Homeschool + Toddler = Total Distraction

February 11, 2016

Here I sit helping Clarissa work on her math lesson, and in comes the cutest and biggest distraction there is in our family right now, Kyrilene AKA: The Toddler.  We love her dearly and wouldn't trade her for the world but she is certainly giving me a challenge at figuring out how to keep her busy and happy and still have the time and focus and energy to give to the older three children with their lessons.

Right now I admit that TV time happens so math and science can happen and if nap time doesn't happen then reading and writing or something else equally important has a much harder time getting done.  I mean who can resist that cute little face?

Suggestions?  Ideas?  Advise?  I will take them all, anything that will help us with our family routine and schedule so we can get to everything that needs to be done each day.  On the plus side today we did get three days worth of science done this morning while "The Toddler" watched Tinkerbell.

Lego's, Dangerous Animals and a Child's Imagination

February 4, 2016

Treysen choose the cassowary bird as his dangerous animal to write about a couple of days ago for his creative writing assignment and today he begged me to let him do legos as his art time for school.  He even promised that it was school related.  Although bummed that we didn't have enough of the right colors for a realistic looking bird he didn't let that stop him.

Clarissa not to be outdone by her younger brother set to work on her writing project subject a cane toad.  She used every single green block we owned and even convinced her brother to swap out the green blocks he had used for other colors but to no avail.  We still didn't have enough green and just like his cassowary her cane toad ended up a rainbow of lego color.

I love watching my kids use their own ideas and imagination when they play and build with their toys.  It means so much more to them and they learn and grow in so many more ways then when they just follow a printed set of directions.  They both think they would make good lego set designers someday.  I smile and nod knowingly and look forward to what they will decide they want to be when they grow up tomorrow.

Lack of Writing Interest and a Change in Assignments

February 1, 2016

We are still struggling with attitudes that came home with each of the children in varying degrees from public school about writing.  Mostly, a general feeling of it's difficult and not fun and a major lack of understanding when it comes to knowing how to go about writing even a basic paragraph.  What I didn't expect was for science TV to pay off today when it came to writing and attitudes.

When I let the kids sit and watch an animal documentary for science one day last week I didn't think much of it at the time.  They picked 72 Dangerous Animals of Australia and while I don't consider that particular show to be the most educational I figured they were learning something and I was catching up on grading papers so win, win.

Today however it paid dividends two-fold.  No one liked the writing topic from our lesson book today which was a descriptive paragraph about something you like to eat at lunch time.  So I gave in and told them to write a descriptive paragraph about one of the 72 animals they learned about last week.  Suddenly they were excited and couldn't quit talking about which animal they were writing about about and everything they had learned about it while watching the show.  I was frankly amazed at just how much they actually remembered.  Needless to say I am grateful for the inspiration today with a simple solution to our anti-writing attitudes.