First Week of Homeschooling (Year 3)

    The Thomas Family School of Wonder is officially back in session for Year 3!  We've had somewhat of a rolling start to the school year.  The older boys have started working through their math and language arts workbooks, and we had started our Ancient Egypt unit while in Indiana.  But as far as officially getting back to our schedule with morning time, independent time, and outside time, that began the day after Labor Day.  I was planning on starting on Labor Day itself, but Lucas had a horrible toothache, and I spent lots of time trying to find a new dentist that accepted our insurance (and, of course, all of them were closed for Labor Day)... and I wasn't as prepared as I wanted to be... and I had an out-of-control outburst of anger toward one of my sons and was feeling all sorts of remorse and off-on-the-wrong-foot.  So, we started Tuesday. Ah, the beauty of homeschooling flexibility...

    Here is what our table often looks like after Morning Time (this was two separate days):

 

And here's the day the Pokemon came to school:

Here's the "morning song" I've been playing around 8:00 to give everyone a reminder to brush their teeth and head to the table!

 I'll rotate it out to other songs eventually (some of our favorites have been the "Good Morning" song by Phil Joel, "Mind Set on Jesus" with Tamesha Pruett, and "Good Morning" by Mandisa).

Schedule

     Our "typical" schedule that we aim for is:

• 8:00 - 9:30 - Morning Time (Cooper and Colson coming in and out as they want)
• 9:30 - 10:30 - Independent Work Time (me focusing on Cooper and Colson)
• 10:30 - 12:30 - Snack, Outside Time
• 12:30 - 1:00 - Lunch
• 1:00 - 2:30 - Self Time (big boys read and play by themselves, Cooper plays by himself, Colson usually takes a nap)
• 2:30 - Snack, back outside or other activities
• 4:30 - Dinner Prep (boys take turns helping)
• 5:00 - Dinner
• 6:30 - Family Reading Time
• 7:00 - Little boys bedtime, big boys have one-on-one or one-on-two time with Mom-Mom and Daddy (till about 8:00, depending on the activity)
• Big boys go to bed when they're tired (Calvin usually around 8:30/9:00; Carter around 9:45)

I say "typical," but we only kept this schedule this week on Tuesday and Thursday. On Wednesday, we went to the library and a park during outside time.  On Friday, we did a shortened morning time and independent time (since they were mostly finished by then) to be able to get to our dentist appointments and a play date at the Children's Garden.

Morning Time

    So, we start around 8:00 for Morning Time. I have the big boys bring their Bibles and hymnals, and I have the pencils and other supplies.  I have some overarching plans and ideas for this year, and I decided to break them down into monthly and weekly plans.  And then from the weekly plans, I check things off as we do them that week. It worked pretty well for our first week.

    And just so it's clear that these are not nice-and-neat, perfectly-laid-out plans, here's what my notebook page looks like:

• Bible - We did Lesson 1 from Lessons from the Land (Appian Media), spreading it out over four days. We watched a video clip about what Bible-time synagogues look like and then read and discussed verses related to Jesus reading from the scroll in Luke 4 (also Isaiah 61 and then others about being brave to be who you are)
• Scripture Memory - We started Week 1 of SMF's 14:6 The Way.  Our verses this week were Genesis 1:1 (all four boys), Genesis 1:27 (Carter and Calvin), and Hebrews 11:3 (Carter). I don't know if we'll all be able to go to Scripture Memory Camp in Louisiana next summer, but I wanted to prepare for the possibility.  The boys will be reciting their verses to their grandmas every week.
• Hymn - The Solid Rock. This was my "class hymn" at Asbury, so it has a special place in my heart. This week, we focused on just getting familiar with it, so we sang all four verses every day.
• Prayer -.We used the Not Consumed J.O.Y. cards and also focused on praying for tribal peoples.
• Poetry Memorization - We're going to work through IEW's Poetry Memorization (Level One) program together.  Our first poem was "Ooey Gooey," which all 4 boys loved.  We also started working on the next poem "Celery."
• Root Word - Our red hot root word of the week is "sub."  We ended up only doing this one day, so I'd like to make sure we're doing a quick review or activity for it every day.
• Japanese - Since we had kind of taken a break from Japanese over the summer, we reviewed the words and phrases that we had already learned. We also watched some Japanese song videos that the boys love.  We usually do this during lunch time instead of morning time, if we're eating at the table at home.
• Discussions - I introduced the 40 book challenge that they'll be doing for reading this year.  I also worked with them individually to get their reading logs and genre requirement graphs up to date. Next week, we'll take some notes together on key aspects of the different genres.
• Wordle - This was a big hit! My boys LOVE playing different Wordle games with my mom when we're in Indiana. Instead of being on the phone, we played offline, whether doing individual words on small white boards or doing one together on the big board.  Our words this week were water, super, and plant.
• History - We finished our unit on Ancient Egypt by discussing papyrus, tombs, mummies, and King Tut. We also finished the book we had been reading Who Was King Tut?  We started the new unit on Mesopotamia by talking about some of the empires in that area and listening to a few chapters from The Story of Mankind.
• Read Alouds - Here's a list of the chapter books we're in the middle of these days.  We don't read all of them every day, but I'll grab time here and there when the little boys are occupied (like when we're all outside or when we're all playing with something at the table or after their bedtime).  Sometimes, during morning time, I'll read picture books to everyone at the couch (we also usually do this every night before bed).  And when we're driving longer distances in the van, we have an audiobook.
• Current Events - Every Friday for the past six years (back when I was teaching 4th and 5th grades), I've watched KET's NewsQuiz show.  It's excellent and focuses on kid-friendly news events from Kentucky and around the world.  Interspersed through the news stories are ten simple quiz questions.  It's about 15 minutes, and all four of my boys are super engaged as we watch together.
• Specials
• Music - We ended up not doing any music this week. My goal is to do some music appreciation related to our history unit and then have the boys work on a song every week on the piano. Hopefully, we'll start this next week!
• P.E. - We're focusing on a sport every month (not necessarily to become proficient but to know the gist of how to play and how to watch the game), and this month we're doing football.  We started with a few kid-friendly introductory videos on YouTube.
• Art - We're focusing on the elements of art every month, so this month we kicked off our study of "line."  I had them draw vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines in their notebooks, and then we did some collage using those types of lines.

Family Math - I purchased three used Family Math books (younger children, elementary, and middle school, since I've got all three!) and plan to do one activity a week as a large group or with individuals.  This week with all of them, I measured a piece of yarn to match their heights (and we also measured them against the wall) and then put them in separate clear bags to see if they could guess which string was whose.  I had Carter and Calvin play a game (that Carter didn't care for), and I processed through with Carter a problem-solving situation involving a buy one, get one free deal.  And technically, Monopoly wasn't in the Family Math book, but I played a to-the-death round with the big boys that lasted over two hours, and it incorporated lots of math! Can you tell who won? Look at all that money I had, compared to theirs!

Independent Time

I gave the boys a checklist similar to previous years with tasks for them to complete over the course of the week.  These included:

• math and language arts workbook lessons to correct from the previous week (and/or follow up with me one-on-one about) and to complete this week
• geography practice on the Seterra website (the goal being to identify all the African countries on the map by the end of the week)
• math and language arts practice on the IXL website. We have a subscription for both of them that tracks their progress in various specific skills
• reading to themselves 30 minutes every day from a 40 book challenge book
• reading the Bible every day (Carter has challenged himself to read through the whole Bible this calendar year, so he's working through that. Calvin is almost finished with the Action Bible)
• writing a letter to me about what they're reading. I'll read these over the weekend and write out a response to them. I did this with my 4th and 5th graders, and it was a great way to connect and discuss reading!

Of course, they were drawn to the online activities and did those first.  By Thursday, they still hadn't started on their workbooks and had a lot of catching up to do!  I'm not sure whether to let them continue to control their own pace or if I should space out the workbook lessons a bit more (and assigning certain ones to certain days).

Little Boys

One of the main things I tried with the little boys this week was an activity in the Family Math book about labeling an egg carton with numbers and having them count out the correct number of beans for each slot.  They both did really well with this! I also wanted to try a recipe this week with them to make bread dough, but we ended up not having time for that.

 

Outside Time

We were outside every day this week -- sometimes after morning time and independent time and sometimes earlier in the morning.  On Thursday, we took our morning time outside and did our art lesson and workbook time at the table in our front yard.

Fieldtrips

We stayed home on Tuesday and Thursday but took a few fieldtrips on Wednesday and Friday.

• library! This may not seem like a big deal, but this was the first time I had taken all 4 boys to the library since the pandemic began 2.5 years ago! We go to the library every week but always to pick up our hold items. I had taken Carter inside once, Calvin inside twice, and Cooper once (last week), but with the boys all vaccinated, we went in all together this time.  They picked out books and played!

• Harrods Hill Park - this is the park closest to our favorite library, so we spent some time there after picking up our books. Here's Cooper taking a break as we walked around the track together (everyone had to do a lap before they could play on the playground). Cooper also started a pine cone collection, which I thought was a great idea until the stubborn sap would not come off our hands even after rubbing them with hand sanitizer over and over.

• dentist - It had been awhile since the boys had been to the dentist, so I scheduled them all at the same time at a new dentist on our insurance plan. The boys all enjoyed themselves (the kid shows in the lobby and during dental work were a hit, of course!).

• Children's Garden - our homeschool social group was meeting up at the Children's Garden, so we joined them after the dentist appointments. The boys loved exploring the trains, plants, dirt, and pond and playing with the other kids.  Calvin especially loves the social interactions. Carter liked catching some minnows in the pond. Colson always gravitates toward the trains, and Cooper liked playing by the old cabin.

There were some things we didn't have time for (which will always be the case!), but overall, I'm pleased with our first full week of homeschooling for Year 3! Now we have 3 weeks to settle into this new routine before our baby comes and changes everything!