Summary Saturday: The Reality of Homschooling

Many times as mothers and especially homeschoolers, we see what other families do and think to ourselves, “Wow! They get so much done and have such fun with cool projects and inventive teaching. I can never do all that because of X child or Y situation. I’m just not a very good homeschooler.” This is especially true when you are just beginning your home school journey. It can be overwhelming and frustrating when things don’t work out the way you envisioned.

When I started this blog, I promised myself that I would be transparent with our lives. Not everything in our home is rainbows and unicorns, especially when it comes to school time. I lose my temper, there are tears and whining, and sometimes when we are all busy…there is Monkey destruction. I had already decided this week to do a “Week in the Life” type of post to show the real side of homeschooling, but apparently someone told Monkey to be in rare form this week!

So without further ado, here is a real week at Live Oak Christian Academy (our school name).

Chipette:

Chipette started working on division this week and our math book, Math in Focus, had some fun activities in this chapter to have students divide blocks into equal groups, and then write out the division equation they just demonstrated.

Next, she did the same thing with craft sticks to make shapes. For example how many pentagons can you make out of 20 sticks?

Chipette loves these kinds of hands-on problems. They stick in her head better than anything else.

Meanwhile…Monkey got into the pantry and dumped half of a bag of rice on my keyboard and on the floor:

My period, e, and s keys still do not work correctly! When this happened I just told them all to get out of the room. First, I didn’t want them to step in the rice and get it everywhere. Second, because I was afraid I might lose my cool. I needed to count to ten in peace.

Back to Chipette, she made a chest vest to learn how the lungs, ribs, and diaphragm all work together so you can breathe.

We have really been enjoying our quick study of the human body and are looking forward to diving into it more thoroughly at a future date.

Chipette has one grammar activity that is her absolute favorite…playing teacher. This week she was checking her students’ homework (I wrote sentences with capitalization errors on the white board) with a red marker. She had to fix their errors and then she gives them a grade based on how many they get wrong.

She has great fun with this game and don’t tell her, but she learns a lot too!

Meanwhile…Monkey got into the master bedroom which is supposed to be kept locked (Right, Chipette?), then got into my fingernail polish, decorated himself, and ruined the quilt on our bed. Which wouldn’t be a big deal (just get a new quilt right) except I designed the entire master bedroom around the quilt and it is not longer sold at Target.

I hate to admit it, but I lost my temper on this one. I screamed and cried. Not one of my finer parenting moments, but I was unbelievably frustrated since I had just figured out what to put above our bed, and, of course, it matched the quilt. But like any good mom should, I apologized to them later for not acting like a Christian should, and I read them James 1:19-20 that I hadn’t shown the righteousness of God. Ugh!

Magpie:

Magpie started her Explode the Code Primer books this week with great enthusiasm. She is a workbook loving child!

Even though, Magpie has excellent fine motor skills, I still try to make Explode the Code a little less writing intensive (there is plenty of practice writing the letters!) by letting her use Do-A-Dot markers instead of circling or coloring.

It makes it more fun and keeps her hand fresh so she can make her letters correctly instead of sloppy because she’s getting tired.

Monkey:

Dear, sweet Monkey, who tried Mommy’s patience this week like any two-year old boy should, but we did get in one learning moment between the mischief. He sat at the table and colored a picture…

for about 30 seconds before he was off on another adventure!

So this is a real, normal homeschooling week for our family. If yours never has these problems, then don’t tell me! I like to believe that we all go through this, so don’t ruin my fantasy. J

Offering a large reward for anyone who knows how to get fingernail polish out of fabric in the tree house,

Chelli