Day 5

11th October 2021

Our Curriculum! It Arrived!

When I was in my twenties, the show Friends was the biggest show on TV. The question was, were you a Rachel, a Monica or a Phoebe?

For me, I was Rachel in my dreams, Phoebe when I was nervous, but when it came to new things and geeking out on something….I was all MONICA!!

So, it comes as no surprise that when I first started researching home schooling, I started trawling the internet for as much info as I could find on the subject.

I bought binders, clip-boards, & yep, jars to organise the textas & pencils. (I needed to set up my ‘home school area’ people!)

Late one night, I came across an article that said “What type of home schooler are you?”

The Monica inside me screamed out, “I don’t know! Lets find out!” And I took this quiz. (http://thehomeschoolyear.com/Home%20School%20Style%20Quiz)

My top 3 scores were:

Montessori – 21
Unschooling – 18
Charlotte Mason – 17

Huh?

To be honest, I had only heard of Montessori. I’ve since learnt there are many, many styles & approaches to home schooling, and there are many, many types of families and children.

So if you’re starting out like me, just do what feels right. I’m learning that home school looks different to everyone and no doubt our approach will change as we get further into it.

The Good & The Beautiful

Another trawl session led me to Ellen Fisher. I watched her home school video (http://thehomeschoolyear.com/Ellen%20Fisher) and was pretty inspired by The Good & The Beautiful.

We didn’t want our kids on screens all day. I liked that they used tangible books. We liked that the curriculum is ‘open & go’ with no lesson planning.

We liked that each lesson covers multiple subjects for example, language, art & geography might all be in just one lesson.

You gotta love that!

The Good & The Beautiful is a Christian curriculum, and while we’re not Christians, we love that the lessons:

Infuse art into every lesson. (Art is very important to us.)
Incorporates good morals & affirmations in the lessons.
Excellent & thoughtful sentences to trace, like going over the definition of a pronoun for example.

I like that the child isn’t overwhelmed by an entire page of writing. They write a little, and then they get to do a maze, or finish a picture, or add to a picture.

Left brain, right brain, left brain, right brain.

We downloaded their sample pages while we waited for our books to arrive and the kids really, really love practicing their handwriting & it’s largely due to the little art exercises sprinkled through out.

It’s also a quick grab exercise, if you need 15 minutes to make a call, or whatever.

Geography

After writing, I was excited to do some geography with our new G&B resources. First we had a good look at a map. I asked them to find London, which is where Liam (Dad) is from.

We looked for Indonesia which was the last place we travelled to before the dreaded lockdown.

Next, we tried a lucky dip to discover what was at position F7 (It was Cuba, Haiti & Puerto Rico!)

The Good & The Beautiful have these great cards to learn from. On one side is a picture of an area with one country highlighted & the other side, the answer. We started with Oceans. So fun!

Mila looking at Maps — Learning The Oceans

Bike Jumps

Lunch time saw them put together a bike jump from some old tree slices we have laying around. I was working from home so when I poked my head out, I was kind of impressed!

Linc hitting the jumps — Time For the Jump!

Mila on The Jumpis — Mila Made Some Modifications

Universal Yums!

We got a knock on the door and the timing couldn’t have been better because it was time for maths and motivation was low.

Since we started using Singapore maths, they’ve been struggling to get their head around the new way of thinking. We’re getting there, but they prefer the Naplan books we had been using.

The knock was a delivery. It was our Universal Yums!!

Universal Yum (http://thehomeschoolyear.com/Universal%20Yums)s is a geography resource I discovered while on yet another trawl session. Each month you’re sent a box of sweet, salty & spicy snacks from a country along with an info booklet, trivia quiz & other cool facts.

All the snacks have a little write up about how & why that snack is important to the country, and you can even go to their site and listen to music from the country. (There was some very funny dance moves to some far out Czech Republic music today.)

Last month we got Greece. This month we got Czech Republic. Delicious, delicious, delicious!

We got our map out and highlighted the Czech Republic on our big map.

I saw my opportunity & I went for it.

“No maths. No yums!”

Maths was done without fuss, in around 20 minutes. 😁

Fighting for the Yums — My Universal Yums!

Czech Republic Box — Czech Republic Yums

Filling In The Survey — Rating The Yums – Learning The Facts

Break Time

After all of that deliciousness, they had to run around outside to burn it off. I got stuck into some more work and then I had to call them in for unit.

Today we were starting our A is For Austraila unit from Simply Homeschool. Looking back, I should have knocked it on the head as we were lost in our Yums box for a good 45 minutes and they had really had enough by then.

Also, when I went to call them in for our unit work, this was happening. How can I compete with that?!!

Watch Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Tk6liMmfFs

Um, kids….time for more learning 😬

The unit work calls for us to read the book A Is For Australia (http://thehomeschoolyear.com/Australia%20Book), which we don’t have so we watched a YouTube video of it being read. It’s a cool book and covers a lot of fun, Australian facts.

We then settled down to make our ‘big map’.

I should point out it was 4pm by this stage, looking back on it I don’t know what I was thinking going ahead with this activity. I guess I’d been looking forward to starting it today.

It was all my own stupid fault for not being flexible & not going with the flow of what was happening today.

Anyway, we had to sticky tape 6 pieces of A3 paper together and then draw an 8cm grid.

Making A big grid — Making The Big Australia Map

Mila Reading — “Grids Are Too Hard. You do mine. Blah Blah Blah”

It started so well, lots of excitement, yay the big map!

And then, it went so south.

Lincoln refused to let me instruct him and so made his grid one square at a time. (Urgh, eye roll!)

His squares were getting larger and larger & when I tried to help him, he got mad at me and told me ‘grids suck!’ and stormed off.

Mila insisted I do hers because, ‘grids are too hard’ blah, blah blah.

This went on for a while. I took a deep breath and called it a day.

At that moment Liam came home & I zoomed out the door past him, for some ‘me time’ at Woolworths (Yep, supermarkets alone, without your kids, is a thing.)

And you know what?

I had a flat tyre! 😭

I cried in my car for a second before pulling myself together.

That last hour broke me.

The grid broke me.

Liam made me a Gin/Tonic & we actually had a really nice night.

We shared the Yums with daddy after dinner and all was well.

It’s funny how you get to a point where you want to rock in a corner, but the kids have moved on & are throwing their tiny arms around you to say, I love you.

I guess that’s parenting in a nutshell. They want to know where your line is….and just when you’re about to put your head in the oven, they turn into Puss In Boots with the big eyes!