A Perfect Unschooling Day

Here is another one of my "posts from the vault." This was written back in January 2008. Enjoy!

Yesterday was just the kind of day that I love. My 9 year old son woke up full of ideas about a story he wanted to write. I set him up on Word and he got to work, writing his story of Paulie's Adventures. Paulie is a penguin who finds buried treasure! My 11 year old daughter got into the act, helping him with some of the typing and spelling, and then she started making illustrations on Paint. She did a good job, too!

Every now and then they would come out to ask me how to spell something, or how to make their pictures turn up where they needed them to in the story, etc.

By the end of the day they had two finished books (the other was a cookbook by my daughter) and they were just beaming with happiness. My daughter told me that she knew she had really learned a lot about how to use the computer and the programs. That was especially encouraging to hear because up til this point she has really had a hard time understanding that she is learning even if there isn't a number grade or a star sticker to prove it. I have tried to explain to her many times that you don't need to be graded to prove you know stuff, but it sunk in on it's own when she could experience it in that way.

Later in the day my daughter got out a drawing program that we had been given, and started working on drawing with charcoal. She really loved it and did quite well.

Overall, the perfect unschooling day. If I had said, "Today for Language Arts you have to write a story" it might not have come at a time when they were inspired. By allowing them to run with the winds of inspiration they got so much more out of the experience, and are still writing books today. I love that.

A little bit 'o culture

One of the things I love about Netflix is the wide variety of films and cultural experiences I can share with my children.

Tonite we are watching Cirque Du Soleil's Dralion performance from 2000. It's been fun to share this with them, since our opportunities to see CDS are fairly limited here in Kentucky. :)

Now I have several would-be contortionists and balancing acts going on in my family room.....

It's Bloggy Giveaway Time!

Welcome to Supermom's Homeschool Blog! I'm a homeschooling mom of six children (ages 5-16) and just started this blog recently because I wanted a specific place to share my homeschooling ideas with other moms. So, I don't have any cool or fancy blog design yet, but I do have a lot of good stuff here and lots more will be coming up in the next few months. So, come back and visit me, ok? :)

This week I'm giving away a collection of things homeschool moms like! One winner will get a package containing:
The Old Schoolhouse magazine Fall 2008
The Old Schoolhouse magazine Summer 2008
Sonlight catalog 2008
The Family Mercantile Catalog (this is really neat and has lots of homeschool businesses represented in it)

In order to enter this giveaway, you need to leave me a comment telling me one thing you wish you had help for, as a homeschooling mom.

Make sure that your comment includes your email address or a link to your blog so I can notify you if you win! I'll be picking a winner probably on Nov. 2. USA addresses only, please. Thanks!

Want to visit my other giveaways? Check 'em out:
The Baby Boutique Blog: Giving away a Belly Hugger!
Supermom's Health and Wellness Blog: Giving away our most popular item for moms!
Supermom's No-Lice Advice: help for keeping the cooties away!
One Dollar Doggie Adoption: Sharpie marker set!

Teaching Textbooks--We Love It!

My daughter used Horizons math last year, and although she was able to do it, she did not enjoy it. When we found out about Teaching Textbooks this year, we were very interested. This math curriculum comes with computer CDs that feature a human voice speaking and teaching the lesson, with graphics and words on the screen. All of the lesson problems can be entered right into the computer program (which is great because the consumable text is quite large), and the student gets immediate feedback about whether or not their answer was correct. The student can also choose to get an explanation of the problem if they did not understand it, and can get hints if they need help.

At the end of each lesson there is a cute little celebratory animation, such as penguins doing the limbo, or animal characters dancing in a conga line. Very cute and entertaining.

The best part of all was that my daughter LOVES the program. She was so excited about it, squealing "I just LOOOOVE this! It's so fun! I want to do math like this all the time!" She did 7 lessons in a row. :)

It was really easy to install, and best of all, it works on our older laptop, which is a major plus since she won't have to get onto one of the computers that is in use more often.

It has been about 4-5 months since my daughter started using Teaching Textbooks and we are still loving it. She is getting the kind of instruction she had been wanting, and I have a built-in helper to tutor and teach my daughter math. It is a big help to me to know that she is getting what she needs, and I have one less thing to have to be totally hands-on about. :)

Kids...They Never Stop Surprising Me

This post is from May 2007. I love this sort of thing and wanted to share it with you.

Yesterday my almost-9-year-old asked me if we could go to the library so he could get some books to read. I mentioned that we have tons of great books right on our shelf that he could check out. (Apparently he did not realize that we had books that might be of interest to him)

A few minutes later he comes upstairs with a book about Hudson Taylor (famous missionary to China) that was given to my husband by his parents in 1978. (Same age as my son is now) He dug right in and started reading, and is now hooked! He's been going around with the book, periodically telling me what page he's on, sometimes reading a line or two to me in his stilted stop-and-start outloud reading voice of a second grader, or tells me things like, "So Hudson said that God told him to go to China, so he's going to GO!"

This is the child that a year ago seemed like reading was never going to click. And here he is picking a random book off the shelf and gobbling it up. Too fun. I'm loving this.

Great Homeschool Videos

One of our favorite free resources is Great Homeschool Videos. They have a really nice collection of fun, interesting, and educational youtube videos that we have really enjoyed. They are always adding stuff, and I have often been able to incorporate their videos into something that we are learning, or expanding it into a bigger learning opportunity. Check it out here.

Homeschooling at the Speed of Life--Book Review

Marilyn Rockett is the encouraging big sister that every homeschool mom
needs!

Whether you're new to homeschooling, or just need some fresh inspiration,
Marilyn brings it to you in her new book Homeschooling At The Speed of Life.

With an encouraging, accepting, and inspirational style, Marilyn shares from
her ups and downs raising four sons and homeschooling. She's so great at
respecting that each family really needs to find what works for them, while
also offering up tricks and tips that have worked for her through the years.

I started homeschooling over 10 years ago, so have pretty much "read it all."
However, Marilyn's book had the combination of ideas, reminders, and
inspiration that I needed to refresh my journey as a wife, mom, and home
educator. The complimentary CD-rom that comes with the book is super-easy to use and has a ton of helpful forms to help you get organized, stay organized, and keep your focus.

I highly recommend this book to every homeschool mom, whether you need help getting off to the right start, or if you're a veteran homeschooler that would appreciate some encouragement and a breath of fresh air!

You can check out Marilyn's web site and book here.

Counting Coins

We have a large jar of coins that we have been adding to for years. We first started it as our "Disney fund" because the kids said they wanted to go to Disney World. One day I got the kids gathered around the table and we sorted, stacked, and counted all the money, and then put it into coin wrappers. This is such a good, fun, practical way to reinforce math concepts with a wide age range of kids:

The littlest ones get counting practice
The older ones get skip counting practice
They can also get lots of multiplication and addition practice
And don't forget the manual dexterity that it takes to handle all of those coins and put them in the coin wrappers!

And it's just a fun time to listen to some music, talk, laugh, and feel rich. :)

Before we got started we wrote down our estimation of how much money there would be in the jar. Guesses ranged from something around $8 on up to $60. We were all pretty excited to see that we ended up with $82 wrapped, plus a lot more that we had run out of wrappers for!

Now we plan to take a trip over to the bank to open a special savings account for our Disney trip. $82 down and thousands to go......

Helping Our Community...Whether it costs me my sanity or not

I wrote this in July 2008, when we had just begun our work at the food pantry. I'm happy to report that it does go more smoothly now that we are more used to it, PLUS I now have a wonderful adult helper that joins us on our shift. Having two adults makes a huge difference in this endeavor!


Back when I had mostly really young children, I looked forward to the day when we could do some community service or church service activities to bless others with the people-power that a family of eight can provide. Now that my baby is a strapping five year old, I think we've arrived.

The kids have helped take down chairs at church for well over a year by now, and I've been keeping my eyes open for other opportunities.

A few months ago when my ten year old son was playing baseball we noticed that the ball park was really littered up (mainly because garbage can bags were not getting changed often enough, so there was just a whole bunch of garbage all over the ground by the cans). I decided to be proactive. The next time we went to the ball park we can armed with grocery sacks and rubber gloves. I explained to the kids that I thought it would be cool if we could help out our community by picking up garbage for a little while as we watched their brother's game. My little boys were totally pumped up, like picking up garbage was the highlight of their life! (Simple pleasures are the best, they say!)

When we got to the ball field, the garbage cans had fresh bags and all the garbage around them had been picked up. Oh no! The kids were so disappointed. (seriously!) Until I pointed out that there was plenty of litter all along the fence lines, etc. So they were back in business, with my 8 year old saying to his brothers, "C'mon! Let's go help our community!!"

They were so cute.

Now that baseball season is done (thank you, Jesus) we've got a lot of time on our hands. And since we live pretty far away from all the homeschool classes, we don't have a single thing on our regular weekly schedules. And the local Emergency Food Pantry got on my radar.

I asked some questions, and found out that they had an urgent need for someone to work at the food pantry on Wednesdays for one hour.

So guess who volunteered?

Yep.

The first week I went alone so that I could get a feel for the "lay of the land" and to figure out how I could get the kids involved there. After that week I started taking the kids with me.

At the food pantry, we do several things. First of all, here are the shelves that hold food:

There is actually a bigger area with more food, but for whatever reason, the way they do it is to stock these smaller shelves with all of the items that go into the back Emergency Food boxes.

There is a list that tells us how many cans of this and boxes of that should do into each box. The kids have really loved making a bucket brigade to pass along the box items from the shelves into the boxes.

Here's one of the boxes we put together: (my daughter, doing her Vanna imitation)

After the boxes are ready, they sit and wait for people to come and get 'em. Some weeks we've had just one person come in. Some days (like yesterday) we were swamped and were super busy the whole time. (In addition to stocking the shelves and making up the boxes, when people come in I have them do some paperwork and find out what their needs are. Often we help people get the food to their cars as well.)

My kids love this rolling cart that is often used so that people can roll their food out to their cars, rather than carry it. In addition to the box of stuff we put together, there are also government commodities that some people get. It can be a pretty big amount of stuff, and would be too heavy for most people to carry to their cars.

Unfortunately, the combination of rolling carts and little boys can be a stressful one. I am constantly having to get my boys to stop pushing the cart around the small food pantry area. There are also rolling dollies that provide a constant temptation to my little hooligans.

In the weeks that we have been going to the food pantry I have tried to improve my preparation level each time. Bring water. Bring a snack. (the first week the kids started telling me how starved they were as soon as they started seeing all the food boxes we were putting together for others....nice and embarrassing!) Bring an activity for down times. (If it's a slow day for people coming in, then there isn't much to do, which can be pretty boring.)

Yesterday I brought a fresh loaf of applesauce bread, coloring books, crayons, and a Mad Libs book. Foolishly I forgot the water. And a cattle prod.

Although there was so much work to do, (and their favorite kind--putting together the boxes) two of my younger boys were really boogers. They fought over the coloring books. They complained because the bread wasn't cool enough to eat. They did not want to work. At one point I turned around to find the 5, 7, and 8 year olds missing. (They had taken off to find the bathroom without telling me. I never let them go off on their own like that! Talk about stress...)

In short, it was very. frustrating. In fact, I had a momentary thought that I am just not going to do this. But of course, that was before I remembered that there is absolutely no reasonable excuse why my children cannot be helpful and well behaved for one hour a week of work at the food pantry. Heck--they do work at home, and they know how to behave at home. I have no idea what came over them yesterday to be so wretched.

So between now and next Wednesday I need to up my game. Will there be an incentive reward of some type for children that do their job at the food pantry cheerfully? Will they get some sort of punishment if they do not? I am flirting with the idea of letting them miss a meal or two and then see if they have a little more compassion for hungry people that need help. I probably won't do that, but when I was walking out of there yesterday it was sounding quite tempting to me.

I assured the children that I am NOT giving up on this. We have the ability to be a blessing to others, and an opportunity to learn to serve. Somehow, we're going to figure this thing out. What I'm telling myself is that if I stick with it, it will get easier, and the lessons and habits learned will be well worth the struggles.

That's true, right?

Right?!

Homeschool--Where the Style Is

One of the perks to homeschooling is that it doesn't matter what anybody wears. Mom can go around in her PJs all day and still teach algebra and read great books. The kids can wear the same clothes they wore for the past three days and nobody complains. Not that either of these things would happen at my house, of course, but in theory, it could.

Behold my youngest on a recent school day:
The ordinary shirt and shorts were complimented by zany Spiderman socks, a beaded necklace, and a homemade Indian headdress.

Later the look morphed into this:

Yes, that's a homemade loin cloth, folks. It's easy to make! All you need is a pair of underwear that mom doesn't mind if you cut and tape. Add some fabric pieces, adorned with markered Indian pictographs. Just use some duct tape along the waist band to hold the fabric in place. Next, slice the underwear up the sides so that people can get a convenient peek at your nether regions. Voila! Your loin cloth is complete.

Freebie Friday: Scott Foresman Grammar and Writing

Hey folks!

I found out about this nice resource online that is FREE! It's the Scott Foresman Grammar and Writing Workbooks for grades 1-6. Check it out here.

Investing In Our Children

I wanted to share this article with you that I wrote back in early 2008. Enjoy!

One of the things I love about homeschooling is that the children have enough time to come up with their own interesting things to do. Not everyone has the slow pace of life that my family enjoys, but for us, having large periods of time that are not scheduled is a really great thing. I get to enjoy seeing my children put on shows (which usually feature costumes, singing, dance routines, and their own plays that they wrote, directed, and act in), see them play "town" (where they make their own money, jobs, rules, etc.), make up games, create things, and a lot more.

Today we were at Walmart to get some groceries, and my 3rd and 5th graders reminded me that they needed more fabric. And duct tape. And a few other things. They love to make their own costumes and clothes. We have an old sewing machine that was given to us by a friend years ago, and sometimes they can use it, but oftentimes they just hand sew. They have made some pretty cool stuff, too. My daughter (11 years old) makes clothes for her American Girl Kaya doll, and my 9 year old son has made some excellent loin cloths for himself and his brothers to dress up as Indians in. :) Today he needed more white fleece material, plus some leopard print fleece, in order to make more Indian clothes. My daughter found some silky pink fabric that she fell in love with, and believed she needed two yards of that. One thing led to another and before I knew it we were looking at patterns, and then purchasing one, plus all the fabric and notions so that she can sew more clothes for Kaya. (Although I'm not much of a seamstress, my mom used to sew for our family all the time when I was a kid, so I do actually know how to read the back of the patterns and figure out what we need to buy. Thanks Mom!)

I was working with a budget for this week's groceries, as usual. I saw these fabric purchases adding up. But I saw how inspired they were getting, and I knew that I didn't want to say, "sorry....we are only going to spend $X on this right now." I did put a few limits on things (what they REALLY got excited about was a new sewing machine!), but overall we were able to get what they wanted.

Now that the groceries have been brought in and put away, they are already at work creating. My 9 year old just came in to show me his leopard print outfit (loin cloth and arm bands--it looks very good!).

Know what? We got everything we needed, plus I was able to invest in my children's creativity and enthusiasm. We never know what that might develop into in their lives, plus it makes for some sweet memories. And, know what? I only went $4 over my budget. :) No prob!

It just wouldn't be a homeschool day if somebody didn't end up in tears....

I wrote this back in September 2007, when I was just homeschooling two of my children after they had been in public school for a couple years. Thankfully we do not have too many teary days any more, but I thought this would be worth sharing, just to contribute to the "Keepin' It Real" category. :)

Today I've hit the jackpot, with both of my little homeschoolers crying during school time. If things keep going like they have been, I might burst into tears myself, thereby achieving a homeschool hat trick.

Despite the good curriculum I have, my complete unwillingness to make my children to meaningless busy work, my good sense of humor, having things be totally quiet here from 10:15-2:45 every day....STILL somebody starts crying about something.

My son cried because of his math, spelling, and language arts. He's now acting like I've asked him to swim the English channel with one arm tied behind his back because I asked him to write his remaining spelling words three times each.

My daughter cried because she got one word wrong on her spelling test, and later because she did not like it that I was going over her mistakes with her from her Wordly Wise book. Last week she complained that I was not doing enough actual teaching. This week she is complaining because I dared to try to teach her something.

A few minutes ago she came down here, red-faced and teary-eyed, to read me the two essays she just wrote. The first was entitled "Why Homeschool Stinks" and the second was "Why I Miss School."

To contrast that, my preschooler is now on a campaign to drop out of school. Most little 4 year olds might say something like, "I don't want to go to school tomorrow" before they go to bed, and you get them to stop talking about it by saying something like, "Well, let's think about it and we can talk about it in the morning" and then by morning the kid has forgotten all about it. I don't have one of those kids. I have the kid who comes to me first thing in the morning, rubbing his sleepy little eyes, and says, "So. Did you think about letting me stay home today? Because I still don't want to go to school." And here I am doing one of the things I never wanted to do, which is basically coercing/forcing a 4 year old to go to school even if he doesn't want to. And WHY am I doing that? So that I can homeschool the kid that writes "Why Homeschool Stinks" essays. Yeah. Good times.

**Adding some more info now. My daughter's main complaints about homeschooling are directly related to the differences between the way she was taught at school as compared to the way we do things here. She is missing being graded (which proves she is smart and learning, or so she thinks), having her time regimented, and things like that. It's a normal thing for her to feel this way and I completely understand. But I have no intention of giving up on her or our homeschooling.

After she calmed down a bit I went to ask her what things we could adjust to make homeschooling better. Once she got past her initial answer that absolutely nothing could make homeschooling bearable for her, she had some very school-ish suggestions. (start school at 7:35 am, keep grades for everything, have specific class times and schedule, etc.) Then the phone rang and her best friend called. When she got off the phone she was looking kind of funny and said, "So. Guess what they studied in science today? Reproduction!! I am SO glad that I wasn't there for THAT!" hahahahahaaha I love it that she got that reminder of why the grass isn't always greener on the other side....

Magical Poker Chips

I have found a chore currency and good-behavior incentive all rolled into one: Poker Chips.

I started out last year with the super cheap ones that are white, red, and blue. (found them at Walmart by the playing cards and games) Now that I have five kids at home full time I got the heavier, more expensive set that has five different colored chips. Each of my at-home kids has a color for their school stuff. (more about that later) The kids have opportunities to earn a chip for things like getting their chores done properly and on time, getting their school work done without fussing, and so on. Pretty much any time I need to dangle a carrot or want to give a reward, I use the chips.

Later on the chips can be used a currency to buy goodies from our Treasure Box. The Treasure Box is only open on Saturday, and contains snacks, candy, little toys, or fun things like Little Dover Books of temporary tattoos. Basically, when I see something cheap that I know they will like, I purchase it and add it to the box.

I have set up the prices in the box to roughly have one chip equal something that costs me 25 cents. I will admit that I put higher chip prices on items that I want them to get less of (candy) and lower prices on items I would rather have them pick (not candy). The Treasure Box is ever-evolving, and they are always surprised by the things I have added to it through the week.

So far I have had pretty good success with using the chips for:
-getting chores done
-getting schoolwork done
-being a good worker when we go to the food pantry to work each week
-going to bed without any nonsense ***** (Glory! Glory! This is worth gold chips!)

Try it and see how it works for you.

Math Monday: Timez Attack

Several weeks ago my 10 year old son needed some help learning multiplication facts, so I turned to my friend Google to see what I could find. We got a free download of this cool game Timez Attack and boy howdy does he love it. It is set up a lot like a playstation game and I would say is extremely appealing to boys in general. Seems like a good tool, and he was out of his mind with excitement that he could play Timez Attack and it would count for school. :) Check it out!

An Inspirational Article

I was initially inspired by this article over a year ago, and it continues to inspire me today.

If you are thinking about homeschooling, or needing a fresh burst of reasons to soldier on, go get some refreshment! This is just so rich, down-to-earth, and wonderful.

Homeschooling ABCs

Yesterday I found out about a wonderful resource that I think will make a huge difference for those of you that are homeschool moms who aren't feeling quite as confident and at peace with the way things are going in your home school this year.

The Homeschooling ABCs course offers you 26 weeks of ideas, direction, and encouragement in your inbox to help you, PLUS over $200 worth of free curriculum and resources!

Check it out here.

We love Times Tales!

My 10 year old son tends to struggle with math. Though we've found many tools along the way that have definitely helped him, it's still pretty slow going on a typical school day.

Lately he has had trouble learning multiplication facts, so I was on the lookout for a way to help him. I was reminded of Times Tales, which I've been aware of for quite awhile but hadn't ever seen in person. I decided to get their original set that covers upper 6, 7, 8, and 9 times tables, to see how it would work.

The system arrived, I started looking it over, and promptly could not understand what it was going to do to help my kid learn math facts. I half-distractedly read some of the instruction booklet and really, really didn't understand how it would work. The next morning I looked at it some more and was thinking that I wondered how quickly I could sell it to someone else. ;) But then I decided to just follow the instructions, even though it wasn't making sense to me, and just see what would happen.

My 8 and 10 year old boys sat down with me while we went step by step through the program. After a few minutes I was starting to see how it was going to work. And within 40 minutes BOTH of those boys knew EVERY multiplication fact for numbers 6-9! My 8 year old was smiling from ear to ear, all excited about how "Now I learned multiplication!" and he's only in second grade, so isn't even up to multiplication yet. The 10 year old was more subdued....sort of mildly amazed that his brain had been tricked into learning something. His regular math lesson went easier than usual, and I was pretty darn excited.

Basically, the program works using mnemonic devices and little stories to help the child remember math facts. It's quite clever. The set I got is their older set which just covers numbers 6-9, but tonite I'm ordering the supplement that covers 3s and 4s. It's not expensive, is non-consumable, so is an easy, helpful purchase to use for all of the kids.

40 minutes!! Can you believe that? Check it out here.

Muffin Tin Meals--How Fun!

I found this post about using muffin tins to make fun meals for kids and thought it was really inspirational. You could do tons of cool stuff with with these ideas.

My "baby" is 5 now, but I think all of my kids would enjoy this idea.

What would you put in a muffin tin meal?

(now I need to go dig up all of my muffin tins, and figure out how many more I will need to buy in order to have one for each child.....)