First let me share what our week looks like, then I’ll break down a school day for you.  Of course, you know that we rarely follow this to the letter, right? (Because phones ring and skinned knees happens and math books get misplaced in places where they never should be placed if someone would have been really thinking when they placed it there.) 

(Not written in the schedule is the fact that if I’m walking by the computer, I usually glance at it to see if I’ve received email.  It’s an addiction.  Sigh.) 

(Also not written in the schedule is the fact that I pray almost constantly and spend time reading the Bible most days…usually in the evening.  I didn’t put it into the schedule because there is not a consistent time I have set aside for reading.)

Here’s a basic week at our house:

Monday - Thursday -  “normal” school days
Friday - P.E.; library; field trips; house cleaning
Saturday - planning for the upcoming week for school and meals; cooking and baking ahead; figuring out the blog plan for the week
Sunday - Church; sometimes company after church; small group fellowship in evening

Okay, now, here’s what our Monday through Thursday school days sort of, maybe, kinda look like:

• I get up anywhere between 6:30-7:30…check email, moderate comments, start breakfast.  Oh yes, and sometimes I even take a shower (aren’t you glad?).
• Matt eats and leaves for work around 8.
• Boys get up and come down for hugs, mess around and waste time, get hollered at gently reminded by me a few times to get the show on the road, then finally come eat breakfast.
• I read Bible to the boys while they eat  (I usually eat earlier with Matt or I eat on the fly).
• I clean up dishes and the breakfast table, the boys get dressed and ready for schoool, I throw in laundry.
• 9:30ish  Boys bring down and set up an “activity” (usually something like legos or knex or magnetix) to work on in the living room while I read.
• I read history to the boys while they do their activity.  This works SO much better than asking them to “be still and listen”.  If all is going well…I also read from whatever “read-aloud” we’re on at the time.  This is probably our favorite part of the day.
• Asa starts his math on the computer; Justus and Elias go to the table to work on math, handwriting, spelling, phonics, other language arts (On Mondays, the boys also write in their journals about the weekend);  Malachi does “school work” at the table too, or just plays until it is 11:00 and time for Caillou, then he goes to watch that.  After Justus and Elias have finished their book work (usually takes about 45 minutes), they go play with Malachi.
• After Asa finishes his math (which takes usually around 30-45 mintues depending on how focused he is) he does spelling with me and language arts, then goes to play.  I work on lunch.
• Lunch time is usually around 12:30, depending on when Matt gets home.  We work on memory verses around the table and sometimes I read more from our read-aloud book.
• After lunch, we do our science lesson and experiment if there is one.  We also work on any writing assignments at this time.  (Last week the boys wrote Haiku poetry.  Even Malachi learned what a syllable was!)
• At 2:00, the boys have reading time.  They usually all sit in the living room reading, while I go upstairs and read to Malachi.  Malachi LOVES this since I’m usually giving so much of my attention to the other boys in the morning.  I tuck Malachi in for a nap after I read to him (most days).
• 2:30, the boys go watch Fetch with Ruff Ruffman and Cyber Chase while Malachi naps.  After their shows are over, they play (somewhat) quietly.  I hit the computer and work as hard as I can during this time.
• 5:00 The boys have computer time and play (usually) educational games.  I work on dinner.
• We pick up the house and eat around 6:30.
• Each evening is different, but now that soccer is over, we’ve been able to spend time playing games together, which all six of us LOVE!  Yahtzee anyone?
• Start getting boys ready for bed around 8 or 8:30.  We have prayer time together either in one of the boys rooms or in the living room.
• Matt and I play rock, paper, scissors to see who gets the computer :)  take turns working on the computer (he on writing out price quotes and bills for his construction work, etc…me answering emails and working on website stuff) and try to get to bed around 11.  We are reading a book called Spiritual Disciplines for a Godly Life by Donald Whitney.  We try to read it together before falling asleep.  Usually Matt gets through about a page and a half before he says, “Are you falling asleep or should I keep reading?” 

So there you have it.  Did that answer any of your questions, or just give you more??!

We love reading books together.  We love learning together. 

We love stuffing the ourselves into our small bathroom with the light off, so that we can look into the mirror with a flashlight through prism glasses to see how color is dispersed through the light (and then laughing our tails off together because we are so crammed into the bathroom that we can’t open the door to get out without practically falling together into the bathtub.)

We don’t spend hours of our time filling out workbooks at our house.   We used to and it didn’t work.  It was grueling for the boys and I found myself nagging all day at them to finish their pages.  Yeah, not so much a fun way to learn.

We want our boys to love learning.  (Not that is always has to be fun…but we want them to be curious and creative and excited about learning new things.)  And we don’t want them to think that learning begins and ends with the opening and closing of a workbook or a textbook.  We’ve begun to take more of an “un-schooling” approach to homeschooling over the past couple of years.  (I’ll try to share more often some of the ideas we’ve used to teach our kids spelling and writing creativity and math and science…)

But beyond all of that…

Our family’s homeschool philosophy is that there are some things that are much more important than others: 

Matt and I feel very strongly that teaching our boys to love and serve others is far more important than learning the states and capitals.  We feel like teaching our boys about God’s kingdom is more important than learning all of the past presidents of the United States in chronological order.  And we think that if they learn to be hard workers, but they don’t learn all the dates of history…we will not have failed as parents (or educators).

Our kids still learn all of these factual things…but we don’t focus on them nearly as much as we try to focus on spiritual matters and areas of the heart.  Because of this philosophy…there are some days we don’t open very many books at all. 

Some days our boys simply learn about life.  And caring.  And loving.  And serving.  And about being patient.  And about how to talk to an elderly person.  And about working hard until you are so tired you can’t see straight. 

We’re constantly working to figure out all of this education stuff.  And discipline stuff.  And the most effective ways to train our kids to be like Jesus.  Never have we been so thankful for grace as we have been as we raise our boys.

I’m very curious about what your opinions are on this subject (whether you homeschool or not).  If you do homeschool…what are some of your philosophies?  Are you a workbook-y family?  Does that work for you?  What do you think are the most important things for our kids to know?

One more quick thing.  Suddenly I’ve been receiving lots of emails asking about our schedule, specifically how we accomplish our school day and get everything else done too (like eat and sleep).  Maybe it’s because I promised to tell you more about our schedule and I haven’t yet?  :)  I’m finally going to share about that in a few days…
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Read more Works for me Wednesday posts at Rocks in my Dryer.

First, can I just tell you how much I am learning during school time?  Yes, me, the mom.    The one who is the teacher.  I’m pretty sure the kids are learning too, and that is…you know…the real point of home education.  But I just love how much I’m learning too.  Wow.

So now, let’s take a poll…  When did you learn World History in school?  And how much did you learn? 

Me?  I had one semester of World History in high school and that was it.  And I don’t remember anything about it. 

Just the thought of learning World History has always sounded very dry and boring and overwhelming to me.  And it also sounded very dry and boring.

AND, I’ve always had such a hard time connecting Bible Times with World History.  In my head (limited brain space that it is)…I’ve separated the two.  Like there were Bible Times…and there were also Ancient Egyptian times…but I never could put them together.

THAT, my friends, is the reason I love this awesome set of books my boys and I are reading about World History!!  They are written by Susan Wise Bauer and are called The Story of the World.

We are a little over half way through the first book in this four set series.  They are so well written that my six year old is understanding it…my eight year old…my eleven year old…and yes this 35 year old mama.  We’re all getting it!  It all makes sense!  The information is captivating and incredibly interesting!  (Of course, it’s highly likely that the reason the boys are enjoying the book so much is because ancient times were so filled with fighting and wars and violence and swords…but whatever.)

The best part of these books?  The author combines Bible Times and World History for me!!  She writes about how Jacob and his sons came down to Egypt and made their home along the Nile and how the nation grew!  And then about how things changed years later in Egypt and the Israelites became slaves and how Moses delivered the people.  It all makes so much sense!!  With dates and everything!

I just love this set of books, and my boys do too!  So, I had to share that with you.  If you’re a history buff then you know all this stuff already and you’re laughing at me…but I’m okay with that.  I finally found a book that makes World History make sense to me! 

I just may be able to be on Jeopardy yet. 

(Yeah, that was a joke.  But you didn’t have to laugh that hard.) 
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Read more Works for me Wednesday posts here.
And…visit Happy to be at Home for more homeschooling info!

Last Friday was the big day that we finally got to go school supply shopping!  All of the boys (and Mama too) LOVE this special day. 

A few years ago we started several traditions that we all now look forward to, like each boy having his very own list…each boy getting his very own shopping basket at Walmart…then eating lunch at Runza afterward.  (Runza is a Nebraska fast food chain that is YUMMY.  The boys always read books to earn a free kids meal there…and we save it for our special school supply shopping day.  It makes for quite an outing!)

Here’s Elias looking over his list as we climbed into the van to get ready to go. 

Oh boy, and here are four boys with four lists and four baskets. 
It was tons of fun….and yes it made me tired.  :)

Malachi is showing off his HUGE-MONGUOUS french fry at lunch afterward. 
The free kids meals came with free ice cream cones afterward too! 

When we got home we organized all of our supplies into desks (which the boys rarely actually use for sitting and learning…but they are super for keeping us organized!).

Yes, of course Mama had to get a few supplies for herself!  I couldn’t resist the girly folder (even though of course a plain ol’ green one would have done the job)…and since I needed new scissors…I thought pink handled ones would be nice!  Also…that pack of sharpie-type markers was only $3!!  A teacher/mama needs sharpies!!

The boys declared this day, “Like one of the best days ever!!”

I’d have to agree! 

Happy to be at Home is hosting Homeschool Wednesday….you should check it out!

On Tuesday, the UPS man finally drove up with our wonderful box of books!!  We were all so excited and ran to the door to meet him.  (I’m sure we made his day.)

But there was just one problem.  Asa wasn’t here.  He was working at our shaved ice trailer that day…and I’d promised him that we wouldn’t open the box without him. 

So we sat the box down (it was about 12:30 pm) in the living room and just stared at it.  It was torture! 

Finally at 3:30 I couldn’t stand it any longer.  Asa was going to have to go straight from working to play practice…and I wasn’t waiting until 9 pm to open that box!!

So, we all piled into the van with the box and surprised Asa at the trailer.  He was super excited to see us….but even more excited to see the box!!  It’s cramped quarters in that trailer with four boys (actually five…I was babysitting!), plus a mama and a box of books.  We got all situated and then I started pulling books out one at a time.  Oh the joy!

Then, we packed it all back up and took it home…where we then spread it all out on the floor and began really looking through the books!!!!

Now they’re all stacked on on of our couches as I work to go through them and get them organized and make lesson plans!

I’ve also been working on the school room…which means I pull everything out of the closet and off of the shelves so that I can clean stuff out and re-organize it all!  It is SO MUCH FUN to go through everything and get ready for the school year.  But…as you can see…I’m not done yet.  Everything is still kinda all over the place as I rearrange the desks and figure out where everything is going to go.

We are very blessed to have enough rooms in our house that we can actually designate a room just for school.  However, I’ve found that we use that room as a “hub” for all of our books and projects…but we don’t spend all of our school hours in there.  I’ll share more about that later!

In the meantime…I’ll go finish cleaning and organizing and making lesson plans.  And, tomorrow, we head to Walmart with our lists and pick up our new school supplies!  We can’t wait!

Please sing along with me:

(Sung to the tune of Oh Where oh Where has my Little Dog Gone?)

Oh where, oh where is the UPS man?
Oh where, oh where can he be?!
With the big box of books for our new school year…
Oh where, oh where can he be?

Thank you, you have so much musical talent.  That was lovely.

That’s our theme song right now.  We can’t help it.  Every year right after I place our big curriculum order, we start listening for the UPS truck.  Like obssessed people.   Because we LOVE it when our books come in!!  It’s almost better than Christmas!

So, let me tell you just a bit about our order (because while I’m waiting for the UPS man, I have to at least talk about my books)…

We order most of our school books through Rainbow Resource…because they have excellent prices for just about everything you could possibly ever need for school, ever.  Plus they offer free shipping for any order over $150.  I also order books through Amazon if I can find them cheaper there.  (That’s my Frugal Friday tip, by the way…using Rainbow Resource and Amazon for great book prices!) 

We choose our books based on what Sonlight Curriculum recommends.  They are very literature based…so we get to read many, many wonderful books together to learn more about the Bible, History and Science.

Here’s what we’ll be reading for History (we’re focussing more on World History this year) and Geography:

A Child’s History of the World
The Story of the World:  Ancient Times
The Story of the World:  Middle Ages
Time Traveller
People of the World
Ships, Sailors and the Sea
100 Gateway Cities

For Science we’ll be learning about electricity and magnetism…and about how things are made.  The boys are especially excited about this.

Usborne Elecricity and Magnetism
Usborne How Things Work
Usborne Book of the Microscope
Light and Color
Diary of an Early American Boy

For Bible lessons, along with simply reading from the Bible, we’ll read through Egermier’s Bible Story Book…work on memorizing verses and work on godly character training.

For Math, the younger boys use Miquon…and we LOVE it.  It’s kind of a backward way of learning math, and it doesn’t work for everyone, but our boys have done well with it.

This year for Asa, we bit the bullet (what a weird figure of speech…I would never put a bullet in my mouth and bite it).  Anyway, Teaching Textbooks was recommended to me and after checking into it, I thought it looked great.  So, that is what Asa will be doing for math.  Thankfully, all of the other boys will eventually use it too…so that makes me feel better about biting…that bullet.

For Reading, each of the boys have a list of books to read either on their own, or to a parent. 

Elias:

Bob Books (great set of bunches of little readers)
The Fire Cat
The Bravest Dog Ever
Greg’s Microscope
A Big Ball of String
Little Bear
The Cat in the Hat

Justus:

The Sword in the Tree
The House on Walenska Street
Jake Drake:  Bully Buster
Keep the Lights Burning Abbie
The Littles
Long Way to a New Land
Lon Way Westward
Viking Adventure
Third Grade Detectives (series)
Along came a Dog
Frindle
Mustang:  Spirit of the West
Shadrach
The Whipping Boy

Asa:

Adam of the Road
Archimedes and the Door of Science
The Bedwins Gazelle
The Bronze Bow
Catherine Called Birdy
Luther:  Biography of a Reformer
Detectives in Togas
Mystery of the Roman Ransom
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Samarai’s Tale

Matt and I will also read the following books to the boys altogether:

Island of the Blue Dolphins
Little Britches
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Diary of a Worm
Johnny Tremain
Calico Bush
Justin morgan Had a Horse
Sign of the Beaver
Toliver’s Secret
Mr. Popper’s Penguins
Mountain Born
Homer Price
Cheaper by the Dozen
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Wow…looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us.  Except it doesn’t feel like work…it feels like READING!  And if we don’t get them all read this school year, we’ll carry them over to the next.  (And by the way…I didn’t have to order ALL of these books this year.  We have quite a few of them already.  Otherwise I would TOTALLY be over-budget!)

Coming up in Homeschool Hubbub:  I’ll share more about what we do for Language Arts, what our schedule looks like…and after the UPS man brings our books…I’ll show you pictures of the excitement!!

Oh where, oh where is the UPS man…..

Whether you homeschool or not at your house…I hope you won’t mind me sharing with you some of our hubbub! 

It’s the time of year again when we are getting all geared up for a new school year.  Summer break is awesome, needed and refreshing…but by the end of July, we’re starting to think about getting back into our schooltime routine again. 

Because homeschooling is flexible (one of my favorite parts about it), we usually begin our school year the first week of August and end the beginning of May.  This schedule has worked very well for us mainly because starting our school year in early August means that we get a great start before anything else we’re involved in begins.  (Public school around here starts Aug. 16, by the way, so we’re not starting much earlier than everyone else!)  Soccer doesn’t start until the end of the month, nor do any of our homeschool group events.  So, we have a few weeks to get established in our school routine without having to run here and there to soccer practice and field trips.

Okay…now that I’ve explained when we’re starting and why…can I just tell you a little about how excited we’re getting?!

I love this time of year!  Beginning fresh with crisp, never-opened books, freshly sharpened pencils and new notebooks.  (I get a little giddy with just the mention of the word, “supplies”.  Ooh, school supplies?  I love supplies.  I think supplies is one of my favorite words…)

The boys are starting to ask more questions about what we’ll be learning this year, and I can see the excitement in their faces.  (Okay, I LOVE that my boys get excited about learning!)

Here are a few of our homeschool hubbub highlights that I’ll share more about in upcoming posts:

1.  I have made my curriculum list and am getting ready to check it twice.  There are SO MANY great books out there, and while I’d like to buy $5,000 worth of books that look wonderful….I’ve decided that perhaps I’d better not.  I’m working to fine-tune my list so that I can call in my order in the next couple of days.  I’ll share my list as soon as I get it all figured out!  Just in case you might want to know what we’ll be reading this year…

2.  I always order just a couple of weeks before we want to start school.  We get so excited when the books come in…which makes the boys motivated to get started reading and learning…and I don’t want to lose that momentum and excitement with the boys.  If we start school just a few days after the books come it…the boys are pumped and ready.  A few days after I order, we all start watching for the UPS truck.  It is ONE EXCITING DAY when Mr. UPS Man brings our heavy box of books! 

3.  I’ll make each boy a list of the school supplies (supplies!!!) he needs…then we’ll head off to Wal-mart where each boy gets to carry his own basket and pick out his notebook colors, get a new crayon box, etc.  THIS is probably one of our FAVORITE days of the whole year.  I can’t wait to share more about this day with you!

4.  We always give our school room a thorough cleaning, and then we rearrange the desks and rugs and bookshelves so that we start our school year in a “new room”.  The boys love this part too.

5.  Each school year, Matt and I decide on a new “Godly Character Training” focus for the boys.  We make a fun chart so that we can reinforce the behaviors we want to see in our kids.  It seems that the beginning of a new school year is a good time to re-focus and begin fresh.  The boys always anticipate finding out what new chart I’ll make for them!  Here are the charts we’ve worked through in the past several years.  I am SUPER excited about the idea we came up with for this year.  I’ll be designing it and showing it to you soon!  I think the kids are going to love it.  (By the way, we never use these charts as a reward system.  All we have to say is something like, “Elias, you did what I asked without arguing or complaining.  You are really shining like a star right now.  Go put a star on your chart!”  His face will light up and he’ll put a star on his chart and that’s it.  We don’t give them anything for having a certain number of stars on their charts.  The reward is just having Mama and Daddy notice that they are being like Jesus.)  Okay, I am super excited to get this years chart finished up!

6.  We usually let the boys have one big “Before School Year Bash” where they can each invite one friend over for a little party. 

Okay…enough hubbub for now.  I’ll have the camera ready so that I can share with you all of our special days of getting ready for school to start!  Feel free to ask questions and I’ll try to answer them as I write these posts! 

I’m curious about any of the special before-school traditions you have (homeschool or not)!  And also…does anyone else get excited about the word “SUPPLIES” like I do?!  Just wondering!