I think we're ready

I ordered and received all the books, I put our schedule in the calendar, I've organized each cubby (until I find changes need to be made). I think we're ready.

This is our board that my mom contributed to our school. I bet you didn't know why I wanted this memo board and that you were giving a contribution when you bought it for me, did you mom?

We are in a new home starting a new year and we've had a chance to really settle in now, so I'm trying to be more official about it at this time. At first we were going to do school in the basement, but it was too hard doing that at the end of last year, because as I needed to get things like laundry or dishes done, or to make lunch, I had to be away from the kid that was learning. We've been doing a little schoolwork through the summer and the kitchen just seems to be the best place to do it. We also have a front room that we are turning into a library where some school work (reading) will be done too. That is where our cubbies are currently located. We still have a desk in the basement in case W needs to get away from the distraction of the little girls to do some work or some reading.

I really felt like I needed an official desk for the kids to put in the library or near my desk in the kitchen. It was difficult to find just what I had in mind, but I think I scored with this antique children's desk and chair.

I love antiques and this is my first true antique, I got it for $50. It needs some polishing up, and some screws tightened, but other than that it is in great shape. I want to get a tempered glass top for it someday. It fits perfectly in this spot and looks great in our kitchen. W is kind of too big for it already I think. Or at least he will be for sure in about a year. So we are pretty much letting E claim the desk for now. She will be doing some actual structured work now, of course most of it will be playing. :) Will works at the kitchen table.

Cubbies 

I feel hopeful about this year. Last year was a train wreck, with the move and the pregnancy and baby arrival. I am praying a lot and trying to keep a proper frame of mind. Since the kids are taking Chinese language lessons during the day, we don't have the same kind of abilities as regular homeschoolers. It is hard to do schoolwork in the afternoon when children are programmed to play at that time, and friends are dropping by. I worked something out with their tutor to try starting lessons at 11:00 instead of 9:00. If we start at 8:00 every morning, we could get some of the tougher schoolwork done when our minds are fresh. I appreciate their tutor willing to start later and to try this out. It made it SO hard on all of us to have Chinese language lessons take priority. 

Art

I am not what you would call, "Artsy". For art classes while I was in school, I just followed the instructions exactly and tried to get the work done and over with. I remember being criticized in 7th grade art class for my pencil drawing. The assignment was to do this pencil drawing of a photograph of our choosing. I chose a photograph of a cat from a cat calendar I had at home (seriously didn't care). This art teacher started trying to teach me how to do a better job on my drawing. I'm not criticizing her at all! She was just doing her job. However, I remember walking away from her thinking, "I'll never understand that."

While the subject of Art is a small one and not as important as all the other subjects, I still think it is important for children to tap into their creative side. I do recognize the benefits, so I want to incorporate this into our home school.

I have just had the most difficult time finding a good book to use to teach my children art. I bought a coloring book that had pictures to color of all the different "masterpieces" from all over the world. It also had a brief history with each picture. My son seemed to like that book and enjoyed coloring it. But I think he is like me when it comes to art. He doesn't like to venture out and be creative. He likes to color the picture exactly as the original. I keep telling him it would be okay if he colored that girls hair neon orange, whatever he wanted. Nope. He had to look at a picture of the original painting and color it exactly the same. I get that he doesn't want to do much decision making with the colors, he would rather just do what has been working for centuries.

I have bought other books since and sent them right back to Amazon after looking at them and thinking that either A - it looked completely DULL, and art should be fun, or B - the book would require some knowledge of art to even teach from it (and I just know the color wheel... mmm yeah that's about it).

I just wanted to share that I found a very simple and easy book to teach art from. (Click on the picture to go to product page on Amazon)

We've done the first two lessons and they are easy and the kids thought they were fun. The book is SO simple and lesson plans are laid out step-by-step with a list of required materials to the side. There are even fun pictures of examples of the art. It says it is for grades 1 - 6, and I totally think you could start the book over and do it over and over again and the kids could do something totally different each time. You'd have to be a complete idiot to not be able to teach art from this book, and I'm an art idiot.

You might misunderstand.

I want to preface this post by saying two things first.

One, Perhaps I am a tad sensitive about this particular topic, so I apologize in advance.

And while I had, at one time, expressed interest in using the online K12 curriculum through Utah Virtual Academy, I have since made a definitive choice not to use it. Let me explain why. For one, I was interested only because I was SO overwhelmed as a mom who was pregnant and thought I would use it for just a year or two until I could get a better handle on things. Now I realize how silly that thinking was, because if I want to home school a certain way I just need to keep doing it and work it out. It won't get better if I put it off or ignore it. Also, while Utah Virtual Academy is a "charter school", and I understand what charter schools are, I know they are using K12 and that is a curriculum that is made by the government. While this is definitely a better option over sending your child to public school, I don't want the government to have a handle on my child's education at all. Especially now with common core among us, what a scary thing for our children! K12 professes to be a tailor made option for your child and we really need that for Will, but I am afraid it just doesn't offer some of the major components of a Classical-style education that we want for our children.

Now, onto the purpose of this post. As we are settling into a new area and getting to know people, and people are getting to know us, we are hearing all kinds of opinions on home schooling. Some people say, "Wow, that is so great that you are doing that!" and some people follow that up with, "I just don't have the patience and don't feel like I could do it." or  "I wish my husband were on board with that." Now these kind of personal revelations do not bother me and I can certainly understand them, and it makes me feel good that people applaud me in our adventure.

We also have been getting comments like, "I know it's just not right for my kids, they need that social aspect of school," and various sayings of the like as if people are trying to defend their choice to me for sending their kids to public school. First of all, I really don't care what you do with your kids as long as you aren't screwing them up so bad they'll be delinquents, I don't need your excuses. It's like they hear I home school and automatically assume I have opinions about their decisions. I don't! It is your own life, your own children and it is not my business. But then they say that and I think they have opinions about my children's social abilities because I am keeping them out of public school. I must say this is where I get the most defensive, because the whole "social" argument is just about the most stupid argument I have ever heard in my life for anything on the face of the earth. And yes, I am including any argument about Mormonism, such as we have horns on our head. Homeschoolers being socially inept is just about more dumb than that. (See my post on the social aspect of homeschooling). Here is what I really wish I could say to the people who come at me with that comment: "So you prefer subjecting your children to playground fights, mad gunman, pregnant teens, drugs, and pedophile teachers." Yeah, okay, maybe a tad extreme, but come on! Where is there evidence of socially inept homeschool children (don't give me the examples of the extreme Christian crazies please. I am talking REAL homeschooling parents who are homeschooling because they genuinely care about the quality of education their children are receiving)? We are slammed with images of children harmed at public school in the media, wouldn't THAT scare parents from the social aspect of public school, and looking at the accomplishments of homeschooled kids like Tim Tebow make them want to homeschool so they can have more control/influence over their child's social life? So this comment not only makes such little sense to me (also because in Utah, your kids can still participate in public school extracurricular activities), but it makes me kind of mad.

Sometimes I also get people saying, "My (son, daughter-in-law, niece, etc.) homeschools. They do the online thing that's free." So in other words they are using the K12 program, which is free, and all the books and supplies, sometimes even a computer, is sent to the student - uh, all at the taxpayers expense by the way. This comment bothers me because it is NOT THE SAME as what I am doing! I wish people would take the time to understand exactly what and why we are homeschooling and not lump us in with the people who are essentially public schooling at home. That isn't the same at all!!! I spend a lot of time researching curriculum every year, and a lot of time buying the curriculum and setting it up and organizing it and a lot of time WITH my children in actual teaching time, they aren't just sitting at a computer with a virtual teacher who did all the work regarding curriculum. I EDUCATE at home. That is the big difference. We are doing this because we know that the public schools are incredibly inferior to what we can offer at home. We aren't doing it because we tried public school and our child wasn't doing well there with their peers, or whatever reason you might want to have him schooled at home, so you do the virtual thing. From the beginning, when my son was just a year old, my husband and I made the choice and never looked back. Maybe we didn't know exactly how we were going to do it at that time, but we knew that we didn't want the minds of our children to be touched by the public education system. We knew it would be hands-on, we knew that we would have tocollect a lot of books to be around the house, we knew we would have to answer a lot of questions and have to do uncomfortable things that most parents get to have the school do. We aren't virtual schoolers. Maybe someday we'll use a private school online for some subjects, who knows, but if it is publicly funded in any way, it's not going to happen, and we'll always be customizing things a very specific way to each of our children. To sum this up, K12 is easy, the way I do it is not, and I just hope some of these people will understand that. Am I prideful and selfish for wanting this recognition? Maybe. But mostly, I just don't want to be lumped into the other category.