Viking Ship I helped design!!!
Is it OK to boast a little??? While working on our Vikings unit, I thought to myself "Gee, it would be awesome to have a wooden Viking ship the kids could play with to go along with this unit", so I contacted one of my favorite shops on etsy.com called ClickityClack. I drew up a rough design of what I was looking for, which began a dialogue between the owners and myself to finally create the above Viking ship (currently found here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/502463260/viking-dragon-ship-with-peg-dolls?ref=related-3)
I also got as a bonus for my creative input a small, 2-man ship to go alongside it. Imagine, if you will, the excitement of two children receiving this awesome package in the mail!!! It has really been a great addition to our table during our homeschooling lessons on the Vikings!
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I have also been continuing with my planning for next year (if you're a regular reader, this probably won't come as a surprise to you whatsoever).
I have been focusing a little more on DD7. We'll finish up with her time in the public school in June, mainly because we have found a delicate balance with the school that will allow us to (mostly) comfortably finish out the school year without anyone losing their minds (on either side, most likely). Not to sidetrack too much, but I have to say that I haven't been overly impressed with the school's handling of DD7's disabilities (autism and speech delay), but again we've managed to make some compromises and changes to allow us to avoid difficult situations a little easier. It is still an uneasy truce, but my husband is somewhat adamant that we "finish what we started" with her in ps this year.
This is where careful spousal compromise has to come into play. I agreed to keep DD7 in school for the rest of the year, if he agreed that she would *NOT* be returning to ps next year. We are allowing for the fact that her therapies may need to happen at a school, but that if that is the case, she will go pretty much solely for those therapies. She may stay through recess time, if its beginning or ending time coincides with her therapies well enough, but otherwise our dealings with public schools will be as minimal as humanly possible.
It is hard to come from a background in education, having spent 10 years in public schools (in one form or another), and then sit here and tell you that we want to avoid them like the plague.
I am sure there are wonderful schools out there, with wonderful administrators, wonderful teachers, etc that work wonderfully for most of the children in that district. We simply have not found one, and I have worked/had dealings with over 11 schools now in three school districts. The same BS seems to keep happening, the same poor treatment of children, the same disrespect for parents, and the same disdain for anyone who hasn't fully consumed the sour Kool-Aid that they themselves cling to so tightly and so rigidly that convinces them that they have all the answers within their cookie-cutter, carbon-copy institution for the production of a work force.
I have found that very few individual teachers (let alone entire schools!) have the mentality that they are truly there to simply help children explore their own innate abilities, to discover their own interests, and to become lifelong learners in the truest sense. They don't inspire children to come up with their own answers, or to consider different ways of approaching problems/challenges. They don't appreciate different learning styles nearly as well as they should, and have great gaps in their abilities to accommodate those differences. They prefer to teach AT children, and they prefer those children sitting quietly at desks with pen and paper rather than getting actively involved in their own learning.
Again, I appreciate that there may be exceptions to this rule, but so far we have not been fortunate enough to come across it...and certainly we have not found a situation that has been a good fit for nurturing the WHOLE parts of each child in our family. We don't just want their education to address PART of them, but to appreciate their entirety. Unfortunately, most schools simply were not designed to even comprehend what that means, let alone be willing/able to provide it.
Being honest, I really feel that it is probably an unrealistic goal, which is fine. For us, however, we WANT our children to be nurtured in these ways (and more!), which for us means homeschooling.
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So, back to the planning for DD7.
Writing: I decided that for her writing practice, I would get a simple elementary-lined writing pad from the dollar store. Because she is autistic, getting her to sit down comfortably and write for any period of time is a challenge for her. What I did was use 30 pages out of the writing pad (ripping out, setting aside and reserving the other pages for spontaneous writings). Then, I googled "Children's Poetry" as well as "Copy Work Poems For Grade 2", and pulled out my favorite 30 pieces (or sections of poems, since some were too lengthy and I wanted to keep the writing to only 5-6 lines long).
Because the writing pad has lines on both sides of the paper, I would write a poem on the back side of a page. This way, she could flip up the page and have my writing up top for her to copy on the bottom. I did all 30 of them already, so she is ready to go to do 1 page of poetry each week, leaving a handful of weeks here and there where we can take a break from it. I find that it is a good rule of thumb to only plan for about 30 weeks of work. Sometimes you may want to expand on something, or simply take a break, and this gives you the flexibility to do that without feeling like you're leaving too much "undone".
Social Studies: Fortunately, I still have the curriculum I used for DS9, which is Waldorf Essentials. For grade 2, the students are expected to learn about Saints and Heroes. I am still pondering how I plan to adapt this for DD7. I will leave this space blank (if you will), while I continue to ponder exactly how these will be handled for her, but suffice it to say that I already have the core curriculum for this subject to use as a spring-board. I also know that there are some of the Saints stories in audio form on storynory.com, so I am sure I will utilize that alongside videos and some work in a main lesson book (frequency to be determined).
Science: We found some great short science lessons FOR FREE on HaveFunTeaching.com. They are in pdf form, so I quickly went through and saved about 22 lessons (that may have been all of the free ones available at the time). I'm totally OK with the fact that there are not 30 lessons, because I feel that 22 weeks is more than enough science for the year for the kids. Also, we watch a lot of Bill Nye The Science Guy episodes, we like to take trips to science museums and other cool displays, and we are big fans of just exploring nature, so I feel that 22 weeks of "formal" lessons is plenty.
The great part about this is that I can have both children do science together. There is a question-and-answer sheet after the initial article, so I'll just print 2 of the question sheets so that each child can answer the questions at their own level of understanding. We'll likely also follow these lessons up with video lessons (from youtube and other sources), so I imagine that each week will contain plenty of information to make a nice, complete science curriculum from this free resource. We can also take out books from the library on those individual topics to round it out (as desired).
Math: For math for DD7, I plan to use the Easy Peasy All In One Homeschool curriculum. It has free printable worksheets that go along with the lessons, and the rest is all online games and lessons. This will appeal to DD7 immensely! There are only about (approximately) 50 pages of worksheets, which means she will not have to sit at a desk with pen and paper to work on math every.single.day.
It will be enough that she'll have writing 1x/week, a science worksheet 1x/week, possibly a page in her main lesson book each week (to be determined), and then 50 days of math worksheets (which is 2x/week for 25 weeks, which feels good to me given her aversion to sitting with pen-to-paper for very long, and the EPAIH site mentioned above has online games and lessons for each and every day of the school year).
We'll still utilize turtlediary (which she loves), roblox/minecraft/blocksworld (her 3 faves right now), and other online games, lessons and videos. She also enjoys audiobooks in the car, so she also gets a lot out of any errand in the car with me alongside her brother.
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As for Eviking, yes we are still doing some work with our Vikings unit. I guess we just hate to give it up!!! We've found lots of online resources, and have been diving very deeply into Norse myths. There is just so much to learn about the Vikings, and we have not yet tired of learning about them. I still have other units at-the-ready (Ancient Greece and US History:"Discovery" to Revolution), but they are actually grade 5 materials, so if we can get a jump on either of those this year, great. If we end up spending this entire year on the Vikings, you know what??? I'm totally OK with that! My son is really, really into it right now, and he's learning so much about them (including world geography and Norse mythology), so why stop if we're not quite ready yet?
I keep saying that I anticipate we'll finish up in two weeks (which reminds me of the movie The Money Pit, where the homeowners keep getting told their home will be done in "two weeks" by their contractor). Maybe this time I really mean it???? I do think we're winding down and nearly at a good stopping point, so I really do anticipate that we'll finish up "soon".
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I know that April is when everyone is sort of in that "mad dash to the finish". We are no exception. We have about 50 pages (give or take) to finish in our math workbook. This means that, by doing about 5 pages a day (and working on math 3x/week), we'll be finished in about 10 "working days", not accounting for quizzes and tests (which takes up an entire day on their own). So...I'm thinking about 4 weeks and we'll be done with the workbook. Yay!!!!! We have a timeline we're aiming for, which is to be done by the end of May. I think we're in a good position to make that happen. I may tack on an extra page here and there if we're feeling spry, but all-in-all, I feel good about the pace we're working on, and happy that we'll totally finish the entire book by the end of May. I don't think it is super common for schools to finish the entirety of their math books/workbooks each year, so I'm feeling very good about our progress in math this year!
I hope you are all enjoying this "last push". I know it can be a little stressful as you try to ensure you "get everything done".
Stop.
I know we are likely to leave somethings "undone" from my original plans for the year. I mean, we've skipped books altogether (think: Farmer Boy). We've totally skipped over certain topics in some of our original plans. We've done far less writing than I had hoped for (and yet the quality is getting better than I had anticipated it would look like).
It's totally OK and perfectly acceptable to stop exactly where it feels good to stop. It's also totally OK to stop simply because you've "had enough school" for the year, and are in dire need of a break.
Go Ahead!!!
Look, you could always consider peeking at those topics over the summer on some rainy afternoon. You could also just accept that your children got everything they "needed" out of the year. Everything happened perfectly the way it needed to. Be proud of their (and your!) accomplishments this year!!!
So, take a deep breath. Examine what is left of your planned curriculum. Pick an end date and work backwards, deciding how much you can reasonably finish in the time left....but don't forget to work PLAY, REST, and LIFE HAPPENINGS into those plans. Leave blank spaces purposely!
If you've done that, and find there's still stuff in your "plans" that won't fit into the remaining weeks, then maybe you can shorten, or even eliminate some things. Can you just watch a video on Christopher Columbus rather than reading about him? Can you just do a quick online math video and follow it up with a game to explain a math concept rather than spend a whole week on it?
Find how you can make peace with what is left of your "school year". Make peace with the beauty of life and all its many lessons, and know in your heart that your kids have gotten exactly what they needed, and that they will absolutely be FINE to skip or delay something.
Be gentle with yourself.
Happy End Of April To One And All
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