Rainy Day Procrastination

It's a beautiful rainy December day at about 8:30am. I should be waking the kids and starting breakfast so our school day can begin...but I'd rather just sit here with my hot chocolate ;) I figured I'd write a little update on our goings-on just in case anyone still looks at this blog.

Its crazy to think that this school year is half over. It has gone by more quickly than I guessed it would. We have been working on some fun activities recently that have kept me busy. When the kids were in public school, I often wondered why the teachers didn't do more hands on projects. It seemed to me that the kids would learn more through them and book study just seemed tedious to teach and learn by. Little did I realize the extent of work the teachers put in to prepare, execute, and finalize each project. One example is the book reports the older girls did. In my "parents mind" the kid reads a book, does the project, hangs it on the wall. The End. In my "teachers mind" you read the book looking at in both your perspective and the kids, you research and decide what type of report would be best to understand the full meaning of the book, you collect the materials for the project, you come up with exact, yet simple instructions, a grading system, an appropriate time frame to finish both the reading and the project (which needs to also be appropriate for different reading levels),  the kid reads the book, you walk the kid through the project, when the project is "done" you both go through the editing process, kid re-does the project, it gets hung on the wall, you prepare supporting lessons for the book AND the project. By the time you are done with all this you as a teacher have no desire to see another project for at least another month, but the kids are rearing to go for the next one. Vicious cycle. Most people will say that teachers have the best job because they get summers off...I really don't see how they could have summers off if they are to be fully prepared for the next year. I know this next summer, my time will be spent pre-reading material and setting up projects so I don't have to be up past midnight getting ready for the next day. I'm sure others have their system better organized than me, but I'm new at this ;)

With that said, we have also been changing our system quite a bit this year. Keeping what works for us and finding new ways to fix what doesn't. Brooke was getting frustrated with our History Group because it was all material she has heard before. Granted we are covering more than she did in public school. But, the kids are all younger than her and have a slower time processing the information. So now she in doing "timeline" for history. She has a binder for each century. Right now she is working on the 1600's. Every day she picks at least 3 years (usually it ends up being more) and researching what happened during those years. She has researched all about Galileo, Pocahontas, Johannes Kelper, Isaac Newton, the Mayflower, and more. Although she has learned about some of these in the past, she is also learning how to do the research on her own, not having the information spoon fed to her. It's opened up a whole new world of learning for her. The other kids are loving the History group though. There are 4 families that get together once a week and we are also teaching in the timeline fashion  but we are going over American History right now. We just finished with the Civil War. It is a bit funny (I may have mentioned this before) but because the parents do the research and prepare different sections of the lesson, we learn a huge amount of details that we didn't know before. We get so excited to share that there are times the kids loose interest and wander off and we adults are sitting there teaching each other. In the end, I know the kids are still learning because every once in a while I'll hear them reference different quotes or stories at church or at the park. Its really fun to hear :)

We are still doing our State Studies each week. Recently, we finished the Northeast States and have moved on the the Southeast. Alabama was our first state in the region. One of the things we talked about was Helen Keller (she was born there). Inspired by her, Kelsie decided she wants to learn how the read braille and do sign language. So we sent away for a free braille card and have started learning that. As a teacher, I get to learn it along side her so I will know if she is doing it right. :) We got some old braille worksheets from Township Elementary, they have quite a few blind students there. I have no idea what the worksheets are for because they have no words on them, but they will be good enough for Kelsie to use for translation practice. Eventually she wants to write her own little story in braille. So if anyone wants to send secret messages to her, learn braille and you can be pen pals ;) The other kids were more interested in learning Morse code, so we will see if we can do that too.

Well, the kids are now all awake and hungry so I had better get on with my day. Hopefully I can get my camera charged and take some pictures of all the cool things the kids are doing :)