Scheduling oh my!

Since I love homeschool planning more than actually implementing them or most any other household chore, I tend to force myself to wait until the very end to make my plan or schedule for the next year. I must resist the urge to plan all year for future years. I typically want to scrap the current year in January in order to start day dreaming about next September. But I resist. I hide catalogs that come in the mail and determine not to buy things at conferences unless already on my decided list.

I agree with other advisors that you really owe it to yourself to take some time off- either go away, or have the kids go away for the day or hire a mom's helper for the day? Anything, so you can really concentrate on the job, look through all those great resources, and search the house for those books you know you bought at last year's conference. . . It is also a good idea to discuss with dh [dear husband] each child's details and how you want to meet them.

After discussing the kids w/ their Dad, The first thing I do is determine my dates. I get a calendar and decide when I'm going to start, stop and take vacation. I try to have a couple of extra floater weeks for unexpected things. I pencil in all those weekly commitments; TKD, dance, soccer, piano, Speech, Bible Study, etc etc. . . Then I count up what's left and start slotting my resources in them. I mostly just concentrate on the weekly schedule and a loose idea of what the daily schedule will be like- [Latin on Monday, piano on Tuesday etc] Since each day is different It's unrealistic to think I can do the same 'school schedule' each day of the week.

Another thing not to forget in this planning is the household chores and meals. While not perfect in this, I do recognize that stopping more often during the day to pick up makes it much easier to maintain the house overall, rather than trying to save it up for one big mega clean up. This is a good thing to do for 'transitions' in your day [after breakfast, before lunch, afternoons before Dad arrives, just before leaving, bedtime, etc. ] set a timer for 10 minutes and have everyone help pick up the main areas of trouble. Whatever gets done in that time is better than nothing. You might schedule in starting a load of laundry in the morning, and swapping it at lunch time. I am going to attempt, yet again, to schedule children for various meals- 1) so they can learn/practice to cook, 2) to learn to serve their family, and 3) to take some of the load off of me. Even the younger ones can make eggs or sandwiches so why not make them for everybody?

As for school. I'm going to try something different this year. I seem to always be struggling to get in my 'favorite subjects' of history and science because I spend so much time doing the 'have tos' When I do school that is. . . Sometimes it's just a struggle period. but also things like teaching someone to read and do math. I've found that I just can't do every single subject each day anyway- and alternating days wasn't working too well either- unless I was in a co-op. So this year, I am doing units. First a 3 week science unit, and then a 5 week history unit. then back to science. there's a little tweaking to fit in the calendar parameters decided on above, but mostly it fits into the time slots I've made. I am very excited to try it this way and see how it works out. . . I've also determined NOT to try to do the whole book, but just pick a handful of related topics for each 'unit.' More details to come, I hope. We start on Tuesday with piano, TKD and possibly Speech Chapter. . .

School's Out, sorta

Just posting like crazy today. Lots to catch up on. . .

The kids and I were very excited to finish our SWR for the year. I had hoped to get through list O for this year, but we DID make it through list N instead. Pretty darn close and M and N lists had all the review words, yay!! And not only that, we were able to do 40 words a week [ OR more, shsh, don't tell] AND do a couple of enrichments for each list. The kids have progressed so much in their reading ability and in their stamina that it is just easier to do the assignments. I feel like next year the 2 of them doing SWR will need to be done separately. They have different needs to work on and I found they either distracted or held up one another. I also need to see if the little one could do some things. I am never real consistent with having older kids teach younger ones, so here's my chance to try again. The next 2 could easily play phonogram games, read pre-school books, and stuff with the youngest. I will have to remember to plan that in- maybe while I do SWR with one and they can switch off. Lots of time to think about it. . .

At the end of our year we did a final spelling diagnostic. I don't do them every month, because one just doesn't test well, yet. . . If I don't count the obvious letters he confused the sound for [f for v, r for w etc] then he spells fairly well. They are both solid second graders in reading and spelling, and this is with one that seemed would NEVER learn to read. So it is a great big HUGE accomplishment. We will start back again at the end of August. For now, we will just enjoy reading, work on some vision therapy for one and handwriting review for the other.

I would still like to finish up some of the history we didn't get to, some of the science and continue to work on the math until done, but in reality, this is purely optional and probably not likely. . . but you never know. . .

Science Project

Here is the kids' science project display.

I am sorry to say that the cracked egg did not make it. We opened the egg and there was a full grown chick inside, so he definitely survived the crack, but I don't think he survived being rolled around by his earlier to hatch siblings. :( live and learn.

The Final Cut!

Here are the long promised movies we made of our chick hatching!!

We ended up with 10 baby chicks. 2 eggs never developed and 6 died before hatching. 1 of the 10 needed 'help' to hatch. He is the little yellow runt. Half way through the hatching process I put the rest of the eggs in cartons. I will always wonder if we might have saved a couple more by doing this at 'lockdown' [the day you stop turning them]. I think I might also have the hatch in the bathroom, so we can easily bring the temp. and humidity in the room up to the incubator level so that opening and removing chicks from the incubator would be more doable. I did not like hatched chicks pecking on the in progress chicks. The kids won special recognition at the local homeschool science fair for being the most fun exhibit. [Yep, took laptop and showed the videos, live animals not allowed.]

I highly recommend the backyardchickens.com forum for information and support! A great group.

Here's an overview movie:

Here's a nice hatch:

The kids made their own video of one of the hatchings.

We had many friends over that day to see the amazing miracles!

They were such cute fluff balls and fun to watch and play!

This was the best 'science project' ever, I highly recommend it.

next post: rats.

Egg Slumber Party

So, our eggs started to wiggle and pip [made little holes] on Tuesday. We were on egg watch! We decided to sleep in the room w/them so could keep an eye on them. Wednesday morning the first ones were hatched. Last night we had fluffy baby chicks to watch as well, so a second night on the floor. Even though we are still hoping a few more hatch, we've given up on sleeping down here. Other than waking up early, we didn't wake up, nor did we miss anything.

The brown thing is a towel covering the 'brooder' where the hatched chicks are being kept warm. It's really a lizard tank w/ heat lamp.

Three of my kids on the floor and I slept on the couch, lol. Okay, I DID check on the eggs several times throughout the last 2 nights.

Here are the fluffy chicks bedded down for the night. [5 of them, can you count them?]

chicken little

Well it's the end of day 22 of incubation [21 is 'standard'] and we have NINE! baby chicks. They are coming in all colors and sizes, from 'tiny' to 'humongous' and from 'tuxedo' to 'chipmunk.'

We also have 1 still working on hatching and 6 eggs just sitting there. [crossing fingers]

Waiting for these last ones has been very stressful for me! I am taking it harder than the kids! Here I am still up, sitting next to the incubator! Even so, this has been the BEST science project by far! I highly recommend it.

Soon our project will be done and our babies will go on to have happy chicken lives on the farm.

Here's some pictures of our babies:

And They Hatch! . . .

Okay, so we went to sleep in the living room. Egg # 12 was being so slow [which is totally normal] we decided to sleep. Around 4:45am we woke up to discover that he had 'zipped,' which is when they make the hole go half way [or more] around the egg shell. He was pushing on it, then resting. It looked like hatching was imminent! Across the incubator, during the night, egg #1 had quietly zipped around the underside of the egg! He pushed much harder and hatched out about 30 minutes ahead of Egg #12!! Because we were watching #12, I put my iphone on the window over #1 and got this great video of his hatch. He looks pretty pathetic, but already is fluffing up nicely along with his hatchmate. We have 5 more pips we are watching. . . With 14 more eggs to go This could take another 24-48 hours!