Back to Basics

Well, I took the last two weeks off from school in order to get caught up on work. I got a lot done, but am not quite finished. My house is in dire need of attention. My kids have chores and our day to day cleaning is keeping us from drowning, but there is so much here that needs to be done. I talked to my hubby the other night and we decided that I needed several more weeks to catch up work, clean and clean out or home and begin working on some unfinished home projects. We decided that the kids needed to get back to school but we needed to come up with a better plan for them that was fun, was working on specific needs that they have and required a little less of me. We explained the plan to our kids tonight and they are excited. Here's the plan:

I will be doing devotion, a Bible lesson and scripture memory with the 3 of them each morning. I may have them copy the verse, draw a picture from the lesson, do character vocabulary, etc.

Mason will be working on his handwriting and reading. He'll be doing copy work of word families and his full name (so maybe other people will be able to read it). He will also be working on reading some Bob Books and doing lessons on Starfall.

The girls will each be reading at least one chapter in an approved book each day. Then they will copy one paragraph from that chapter.

All 3 children will be completing States notebooks. They will gather information together then do worksheets. Mason will write the state name and capital, then draw the state, their bird, flag and flower. The girls will draw the bird, flag, and flower and will be filling out a page of info (capital, population, date of statehood, area, motto, climate, temperature, natural resources, industries, agriculture, exports and imports).

We have a great science book that briefly covers many areas of science. They will read one section each day and will have a couple of vocabulary words daily. They will also have occasional experiments.

For math they will all be working on memorization by using worksheets, songs, computer games and flash cards.

They will also be expected to do a better job on their chores (there Daddy has committed to checking them each day) and we will all work on household projects together in the evening. They should still have a few hours of free time every day and we should be well on our way to where we want to be within the next couple of weeks. We may stick with some form of this school schedule for at least parts of the summer. We always school in the summer, but not necessarily all week. Just depends on what else is going on. We will definitely take days off for fun stuff, but if it's too hot to be out or the weather is stormy or we're just not going anywhere we will do schoolwork. Doing it this way gives us plenty of extra days so we can take breaks whenever we need them instead of having to pre-schedule them. It works for us.....