Brenna, Isaac and Homeschooling

By far, the most common question people (family, friends, complete strangers) ask me about homeschooling is, I suppose, the most practical one:

What do you do with Brenna and Isaac while you teach Nathan?

I lock them in their room.

Just kidding.  This question is one that I wondered about before we started school, but sorted itself out more simply than I expected.

What do you do with your kids when you're cooking, cleaning, loading the dishwasher?  Either they do it with you, or they go play, right?

Well, in general, Brenna does school with us, and Isaac plays/disrupts/naps.

Disruption at its cutest. 
Those are wet clothes he's sitting in.

(Yesterday, his brand of disruption was pelting me in the face with a stuffed football.  Nathan and I were working at the table, and Isaac climbed into the chair opposite us and threw the ball at my head.  I set it on the floor.  He came around, grabbed it, went back to the chair, and threw it at my head again. OVER AND OVER.  I was concentrating on what I was trying to teach Nathan, so that dang ball hit me in the head about five times before I threw it back at him took it away.)

Isaac is on a spazzy (for his age) nap schedule.  He's definitely down to one nap a day, however, that nap needs to start between 10:00 and 11:30 (One day this week he woke up on the wrong side of the whole world and was tossed back in his crib at 8:30).  This causes me some measure of stress, as a nap that begins at ten in the morning and lasts a couple hours is not going to see this young man through until his seven o'clock bedtime.  So basically he wakes up shortly after lunch, and I try to keep him happy until Daddy gets home around six, thus starting the only part of his little day worth living for.  The upside is that he sleeps through a good portion of our school day, which makes things much simpler.

Brenna, on the other hand, for the most part does school with us.  I have a couple cheap little preschool workbooks and the amazing Kumon My First Book of Cutting that she works on while Nathan does his math, and she does the rest with us, or takes off to go play as she sees fit.

There are definitely times that I have to explain to her, "Right now, I'm working with Nathan.  You may listen quietly or go play, but I cannot talk with you until we're done."  I sort of file that one under "Having more than one child". 

So that's how we roll.  For those of you who can stand it, tomorrow, I'll talk about how our school day actually looks.  I am LOVING our curriculum!

First Grade, Here We Come!

Warning: this post is mostly my thoughts and reflection this morning, and as such, may not be... well, interesting!

Today is Nathan's first day of 1st grade.  We are all excited for another fun beginning and relieved to be back in a pattern.

I noticed a couple things this morning:

We are so much more relaxed this year!  I'm sure that's a no-brainer, but last year was such a learning experience for both all of us.  I spent last year figuring out how Nathan learns, what motivates him, and also how I teach. 

The other big thing I noticed is that it's not all about Nathan this year.  Last year, every single decision I made regarding school was made with Nathan in mind.

What's best for Nathan?
How will this affect Nathan?
When I school Nathan...
etc.

Conversations about homeschooling were only about him, even though I knew that (most likely) I'll be home educating the other two as well.  I would try to break out of that thought pattern and think about the broader implications of our decisions... but I couldn't do it.

This summer, though, my thoughts have turned much more to our family.

What's best for our family?
How will this affect our family?
When our family is in school...

It's really been a relief to know that I don't have to be hyper-focused on my beautiful boy at all times!

We've completed our morning routine and we're getting ready to start school.  It's gonna be a great year!

7 Quick Takes Friday

I have a whole lot of little random things rattling around my brain lately.  I keep thinking I should write a post about that.... but it would be one sentence.  When I saw 7 Quick Takes Friday over at Conversion Diary, it was a little gift of brevity from God!

1.  I've been getting ready to start our home school year all week.  The curriculum I'm using is ordered, and I'm very excited about it, so our actual timeline will likely depend on when it gets here, since we'll probably just dive right in.

2.  I'm contemplating, after these many years of using children as an alarm clock, getting my own.  I KNOW!  It sounds terrible.  But there may be some relief in having my coffee before there are three little voices at the side of my bed making their imminent starvation my problem.

3.  I've also been working on Brenna's quilt, and as I've mentioned a time or two, I like to make things harder than they were supposed to be.  Due to my overestimation of my own abilities, I'm having a problem with the dimensions of the quilt.  The style I chose moves around a lot.  Anyhoo, I also don't really love the way it's all coming together.  It makes me glad I'm getting all this learning out of the way while my children are young enough to think everything I make is THE COOLEST THING EVER!

4.  Isaac is killing me.  He is loud, insistent, obnoxiously stubborn, LOUD, he hits, he throws, he screams, he's fearless to the point of injury, and he's loud.  All the time.  If he's awake, I'm stressed.  Definitely my hardest toddler.  Then he smiles, and oh.my.word.  He's beautiful.  Charming.  Such a gift.  Then he throws his shoes at me.

5.  It's been hot.  Big surprise, right?  So we've been traveling around the area finding things to do on the weekend just to get out of the house.  We figure it's better to be hot someplace interesting.

A few weeks ago we went to Oak Alley Plantation.  It was beautiful.  The tour probably would have been better if the above mentioned toddler hadn't felt it was imperative to be louder than the guide at all times, causing the two of us to have to leave, much to the relief of the other paying customers.

This weekend we're going to New Orleans Museum of Art.  It'll be the kids' first time at an art museum.  Yay for culture!

6.  I can't figure out what to do for the Brenna and Nathan's birthdays.  I'm a little wary of inviting three or four six year old boys over to climb my walls for a couple hours, but it will be too hot to do anything outside and I'm not willing to pay several hundred dollars to rent a birthday party venue for a total of eight children.  Anyone have any ideas for me?

7.  Ummm...

We got a good coupon for a set of tires, which we will need reasonably soon.

Or,

I can't find a picture I like for the place of honor in my wall of pictures, so the frame is still empty.  It's starting to bug me.

Oh, I know! 

This week I wrote my to-do list on the white board, really big.  It's awesome, because I can't ignore it!  I have been so productive.  Of course, that means that my children REALLY, REALLY need to use the white board that they've been ignoring all summer, because clearly it's the most desirable space in the house.

THE END

That's What the Promise is for.

Found this today over at BooMama.  Love her.  Love this.

Heart to Heart

Nathan and I were having a little chat tonight in bed about some things on his mind.  I was explaining what an addiction is, and how someone doesn't feel normal unless he's had whatever he's addicted to.  He immediately understood:

"Like you're addicted to coffee?

"Yes." (smile)

"I think I'm addicted to TV.  And scones."

Practice makes... well, hopefully at least better.

I planned on quilting Brenna's quilt by hand... which would take approximately twelve and a half years.

But then I came across this and this.  So fabulous.

And I also love her free motion quilting.  Which is faster.  And hard.  So I started looking for directions, tips and tricks.  I found directions, but as for tricks... well, most everything I read said practice.  Practice, practice, practice.  I hope no one paid money for that advice.

So I have been practicing.  Since good quilting fabric is expensive, I went to my handy local Giant Discount Establishment and bought a couple yards of cheap fabric.  But even then, batting was still more expensive than I wanted to pay for practice materials.  So upon consideration of the materials at hand (meaning, spread across the floor of various closets) I decided to quilt one of the "mess" towels we keep around for cleaning up the plentiful spills around here.  Brilliant, right?  Well, sort of.  Not really smooth, and TONS of lint, but it's doing the job.

Free motion quilting is basically using your sewing machine needle to draw pictures on the fabric.  But instead of moving the pen, you move the paper.  So the key is to keep the foot pedal at a steady pace, while also moving this huge, heavy quilt around under the needle... and make it look nice.

 

I divided the quilt sandwich into squares, and I'm practicing a different style in each.

I love spirals.  And I suck at them. You can see here how moving the fabric and the pedal at the wrong speeds really impacts stitch length.  It's totally like learning to drive a car again :).  One of the tips that I keep coming across is "don't look right in front of the needle.  Look where you want it to go."  I think I heard that a time or twenty when I was learning to drive!

I think this is the one I'll use on Brenna's quilt.

How cute are these guys?

This one is Nathan's favorite.

I'm not ready to start on the quilt yet... I really want to get my stitch lengths under control, but I think I might be able to start next week sometime.  Yay!

Just had to share...

Isaac OWWW! from Miranda Stewart on Vimeo.

A couple notes:

This display was after a pillow fight, which is why Isaac didn't think anything of Brenna popping him in the nose.

There are shoes everywhere because they are Isaac's latest obsession.  He carries them around and throws them at whomever he thinks might be in need of a pair of shoes (and he always carries the pair).