Secular Thursday: Patience is a Virtue...

...especially if you're a homeschooler.

Last week, my husband made a chart of colors with all the colors written in different languages. After the girls sat down on the couch, he pulled out the color blue and said the colors to them in English, French, Spanish, and German. Rose is 7 months old. She didn't care. Iris, who is two, had gotten up in the middle, gone to the toy box, and had begun to play with something random. Lily, being four, had stayed put, but had totally spaced out. So when their dad repeats the color and then asks them what that certain color is in a specific language, Iris isn't paying attention and Lily's automatic response is "I don't know." My husband: "Did anyone else just get a sudden headache?" I snorted at that moment, trying to supress my laughter. He then goes on to say, "You know, each day I keep getting more turned off on the idea of homeschooling." "Why? Because how frustrating it is that they don't want to pay attention?" "Exactly."

Like I said, I could only laugh. I deal with this every day. Every day, when we sit down for an activity, Lily spaces out in the middle of doing bookwork. You can ask her to draw a rectangle, and it will seem like she's doing just that, until, halfway through the rectangle, she's doodling. You ask her what she's doing and she stops and stares at her doodle and responds with her usual "I don't know." *head-desk* Iris gets distracted almost immediately after given an instruction. A simple "can you draw a circle for me, please?" and as soon as she picks up her crayon she's completely forgotten what you just asked her. Most of the time they sit down to do a certain activity that involves their undivided attention, like writing or math, I have to snap my fingers in front of their eyes and go "FOCUS!" or it will never get done. I've learned to be patient.

I am a very impatient person. I was kind of spoiled as a child. Materially, I wasn't given everything I wanted, but my emotions were always tended to immediately. If I was angry, you had to console me, NOW. If I was hungry, you had to feed me, NOW. If you had upset me, you had to apologize, NOW. So when I work with my girls and they don't do it NOW, it can get quite frustrating, especially when it's not just spacing out but downright defiance. There have been days when I just want to pull a Homer Simpson and throttle them, but I always try and leave a room when I get too irritated.

Patience was something I had to learn when I began staying with my children full time. If I got too angry or frustrated with them, I usually had to put my own self in time out. I'm not saying I don't get angry now or that I'm anywhere near perfect where patience is concerned, but I do my best, and I have gotten better over the past couple of years. It's not easy and a constant work in progress, but every homeschooler knows how much patience is needed.

Wordless Wednesday: Burger King Night

Unit Ideas for March

• St. Patrick's Day
• Dr. Seuss's Birthday
• Spring
• Ostara/Easter
• bunny and Easter eggs
• Forest Animals
• bears
• deer
• raccoons
• wolves, foxes, coyotes
• Simple Machines
• pulleys
• wheels
• ramps
• lever

Lesson Plans for the week of Mar 01- Mar 05

Monday: trace lines; workbook exercises: letters A-C, Big/Small, color red, sorting same, things to do at home, alive/not alive; music: quarter note; Spanish: colors; write in journal; workbook review: draw shapes

Tuesday: DR SEUSS'S BIRTHDAY!! spend day reading books by author and playing with ooblech! (non-newtonian fluid)

Wednesday: trace lines; workbook exercises: letters E-f, open/shut, color orange, sorting same, things at dinner, plants; music: quarter note, half note; Spanish: colors; write in journal; workbook review: hours

Thursday: trace lines; workbook exercises: letter G, review upper- and lowercase letters A-G, stop/go, color yellow, sorting same, things in the kitchen, habitats; music: quarter note, half note; Spanish: body parts; write in journal; workbook review: pennies

Friday: trace lines; Spanish: colors & body parts; write in journal (haven't thought up of what else to do today, thinking simple machines for the both of them)

Weekly Wrap-Up

This is my first "wrap-up" post so bear with me. :D

Monday: Lily has gone through most of her Bran Quest Kindergarten workbook. So to make sure she was retaining information, I decided to do "workbook review" with her the entire week. We back-tracked and did everything she had done in the book by memory this week. On Monday she worked on writing the letters A through G in both upper- and lowercase. She also wrote number 1 through 12. Afterward we took some time out and wrote in her journal.


Iris worked on tracing. She did vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines. When i got to curves, she wasn't feeling it and decided to play with blocks. So with the blocks we worked on creating patterns. I was trying to show her to just put it next to mine in a new line, but she wanted to continue the pattern adjacent to the line I had created. Worked either way. At least she was understanding the pattern concept. We then spent a half hour coloring in books. :D (me included)

We've been trying to introduce musical rhythm, and today was the day we did the most work. Unfortunately even though we worked with only a quater note, Iris just had fun saying "ta" and Lily retained 0. After 15 minutes of trying, I gave up for the day and moved on to basic Spanish--which thankfully they took on with no problems.

Tuesday: We had a playdate over at a friend's house today! We were there for three hours just having a good ol' time. We didn't get much done but had a lot of fun.

Iris worked some more on writing lines. Again, she refused to even TRY writing curves. Lily wrote some vocabulary from memory. I, my, you, a, the. When we got home, we did some basic Spanish.


Wednesday: We had an appointment with the Early Learning Center here in town for the Child Fair. The Child Fair is actually held for vision, hearing, dental, and speech/language screenings. They all passed with flying colors. Lily and Iris are 'ahead' by two years, each. Rose is only 6 months, so as long as she's squealy and healthy and happy, I'm not worried about her. Having three kids, we were there for at least an hour, maybe two. So again, we didn't get much done. Iris worked on body parts. Lily practiced basic adding/subtracting skills with a game of Monopoly, Jr.

Thursday: I had a whole big day planned that was put on the back burner because my husband had forgotten to print out all of the lapbook activities. (I would really like a printer that isn't taking up space as a paperweight like our current one) So instead, we hung out in our pajamas ALL DAY. I took the girls to the library where I printed out our activities (and it cost me 2.40$), played outside in the snow, and practiced some basic Chinese.


Friday: We had a visit from our "teacher" through the Learning for Life program provided by our Department of Public Health. So the girls got to play and interact with Carla by having a picnic, reading some stories, and playing with some random toys. Afterward we did our If You Give a Mouse a Cookie lapbook that I had gotten from homeschoolshare.com. It took the ENTIRE DAY. :) Iris did the shadow matching game (she got all of them right on the first try!) and the mouse paper craft (building a mouse). Lily did the 'bookwork' by writing all the circles she found in the story and telling me what we knew about mice. Both girls did the cookie-match and math mat activities. We shared some mouse-themed songs and poems and then we sat down and baked cookies. We had a LOT of fun doing this. I loved that it covered math, science, art, and language arts. Not to mention we ate some delicious cookies.


It was a crazy week. We kept getting visitors, AND it decided to snow again. Thankfully this weekend has been very nice and we've been able to leave the house without slipping on ice every five seconds. We actually left the house today in tennis shoes instead of snow boots. Tomorrow I'll be posting my ideas for the upcoming week's lessons.

Secular Thursday: Science is Real

First off, I may be a secular homeschooler, but that does not mean that I'm an atheist. It's a common misconception that secular=atheist. I just feel that religion is something you learn about and all religious beliefs are open for discussion. There are times when I may add something from the Bible, Torah, or a Buddhist quote depending on relevence to the topic.

Anyway, my kids are only 4 and 2, so they don't really care. Regardless, we are trying to do a simple Science program that is fun for toddlers. They Might be Giants teamed up with Disney and made three DVD/CD combo packs titled, Here Come the ABCs, Here Come the 123s, and Here Comes Science. It's a DVD full of fun educational music videos, all animated, or, in the case of the 123/ABC, animated and puppeteered.

Now I'm not against Creationism. But Evolution is fact. It's been proven; you can see it in action. I'm one of the rare outspoken few who believe that Evolution is overseen by a higher power. I don't believe in JUST one or the other. I find that they each have their place and combined, they make perfect sense. What I like about Here Comes Science is that it talks about Evolution and how each living organism is connected to the next, biologically speaking. We may differ in many ways, but all creatures are combined by 4 common elements and have all evolved to better suit and adapt to their surroundings. WHat's the most awesome part? This is taught IN SONG! It's a musical of awesomeness. My toddlers have NO IDEA they are learning and I love it.

The pictures I provided are the CD cover (which are all the tracks sung on the DVD) and a photo that I took with my phone of a clip from the Speed & Velocity video.

Go check it out.

Monthly Themes Ideas

I keep forgetting to post these. I'm going to do this the first of every month from now on. (So for March, next week).
These are unit theme ideas for future reference.

January:
Seasonal changes
-rain
-snow
Animals in winter
-hibernation
Penguins
-polar animals
warmth and coziness
Martin LK, Jr.

February:
Groundhog Day
Candlemas/Imbolg
Chinese New Year
Valentine's Day
-communication/correspondence
transportation
-road
-trains
-water
-air
-space