Ramblings...

So according to our place value chart we are currently on day 32 of our current school year. We only put a straw in it on the days we actually do school *granted we are learning everyday, there is a difference on school days*.

How has it been going? Fairly well I would say, have I been keeping track of the lesson plans I made though…no. In fact *grabs lesson planning notebook* THIS is the first time since about the end of our first week that I have actually looked at this. I know, For Shame!, but I just haven’t got into the habit of checking plans.

We are still fairly new at this formal school thing. We started this school year *only our second year!* in July, but I had made my lesson plans to start in September, so things are slightly off, but I think we are doing pretty well. Obviously we aren’t behind my original plans, which is always nice. Considering when we started we do need to pick up the slack on some of the things we have been falling behind on.

I had also originally planned about a three week break at about our 20th day mark, but that was due to a family vacation we were trying to plan, which was part of the reason I went ahead and started us back in July. Along with having the materials, it being too hot to do much else, and I really just wanted to get it all underway. Anyways, things have changed so I don’t know when we will be taking our break, but suffice it to say by the time we do get to our three week break things will be going very well *I hope*.

So here is where we *should* stand: At our 30 day mark according to my lesson plans we should be on spelling list number six, week six in our daily handwriting lessons, chapter six in language arts, history studies should be on Ancient Egypt, lesson #24 in math, and for our science studies we should be learning about Earth’s atmosphere.

Here is where we *actually* stand:

We are on Spelling List #3 because when I gave Child#1 the other two test he flew through them so I decided to devote that time to allowing him to just play, and I would quiz him randomly on words from the word lists I have created until after the holiday season when the words on the lists start to get more difficult.

Daily Handwriting has been sporadic, I found a handwriting workbook at the bookstore on base and thought that would be better for now. It is something Child#1 can do independently which gives me time to work with Child#2. Once Child #1 goes through that workbook then we will start back up with the handwriting lessons from Writing With Ease.

We are only on Chapter #3 in our Language Arts curriculum, since when I came across the HOP deal I decided to incorporate that into our schooling. So the goal has been one week HOP, one week Language Arts. It doesn’t always work that way since we should be on Chapter #4 if we really did stick to the switching, but if Child #1 is really getting into the HOP lessons I’ll let him keep going for another week. His reading has gotten even better so it’s worth being off on our Language Arts work.

As for History we are tackling Ancient Egypt so we are pretty much on point for that, and we have lots planned for this subject, so it may push us a little behind. As far as I‘m concerned though the fun we will have will be worth it.

With Math we are on about lesson #20, so we are a few lessons off, but we haven’t been doing math lessons on the days when we originally planned. Mostly because we have been slacking, still moving from summer mode to full on school mode, still getting our homeschooling bearings *which is another reason why I wanted to start early*.

Lastly Science, we are still on the solar system, but will be moving to Earth studies very soon. So not really off too much on that one. Especially since Child #1 *and even Child #2* knows the solar system very well, I think it’s worth the extra time we’ve taken.

*I didn’t mention Social Studies because I have thrown our formal text on that out the window for now, I will wait another year or so on that one, and focus more on life lessons, current events, and tying into historical time periods for now*.

Other things that have found themselves temporarily thrown out *aside from the Social Studies text*:

Our art curriculum has found itself neglected since it wasn’t jiving with us. It is a great curriculum and I look forward to using it, but right now the boys aren’t ready for it. It is far more enjoyable to allow them to do the art that falls inline with our History work, instead of doing formal art lessons. So right now art is just fun coloring, History linked, and random crafts. Maybe next year *or possibly the year after that* we will pull out the art curriculum and use it full-time.

Our Japanese cultural learning is coming along great, especially with the addition of a new weekly activity, that should really help immerse us even more. The language learning needs more work, but we have some plans being laid to make fluency happen *and I can‘t wait until we are fluent in the language trust me!*.

I also came across an item online that will help keep us on track, but I’ll share more on it when it arrives.

Well I think that is about it! Our first 32 days haven’t been easy, but they haven’t been too difficult. Homeschooling is definitely a process, it will take some time to learn our rhythm.

I’ve also made a change as far as how often we will do school, instead of following a traditional calendar like I had originally planned we will do year round schooling. It just seems to make more sense to us, and works with our hectic lifestyle. I still haven’t figured out how we will do breaks, how often, that sort of thing. But I’ll share more on where I’m going with it later *when I actually figure it out*.

I was reading the other day over at Finding the Fantastic in Everyday Learning about making a homeschooling crest. I thought to myself for a minute should I do it…and then before I knew it my mind was racing with ideas. So of course I did it. First I had to decide on a mascot. What would best fit our family? I figured it would be pointless to ask the boys to make this decision since, they will one day realize that Spongebob and Anpanman really aren’t as cool as they are to them now. So what would stick with us as a mascot? Well I decided on dragons. My husband has collected dragon statues/figurines for years. They fill our bedroom, and a lot of the items we purchase if there is a dragon option we are going to get that one.

So it made sense for our homeschooling crest to have them, since if we had the money *and the space* they would be EVERYWHERE in *and outside* our home. The boys love them as well, so it was a win/win situation. After deciding which mascot we would have, I plugged in “dragon crest”, found a template, and set off altering it to fit our needs. I left the dragons red from the template, since they looked cool, and worked well with what was floating around in my head. Then I made the black background, the blue oval which got rid of a lot of extra little details from the template that didn’t work with my wanted end result.

Then there was the shield to fill in, after tweaking the colors, making sure the basic outline and colors worked I added an Earth to the center of the shield since the world is literally our classroom. Afterwards I added our school name: Holmes Schooling *it’s on everything we have that is school related because back when I was thinking of a school name I thought how clever our name is close to homeschooling…and we are homeschooling*. Corny? Perhaps, but it was the only thing I could think of, and it’s pretty simple, self explanatory; and most importantly we like it.

After all that I had to find our motto…it was pretty easy to come up with “It’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey” I think that sums up our life in more ways than one. I picked Japanese as the language for our motto, because we reached the decision to homeschool once we got to this country. I had been thinking about homeschooling before we left, but The Spouse wasn’t for it. It wasn’t until we got here that he came on board and we officially started our homeschooling journey. So this country is very important to us, on so many levels as well.

Finally, I thought the shield needed a little something else, so I added the Latin words for Live, Laugh, Love. That put the final touches on our homeschooling crest. It symbolizes us to the fullest, at the top is our family name, the name that shows we are a unit. Our name is flanked by the mythical creatures we enjoy, whose power we find alluring and mysterious. We balance our nomadic world traveling lifestyle with laughter and lots of love. And lastly we embrace the journey that we are on, because it is what will continue to shape us for the rest of our lives.

Like our crest? Want one of your own? Well head over to Finding the Fantastic in Everyday Learning to find out the how-to’s on homeschooling crest! Once you have your crest made then you can head over to CafePress and upload your image. From there you can have it put on t-shits, coffee mugs, thermal cups, tote bags, you name it and you can put it there!

Every homeschooler knows how hectic life can get. Some weeks are far more hectic than others. For us this week The Spouse is on 12 hour shifts, there are karate lessons, a lesson/enrichment planning powwow with a fellow homeschooler, daily errands, and I have a very annoying sunburn that is screwing with my ability to think clearly.

So this week I pulled out my laptop, cookbooks, and my memory to piece together our week of meals. So with everything going on I will at least not have to spend 30 minutes staring into the refrigerator hoping that dinner will generate itself without any help from me.

So here we go:

Monday: Shepherd’s Pie *it was yummy!…unfortunate my picky “it has vegetables” eaters didn’t agree*
Tuesday: Grilled Pork Chops with Pasta Salad
Wednesday: American Chop Suey Casserole
Thursday: Chicken in Mushroom Gravy
Friday: Meatloaf with Mashed Potatoes and Vegetables
Saturday: Fish and Chips *yes I mean fried fish and French fries it just sounds cooler to call it fish and chips*

So what yummy foods do you have planned to help make your week flow a little smoother? Want to share them with other menu planners *or get some ideas for your own menu*? Well head over to the Menu Planning Monday post on I’m an Organizing Junkie to share and discover.

For history we are currently studying Ancient History *since we follow a classical approach in regards to history*, and our focus for the next couple of weeks will be on ancient Egypt. To kick off our studies we headed to an Egyptian Mummy Exhibit the local museum was hosting. *Pictures weren’t allowed inside so I don’t have any photos from the exhibit itself…just the massive poster outside the exhibit room*.

The boys loved it, despite not having one of those handy headphone sets to tell us about each piece *they only had them in Japanese*. My goal with our history lessons is to allow the boys to actually step back in time and experience the time period as much as one can in the 21st Century.

First we started with going on an archeological dig as an intro to Ancient History, then they boys got to be cave boys for a day when we entered the Stone age. Now for our Egyptian studies we will be extending our fun.

Some of the things that will be used:

History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations
Spend the Day in Ancient Egypt
Egyptology Search for teh Tomb of Osiris
Free Ancient Egypt Unit Study and Lapbook *I don’t know if we will make the lapbook, but the library list that comes with this unit study will come in very handy*
Facts and Recipes
Explore the Pyramids
A Child’s History of the World

Both History Pockets and Spend the Day have activities that will help guide our studies along with the Free Unit Study. We will also devour books I plan to scoop up at the library tomorrow morning, and enjoy some fun hands on digging/discovery items that some friends of mine told me about. All of this will be the build up to our Egyptian Festival! Which we will be doing with another homeschooling family we are very close to.

We will don handmade traditional Egyptian garments and jewelry, partake in traditional Egyptian games, and dine on traditional Egyptian food and beverages. It’s shaping up to be a great time.

I absolutely love all the wonderful things we can do since we are doing school at home! Not even the sky can limit all the wondrous possibilities we have.

A friend of mine recently asked her friends’ list if they thought token economies worked. I think they can personally when handled properly and followed through on. It got me thinking about

1. How I need to go ahead and place my order with Accountable Kids, and

2. What is it I want to get out of the program.

I stumbled upon Accountable Kids while babysitting for a friend. She is a book junkie like I am so I often scan her bookcases when I’m in her home making a mental note of what I need to look up and learning a little bit about her as I go along *I’m a firm believer that ones bookshelf is a gateway into who they are, and it’s nice to see what gets my inner circle’s wheels turning*. As I scanned I saw Accountable Kids and figuring I had some time before she would return I plucked it off the shelf and began to read it.

Now we have dabbled in token economies before. First with a chore chart were every chore had a monetary value attached to it. This was mostly to help teach money and financial responsibility *saving for the bigger toy instead of blowing it the minute they got it*. I wasn’t really happy with it, since at the ages the kids are money doesn’t have the kind of value adults give to it and thus doesn’t allow for any sort of discipline measure *at least not in our home anyways*.

We currently have a family chore chart, and we all contribute to the final rewards *family movie nights, dinners out, fun park trips*, but that is more of a way to show how we all contribute to the home and our rewarded for our hard work at the end of the week. It still didn’t address some of the issues I felt were most important *accountability and consequences when one is irresponsible*.

Which is what made me nearly polish off the Accountable Kids book before my friend came home. It addressed the very issues I was trying to address. I enjoyed it’s method of handling discipline issues *I’m not all spanking is evil, but I personally want something different than what The Spouse and I grew up with*.

And most importantly it gives me a model to stick too, I think that has been the biggest problem is having a clear model we can use. What we have done has mostly just been pieced together and frankly not as affective as I would like and I know it is because of this lack of structure.

Something else stood out to me while reading the comments on the post, and it was that one commenter had said this method reminded them of Pavlov’s Dog experiment, which got me thinking on a deeper level about parenting, discipline, etc. Pavlov’s experiment is an act in classical conditioning where he used stimuli to induce a response in a dog. Even in it’s most simplest forms parenting can be seen as “conditioning”, although I prefer to not think of what I am doing as a parent in the same light as a scientist using a dog.

We start this from the time the child learns to roll over. First by moving objects out of their way *they soon recognize they can‘t have these items*, then proclaiming HOT! when they reach for the stove/oven *they soon remember they must not touch these items even if you aren’t around to tell them they are hot*, to potty training *it is called training after all* where we teach a child what to do when their body gives them the signals that it needs to go, it all adds up to producing someone who can navigate through life realizing that there are consequences and rewards *either internal or external* in life.

So it brought me to the conclusion that all parenting is conditioning in some form or fashion. The only thing that changes is the methods we use with our children. For some families it’s token economies, for others it’s grounding, bribing, time-outs, scolding, or corporal punishment.

Each method is an attempt to get the desired behavior that the parents/guardians want. Not all methods offer positive results *for instance bribing is usually done when the child is having a fit in an attempt to stop the behavior, which in a lot of cases just feeds the behavior later on so they can get their way*.

The most important thing about parenting regardless of how you look at it is that you do what you see is best for your child(ren) in a safe, loving, nurturing way. Ultimately, you want them to be accountable, confident, respectful, responsible, loving, and secure in who they are.

There are million and one different ways to do this, trust yourself and you will me amazed at where it can lead.

**For the record Accountable Kids isn’t paying me or giving me their product *I was just THAT impressed with what I read…and when it comes to books/products of this nature it takes A LOT to impress me*.**