homeschooling log 2010: chapter four.

With not feeling well for the past week, I did not do much with my little ones. We had Master's yesterday, and Ian spent time in the car ride home telling me all about Beethoven Bear and Mozart mouse. He's already familiar with a lot of Mozart's music as well as the music of a few other composers, due to all of the music that I like to play and the fact that many of the toys that I have gotten for them play classical music.

Well, with the inspiration of his commentary from the day, we spent the rest of the car ride home singing lots of songs. Ian and Natalie had me singing the same tunes over and over and over again, and I was happy to oblige. I know I probably did about ten renditions each of the continents song, the states song, the Spanish alphabet song, and the regular alphabet song. I also went over the phonetic sounds with them. A lot of singing.

This is my first time teaching one of my children to read. I didn't have to teach Bobby. Somehow, he already knew how to read by the time he was two and a half. To this day, I still don't know how that happened. But it happened, and schooling him was pretty much a breeze because of it. Ian is my first child that I am actually having to teach "from scratch," and while he has been doing well, today was a weird day. We had to go over the same set of words four or five times until he got it. I am going to re-do the lesson tomorrow. One practice that I got into when Bobby was small and I want to continue with Ian is never to move on to the next lesson until the one we're on can be done without difficulty. I'm in no rush. I want to see him "get it."

I put the lesson away and we got through the other activities that we normally do before moving on to picture study. Ian and Natalie both ask for that just about every day, along with reading. I love this gentle approach to learning how to make observations and articulate what one is observing.

I keep a little planner so that I can write down what we do every day. That way if there is a lesson that needs to be repeated, I can make a note of it, otherwise I will probably forget. It's part of the OCD planning side of me (and yes, that really is a side of me). I can really go overboard when it comes to planning my curriculum each year. I reminded myself before I even started this year that my kids are FOUR and TWO. Like, really. It's not like they need much. I've kept my sanity as a result.

But anyway, back to the planner. I used the "Homeschooling Journal" when Bobby was small but there really is just no need to use anything fancy. A regular old planner from Office Depot suffices just fine. Knowing little things like that would have saved me some money years ago.

Maybe in a later post I will share some about my homeschooling philosophy and style. I know I also still need to share more music resources. I have been remiss in putting all of that together. We have a school break next week, so I'll be able to concentrate on it more fully then. I'll still be doing school, but we will have a break from Master's so we'll be relaxing in Ohio with Daddy. We are all looking super-forward to being with him again. We miss him so much.

I apologize for this post being somewhat all over the place and rambly. That's not even a word. I apologize for that too. It's late. My night-owl nature seems to be morphing into something else since the new school year started. I am tired earlier. Wanna go to bed earlier. Am going to bed in the next five minutes. Because when I am tired like this I cease to make much sense. Chapter Five of the Homeschooling Log will be much more fasifsticated and edumacated sounding. I promise.