Routines and Rhythms

Celosia School - Year E (Kindergarten)

Neither Raccoon nor I are morning people. Kitty and my husband, the King, wake up with a smile and chatter, Raccoon and I do not.

6 to 8 am    Somewhere in here all four of us eventually wake up. Kitty likes to go outside first thing and Raccoon watches some Netflix until he's civil.

8 to 9 am    Valiant attempts at breakfast which neither one of my children eat well.

9 to 11 am   School happens at some point between these hours. I break Raccoon's day into two blocks. During one we read his history lesson (currently from a children's almanac published in 1942) and do pages in his two workbooks. Then in the second block we do hands-on activities from our science kits or outdoors. Some days both blocks happen during this time, other days we split things into am/pm and occasionally evening work as well. Kitty joins us, plays by herself, or is off with Daddy, depending on the day.

11 am    Lunch (Since neither one does much for breakfast, we do an early lunch which they generally eat well)

noon to 1 pm   Free play (I eat lunch)

1 to 3 pm   Naptime for Kitty, iPad time for Raccoon, and free time for me if my husband is home. If not, Raccoon and I do something together.

Our afternoons vary a lot. Sometimes we take a walk, go into town, visit the neighbors, do messy stuff, etc. It depends on how much and what we accomplished in the morning. There is a snack somewhere in here as well. We are mostly outside and do educational stuff mixed in with everything else.

6 to 7 pm    Supper

7 to 8 pm    Family play, often with the King

8 pm    Bedtime for Kitty, free time for me and the King, movie time for Raccoon

9 pm    Bedtime for Raccoon

10 pm   Bedtime for me (although several times a week I stay up until midnight, just enjoying the quiet, I am an introvert)


Looking at this, part of me thinks "I should be doing more!" but another part of me says "Free and happy, good enough!" so this is probably how things will stay for the next few months at least. Our core subjects are language, science, math, and history with art, music, social studies, etc roaming through.

In order to fulfill 180 days of school, our target for when we actually have to report that we are homeschooling, Raccoon needs to do 5 days of school per week for most of the fall/winter. So my plan is that MWF we will do our core subjects, T will be coop day (he's going to attend our local school in Spanish while my husband is there teaching English), and Th will be special project or book day. In the spring we will switch to a four day week, which I'm sure will be a welcome break as the rainy season lets up and we start to spend more time outside again. With our year-round schedule, this puts us done in May with June completely off and a soft start in July for first grade (if he's reading, if not I might just call Year D Kindergarten again and keep matching each subject to his interest and ability level).

Musings - More About Us

We didn't do Tot School this week since we have visitors and our rhythm of life has been different. Instead, I thought I'd write about some different things that have been on my mind. We've been doing Tot School officially for a little over a month now, even though I've tried to incorporate fun learning activities into Raccoon's schedule since he was a baby. I think a little reflection at this point is good, especially if our Tot School eventually turns into homeschooling for K and up.

* I am getting a better sense for what will flow in and out of our play, and I like that. I'm also figuring out how to choose activities that I'll actually put together, versus other ones that seem like good ideas but I'll never get around to doing.

* My current goal is to expose Raccoon to new information and to have fun together at the same time. He's never been fond of adult-led activities, so I'm not sure how that will work out in the future with his schooling, but for now it's still okay.

* I saw this post on learning styles and at this point, Raccoon falls into the visual/spatial, kinesthetic, logical/mathematical (some), and interpersonal categories. It'll be interesting to see which style dominates as he gets older. And I have to add, could this BE any different than me!? I am strongest in verbal/linguistic and intrapersonal. Ha ha. That explains.... a lot. It also reinforces my doubts of school being a good fit for him in the younger grades, when his self-control will probably not have caught up to his raccoon-ness.

Other thoughts on how I do Tot School in particular:

* A friend of mine saw my blog and asked me how long we spend on each activity. I think she envisioned Raccoon nicely working on things all morning, or something. Ha ha... um, no. Our activities last between 1-5 minutes usually, then he's off to something else. So even if I have 20 pictures, we've probably done 60 min of activities spread out through the day, tops.

*Sometimes on other blogs I see the comment that their son or daughter "worked on it for a long time" and I'm curious how long that actually is. The longest Raccoon and I ever spend on anything is about 20 minutes if he's super engaged and the task is fairly open-ended. As I've mentioned before, he does not like repetition. This affects the things I choose for him because I don't want to spend a long time prepping activities that he'll be through in 1 minute, nor do I want to create elaborate materials that he'll be interested in once, then never touch again.

* Partly to solve the above-mentioned problem, I have started to pass on some of our activities to two of Raccoon's cousins who are a little older than he is. Especially things like the matching activities, tracing sheets, mini-books, etc. They are primarily Spanish speakers, so although the level of the activity is a little low for them, I'm hoping their mom uses it to help reinforce their English. We'll see how it goes, but I feel less wasteful if I am at least passing on the things Raccoon is only going to do once.

* Which leads to... is it a waste of paper/my time if he's speeding through these activities once? I  have pondered this, and I think that they are valuable in moderation, because it does expose him to new things. He often suprises me when he does choose to do something I've offered before with no luck.

* How I pick themes - if it bores me, it's probably not going to interest Raccoon either.

* When do we do Tot School? I am not a morning person, so the earliest we ever start is around 10 am. I like to just have stuff ready so that we can do things whenever we have time, whether it's in the morning, afternoon, or evening. The most we ever do is about 30 minutes at a time.


I'm always curious about what others do and how things work, so if you have a "how we do things" post, leave me a link and I'd love to read it.

Getting Organized

I decided to take this week off to plan and get organized. The last few weeks have been a good learning experiences for me as I see what Raccoon currently likes and doesn't like with the Tot School activities I've planned. I have seen several homeschooling blogs have a Weekly Board of some sort (calendars, themes, etc) and decided that it would be a great way for us to stay organized.

Categories I plan to put on our board (with next week's content):

Theme                                        Space
Person/Profession                      Neil Armstrong/Astronaut
Letters                                        Cc, Ll
Song                                           This Little Light of Mine
Verse                                          Matthew 5:16 “Let your light shine before men…”
Rhyme                                        Wee Willie Winkie
Day of the Week                        (Pick out of pocket daily)
Weather                                      (Pick out of pocket daily)
Map                                            Solar System Diagram


The Theme will come from 2 Teaching Mommies for awhile, starting with their units on Places.
The Person/Profession will tie into our theme for the week and I'll probably just make up a one page sheet using Wikipedia, or other online sources.
The Letter, Word, Song, and Verse I plan to take from Raising Rock Stars Preschool.
The Rhymes I'm going to take from Mother Goose and we'll see how it goes.

Hopefully I'll have some pictures to put up soon!

Community and Nature Week

Activities
Language	Phonics Cards	Riddle Matching	Worker Memory Game	Music Activity
Science	World Map	Ocean Booklet	Ocean Diorama	Map Activity
Math	Frog Numbers	Make a Tree***	Make a Flower***	Pizza Fractions ½  ¼
Pretend	Dress-up	Guess Who?	Plastic Animal Tracks in Playdoh	Toothpick Art in bananas
# Books Read
Extras	stranger danger role play (w/Bernstein Bears book), threading “fish” blocks, cornstarch sidewalk paint

Just a few notes on how I use this chart:
*I try to print/prepare all of my material over the weekend so that I'm ready to go on Monday. I keep all of the things I need in one folder.
*When Raccoon is in a good mood or I'm looking for something new to play, I pull out whichever activity I think will work at the moment. So some days we do one thing, other days five, it just depends.
*Our big "learning" times are Tuesdays and Thursdays for now, as they are our completely stay-at-home days.
*We do a lot of things in the afternoons because by then we've played all his favorite things and he's often ready for something new.
*This list is probably too brief to be helpful. Right now it's more for my record-keeping, but in the future I will try to put up more links or pictures.

***I downloaded these two printables from the Teacher Express part of Scholastic's website under their "Free Resources" section on the left-hand side.

Back to School

We've taken quite a bit of time off, between travelling recently and then trying to make some major changes in our routines (like sleeping through the night). But I've been reading some of my favorite blogs and feeling inspired to start up the fun again.

I like the year-round schedule on this blog. I also recently signed up for this free science newsletter, as I am looking to incorporate some simple activities/experiments into our weekly routine. Raccoon loves to ask, "How does this work, Mama?"

For now, I'm not really worried about methodical study, but I do want to have new information and ideas to present to Raccoon each week, whenever the time is right. This week we're going to do some activities centered around the human body.

A Little Bit of Learning

Raccoon is constantly absorbing new information, of course, but today we actually did some intentional learning. We watched some Readeez on YouTube and did our dinosaur and horse breed flashcards on the computer (at Raccoon's request). We both enjoyed it.

I've seen the idea mentioned on several preschool blogs, but I like the simplicity of this one (third picture down). Raccoon likes knowing the day of the week because we do different activities depending on the day.

Schedules

Raccoon has never liked adhering to a schedule, even as a newborn he was all over the place with sleeping and eating. Recently I've been trying to do create some regular times for learning. Things go well for a week or so, then it stops working. My major discovery awhile ago was to connect our learning with a physical activity. The only problem is that as soon as Raccoon can do something, he completely loses interest in it and rages on to master the next skill. He really liked running for awhile, but now that he's got that down he wants to run up and down hills with some hopping and rolling thrown in. I love that he works at something until he gets it (even though at the beginning he gets really frustrated). But the constant changes in our routine makes it hard for me to be ready with what he wants to do at the exact moment he wants it. So I just gave up trying to do anything, but then he started asking me for our learning activities and I could tell he missed it. His behavior tends to deteriorate, seemingly from boredom, if I don't constantly introduce new things.

I need to figure out how to keep up. For the first week of the cycle, I have to come up with new ideas and materials. Then we have a good week or two before things stop working and I think, here we go again! So for the next few days I'm going to rethink my approach and see if I can figure out a way to anticipate his need for change and a new routine every few weeks. Hopefully this way I'll be able to stay ahead instead of constantly trying to catch up. We'll see how it goes.