now.  We are just trying to finish it from last year to officially start our vol 2 for this year.  So life has definitely been in the way.  But I keep up her reading.  She is reading a lot on her own these days.  She often goes to bed w/the science encyclopedia, SOTW, and her current book (Ramona series lately..) and reads from each, reporting to me the next day what she did.  Once life calms down a bit I would like to do more w/SOTW 2.  We are doing LCI in co-op this year and that covers a lot of classical history and geography.  She also does a science class there.  We expand on it at home w/ MP and with library books.  So we are studying, just not as much written narrations as we usually do.

 

We are still doing a lot of memory work: history lists, science list, books of the Bible and art cards.  And we are reading a couple of different books aloud.  Both of course do math 3-4 times a week.

[Soror]

Well, I'll listen in although I don't exactly fit in (I don't think!). I always love to hear what others are doing however.

[Farrar]

We aim for semi-relaxed.

 

Our September has definitely been relaxed though.  We have been on break all month and will only start on Monday.  :D

[Jilly]

 DS 10 schools in a very relaxed way. This week he has been writing for hours a day working on fanfiction and other books. He has been working through Life of Fred one to three chapters a day, and he is reading A Wrinkle in Time. He has a new obsession right now, hybrid fruit. I have no idea where this came from, but he is obsessed, so we have been researching and trying different hybrids. He records his reactions to all of them, and he is brainstorming what fruits he thinks would go good together. He has also been composing on the piano and working on Latin. He loves Latin.

[sewingmama]

Well nothing too exciting going on here. My kids are young so when they finish the basics they usually just play.

 

DD is working on a lapbook about Unicorns. I'm not sure how that is going...I helped her gather information and left her to it. She's my crafty kid so lapbooks of her own design are right up her alley.

 

Now that its spring the boys spend a lot of time outside with scooters.

 

Next week is school holidays here and we booked a beach vacation for a week.

 

Yep...super relaxed around here LOL

[sdobis]

I always start out the year with grand plans, but we always shift to a more relaxed style. 

 

DS 15-He's not nearly as relaxed since his goal is to pass 5 CLEP tests at the end of the year. He does one lesson of algebra a day, Spanish through numerous materials, biology with DIVE and other videos, history with Notgrass Exploring America, lots of writing, reading American lit and watching movies based on American lit. He's also studying old testament kings at the moment. My son plays football for our homeschool team, spends way too much time with his girlfriend, and will be looking for a job to help pay for his driving lessons.

 

DD 9-Reading is our main focus. She is just beginning to read on her own. My goal is to read to her daily (The Sign of the Beaver currently), have her read two stories a day from her Rod and Staff reading book (also covers bible), and have her read something for enjoyment only (goosebumps). We use MEP math about every other day and lots of Life of Fred. I read Mystery of History and my dd likes to place a picture on her timeline book. We read from Mr. Q life science once a week. Other than this, my dd likes Spelling city games, magic school bus cartoons, fun experiments, making crafts galore, learning to sew, watching American lit movies with her bro, and other cool shows. She wants to plant a garden this year, open her own web store with her sewing and crafts, and learn to bowl.

[Down_the_Rabbit_Hole]

Dd (8) works on her story writing every day. She has several notebooks, each dedicated to the type of stories in them: animal stories, mystery, scary, weird . She is also working on building a circus (large decorated box). We have been entertained each evening by the different shows she puts of with the circus people/animals she made. This week she finally started reading the Little House series. During our read aloud time (right now we are reading Johnny Tremain) she works on sewing quilt blocks. Her goal is to make a lap quilt completely by hand. Twice a week she goes over to the home of a little girl (4) and keeps her occupied while the mom cleans house or gets other things done. Sort of like a babysitting job but with the parent still home.

 

We still have the normal school work:spelling, language, math, history, and science, but these are getting done by lunch. So from lunch to evening she works on her own things.

[Runningmom80]

I aim to be relaxed, I'd love to join in! DS will be 7 in November, doing a grade 1/2 sort of mash up.

 

Currently doing OM, but seriously considering deviating. I've read project based learning, and I'd really like to get into that.

 

 

I'd love to classify myself as a classical unschooler if it wasn't so laughable. :lol:

[Halcyon]

I am working on a "relaxed rigorous" model here at our house :D not sure if I fit in here, but.......

 

Ds11 is doing Pre algebra, and we are spending some extra time on linear equations right now to cement the "how do I approach this problem" ability. He is writing an essay about mummies, and also a paper about how to shuffle cards properly (we are working a lot on writing and vocab this year). He's reading some horrible book about zombies by Charles Higson-he just loved dystopian, scary books, and also reading Witches of Blackbird Pond with me. Latin is goi g really well, much much more relaxed than last year, again with a focus on vocab, his weakness. He is spending inordinate amounts of time learning card tricks and has gotten surprisingly good.

 

Younger is designing and making many dresses for his Barbies. He takes a weekly sewing class and is learning a lot. He is enjoying Duolingo Spanish tremendously and has learned far more than we did all last year. We love Duolingo here! Math is steady, writing is good. He is reading Bud not Buddy and playing lots of settlers of catan with brother and sitter when I work.

 

It's been a good week. :)

[RoundAbout]

We are by necessity relaxed this year because we are traveling. We just finished a month long grand tour of some major National Parks. DS finished several Junior Ranger programs, attended some really cool talks on animal conservation, and did the young scientist program in Yellowstone. Also impressed with his ability to set up the tent by himself and start a fire :)

 

We do math almost daily and are about to finish RightStart C and probably spend a month playing the RS games before moving onto something else (not sure if it will be level D, BA, or another program). We do handwriting practice as much as we can and DS reads to me for about 20-30 minutes every night (currently about half way through the first Harry Potter).

[briansmama]

I'm not sure we'd fit into the relaxed category as we are actually pretty rigorous for 3 hours per day, but the rest of the day is devoted to cool projects/interests directed by my kids (4th and 1st grades).

 

My 4th grader is taking a computer programming course (Tinker) because he's interested in designing a video game. He asked if he could sign up because he wants to create a video game app and have people rate it :) He's not there yet, but working towards that goal! He also asked his piano teacher if he could play more songs in the next recital. That made me happy, since this was the child who asked to stop taking piano lessons last year. Very glad we stuck with it. He's also working almost every day on his first novel. I'm really impressed that he's continuing that project, as he's been working on it for months now. He's taking an online Greek Myths class and loves it. This has led to a Greek history study during lesson time, which we are both really enjoying.

 

Our 1st grader is starting to "get" his school work, summarizing his cultural Fairytales and doing the academic/artistic output that goes with it during lesson time. On his own time, he's writing lots and lots of books, menus, letters, games using stapled sheets of paper. He asks to play restaurant nearly every day, where he creates the menu and "serves" his family.

 

All in all, we've had a great beginning to the school year. This is the first time I haven't planned any more than a month in advance, and even then, I've mostly planned the schedule and resources, not the daily content. I'm really trying to remain flexible and create integrated lessons surrounding their interests. It seems to be a good balance of interest-based and focused academics for us.

[madteaparty]

I think I fall into this category: we only HS a few days a week (he has light homework the other days when I work) and really we are just doing the 3Rs this semester with some 20 minutes of French here and there and a chemistry co-op.

This is our first semester homeschooling, and i think it si going ok, though I have no way of knowing really. I hope we are doing enough. We have a couple of trips planned in the near future and just taking it day by day I guess.

 

[Chrysalis Academy]

Well, if relaxed can count as a state of mind, I have to say I am remarkably relaxed so far this year!  I'm taking things slow and easy getting used to teaching dd7, and figuring out what works with her and how to engage her.  Parts of our day she loves, parts she "hates" and figuring out what she's ready for, telling the difference between bored/too easy and too hard is my current challenge.  My feeling about 2nd grade is pretty relaxed, however - all she really needs this year, IMO, is math, reading and writing.  For content subjects I read aloud and she tags along with documentaries and projects her sister is watching/doing.  More important to me this year is establishing our learning relationship, and figuring out what works best with her.  Given that she's at or above "grade level" in all this stuff, I'm pretty relaxed!

 

DD10's 6th grade year has been a lot more relaxed for me, because her attitude is great and she's capable of working so much more independently.  Our topic (rather than text) based history is going so well, she's writing across the curriculum (no WWS stress!) and science is mostly independent.  We're focusing intensively on writing and problem solving skills this year.  But again, because she's above "grade level" in most areas, and is young for her grade, I feel pretty relaxed about the whole thing.  We've had a light week of school this week because her play opens tonight, and she's had 5-hour rehearsals every evening, so she's been a little burnt.  We'll hit it harder again starting next week.  I love the flexibility to ebb and flow the intensity of our school work based on what else is happening in life - that adds to a relaxed state of mind, for sure.

 

Having both girls at home is relaxing -for the first time in 6 years I'm completely disconnected from the ps schedule, and it's so liberating! I'm really loving that part.

 

So yes, I'd have to say we're having a fantastic and relaxed school year so far!  So far, so good!

[Halcyon]

Rose, your post made me smile. Glad things are going so well for you!

[Susan in MO]

Your post reminds me of a wonderful Relaxed homeschool mom, Mary Hood.  Do you follow her method?  She has been around in the homeschool circuit for years, and wrote a book called The Relaxed Homeschooler. Here is her website if you are are not familiar with her homeschool philosophy.  http://www.archersforthelord.org/

[JaneEyre]

Well, we had been more relaxed in the past and then last year tried to be more structured (did lessons at the same time, did them everyday, used textbooks, and tried to follow the AmblesideOnline schedule).  I was looking for something to help me be more relaxed again and I ran across a post by, I think, Ellie that said she had always had two days of lessons, a library day, a cleaning day, and a day for field trips.  We tried that last week.  The only change I made for us was that my oldest did the younger kids lessons while I cleaned on the cleaning day. 

 

It was a great week!  There was a field trip on Monday that lasted from 9-2, and when we came home tired we all just relaxed and didn't worry about lessons.  Tuesday was a regular lesson day.  Wednesday we got up went to the library for a few hours and came home and all laid around enjoying our books.  Thursday I did a deep clean of the bathroom ( which I didn't have to worry about cleaning a little on everyday, because I knew I had a 'Cleaning Day' coming up), while my dd13 had a checklist from me and got to be the teacher for her little brothers and then do her work.  She loves to be the teacher, especially when it's between that and cleaning : ) Friday was a regular lesson day.

 

We relaxed our actually lessons as well.  I love most of the Ambleside choices, but trying to follow the schedule did not work for us.  Now if we like an Ambleside book, we will just read it on our own.

 

We have lessons all year, so I think this is a great schedule for us for right now.

[Runningmom80]

I like the idea of having only a couple of days of lessons.  I may try that!

[Chrysalis Academy]

OMG, dh just brought home 3 crates of tomatoes, the last of the season . . . so tomorrow will be a very relaxed day:  how to can tomato sauce!!  :lol:

[Desert Strawberry]

I will be brief. I'm on my kindle. 

 

We had a rough couple of weeks, but seem to have worked things out. 2.5 months in I'm still juggling things. It seems at least this year juggling is going to be the name of the game. 

We'll just have to be flexible. Even though my meticulous planning has fizzled, we are making good progress--too fast in some cases. I'm having to conjure up additional lessons to fill in until we can get what we had planned.

Over all, doing well :)

 

[Soror]

Well, I'm not sure if this was a spam bump or not but I'll bite :) Even though we've finished 13 wks here I'm still doing little tweaks, thankfully we seem settled on the basics though. We are especially loving MCT and WR. History and Science are still a bit flexible. I'm having ds either read or do an activity in both for at least 20 min a day but I'm keeping it pretty open as to what he wants to do. I've been doing a pretty big read aloud time about 3x a week incorporating science, history and literature for everyone and during this time I've been keeping to Middle Ages for History. We started the GEMS Bubbleology guide last week and everyone loves it so far. I'm just planning on 1 lesson a week, although they continued to play w/ it all throughout the week. I thought I'd start w/ an easy guide to see how it went.

 

I've been able to make it to the library more and have been stocking up on science and history magazines and having ds pick plenty of books for himself while there as well. He loves the magazines and if I have them around he'll read them, they have KidsDiscover, Cobblestone and Ranger Rick. I also have a decent amount of books here, especially classics and he always has at least one going. He seems to absorb so much just from all the reading he does.

 

Yesterday he decided he wanted to do Latin so he started going through GSwL. He's still super excited this morning and talking about how fun it is. I'm just letting him do it on his own but I did show him where the audio files are, I wont be forcing it though.

 

I have noticed his curiosity has been much greater lately and he is always surprising me about what he knows. Our school feels really, good? I don't know. We are hitting the basics hard but still having fun and also getting plenty of content in and best of all we are all enjoying it. I can really see my son maturing and can see him start having more interest and ownership in his learning and am so excited to see what the future brings.

 

I didn't mention my daughter much but she is in 1st and most of her days are spent in crafts and imaginative play. We are using RS and LoE for the 3Rs but otherwise her days are free. She watches educational videos with us and loves read alouds which we do a fair amount in the afternoon. She is always writing something, cards, invitations or such. I'm starting to see her spelling really improve in her little projects. Her and the 3yo play very well together.

 

Sigh, that is all really disjointed. It is hard to express and quantify what we are doing. I'm just pleased w/ the atmosphere of our house learning has been enjoyable and organic even though my recording of it all seems quite stilted and unclear.

[Soror]

OH, I totally forgot that the kids went through a few week stint of learning survival skills aka preparing for the zombie apocalypse. They worked on making a shelter, learning to start a fire w/out matches, making a water catchment apparatus and ds carved a small spear for catching fish.

 

We've had some nice field trips as well. We visited an exotic animal zoo and a local historic place where we learned about the local area and the civil war. We've visited different parks. We've just been doing various things and keeping busy.

[lovinmomma]

Well, we had been more relaxed in the past and then last year tried to be more structured (did lessons at the same time, did them everyday, used textbooks, and tried to follow the AmblesideOnline schedule).  I was looking for something to help me be more relaxed again and I ran across a post by, I think, Ellie that said she had always had two days of lessons, a library day, a cleaning day, and a day for field trips.  We tried that last week.  The only change I made for us was that my oldest did the younger kids lessons while I cleaned on the cleaning day. 

 

It was a great week!  There was a field trip on Monday that lasted from 9-2, and when we came home tired we all just relaxed and didn't worry about lessons.  Tuesday was a regular lesson day.  Wednesday we got up went to the library for a few hours and came home and all laid around enjoying our books.  Thursday I did a deep clean of the bathroom ( which I didn't have to worry about cleaning a little on everyday, because I knew I had a 'Cleaning Day' coming up), while my dd13 had a checklist from me and got to be the teacher for her little brothers and then do her work.  She loves to be the teacher, especially when it's between that and cleaning : ) Friday was a regular lesson day.

 

We relaxed our actually lessons as well.  I love most of the Ambleside choices, but trying to follow the schedule did not work for us.  Now if we like an Ambleside book, we will just read it on our own.

 

We have lessons all year, so I think this is a great schedule for us for right now.

How much do you accomplish during this time? Do you use any actual curriculum for your regular lessons?