homeschool parent

Let me pour you a cup of tea and we can chat

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 16 Comments

Can I get you some tea?

I’ve got some herbal and regular and chamomile, but chamomile makes me sleepy. Does it make you sleepy?

Well, anyhow, I thought it would be nice to catch up today and just chat.

My bloggy friend Erin has a coffee chat feature she shares on her blog, but I don’t drink coffee, so I thought today I’d offer some tea instead. Then again, if you’d like some coffee, I can make some in the Keurig. I think. I tried one time, and my son said it was fairly watery so…maybe you’d better make the coffee.

I have milk for cocoa but it’s lactose free, if you’re okay with that.

I’ve been drinking lactose-free milk (Lactaid brand) since it first came out when I was maybe 11 or 12.

Before that I either had no milk or soy milk. I’ve been lactose-intolerant my entire life and I generously passed it on to my first born. Luckily, Little Miss doesn’t have the same issue. Not yet anyhow. My mom developed the issue when she became an adult and my brother was older when he started having issues with dairy as well.

Anyhoooo….I digress, which is actually what I intend to do for this entire post.

The other night The Boy and I were talking about his blog nickname, which I chose as a joke because The Husband always comes home from work and says “Where is The Boy?”, but now keep using because I don’t have any other ideas for blog nicknames. I don’t know why I don’t use the children’s real names on here. I mean, I have my real name on here so people can figure out my kid’s names, but I guess I just like the whole nickname thing so I have stuck with it.

I also have no idea where I picked up “Little Miss.” My daughter is not dainty or proper by any means and maybe that’s why I chose it. Because she’s the exact opposite. *snort*

We have had some nice, sunny days here and despite almost all of our leaves having already blown off, we still have a few bright colored ones hanging in there and helping to make everything beautiful. Little Miss is getting as much trampoline jumping in as she can before the snow starts to fall and our neighbor puts up their trampoline.

Our evenings are cool, which has brought animals to the ends of our beds and in some cases right onto my chest. Winter is cuddle season around here and it’s when our youngest cat, Scout, seems to revert back to being a kitten. She still likes to curl up on my chest, even though she doesn’t fit as well anymore. I hate to move when she curls up that way but I have to hold my arms a certain way to give her a bed and eventually my arms give out. Yesterday I had cat fur up my nose but hated to move her. Cuddles with her are a rare thing for much of the year so I have to take it when I can get it.

When I find myself dreading winter because of the dark, cold days that loom ahead, I remember that at least I will be able to cuddle under a fuzzy, warm blanket with a cup of tea or cocoa, a cat or dog curled up on me, and hopefully a good book in my hand or a cozy mystery on TV. The mention of a warm beverage reminds me — do you need yours warmed up? I usually have to warm my tea up about five times a day, if not more, just like coffee drinkers have to do.

The Boy has been working every Tuesday and Thursday with his grandpa, a tradition we started around the same time we started homeschooling at the end of the 2017-2018 school year. I’m really glad that my son has this time with his grandfather and that my dad can have some extra help around the house and property.

We are continuing homeschooling lessons, but I am a lot less strict this year than I have been in previous years. I am still requiring “book learning” so to speak but if the opportunity for a hands-on experience comes up, that trumps books and worksheets any day. I don’t even mind if the opportunity is what others might not consider “educational.” If we have the opportunity to get out of the area on a drive or spend time with family, homeschooling gets laid aside and we go.

Earlier this month we visited my 89-year-old aunt, traveled 90 minutes away to take Little Miss to a small (very small) Build-A-Bear store, and grocery shopped in place of more traditional math, reading, history or science lessons. Each opportunity offered its own unique lessons, even math when it comes to grocery shopping trips. Those trips also help to teach the children how to interact with others and offer assistance to strangers when needed.

In some ways, I find the life lessons more valuable than the “traditional” lessons and I am more grateful for them this year than in previous school years. I used to feel like I failed as a homeschooling parent if my children didn’t complete a list of traditional assignments I had for them. It’s taken me almost five years to break out of the mindset that homeschooling has to be like traditional school and now that the wall has been broken it is a liberating feeling and one I plan to continue doing.

I’ve found myself drawn to lighter movies or shows as the news of the world becomes heavier and heavier and more and more upside down. Recently I have enjoyed watching my favorite, sweet and innocent kisses from movies, including this one, from The Quiet Man (parodied in ET), which is pretty much my all time favorite.

I miss the days when kisses in movies were sweet and tongue free, or at least you didn’t see the tongues swirling around each other while characters attempted to suck each other’s face off.

As I sit here in my living room with schoolbooks piled around me (I just finished lesson planning for the week), Little Miss chatting with a friend on her phone (they can video chat through Kids Messenger), and the animals sprawled on various pieces of furniture, snoring away, I am trying to bring to mind other favorite movie kisses that aren’t gratuitous and cringeworthy.

Let’s see, there is:

  • Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in From the Terrace, even though I hated the movie overall;
  • Anything with Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart
  • Cary Elwes and Robin Wright in The Princess Bride
  • Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed in It’s A Wonderful Life (when she’s on the phone and he’s listening in and he’s so close and wants to kiss her and it overwhelms him and … swoooon)
  • Rhett and Scarlet in Gone With the Wind
  • And Mark Darcy and Bridget Jones at the end of Bridget Jones’ Diary.

I guess I’ll have to bring this chat to a close. I need to read my son’s history lesson so I know what he is learning, teach Little Miss history (we are reading a book about George Washington Carver instead of reading lessons in a book) and reading, and then get ready to make dinner early so I can take Little Miss to gymnastics for her make up class.

I hope you enjoyed your cup of tea (or coffee) and our chat. We’ll do it again soon.

Homeschooling Notes: Homeschooling grade school level verses high school level

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 7 Comments

I had an epiphany this week about homeschooling my first grader. Yes, it is a little sad it came at the beginning of our third month of school, but, hey, better late than never.

I am in a unique position in that I am teaching an elementary school student and a high schooler at the same time. Well, maybe it is not that unique since I know parents who are homeschooling multiple children of various ages. I suppose it just feels unique for me because the majority of people I know (with the exception of one who is teaching five from ages 6 to 15) who are homeschooling are teaching one child or a couple of children around the same age.

My problem was that I was trying to apply the same tactics that I used for teaching my high schooler to how I teach my first grader. While my ninth grader can handle multiple subjects a day and comprehend everything presented into those subjects each day, my first grader is a bit overwhelmed and when she gets overwhelmed, she shuts down and doesn’t want to even try to learn.

She wasn’t brought up in a school setting where a teacher presents several subjects to students a day and expects them to retain all that information. My son was. He was taught to be a little learning soldier, moving forward to the next thing whether he understood what he’d just learned or not. No time for trying to understand. They had a schedule to keep and a goal to reach before the end of the day/week/month/year.

Little Miss is used to more leisurely learning days where she can focus as much time as we feel is needed on each subject, only I wasn’t really doing that. I was making myself a list of at least four subjects that had to be done each day. This left us feeling rushed and scattered. Instead of lingering on a concept she might not have been grasping as quickly as others, there was a clock ticking in my head that said her work had to be done within a certain time frame so we couldn’t dilly-dally on place value, for example. In my mind, if she didn’t grasp the concept in the time frame we had, well, too bad. We’d address it again the next day because I still had Reading/English and Science to do.

This week, though, I abandoned the traditional idea of school and decided to focus on only two subjects a day for Little Miss. Two main subjects and an extracurricular on some days, plus Bible every other day.

We are homeschooling for a myriad of reasons and one of those reasons is the luxury it gives us to take our time to learn. Unfortunately, I wasn’t taking that time or recognizing the benefit of homeschooling very well. I was trying to make homeschooling like traditional schooling and doing that negates the entire point of homeschooling.

So, for now, I am going to do Math and Reading, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. The lessons I have for those right now are short and to the point, so we are doing two lessons on those days. The math lessons are a little more time-consuming and now we can take time on them and give Little Miss the time she needs to be a bit of a goof while she figures out whatever concept she is learning that day.

I might decide we need to do one of those every day so I will see. The great thing about homeschooling is I can change our schedule as needed.

For now, I am going to do science and history on Tuesday and Thursday. Two lessons on science maybe depending on each subject, each of those days, and most likely only one on history on those days.

Art will be Wednesday and Friday or other days if it fits with the other subjects. Then I want to add music in on certain days – maybe Tuesdays and Thursdays.

I am hoping this schedule will help Little Miss stop dreading school days. She knows she has two subjects, Bible and something like art or music each day and that’s it. She can focus better and not feel like her brain is stretched too far. When I mentioned the idea of only two subjects a day, without mentioning why her response confirmed for me this is the right move.

“Oh, good because when we do all those subjects, I can’t keep all of that stuff in my brain.”

Here is to hoping she can keep more stuff in her brain with less of it being poured in each day.