School, School, and More School

First Day of Homeschool 2014-2015

We are in the fifth week of the 2014-2015 school year.  The fifth week of local school and fifth week of homeschool.
Josiah is in second grade local school, and third grade homeschool.

Josiah's first day of local school - 8 years old

Jacob is in Kindergarten local school, and first grade homeschool.

Jacob - 6 years old

And Emma is in preschool for both local and homeschool.

Emma - 4 years old

Judson is just home!
Our kids are super kids, when it comes to studying.  Jared and I are continually needing to sit back, observe, and decide when we stop, switch, or adjust things in order to just let them be kids.  At this point, our kids are able to keep up at the local school.  However, we anticipate reaching a point in the upper elementary grades, where our family will not be willing, or able, to put in the work it will take to keep up with their class requirements.  Therefore, we have decided, for right now, it is best if they go half day local school and half day homeschooling, knowing in the future they will switch to full time homeschool.  I am amazed with what they are able to accomplish each day.  This year, all of Josiah's local school work is in characters, no alphabet/phonetics.  This includes his reading, writing, and math (lots of story problems), in addition to his other classes, art, manners, music and P.E.  After a morning of looking at and deciphering lines stuck together to make a picture word, they then come home and look at and read English, and study math.  This has been a challenge for both boys, and has been especially difficult for Jacob as he is in the process of learning to read.  I am trying to help him distinguish the difference between b, d, p, and q, after he has spent the morning distinguishing between, 人, 大 and 火.

Outside Emma and Jacob's school

Walking home

After lunch, we begin homeschool, with all the basics, reading, writing, spelling, math, history, and science.   Our history and science are on the light side, however are also favorite areas.  We are using Sonlight curriculum for most of our subjects.  I appreciate, especially for Josiah's 3rd grade work, how history and Bible is intertwined with the reading, writing, and literature.  Our time is limited, and this seems to be the best use of that time.  Much of their math from local school, also overlaps with homeschool.  At home I am able to teach concepts, check for understanding and not require a huge amount of practice.  (They really are getting many of the concepts at school, even in a second language!)
In addition to homeschooling in the afternoon, Josiah, Jacob and Emma also meet with a language tutor.  Josiah spends his tutor time working on homework from local school, and/or preparing for the next day.  This has been a huge help, as it takes me literally hours to help him with his work, vs. minutes with his tutor.  Jacob and Emma still do preschool type activities with their tutor, arts and crafts, directed play, read books, etc.  We have their tutor times staggered so that I am able to do individual work with one, while the other is occupied.

A Homeschool moment

Not often do we have a day that goes as smoothly as it sounds (or is scheduled in my book).  I am still trying to work out the kinks.  Sometimes someone, or everyone, is sick, the local school schedule switches last minute, Josiah has an overload of homework, etc.  Jacob was still taking naps, until five weeks ago, and it is hard to completely break him of them.  Emma and Judson do not always sleep as long as I expect in the afternoon and then I am suddenly needing to pull out activities for them.  This year I am trying to have a bag of stuff for Emma, for each day, that she can pull down and work on independently.  She loves it, but so far it is a lot of work for me to put together.  Trying to figure that out.  Judson usually does pretty well playing with one of his 'busy bags' that I have set aside for that purpose, but not sure how long that will last.  There have also been many days when the kids are just 'DONE!' and there is really no way we can continue trying to learn.  I am trying to be sensitive to this.  There are times I have switched things around for homeschool, doing math all orally, or me being a scribe for Jacob. Other times we have just stopped for the day, cancelled tutors, and gone outside or played a game together. These days are hard for me, I don't want to be off schedule (whatever that means).  Somehow, though, we always seem to catch up on another day.

This is probably more than any of you really want to know!  I will try to not do many more posts with an overload of school information.  Thanks for sticking with me until the end :).