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Have you started your new year yet?
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If you haven’t, when do you plan to start? We’ve a stagger start as well as a soft start. I started my oldest (of the two that’s still homeschooling) on the first with math and Latin. This week I added the youngest with math and Latin, next week we will add some of our morning basket. The following week we will add everything to the schedule.
We start back the 22nd, so a week from next Monday. I’m super excited, most of the kids are looking forward to various things too.
We are 3 complete days in. I like to start of with some half days to get back into things, and allow extra time for everyone to figure out new materials. So our 3 complete days (going by my plans) actually took us 5 calendar days to finish. We’d continued with math and read alouds all summer, so it wasn’t too big of a shock.
I’ve already exchanged R&S Spelling with Spelling Wisdom, after two days of frustration with R&S, but I don’t see any other changes. I’m still working out a couple scheduling issues, but nothing big. Mostly I’m trying to figure out what to do with my 9th grader. When should she stay with us, and when should she work on her own materials.
We will start the week of Labor Day with a staggered start and short days.
Right now we are still in the middle of camps and swimming lessons!
We started on the 1st and so far, so good. I felt like all of us were really ready to get back into a predictable routine.
We’ve started, too. A slow start. I assigned 3 days’ worth of independent work spread out over 5 days. This week, I’ll assign a bit more independent work.
I am in the middle of canning, so our family stuff will just have to wait a week or two or three(?).
I do hope to get bck to Barton work with my dyslexic dd soon.
We start next Wednesday ? Still making some purchases and getting a schedule down for everyone. My oldest will be a senior ? So I’m trying to get in what we can and make some good choices but keep it enjoyable at the same time.
We have completed 12 days of bookwork so far. My daughter, who has a learning disability, wanted more independent work this year. So far it is going well. This will help her to follow directions. We are also using goal cards this year, which we have never done before. She can see everything that needs to be done for the day, and when she finishes something, she will cross it out. She is enjoying that. Now, if we just could do more on an actual schedule, which the neuro-psychologist recommended, we would be in good shape.
My other problem is finding extracurricular things, handicrafts, etc. for her to do. Because there are no other kids here to play with, she is acting bored in the afternoons already. It will be a long winter if she can’t find things to do now, and summer isn’t even over. We didn’t join a homeschool group this year, so I guess I need to schedule more visits with homeschooling friends. We will be doing some traveling out-of-state this fall, as I have two new grandbabies coming, both in October! These will make seven! We are in PA. Where do we go first? Indiana or Massachusetts? I’m excited! So, we keep plugging away at bookwork until then, so we can take some time off:)
We began the last week of July with just Bible & math. The second week we added science & something else but I can’t remember what at the moment. We have started all the individual subjects, but we haven’t begun family things like geography or literature yet b/c the last two weeks have been peppered with medical & dental checkups.
I wanted to start early so we could take a week or two off before our baby girl arrives in Nov. I have it written down that we take all of that month off, but we will probably start back soon after baby b/c the children just behave better with routine.
We are a month in! It’s been so hot and humid, and none of us handle heat too well, so we have been cooped up anyway… I figured we could get a jump start now, then take some time off in the fall once cool weather comes. I am so ready for summer weather to be done… blech! Starting September 1st I am going to log our outdoor time, just out of curiosity.
As for how things are going, MFW’s ECC was a fail for us – I shelved it last year, thought maybe it would be better this year… nope. At this point I am piecing together things from home and the library, trying to get a game plan for the rest of the year. We’re still doing something at least, and I am finding my oldest is resisting “school” less and less which is the goal for this year – for him to get back his love of learning.
We started on August 1. This is our second year homeschooling and our first year using some SCM materials.
We started today and apparently kids were more than ready because they got up and completed most all their individual work before I even woke up and I woke up at 7am!
I am in the habit of writing their daily assignments on a dry erase board, the night before. Kids are now 10 & 11, so I was super impressed.
We completed our full day in 4 hours and that is including about an hour for their work, so I was pleased with that as well!
I purchased a document camera and a dongle so that I can connect my computer to our tv and I can place any book under the document camera and have it on the tv as well. It worked like a charm….saving paper like crazy and I can flip from an ebook to a Youtube video and back or project Hollings’s Seabird book with it’s lovely pictures while they sketch and then flip up a video of a real flying gull or tern etc. Then google a map for them to see while working on their maps while I read from the book with split screen. Just so awesome.
I purchased a document camera and a dongle so that I can connect my computer to our tv and I can place any book under the document camera and have it on the tv as well. It worked like a charm….saving paper like crazy and I can flip from an ebook to a Youtube video and back or project Hollings’s Seabird book with it’s lovely pictures while they sketch and then flip up a video of a real flying gull or tern etc. Then google a map for them to see while working on their maps while I read from the book with split screen. Just so awesome.
That sounds pretty neat! I am not an ebook person, but for certain things I can see this being a nice option to have (artist study would be nice blown up on a TV screen – ours isn’t huge, 32″ maybe?, but bigger than any other option). Do you have a link for what you bought? (Is that allowed on here? If not, ignore my request 😛 )
I don’t think this hardware recommendation would compete with SCM in any way and should be ok. If not, they are free to remove my post as I am not trying to break any rules, but just help and encourage other moms.
First, I have a ASUS computer than runs Windows 8 and so I had to buy a dongle that was compatible for my computer so that communication wirelessly would be possible. The dongle is a cable that has a HDMI plug on one end that plugs into the back of your tv and then it has a USB plug on the other that also plugs into your tv. The USB portion is its power source. My TV is older and doesn’t have USB plugs, so I just used an iphone USB power plug and have it plugged into a power strip. Here is a link to amazon where I bought my dongle. (That name just cracks me up….makes you feel like you are saying something naughty! 8-P)
The dongle simply projects my computer screen onto the tv and so anything I can do on the computer will be seen on the tv. This allows kids to sit anywhere in our kitchen, living room, or dining room and they can follow along.
Here is a link to the document camera I bought, just in case others find this post helpful.
https://www.ipevo.com/prods/Ziggi-HD_Plus_USB_Document_Camera
The document camera comes in handy in several ways by allowing the kids to see the pages of the book I am reading without having to sit right beside me. They will do legos and can easily look up to see pictures or if the story gets good, I will catch them following along as I read, which I love. I have also been known to play reading games with them if I feel they are just not engaging for some reason and so I will read some and then I will just randomly and then one of them will pick up where I left off and then they will stop randomly and the next one has to pick up and read. This makes the follow along to “play” and it causes them to get engaged and they get some experience reading out loud too.
If I have a worksheet I want to go over orally rather than have them each do it, I simply use the camera to put it up on the tv and then I cover it with a clear sheet protector and then I can fill in the answers as they give them and I do not have to write in the book or on the worksheet. This way I can sell the book later or keep for future grandchildren if I want.
I did this mainly though to save a huge amount of money on our Language arts curriculum (Michael Clay Thompson’s) anyway, it calls for each kid getting their own set of books and would just cost a fortune. So, I can just buy the teacher’s manuals and project them as I read and the kids still get the benefit of being able to follow along and If there is a page with answers, then I use a piece of scrap paper to simply cover them. I saved enough in one year off that curriculum to cover the cost of both the camera and dongle with a lot of change left over.
We do Fred math as a family and I can read the chapter and then have the kids copy the questions and answer them on their own and then we go over the answers, which saves time rather than have each kid do the chapter independently and is much more fun. Oh the laughter we have with FRED!!
Anyway, hope this is what you were looking for and I hope you find it helpful.
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