A Perfect Fit, Part 2

On Saturday, I talked about my love for Five in a Row.  The freedom it's given us is just what our family needs.  However, so much more goes into a day of parenting/schooling around here.  FIAR makes up about 45 minutes of a full day that encompasses the things I love about homeschooling.

In the morning, our family works together to run a load of laundry and load/unload the dishwasher.  The kids each make their own beds (as a side note, for the first time in my life, it has become habit to make my bed as soon as I get out of it.  Yay for growth!) and put away all the books they read the night before.

Next, we sit down for a devotional time.  As I was trying to figure out what to do for devotionals shortly before school started, my friend Nina told me she was using a book called Leading Little Ones to God.

The title sounded vaguely familiar... last year, I was given a couple huge totes of homeschooling supplies and texts from an acquaintance back home.  I told Nina, "I think I have that!" and I did.  I hadn't spent any time at all looking at it, but for some reason, decided to bring it to New Orleans with us.  It's a wonderful book.  Each day has a short reading, a scripture passage, and a hymn.  Last week, our readings were

• Our hearts ask for God
• We cannot see God
• We see God's works
• God talked to people long ago
• God talks to us

When I saw these subjects, and all the rest presented in a very loving and simple way, I knew this would be perfect for Nathan.  He asks questions about these sorts of things all the time.  Another perfect fit!

After devotions, we do math.  One of the things that the commenters about FIAR mentioned was that you definitely need to supplement math and handwriting. 

For handwriting, I've chosen to have Nathan write letters to people, because sending mail is about the greatest thing EVER.  Every week, we'll write one letter (and Brenna draws a picture), and spend time the rest of the week working on the places that were hard.  I know that's sort of backwards, but it works for us!

The big math decision, I turned over to my mathematically inclined husband.  I narrowed it down to two programs, then told him to try to remember being a kid, and pick which one he would have liked to use.  As I am mathematically challenged, even studying the websites' descriptions of their teaching styles was confusing to me!  Brian chose Math-U-See, a program that has received raves from those who use it. 

Math-U-See comes with a video lesson, a teacher's text, a workbook, and colorful blocks to play work with.  While Nathan works on his lesson, Brenna builds with the blocks, occasionally stealing the ones he needs.  Good stuff.  Because math is so not my subject, the jury is still out on this part of our curriculum, but if it doesn't work well for us, people are selling these things on ebay for almost what we paid for them! 

So, then comes snack time, then FIAR, then lunch and rest time.  After rest time, we finish anything that we didn't complete before lunch, and the children have free play time.

Okay, now, all those of you who love me, please be gentle with the obvious-ness of this next part!  I am a work in progress!

One of the parts of our day I've come to love arrives at four o'clock.  We stop everything, and tidy all the major living areas of the house.  This includes picking up toys, sweeping, folding and putting away the clean laundry if we didn't finish that earlier.  We clear and set the table for dinner, make the kitchen ready for business, and make sure the clothes in the closets are actually on their hangers (it's sort of amazing how many things get taken off hangers in the search for something to wear!). 

The first day we implemented this, I almost cried.  I had set aside about 45 minutes in our schedule to attempt to tidy two rooms (the living room and playroom).  An hour and a half later, the progress was, well, almost noticeable.  But as we've made this our habit, the cleaning itself goes faster (which is why we're able to do more than just tidy two rooms), and the cleaning carries over to the next day.  It's sort of amazing to me!

So once we've tidied, the kids are free to do their thing until Daddy comes home, and everyone goes positively spazzy.  And the mama pours herself a glass of whine wine and hides for the rest of the night.

So that's our school day.  All in all, a perfect fit for us.  Next mission: figuring out when to do the grocery shopping!