...More Scheduling

A traditional school year is five to six hours a day, 5 days a week for 36 weeks or 180 days.

As a home-schooling family, we could have chosen to follow the same schedule of the local school, but we chose to customize a schedule to suit our family’s needs.

According to the state of Connecticut, we do not have to do every subject every day of the school year.

I have been struggling with the amount of activities in which to enroll my children and just beginning to face the realities that I do not have to enroll my children in every class or outside activity that their/my friends do.

I have decided to enroll each child in in only one pay activity per week. Of course I will schedule play dates and the like, and invite other children to sit in some of our activities and lessons, but I do not want these things to interfere with the educational purpose of home schooling.

Our Fridays will continue to be left for field trip days whereas, Monday through Thursday will hold the highest concentration of academic study. I do however, plan on teaching some things on Fridays and Saturdays.

I am such a planner that I cannot help myself about planning out everything. Of course, I do not anticipate a play-by-play daily run-down, but I will specify subject area topics for each day.

The amount of time spent on each subject depends upon the age, small motor skills, learning style, and abilities of each child (ranges as follows: 3-5 minutes for preschoolers, 10-20 minutes for 1st -3rd graders, 20-45 minutes for 4th – 6th graders, 45 minutes or more for 8th – 12th graders). Although Jonathan is at a preschool age, his attention-span, learning style and abilities enable lessons to run approximately 10-15 minutes.

The total number of hours spent each day in one-on-one instruction ranges as follows: thirty minutes in Kindergarten (broken up into several five-minute sessions), one to two hours in grades 1 – 6, two hours or more in grades 7 – 12. Again, more can be accomplished orally than handwritten for children with handwriting difficulties. In our planning, our TOTAL home-schooling daily agenda is two hours — which conveniently is the amount of nap-time for the baby.

The remainder of our school day is spent in independent book exploration, free play activities with his siblings and friends, complete own “chores”, exploring an instrument, create an art projects, and/or participate in any other activity that can be done independently. The television and computers are not available during the school day, and are limited to ninety minutes weekly, other than for educational purposes.

Some states require an excess of four to five hours of home schooling daily, thankfully Connecticut is not one of them. However there is a difference between “actual teaching time” and “school attendance” time.

Ladies Day

Harwington Rod and Rifle! Favorite Mama day off of the year!!!

Making it... Halloween style

Trina decided she wants to be Rapunzel for Halloween. Although I was not surprised by that, I was surprised that she asked me to make the dress for her. I havent had much time or energy to sew lately, so I am not really sure where the idea came from, nevertheless, I am excited. I was anyway until she told me she ALSO wanted to where the costume that I make to our Disney trip in less than a week... SUPER!

Poor nameless child...

I am still at a lose as to what we should be naming our littliest addtion to the family. Matt and I cannot seem to agree on any names and it is beyond aggravating. I loath his suggestions and he mine...

He likes : Danger, Cameron (He seems to be digging the new age)

I like : Nathaniel, William, Christopher, Donimick, Andrew, Elijah, Michael, Nicholas, Timothy, Cadence, Caleb (I'm a classic girl)

Jack suggests : Alexander, Daniel (It's all in who he knows)

Trina suggests : Maximus, Flynn (I think our little Rapunzel has an addiction)

Autumn Butter

AUTUMN BUTTER -

Ingredients:

* 1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
* 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
* 1/4 cup whipping cream
* 1 cup butter, softened

Directions:
Mix all ingredients until well blended. Spread onto your favorite muffins, quick bread, sweet crackers, or drop a dollop onto morning pancakes.

CINNAMON BUTTER -

Ingredients:

* 2 sticks butter
* 1/2 cup brown sugar
* 1 tsp cinnamon

Directions:
Combine all ingredients and mix well. Serve over sweet bread, muffins, or morning waffles. Store tightly covered in the refrigerator.


Winnie the Pooh's Honey Pot Balls
Ingredients:
1/2 c. Peanut butter
1/2 c. Dry milk
1 T. Honey
2 T. crushed nuts

Directions:
Mix in bowl the first 3 ingredients. Mix well. Divide dough into 6 pieces. Mold each piece into a ball, sprinkle with the crushed nuts.

....and He's ROLLING

Jack's was invited to his FIRST birthday party of the school year and it happened to be a throw-back to my childhood.

Although he has NEVER even seen or heard of roller skates, I still thought it would be "fun" to give it a shot with a bunch of 5 year old and their unexpierenced skating abilities. It was painstakingly obvious that the parental folks got far more of a workout than the little ones...Still yet, the kids had a ball and actually learned quite a bit on how to "stay up" on wheels. He and his little classmates, also played a mean gave of air-hockey and pinball.

All the parents I met (the whopping three others that attended) were super nice, and "real". I think it's going to e a good year.

Talk Like a Pirate

PIRATE’S TREASURE MAP

Tasha started kindergarten this year and has been in “craft overload” a bit so we don’t do as many projects at home as we used to. But every once in awhile, I come up with something to intrigue her and “making” the paper for the treasure map definitely did! CLICK HERE to see a full sized photo of the craft. Close the photo window when done viewing.


Pirate's Treasure Map

You’ll need cold coffee or tea (about 1/2 cup), piece of white paper, a blowdryer, a little imagination and some markers.

Take a piece of nice white paper and rip off all the edges (don’t cut them with scissors, rip them!) If you rip the paper a bit more than you meant to, it’s not the end of the world.

Crumple the paper up as tightly as you can into a ball.

Flatten the paper out again and put onto a plate or cookie sheet. (if you haven’t told the kids what you’re doing, they’ll start thinking you’re really weird right about now).

Pour coffee or tea over the paper. Swoosh around with your hands to make sure it covers everything.

If you’re doing this with a large group of smaller kids, you may want to get it to this point and set them aside for a couple minutes (get the children arranged at the table for drawing their maps). Then pull out some finished, dried sheets that you premade. It keeps the kids from having to sit through the “waiting” parts of the project.

Let it sit for about 5 minutes (if you’re doing it with a group, you don’t have to let it sit so long… 2 minutes is enough to give it some colour)

Pour the coffee off into the sink.

Blowdry with a hand held blowdryer on high for about 5 minutes (leave it sitting on the plate while blowdrying or it will tear to pieces). When it’s pretty dry (and starts to lift a bit) switch the blowdrier to low to finish off (about another 2 minutes).

Now… take some markers and draw your map. There should be a big X in the middle, a dotted line trail that winds around and maybe a title that says “Pirate Island” and a North, South, East, West arrow in the corner.

Once you’ve drawn the trail and X you can draw and label some “obstacles”. Some ideas are:

Bloody Beach

Waterfalls of Doom

Skull rock

Monster Mountain

Skeleton Jungle

Captain’s Cave (Captain’s Cavern)

Serpent Pass

You can roll the map up and slip into a 1/4 tp roll holder or tie with a ribbon, stick it into a bottle or just hang it up on your wall!