On schedules

Inspired by a conversation I had earlier.
I am a big fan of schedules- not just for homeschooling, but for sleeping and eating for children.
There are a few reasons.
First- I think it's very important with multiple kids to have sleeping and waking times together. This means that most of the time it's quiet when one child wants to sleep and it's OK to be noisy when they want to. They are usually into playing at the same times, as well.
Second- kid free time is very important to me. I love my little ones dearly, I do. But I very much value that after bedtime I can count of doing grown up things- chores that are more time consuming or dangerous with running toddlers around, quiet mama reading, knitting, and other decadent activities. I also value time with my husband where we don't have to focus on being parents, we can instead focus on being each other together. Enough said on that.
Third- I like knowing when to expect them to be rested. I can commit to activities and projects out of the home with a reasonable expectation of them being well rested, well fed, and ready to play or focus, whatever the situation warrants.

In other news- we FINALLY finished lesson 100 of the Ordinary Parent's Guide! It took so long due mainly to all the just plain reading we've been doing, but I am determined that we will finish phonics this year. Sweet Pea is doing an awesome job reading- tonight we started a Magic Schoolbus book together and she managed most of the words by herself, becoming mainly tripped up by names. Yay, Sweet Pea!

Daily reporting continued

We are enjoying First Language Lessons. Sweet Pea did Lesson 10 today- very exciting to write and discuss her own special name. :)
Earlybird Mathematics is going well as well. She's half way through lesson 18 and was very disappointed to see that the book is almost over- until I told her we had another one to do next.
Writing with Ease- what can I say. Sweet Pea doesn't hate it, but I'm beginning to. It just moves so slowly, and seems overly simple. We'll continue slogging through for now- but it's seeming less and less enticing day by day for me.

Spelling test #1

And I'm pleased to announce that Sweet Pea got all the words right!

Daily Report

This week is going well. Sweet Pea had her first spelling lesson with real words as opposed to sounds.


We're preparing for mental math in Singapore. Sweet Pea was initially unsure of why I wanted her to do it this way, but now it's clicked.


And we did Alice in Wonderland. Sweet Pea was intrigued by the Caterpillar.

Daily Report

Singapore Earlybird 2 A Lesson 15- complete! We stretched this one over two sessions to allow for some hands on modeling of the concepts.
First Language Lessons Lesson 8 complete! Sweet Pea still perfectly remembers the poem she learned.
Writing with Ease- we doubled up lessons today because we didn't finish last week's lesson, so we did week 3 day 4 (Rumpelstiltskin) and then week 4 day 1 (Alice in Wonderland) today.
Sweet Pea wrapped all this up with some cursive practice. Since we're using the workbook pages with Writing With Ease and those are in print I've decided to start giving her regular, short practice sessions on cursive again.

Note to self:

A new puppy throws the best laid plans to the winds. Housebreaking + homeschooling= this should be interesting!

Daily Report

We skipped Miquon today to instead work more on Singapore. Lesson 15 is now 1/2 way done. We could have done it all today but I'd rather give it a little more time to sink in.
Spelling Workout- we did the first part of Lesson 6. Sweet Pea has her first 6 spelling words! Let's hope that this goes well.
Writing With Ease- day 3 of week 3 done. Story this time was about Rumpelstiltskin.
History and science tomorrow or this afternoon? We'll see.