There are so many different methods, resources, approaches, etc, for homeschooling — it can make a newbie homeschooler dizzy! Or even some of us who’ve been at it for years. I bet every homeschooler can list at least a couple of things they tried that they didn’t like, or didn’t stick with for one reason or another. (Take lapbooking — I really like the sound of it but we just never got into it. Nothing against lapbooking, I *still* sometimes delude myself into thinking we can give it another go!)

On the other hand, sometimes you see something that you think you *won’t* like, or you don’t fully get it, or whatever, and so you skip it–only to come across it again later and then love it! Such is the case, for us, with notebooking.

I first started seeing freebies for notebooking on Currclick. (I have way too many freebies from Currclick, will I ever use them all?) I’m not the kind of person to grab up EVERY freebie, but I did download a few of them because I wanted to know what it was. And it was just a blank page. With some lines. And a box. And I didn’t get it. “What in the world IS notebooking anyway??” Somewhere along the way I finally figured out that it was kind of like journaling what you learned from your lesson, but it wasn’t until we started using Apologia science last year that we had our first real experience with it.

Last year we started using Apologia Anatomy for our first group science class. After downloading some samples, I decided to go ahead and get the notebooking journals… “Surely I can figure THIS out!” I admit that at first we were all a little lost. The girls looked at me in confusion.

“What do we do?”

“You just write down things that you learned.”

Pause. “ALL OF IT??”

“Well, no, the main stuff. Or maybe pick something really cool you didn’t know and write about that — I dunno!”

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that (then) 7 soon to be 8 year old Drama Queen wasn’t going to take to this whole “writing lots of words” thing. And at that point, Apologia hadn’t come out with the junior journal for astronomy, so most of the time she actually dictated and I wrote. And I figured that was okay, because she was retelling what she had learned and that was going to help her remember the lesson just as well as writing it.

It also didn’t take long for me to figure out that I had this whole idea in my head that everything was going to be filled in and it was going to be pretty and we were going to have this neat little keepsake for the end of the year — or that the idea in my head wasn’t actually going to happen in reality and I needed to loosen up and let it go. Yes, I did encourage the girls to be neat, but I did not need to enforce my vision of perfection on them, either. Overall, I would say that our first year of notebooking went very well, and I decided to continue and expand that even more this year.

This school year, we’re still doing Apologia science, and they *do* have a junior notebooking journal which makes it easier for Drama Queen, I have plans to add notebooking to our Mystery of History lessons as well when we switch over to the next book, and Princess has a notebook/journal for her “Who is God” worldview curriculum. We’ve gotten more comfortable with notebooking but it’s still pretty new and we still have a lot to learn! Just last week I found a tip on Notebooking Fairy to have the kids create word banks while listening to the lesson and then use the word bank while doing the notebooking. We tried it this week (as we were reading I told them when to write down a word and later they used the list to remember what to write about) and it helped so much!

Other things I’ve learned that have helped us are:

1) To adjust my expectations for each child. They have different strengths and weaknesses let alone ages and personalities. My middle daughter wears out faster while sitting and writing and needs to get up for breaks.

2.) To require the little ones to do less, only as much as they are able, and the older ones to do more, challenging and pushing them just a little.

3.) To factor in learning style and interests/abilities. I ask my artsy older daughter to put in more effort on her illustrations when she slaps a stick figure in the box. I ask my less-attention-to-detail middle daughter to pick a few things to write and use this as an opportunity to practice neat writing and neat presentation (no scribbling on the page) and to do the best she can with the illustrations but not worry about it to much. And I let the little drawing boy only draw illustrations if he’d like, preferably dictating a sentence to me to write, and maybe copying the sentence as well if he’s willing to.

4.) Let them use the book! It’s not a test, it’s a journal. If they remember “the guy who did the thing” but can’t remember his name, let them look it up! There’s a good chance they’ll remember his name the next time.

Things I like about notebooking are that it:

1.) Causes the child to immediately recall what they just read/heard/learned. Thereby strengthening their memory and recall of it.

2.) Utilizes LISTENING, READING, and WRITING (and sometimes TELLING!) and I think that things are best learned when more of the senses are involved.

3.) It’s more relaxed and fun that worksheets and quizzes! Though the Apologia science notebooks DO have some questions to answer, sometimes crossword puzzles or diagrams to label.. my kids LOVE those extra pages.

4.) Keeps a visual record of what they are learning — AND they’re growth as a student as their writing, handwriting, inclusion of detail, illustrations and overall presentation improves.

Notebooking may not be for everybody but I think most everybody can utilize it to some extent if they want to, no matter which homeschool method, curriculum or style they use. You don’t even have to have a fancy journal, just pick up a composition book (or one with a ruled lower half and a blank upper half for a drawing) and let your kids write about what they learned. You can throw in some questions on your own, or ask them, for example, include a labeled drawing of a cell, or a labeled picture of the parts of a flower, etc.

Either way, this is how we’ve been using notebooking at our house. We like it. And I think we’re going to like it even more as we get better and pick up more tips to make it easier and more useful than it already is.

For more “N” posts, head over to Dawns’ @ The Momma Knows. You can find all of my ABC posts here.

Here we are nearly 3 weeks into the new year and I haven’t done a single ABC’s of Homeschooling post! In fact, I haven’t done many posts at all! There’s been several things going on over here. We got back into school after a long break (sorta, more on that in a minute,) we got a baby cockatiel, we’ve been sick — not very fun, and we’ve got some new and exciting things planned for the 2nd half of the year. Let me catch you up on what’s going on at Faith Family Home School right now!

Kicking Off the New Year

One of the things that every homeschooling parent will tell you (if they’ve been doing this for more than, oh, six months) is that it’s hard to get back into the groove after a break! That’s one reason we try to keep breaks short and take more of them, and school more year round.

KNOWING THIS,.. I let us take a really long break around Christmas anyway.

It wasn’t smart…………….but it was fun. =)

If you find yourself in this boat you have to keep paddling anyway, you can’t just throw your hands up in the air and hope for the best. (Believe me! I know!)

The first thing we do is we start off slow. I don’t expect to do a full day’s work on the first day back and so I don’t even try. Shoot, I don’t even try to do a full WEEK’S worth of work the first week! My main goal is retraining ourselves to get up and get started on school instead of lazing in pjs and watching cartoons or whatever.

The second thing I do is remember to be patient and consistent. I remind my children what their expected and acceptable behavior is, what our goals are. Be patient as they try to push those boundaries but hold those boundaries. “We WILL do school, we will do ‘this’ much today, let’s do this, okay?”

Another thing that’s helpful is taking short breaks. Even if it’s just a break to play a racing clean up game or a snack break. Take a minute to swap out the washer and dryer and fold a load of laundry together – SOMETHING. And then get back to the books.

And if the extra long break was unplanned and you’re now “behind” on your schedule, don’t try to double up on everything all at once! The extra stress is likely to cause the kids to bog down and run on slow mode. We usually double up on one or two things at at time until we’re caught up, then double up on something else, and so on. So take a minute, count the lessons, map out a plan and write it down. YOU will feel much better and less stressed out – and you’ll pass that on to your kids.

So now that I’ve said all that, I’ll say that’s how our first week back to school after Christmas STARTED. And then I got sick. =( For a week I felt awful and we didn’t do school. So we had to start our slow process all over again. And that week my daughter was sick, so we stayed slow, and this week was my son’s turn, so we’re still taking it easy. But as long as you keep chugging along, you’ll get there!

Oh, and look! For the new year, a new look for the bulletin board! I don’t know if it’s going to help us get school done but it makes me feel more ready to try. =)

Live Animals

So if being sick and detoxing from holiday laziness overdose wasn’t enough… we should add a baby bird into the mix, right?

Seriously, he was the “ugliest duckling” (and yet oddly cute) when we brought him home and now he’s grown on us and he’s just all sorts of cute.

Last Wednesday we all took a trip to a local pet shop and brought home a two week old baby Cockatiel. We’ve only had him 9 days and already he’s grown so much! Meet “Captain Jack.”

I’m amazed how quickly he’s growing! The kids are daily ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the changes.

Much of our time in between our slow schooling has been taken up with holding, cuddling and feeding this little guy, while reading and learning about pet birds in general and Cockatiels specifically.

We’ve learned what pin feathers are, why they’re also called “blood feathers,” that the real feather is actually INSIDE the pin feather, that birds grow quickly!, and fledge at a much younger age than we thought. Our little Captain Jack could be taking his first flight in only 2 or 3 weeks! Next week we start introducing solid foods!

Having a pet and learning to take care of it may only help us learn more about THAT particular animal, but it’s great fun researching and reading and then observing our pet for what we’ve learned. It’s a great research/scientific/observation process in action. Especially cool is that I learned Princess can volunteer at the pet store a couple of hours a week after she turns 12. Not only will she learn how to help take care of all the other animals as well, but she will learn about helping customers and working and doing a good job. *I.love.that.idea.*  At any rate, Faith Family Home School now has a class pet. =)

Here’s a few of the sites I’ve found helpful and bookmarked for future reference.

• Australian National Cockatiel Society
• The American Cockatiel Society
• Cockatiel.com
• Fledgling Cockatiels
• Weaning Baby Cockatiels
• How to Wean a Baby Cockatiel

I’m sure you’ll be seeing more of our little Captain Jack in future weeks. ; )

Music and More

We’ve got a couple of exciting things coming up for the second semester of this school year. The first one is that Big Daddy, Drama Queen and I have signed up to take some informal guitar lessons at church starting this Sunday. Big Daddy and I already play a little… Drama Queen is BeSiDe HeRsElF! She has an interest in music and has been wanting to learn to play guitar. You should see her tiny hands! But we’re going to see if she can get the hang of learning to play on a full size guitar. 8 year olds have learned to play before..we’ll see how this goes. =) She has quite the singing voice, too, and I’m excited to take the first step in encouraging an interest of hers.

This is especially exciting because I just did the same thing with her older sister, coming up with a really good idea for her in her area of interest. Princess has an interest in fashion design. And after she drew a design the other day I got a really good idea. A really.. reallly.. good idea. *waggles eyebrows*

Princess has now been given the task of designing 6-12 more outfits and then picking one to make. She’ll have to make or combine patterns, go shopping for materials on a budget, and sew the outfit for herself to wear. She loves this idea. And so do I! Also, we’re going to be subscribing to a couple of magazines we’ve carefully selected for girls 8-12 so she can observe the fashion trends in the magazines. And we’ve (well mostly she’s) been finding tutorials on youtube for drawing figures so she can practice drawing clothes on people standing in different positions. She’s already drawn a few more and she’s really taking off on this project with gusto!!

What I love most about both of these, the music and the fashion designs both, is the ability to help our children pursue their interests so fully. It’s A PART OF school. Maybe their interests will change. Maybe not. Either way they’ve gained a new skill. ; )

So that’s the wrap up on what we’ve been doing in school in the Oliver house the past few weeks. Phew! Wasn’t that a lot?? I wonder if this is any indication of how 2012 is going to go?? ; )

Don’t forget to hop over to Dawn @ The Momma Knows to catch up on everybody else’s M posts. You can find all of my ABC posts here. Also, please forgive the camera phone pics — I know they’re not the best!

Ever feel like you’re banging your head against a wall?

Or talking to deaf ears?

Or swimming in circles?

Sometimes school is *not* going well. Sometimes everyone is dragging their feet, including the teacher! Sometimes everyone is a little A.D.D. and can’t seem to focus (even the teacher.) Sometimes the kids wonder what it would be like if they hopped on the long, yellow bus (and so does the teacher.)

EVERYTHING worth doing takes work. Everything WORTHWHILE is going to get hard.

• I don’t homeschool because it’s easy! Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.
• I don’t homeschool because it’s *always* fun. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.
• I don’t homeschool because I know exactly what I’m doing and I have some magic ingredient in me that  somehow gives me all of the patience and diligence I need — sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t!

I homeschool our children because it’s worth the effort.

Because I’m convicted, and committed.

Because when something is important to you, you’ll make it work. 

So what do you do on the hard days? You channel Dory from Finding Nemo and you “just keep swimming.” Maybe you switch things up for the day, maybe you take a break, maybe you regroup and refocus and try again. But you don’t give up.

Just keep swimming, 

                                               swimming,  

                                                                        swimming….

Because one thing is for sure, if you don’t.. you won’t get anywhere. Like anything else in life, when you don’t have any motivation or when you’re having a hard day, you just keep putting one foot in front of the other — even if they’re baby steps — because at least you’re still moving forward.

I’m guilty of flopping down in frustration on bad days. Or keeping my chair warm on unmotivated days. But I have to remind myself to get back up and move. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I’m not perfect. But when I remember that you will make it happen if it’s important, I usually find a way.

One more thing… as a Christian, I need to remember I can’t do it on my own. In my own strength I am imperfect, lazy, weak, unmotivated, undisciplined, scatterbrained, stressed out and unreliable. But when I seek Christ for HIS strength, I am made able.

Sometimes the holidays bring accompanying distractions, financial stress and many other things that encourage bad days or unfocused days. Or maybe you’ve recently been through some kind of life-altering event. Whatever the case..  I hope and pray that if you find yourself swimming in circles or just collapsed in a heap.. I pray that you are encouraged. We all have bad days. We just don’t like to advertise them. Many of us have REALLY bad days and we don’t like to open up about them. But you are not alone. One step at a time, one day at a time, life moves forward. When you don’t have the strength, Jesus does.

I’m not really sure how I ended up here.. this wasn’t what I originally set out to write. Maybe one of you needed it. Maybe I needed it. God bless you and keep you, my bloggy homeschool friends.

This post is a part of the ABC’s of Homeschooling hosted by Dawn @ The Momma Knows. You can see all of my ABC posts here. 

Yes, I have holidays on the brain! (Who doesn’t??)

It seems like Thanksgiving was only a couple of days ago and Christmas is only a few days away! Check out our Thankful Tree on our school bulletin board. Over the next couple of days we’ll be re-doing it for Christmas and Advent.

We’re a week into Advent now, (a month long intentional celebration of the coming of Christ, first as a babe, and soon to return again.) Of course, holidays aren’t homeschool specific. Everyone celebrates holidays. But there are some ways that holidays creep into our lessons and influence our current school work, right?

There are crafts, activities, history, literature, unit studies… any and all of these may show an appearance for any given holiday. I’m planning on finishing a lapbook on the history of Christmas that we started working on last year – better late than never, right?Currclick.com is one of the many places I turn to for holiday activities, as well as a number of freebie printable sites. I also have several holiday books for reference.

So there’s lots of holiday stuff going on around here. And lots of imagination flowing, too. My kids are FULL of it. I may be a bit biased.. but I think my kids have huge imaginations — especially my son. His imagination is a big as the sky. He has turned cardboard soda boxes into a suit of armor and he makes pipe cleaners into little people. He likes to make “inventions” and do “experiments” and dream up all manner of exciting adventures. But he’s not the only one. The girls are pretty good at it, too. They dress up and pretend many varieties of scenarios and storylines. My oldest one can take a plain piece of fabric and twist and tie it into any costume she desires. And sometimes it drives me crazy because they’re supposed to be doing chores or school but I find them playing in their room all dressed up on a make believe adventure. But mostly I don’t because I really love that they use their imaginations the way they do. I’ve always kept dress up buckets full of costumes, fabric pieces and accessories to encourage that.

I try to find other ways to encourage their imaginations, too. Legos, construction sets, art supplies. I think a healthy imagination is important, don’t you?

So how do you help your children on their imaginative quests? And how do you incorporate holiday activities into your homeschool day?

This post is a part of the ABC’s of Homeschooling by Dawn @ The Momma Knows. You can read all of my ABC posts here.

I say this often… I don’t know what I’d do without Google!! I’m so grateful that I homeschool in this day and age so chock full of such wonderful technology. If I didn’t, I’d definitely have to fork over the big bucks for a really great set of encyclopedias. Because little boys? They ask LOTS of questions!!

Granted, you can’t automatically believe everything you read on the internet, but it’s such a great tool for finding how things work or facts about animals or answers to science questions.

Google isn’t our only cyber homeschool tool, though.

There’s also Netflix, YouTube, Wikipedia and LOADS of educational websites.

YouTube is almost as awesome as Google. Seriously. YES.. there’s a lot of JUNK on there. But you can find a tutorial for almost anything! Princess enjoys origami. YouTube is a good resource for origami tutorials. You can also find tutorials for sewing, crocheting, knitting, drawing, singing exercises, dance lessons, and whoknowswhatelse. Have a kid who has an interest in something you don’t know how to do? YouTube can help!

Educational websites like Khan Academy, NeoK12, BrainPop, and WatchKnowLearn (that’s a new one, haven’t used it yet) are also very helpful. Especially when you’re looking for a video to explain something you’re having trouble teaching or your child is having difficulty grasping. Sometimes watching someone else present it in a different way makes all the difference.

The internet is one of our best and most used tools. And I turn to Google, specifically, quite frequently. What about you?

~

This post is a part of the ABC’s of Homeschooling hosted by Dawn @ The Momma Knows. You can find all of my ABC post here.

Ok, so I completely ripped off that Christmas song… but it works! Are you ready? Thanksgiving plans are fast underway here. I’m in charge of the bird, the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, the bread rolls and the pumpkin pie. My husband’s family will be joining us here at our house (and I only have a toaster oven) so I’m going to be cooking our turkey the day before at my mom’s house. You know… I’m thinking that might actually be pretty smart anyway. ; ) I don’t have any recipes to share because I pretty much do things straight and simple (it’s the way hubby likes his food!)

I’ve got lots of house cleaning on the schedule for the upcoming week, but also, I want to try to fit in some Thanksgiving related activities, for school, too. We’ll create our Thankful Tree and spend the week adding to it until Thursday.  I have several Thanksgiving books to read with the kids and I want to make sure that we read one each day — including the story of Squanto. I love the story of Squanto…. God’s providence always stands out to me and amazes me.

Monday is Little Prince’s birthday!! He’s not so little anymore, he’ll be six. (Pause a moment for mommy sentimentalism right here.) Of course he’ll always be MY little prince. = ) One family tradition we have here is that birthdays are school holidays so there will be NO SCHOOL! The kids always love that part. I think in addition to getting some cleaning done we’ll use that day to make our thankful trees and decorate for Thanksgiving. That night we’ll be celebrating with our families and with Star Wars birthday cookies (and presents.. shhh!!)

I’m looking forward to the coming week! Don’t be surprised if I’m not around much.. (I won’t be surprised if you aren’t!) = p

Happy Thanksgiving my American friends! (My Canadian friends, I know you’ve already had yours!) I will leave  you with a few links from my Pinterest board, Holidays. Click the pictures to see some of my favorite Thanksgiving pins that I want to fit into our celebration this year.