Playsilks, Cheetos and Apples, OH MY!

The girls took advantage of the the late morning cool and took their American Girls out on the lawn for a picnic. I didn’t get a shot of the picnic; by the time I got outside they had packed up all the plasticware and were leisurely laying about in the shade noshing on a green apple and cheese puffs.

Obviously, the picnic was exhausting for the American Girls. I must admit a few minutes outside made me want to lay down on some playsilks and get lost in a good book for a few hours.

It was another hour before they made their way back inside; by then the temperature was getting in the upper 80s and the breeze had disappeared. As they walked through the front door I could smell that faint, somewhat sweet scent of children on the verge of becoming stinky. You know the smell? Right after they begin to sweat, but before it becomes odoriferous enough to send them to the shower?

In case you’re wondering how they can play-away early hours on the lawn on a ‘school day’, you should know Fridays are our days off. We school Monday through Thursday. When I was purchasing curriculum there was the option for a 4 or 5-day plan. The 4-day plan means more is divided among the 4 days, but it gives us all an extra day to our weekend and for field trips, so we opted for the 4-day; wouldn’t you?

Speaking of homeschooling, there were a number of questions after yesterday’s post I thought I’d answer here. If I forget yours, please feel free to email me again (and accept my apologies).

Kim asked: “Congrats Heather – I love homeschooling – I just have a 5th and a 6th grader. I’m wondering how you are handling sports this year. Lexi is playing on a HS softball team, but we haven’t locked anything down for my son. We finally got our study finished and it’s wonderful to get set up and leave it.”

Emelie (11) has opted out of playing soccer this year because she wants to continue cake-decorating and be involved with a speech and debate team. Meredith (8) begins league soccer on Saturday (she’ll have practice twice a week and games on Saturday) and ‘might’ be interested in speech and debate; though I’m betting not. Mer has taken dance for 3 years and so we were surprised she chose soccer. We’re excited for her though because that girl NEEDS to run and soccer will give her that opportunity. Kenny (5) is not at all interested in league sports yet, but does like to run and play hard with Meredith. If we felt it absolutely necessary to have a phys. ed. program of some sort, our local homeschool has one in the Co-op. We might do it next year, but this year there is already enough on our plate.

Bethany asked: “How many hours a day will you spend doing lessons on an average day? Are you working planned field trips into your schedule or are you just saying, ‘Every other Friday we’ll do something cool outside the house?’”

We homeschool from 8 AM – 2 PM with a 15 minute break at 10:30 AM for a morning snack and then a half hour lunch at noon. The day is pretty much divided up into 15, 30 and hour increments. There is a bit of ‘free time’ here and there, but on average Emelie (6th grade) works 5 1/2 hours, Meredith (3rd grade) works 4 1/2 hours, and Kenny (K) has 3 hours (because he tags along with Mer’s Science and History Readers).

Our big Field Trips are once a month with our local homeschool group. I am also looking to join a homeschool group one town over to look into their Field Trips. However, if we get a hankering to go and ‘do’ or go and ‘see’ we’ll just do it; no schedule outside of the homeschool group’s Field Trips.

I had a couple of email questions too.

Jennifer asked: “I’m not opposed to homeschool, but aren’t you worried you won’t teach them all the things they need to learn for each of their grades?”

The first time I homeschooled I was VERY worried about meeting statewide standards. When we moved back to Texas from Georgia I looked up all the grade-by-grade standards on the Texas Educators site and downloaded these long lists of garbledy-gunk.

Then, when we put Emelie and Meredith back into public school, I took their portfolio of their homeschool work to their teachers and both of them told me, “Your daughter has already done work I won’t even be able to get to this year. There is no way I can do this level of work in a class of at least 20 kids.” Both were in awe of the work the girls had completed. Both made it clear that I did above and beyond what they could.

So nope, I don’t really worry about keeping up with their grade levels. :)

Kathleen asked: “I have a very hyper child. It seems like your children are very well-behaved. I can see how you can do this, but there is no way I could manage it.”

I will be the first to admit that my kids, although active, are not what is considered ‘hyper’. If I ask them to sit and read, they’ll sit and read. If I ask them to complete a worksheet, they’ll complete a worksheet.

I understand some children have learning disabilities, developmental delays, ADD, and a myriad of other biological/chemical reasons why sitting still to school would be challenging. I have not personally dealt with any of them, but there are a few homeschooling bloggers who have.

If a child cannot sit still due to the above reasons, a different approach to school seems as though it would be better – RICHER. Public schools would be even more difficult than a homeschool. However, I am of the opinion that too many children are too quickly diagnosed as having chemical issues when really it is behavioral – as in, disobedience. In which case, a bit of discipline could go a long way.

My kids are NOT always well-behaved, but when they disobey there are consequences; they know this. They understand the boundaries and though they test them here and there (some days more than others), for the most part we don’t have runaway issues that keep us from completing our work peacefully – even with excitement.

Okay, that’s all I got from y’all and I need to publish this post and test out a new Raspberry Chipotle we picked up.

Good night!

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