Obstacles.

I can’t say that word without thinking of “O Brother, Where Are Thou” and how they say it as OB’STACK’els. But I digress.

Obstacles are a part of life, and most certainly, a part of homeschooling. There is almost an unwritten guarantee that your child will dislike and struggle with either math or reading. (Or if not one of those, writing.) In our house we’ve run up against all three. Princess had some difficulty grasping math, Drama Queen had trouble learning to read, and now they both take issue with writing. Now, however, the issue isn’t that they *can’t* write, as much as it is that they *think* they can’t. Ah, but that’s an obstacle in and of itself!

THINKING that one CAN’T do something is a common obstacle, and an important one to overcome. In fact, it played a part in Drama Queen’s early trouble with reading and once I proved to her (with simple word family flash cards) that she indeed *could* read, her reading proficiency took off! So for the past two weeks we’ve been tackling this particular obstacle, and we’ve been focusing on writing.

As was the case with Drama Queen’s reading resistance, I decided to step back and make writing very simple, break it down and show the girls what they *CAN* do. I knew that Drama Queen could write a complete paragraph if she tried, and I knew that Princess could write an entire essay if she put her mind to it. So for Drama Queen, I went online and found a “hamburger paragraph” template. I know there are issues with teaching hamburger paragraphs, but I believe the main issue is not progressing beyond them. For the purpose of our exercise, it worked WONDERFULLY. After some initial resistance, Drama Queen wrote a full, complete paragraph, I proofread it, and she rewrote it with the corrected spelling and punctuation. Her second hamburger paragraph went SO smoothly.. she finished it before I even knew she started! Princess’ first writing assignment was a creative one, but her second one was an essay (and that’s where the mental brakes start kicking in–screeech! “I can’t do this!”) To help Princess with this process, I printed out an essay outline model, and then I directed her to an online essay generator at readwritethink.org that walks the student through the process of creating an essay. The process was so painless, she didn’t argue when she was done, but printed out the essay map she’d created and immediately used that type up a first draft. Success!!

Sometimes overcoming obstacles is a little more complicated and difficult, but sometimes it’s just a matter of having the right tools–and the confidence to tackle them. Part of our jobs as parents is to teach our children how to conquer challenges and to rise to the challenge with a good effort – because they really can do most things when they set their minds to it. (Not all, of course, but most!)

Speaking of challenges..

PHONICS.

Phonics are often another challenge. And I’m often asked how I teach my children to read, and whether or not I use phonics to do it.

YES. I do use phonics. I believe reading is both a knowledge of how letters work together to make sounds (phonics) and remembering what they look like and recognizing them without sounding them out (sight reading – this also applies to “weird” words like “two.”) When learning to read new words a good knowledge of phonics can help make the process easier and less painless. And if you’ve ever observed a child learning to read, you know how they naturally begin relying on their memory, which is obviously a natural progression – how many adults do you know that sound out all of their words while they are reading? ;0) So reading takes both.

On the other hand, I am not the super phonics police. We don’t memorize and recite the rules, we don’t use the rules for copywork — my kids probably can’t recite any “rules” to you because I also like to keep reading relaxed and natural and fun. Reading should be enjoyable, and that begins at an early age, even before the child can read. = )

So how “DO” we do phonics?

• We have some simple phonics flash cards.
• We use the free Progressive Phonics ebooks.
• We practice word families with handwriting practice or making our own family cards (hat, rat, bat, cat, etc.)
• We use the phonic knowledge we’re studying with repetitive readers such as The Dick and Jane Treasury or The McGuffey Readers and as we read we sound out new words, we apply what we know, we learn NEW sounds if we come upon new words, we learn to recognize words we’ve already sounded out, etc.

This post is a part of the ABC’s of Homeschooling hosted by Dawn @ 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?

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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.

Fidgeting drives me nuts.

I’m just going to be honest and throw that out there.

When Drama Queen was learning how to read and she was sitting on my lap, she wiggled like something crazy and it drove me batty! I wanted her to sit still because I can’t focus like that — but she NEEDS to wiggle! After I figured that out I had her sit next to me instead of on my lap and we were able to work that out.

It’s already obvious that Little Prince needs to keep his hands busy while he listens. He doesn’t sit still well either. Sometimes he just hops up and runs to his room to get another car or action fiure! That also drives me batty. He’s so funny, though. I’ll call him back and he’ll call out, “I’m listening!” As if to say, “Keep going, I’ll be right back.” Most of the time he doesn’t look like he’s listening either, and sometimes I get a little frustrated. I’m quickly finding out that he really IS listening more than he looks like he is. Most of the time he has more answers than the girls do.

It’s crazy for me to think about because I like people to LOOK at me when I’m teaching or giving some instructions. When I’m imparting something important I need to make eye to eye contact. But my son can barely make eye contact and to connect with him you really need to hold his hand or touch his arm. Drama Queen needs to be told to listen carefully and repeat it back. Princess is most like me, making eye contact, confirming what I want her to do and running off. She doesn’t like distracting noises or movements when she’s learning, either. She has her own set of challenges though. She does get bored sometimes and sometimes I catch her drifting off into space daydreaming. That doesn’t really go with this post, though. ; ) Point is, it was really hard at first for me to see what my youngest two needed and to see their fidgeting and wiggling as something other than disobeying and not paying attention.

So my frustration with it is getting better as I try to keep it in perspective and just make sure that they’re still listening. But I do want to have at least a FEW ground rules. You know..like no hopping up and running off in the middle of the reading. I haven’t actually laid out any “rule” rules, it’s more like I’m trying to pay attention and guide them into appropriate behavior. In addition, I’m trying to work WITH their needs so that I get less frustrated – like sending Little Prince to go pick out a few action figures and come take a seat on the floor in front of me before I start reading history.

One more thing I’ve been thinking about doing is creating a little box of THINGS… quiet things… that they can pick from while I’m reading. Notsomuch during math but I read science, history and bible worldview aloud. Things for keeping hands busy, things with textures and movement and even things for visual interest to not leave Princess out. It’s a thought. I’m wondering if anyone else has tried something like this?

Fidgeting during lessons is just BOUND to happen I suppose. Maybe it’s during math for one kid and while listening for another but all kids are bound to get bored and fidget at some point. I suppose it’s probably how we handle it, and how we teach them to handle it, that matters the most — don’t you think?

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