Homeschooling Mama to 7 on earth, 2 in heaven: Homeschooling Adventures: Reading, copy work and FUN with friends!

This “school year” seems to be flying by, I can’t believe I haven't written since August! I’ve been wanting to give more frequent updates on our homeschooling but never seem to make it a priority, I always have too much I WANT to do…or maybe I should say I always have too many books I read instead :) Anyway…

Someone recently asked “Are you ready for the school year to be over?” My response was “No!” Not just because we don’t take a full break in the summer, but also because we are just having fun learning, and of course also because we still have a lot more I want to accomplish!

We have been having a pretty good homeschooling year, not saying the kids are always excited about everything we do, because they aren’t. But I feel like we have struck a nice balance.

We do a lot of reading aloud, all of us together, high-schooler down to toddler, we always have a fiction book we are on, currently we are halfway through The One and Only Ivan. Plus, we have read (and continue to) a bunch of child friendly versions of Shakespeare plays and lots of poetry. We do a lot of our other subjects by reading aloud too and just discussing the topic, asking questions to one another, so sometimes our schooling doesn't have anything necessarily tangible to show for it, besides things we do for writing & math or when they draw about it.

Our homeschool style isn't about checking things off the list or getting so many pages completed just so that we can say we are done. I say this because there was a time early in our homeschooling when I felt like that's what I had to do. Other than their math books, Math-U-See, we don’t do workbooks or tests, unless a particular kid requests it, for example over the years we have acquired (mostly through someone giving them to us) random workbooks so sometimes they ask to do them, I just let them do as much or as little as they want from them, no pressure. I ask them questions to gage how well they understand or are playing attention so I don't feel the need for tests. Sometimes a kid will say “can you quiz me on these spelling words?” so I guess that would count as a spelling test, but thats usually something they enjoy, and it’s never about getting it right or wrong for a test, it’s just about learning it/knowing it.

We do have curriculum (My Father’s World, among others) materials that we use as we want without feeling like we are tied to any certain thing. One of the things the kids are liking this year is our art lessons from God and the History of Art, we just all sit around our big school table, whoever wants to do it (which is usually my 6th grader, 4th grader, 3rd grader, 2nd grader and sometimes Kindergartener) and I will read and talk about what the lesson is, maybe give a demonstration, then they are free to practice it however they want, lessons are anything from learning to shade in your drawing or making things looks 3-D to drawing Obelisks from ancient Egypt and hieroglyphics.

Now that I have 5, almost 6, students that are readers, one of my biggest requirements is just reading. In addition to the reading aloud we do as a group, they need to read to themselves every day, I don’t set an amount of time for this but just that they progress through whatever book or books that they are working on at a nice rate. At the beginning of 2018 I had each of them start reading aloud to each other for at least 10 min every day. It started as a “Reading Challenge” for January but is something we are continuing indefinitely. They get rewarded at the end of the month (last month was with donuts from our favorite local donut shop!).

We have done several free field trips this year, including restaurants where the kids have learned how things work there or how to make something, a place that does history/art classes (we’ve done quite a few of those), biography and geography fairs with our homeschool group, etc. We’ve been to a Shakespeare exhibit at a museum and homeschool days at an Air Force museum. In the fall we did nature classes almost every week and will hopefully be starting those back up as the spring weather begins.

learning to make homemade pizza dough

Every week we do “poetry tea time” where we sit around the kitchen table reading poetry while drinking or eating some kind of treat. We do writing in the form of freewriting, usually once a week, and copy work, a few times a week. For copy work we use phrases from the books we are reading, inspiring quotes, bible verses, lines from Shakespeare, etc. Recently they did a few lines from the Declaration of Independence and then memorized it. At Christmas time we used quotes from Scrooge and the Grinch for our copy work. It’s just a good way to check on their handwriting, practice cursive for the ones doing that, help them see how quotation marks and punctuation are used, and helps them become familiar with and remember passages. Sometimes I will have the kids write it again with me just reading it to them without them looking at it to see if they can remember the correct spelling and punctuation.

We have done a lot of fun “lessons” with friends as well this school year, we did activities to go along with The Indian in the Cupboard, made up our own definitions for all the crazy words in the Jabberwocky poem (by Lewis Caroll), had a Harry Potter party with friends who also read all the books, wrote comic strips, celebrated Dr. Suess’s birthday, went creeking, hiking, did Lego Clubs with topics like The Periodic Table of Elements, careers, the Wright Brothers, engineering, etc. It is always nice getting together for educational activities with another homeschooling family, we can all learn something from each other and it’s good for us to switch things up. This week we have a spelling bee with friends!

I should have been writing/sharing more often because I know I’m probably forgetting things from the beginning of the school year, and this is getting long, but I think this is a pretty good overview of our year so far.

I don’t share all this to say “look how awesome our school year has been!!” all these things I have shared are the highlights, some of my favorite things that have worked for us for this season of our lives, with the ages of my kids. It is not always fun and games. We have read aloud times that I feel like I have to shout just to be heard over our toddlers loud voice, we have math times when I am overwhelmed with 2-4 kids asking me for help at the same time, we have a teenager that is moody (!) and has math problems that sometimes I don't understand, we have fights amongst siblings over who goes next and who is the best reader/spelling/multiplier/drawer/etc., we have a toddler who is into EVERYTHING (and if he’s not into something then he wants to be held)!

my brother helping my high schooler with her math

This whole homeschooling journey is not easy, but you can make it a little bit easier on yourself by just trying to have fun with it, when you are enthusiastic about something it rubs off on the kids! Give yourself the freedom to mix things up when what you’re doing isn't working, you’re relationship with your kids is more important than whether or not they get an assignment done.

Hope maybe this post has inspired some ideas to try if you aren’t happy with how your school year has been going or you are just feeling the need to change things up.