Pressing On

It's January.  At this time of year I find my energy seems to wane.  But I don't want our homeschool to suffer from the winter blahs!  Here are some tips which help to keep me going during the winter months:

•  I start every week with a "must do" list.  I write out a sheet which tells me exactly what we need to read for the week, which activities we'll do, and what I want to accomplish for the week.  I do my planning in advance, so this is just a "short list" to remind me of what we have lined up for the week.  I check each item off, one by one, as they are completed.  This helps me to stay on track for the week, and gives me a motivational boost as assignments are checked off the to-do list. I also jot down doctor appointments or other "interruptions" on this list, so I can be aware of anything we'll need to compensate for.
  

•   I have a to-do list for each day, as well.  My younger kids use charts which tell them exactly what they need to do each day.  Their motivation to complete their chart is contagious, and the accountability of having it all laid out for everyone to see means that nothing gets skipped.

•  I have a chart, too, which tells me exactly who I need to be with and what each of my younger children should be doing at any given time of day.  I have "office hours" each day for my oldest, when I have time set aside to work one-on-one with him.  He is free to schedule the rest of his day in whatever order he wants, as long as he gets all his work done.  But for the younger children, I need a fairly rigid schedule to ensure that I get an equal amount of time with each one, and that no one is wasting time while I'm working with a sibling.

• I reward my children for a good attitude and a job well done.  I'll write more about our system soon, but for now, suffice it to say that there's a pat on the back for getting ready on time, being cheerful about getting school work done, and for saying, "What's next?". 
  

•  I start early.  This winter we've been doing some of our reading at the breakfast table.  It feels great to have one thing done before we've even cleared the breakfast dishes!  

• We start on the right foot with devotions, immediately after breakfast. If we don't, this most important part of the day will easily be squeezed out.  For us it works best to do fairly brief devotions twice a day (morning and evening).  Bottom line: we are more faithful to our morning devotions when they are scheduled to last about 20 minutes than if they last an hour.  A little, done faithfully, has produced more fruit than a lot, done unfaithfully.
  

•  I divide the day.  We get all our "hard work" done in the morning....phonics/reading lessons, spelling, dictation, and math.  This is the meat of our day.  After a brief recess and lunch, we get to the "cake":  history, science, and enrichment subjects.  These are the most enjoyable subjects for us, and it works well for us to save them as a reward for a productive morning.

•  I add in a mid-morning "snack break".  I've put an electric kettle in our schoolroom this winter and it has really raised everyone's morale!  About 10 a.m. I make a cup of decaf coffee for myself and a cup of tea (or occasionally, hot chocolate!) for the boys.  Our basement schoolroom is a bit chilly at times, and we enjoy this pick-me-up.  I keep it very brief (no more than 10 minutes) so it doesn't derail the whole morning!  If we're eating a late lunch I'll add fruit, crackers or a granola bar to the hot beverage.

• I look ahead.  I add up how many days we need to complete to finish our school year, and set a target date for completion.  Unforeseen events (hospitalizations, out of town guests, and can't-miss-opportunities) have to be factored in, as they may occur, but this gives me something to aim for.  I always take stock, every month, to make sure we are on track to finish our coursework by the end of the school year.  

• I incorporate some basic daily chores into the day.  Nothing saps my motivation faster than a messy house.  The childrens' schedules include a few minutes after meals to unload the dishwasher, sweep, take out trash, and straighten up the public areas. I keep the laundry going in between subjects.

• I limit time on the computer during school hours!  This is key for me.  I used to just "check mail" constantly and found that frequently, an email would need an "immediate response".   My home-based business cannot be allowed to encroach on school, so I've had to set a schedule for my computer time.  I check email in the morning before school, during recess, and in the afternoon once school is finished.  I'm not perfect about this, and find it very tempting to check any time I am near the computer!!  Sometimes I yield to this temptation, but I find that I am far more productive--and motivated--when I focus on the task at hand and forget about checking email!

How do you stay motivated during the blah days of winter?  I'd love to read your comments! We can all use a little inspiration this month!

Eastern Europe feast

Cabbage rolls in tomato juice

My husband and I lived in Eastern Europe for several years when we were newly married.  Although we weren't huge fans of cabbage rolls at the time, I got a yen for them last week and decided we would have an Eastern European feast.

I didn't know that my hankering for purple sauerkraut and stuffed cabbage rolls was pregnancy-induced, but my husband recognized it as a tell-tale sign. You can read all about our exciting news on my Countercultural mom blog!

This would be a good feast to have if you are studying any area in Eastern Europe.  We were served cabbage rolls in Romania and in the Czech Republic, in Germany and in Hungary.  Most Eastern European countries have their own version of the dish.

Stuffed cabbage rolls with purple cabbage, 5 grain bread and baked apple

Menu:
For our Eastern European feast I served stuffed cabbage rolls, baked apples, purple sauerkraut and five grain bread.

Baked apples:
Cut apples in half and remove seeds.  Lay apples skin side down in a casserole dish and put a dab of butter in the center of each apple.  Sprinkle apples with cinnamon-sugar.  Fill the dish half way full with water and bake at 350 for about 25 minutes.

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls
1 head of green cabbage
1 large onion, chopped
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 cup uncooked brown rice
1 pound ground beef
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 tbsp brown sugar
3 cups tomato juice

Remove about 10 or 12 large outer leaves and 6 small leaves of cabbage.  Cook the leaves in boiling water 5 to 8 minutes or until just tender.  Drain and set aside.

Saute onion in oil until crisp tender.  Add the brown rice and cook 3 to 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring constantly.  Cool rice mixture slightly.

Combine the rice mixture, the ground beef, salt and pepper.  Spoon about 1/4 cup mixture in the center of each large cabbage leaf; reserve the smaller leaves.  Fold left and right sides of large leaf over; roll up, beginning at the bottom.

Repeat with the rest of the large leaves.  You can cook this dish immediately, or chill it overnight in a sealed tupperware container, as I did.

When you are ready to cook the rolls, arrange the reserved small leaves in the bottom of a large Dutch oven or stockpot.  Spoon the brown sugar over the leaves.  Top with the cabbage rolls, seam side down.

Pour tomato juice over assembled layers; bring to a boil.  Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 2 hours or until rice is done.

Purple cabbage

Braised Red Cabbage
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon caraway seeds
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp grated lemon rind
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 qts. water
1 cup red wine vinegar
*1/4 cup salt
1 small head red cabbage, thinly sliced
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1/4 cup chicken broth

Cook first 8 ingredients in hot oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until onion is tender.

Combine water, 1 cup vinegar and 1/4 cup salt in a large Dutch oven.  bring to a boil.  *One-fourth cup of salt is correct for this dish.  Most of the salt is drained away after cooking.

Add cabbage to the boiling mixture and cook 10 seconds, stirring constantly.  Drain.

Add the cabbage, 2 tbsp vinegar, and chicken broth to onion mixture; bring to a boil.  Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 15 to 20 minutes or until cabbage is crisp-tender.  Discard bay leaves.

*My mother-in-law and I enjoyed making a kind of soup out of the leftovers by combining the stuffed cabbage rolls, the purple cabbage and the tomato juice.  Yummy!

Write Guide writing course

We're finally getting back in the swing of school after the holidays. Time to start posting again!

I love writing, and I am the happy beneficiary of several excellent writing courses taken in high school and college. Unfortunately, this has not translated very well when it comes to teaching my own children to write well, especially for my oldest, whose writing skills are advanced.

About 18 months ago we found Write Guide, an online course which pairs students with experienced, highly qualified writing teachers. It has been a fantastic fit for our family, and my son’s writing has improved by leaps and bounds through Write Guide.

You can read my complete review of Write Guide on The Curriculum Choice.

Edublog Awards

One of my other websites, My Audio School, has been nominated for Best Educational Use of Audio in the Edublog awards! Voting ends TONIGHT, December 16th. If you haven't voted yet, please take a second to click the badge and cast a vote for My Audio School!

Melting Snowman

When I saw this adorable Melted Snowman project on The Devine Home, I knew this would be perfect for our Georgia home.  My four year old and I had lots of fun making it! 

First, pour a couple cups of sugar onto a domed cake platter.  Then pick out 5 black and 1 orange button for the eyes, nose and mouth.  Add twigs for arms, and pop on the dome.  For a hat, we used an old Christmas tree ornament from Texas.  A camouflage scarf tied around the cake stand base completes the look!

I purchased some snowy window clings for this project, as you see in the original (at the link above), but of course I lost them (and the matching buttons!) somewhere in our Christmas shuffle.  We were able to find enough buttons in our button box, but the window clings will have to wait for another day.  Maybe when I start wrapping gifts I'll stumble across them!

Home-Spun Holiday Traditions

This post is part of the Home-Spun Holidays blog carnival, which is being held at Mentoring Moments for Christian Women.  The theme of the carnival is to share the simple, inexpensive things you do at home to make the Christmas season memorable.  On my Counter-cultural Mom blog, I've shared some of the ways we celebrate Christ's birth during this season. This post is about some of the things we do just for fun.

There are lots of things we do for fun during the holiday season right here at home.  I do a lot of my shopping online, and once the holiday packages start arriving, the kids enjoy making box robots.  They have lots of fun constructing the robots and then playing with each other in their new costumes.

Every year my husband sets up a little Christmas village and a train around the base of the tree. We all love to turn the lights out and light up the tree and the village, and watch the train chug around the track. It's so relaxing and fun. The boys can often be found sitting by the tree watching the train. This is one of our favorite traditions.

Our boys love to drag their bedding out by the Christmas tree and have a "sleepover" together.  They put Christmas music on and fall asleep to the sounds of the season and the twinkling of the tree lights.  I sneak in once they are asleep and turn off the music and the lights.  I snapped this picture last weekend.

It seems almost too silly to mention, but one of the kid's favorite things is to hide army men in the Christmas tree!  They love to pretend these army men are spying on me during the Christmas season, and they take it on as a challenge to hide them so well that I can't find them.  When I pull the tree out every year I find army men that have spent the winter in the tree, never having been found.  The boys love that, because it means they did their job right.

Making Gingerbread houses is another beloved tradition. I'll be writing more about that later this month.

My younger boys still enjoy setting up the Nativity set. We have 4 different sets and two stables, and I put them all out at once. When I am reading aloud to them, they like to play with the little figures and set up the scene.

What do you do to celebrate the Christmas season?  If you blog about it, please link your post to the Mentoring Moments blog carnival.  It will run from December 6-12th.

Art: Studying the Masters

Pieter Bruegel's painting The Land of Cockaigne depicts a legendary place, where food and drink could be found in abundance.

As we read about an artist, I like to have the children work on a project which helps them gain some insight into his work. Often they do a work of art using the style or technique of the artist we are studying, such as a watercolor painting or a plaster of paris fresco.  Sometimes, though, I like them to do a work of art based on the subject of a chosen painting.  We did this recently with Pieter Bruegel's painting The Land of Cockaigne.

First we read the beautiful book The Fantastic Journey of Pieter Bruegel.



This book is written like a diary account, imagining what may have happened on Bruegel's real-life two year journey through France and Italy during the 16th century.


We gathered a little more information about this particular painting in the book What Makes a Bruegel a Bruegel? before the boys began their own drawing of "The Land of Cockaigne".

They enjoyed imagining what foods they would place in their own legendary worlds, where cotton candy clouds rained M & Ms and slices of pizza grew up out of the ground. When they were done drawing, they labeled their work "The Land of Cockaigne".  This fun activity is a simple way to help children remember an artist and one of their famous works of art.

Twelve Days of Christmas 2009

December brings big changes to our schedule. And it is finally here! I'm so excited.

We'll be working hard to finish up any outstanding work from this semester so that we can phase in our favorite Christmas-related projects. This year, instead of making our traditional Gingerbread Houses we plan to do Gingerbread Castles (we are studying the Middle Ages, after all!) Copywork will take on a Christmas theme. I'm looking forward to baking, decorating and reading by the fire.  Advent starts in full swing tonight, too.

Plans for this Christmas season have been in the works around here since October! That's when work began on the annual Mentoring Moments 12 Days of Christmas articles. I put this year's content together, so I got a sneak peak at everything our writers submitted.  It is going to be a wonderful series, so I encourage you to head over there and subscribe so you don't miss a thing!  Christmas party ideas, thoughtful devotions, crafts for kids, recipes, decorating tips and much more round out this series.  We'll be posting several new articles daily for the first 12 days, and one more article daily for the rest of the month.

Today's content includes my article about holding a Gingerbread House party for kids, a yummy punch recipe,  a wonderful idea for creating a Goody Basket for each day's Christmas-related activities courtesy of Brenda (from The Tie that Binds and Joyful Holidays) and my devotional thoughts about finding spiritual refreshment during this hectic season.

I hope you'll check it out!  I also wanted to give a heads up to you fellow bloggers!  Mentoring Moments will be hosting a blog carnival which begins December 6th, titled Homespun Holiday Traditions.  To participate, please write a post on your blog this week about something simple and inexpensive you do at home to make the season special.  Head on over to Mentoring Moments on the 6th and add your post URL to the MckLinky at the bottom of the post.

Spelling with Clay

Kinesthetic spelling activities are helpful for my dyslexic son.  In this exercise, he formed each letter in the spelling word out of clay.  He likes using a different color for each letter.  He also formed a representation of the word's meaning out of clay.  This is an important step for dyslexics, who think in pictures.

When he was done spelling this word and making a little fire to go with it, he took a picture of it in his mind.  He likes to actually put his hand up near his face and make a clicking sound, as if he had a real camera.  Later, when he needs to spell the word, he can recall the picture he took in his mind.

This method has been helpful for him, particularly with those little amorphous words that are difficult to attach a meaning to.  Dyslexics often struggle with words like "the", "a", "of", "and", and a host of others.  The very act of spelling out those little words in clay, and building something to represent them, has been of great value.


For example, to represent the word "and" he might build two people.  It doesn't really matter what he chooses to create to go along with the word, as long as it represents the word to him in a picture form.  This technique has been effective in helping him with both reading and spelling those troublesome little words.

My preschooler and emerging reader love this activity, too, by the way!  My 7 year old absolutely loves making alphabets and words out of clay. He enjoys this spelling exercise just as much as his brother does. He is not dyslexic, but it is a fun hands-on activity for him. And my preschooler??  Well, he just loves mashing it around.

I came across this idea in the wonderful book The Gift of Dyslexia by Ronald Davis.  If you have a dyslexic in your family (or suspect you might), I highly recommend this book.

Joyful Holidays

I'm inspired! I just saw my friend Brenda's new makeover on her Joyful Holidays blog and it has put me in such a festive spirit! Head on over and check it out. She's already got some great Thanksgiving things posted...I'm dying to try out the Thanksgiving fortune cookies, they look so cute! She'll continue posting all kinds of inspiration throughout the entire holiday season.

She's also planning a give-away from her favorite etsy sellers to celebrate her new blog makeover. Check it out this week for fun, and then stop by again December 1st to find out how to enter.

Secrets to Contentment

Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Do you struggle with gratitude? Sometimes life is hard.

And sometimes we just see the glass half empty, even when things are actually going pretty well. I know I can certainly be that way.

I'm a perfectionist. A frustrated perfectionist, that is. In this podcast I share about my journey to contentment. Topics include marriage, children, homemaking, body image and finances.

Medieval Castle Siege Game

Finished castle with "King Toucan"

I got this idea from someone else's blog, but unfortunately I can't remember where I saw it!  We had lots of fun with this one.

First, we printed out castle templates so that the kids could assemble their own castle.  I printed out the black and white ones, and the kids colored them creatively.  This was a simple activity, that required a few printouts, some colored pencils, cardboard (we used old cereal boxes), toilet paper tubes and glue.  The castles did not take long to assemble...maybe an hour to make 3 castles (from start to finish, with most of the time spent coloring.)

Next, the kids placed their castles on a large sheet of butcher paper.  I wish I had had poster board on hand, but I didn't....so the paper had to do.

I read a book about castles to them, pausing at the end of each page so that they could decide if they wanted to "add" anything from the reading to their own castle.  I had to do the writing for the youngest ones.  They made little drawings on the paper to indicate buildings, weapons, and supplies, and then whispered to me what each drawing meant.

I helped them to label their drawings, and then read the next page.  We went back and forth like this, pausing after each page, so they could decide what their castle would need to withstand a siege.

After we were done, I used a printout from this Castle Siege game which prompted them to tell what people would be present in their castle.  Those names were written down (king, blacksmith, peasants, etc.).  They had one last opportunity to mention any supplies, animals, food items, people, buildings, etc. that they needed before the game began.  Once the game started, no one could add anything to their castle.

The Castle Siege game has a bunch of cards that you print and cut out.  Each player draws a card and adds or subtracts points from their total score, based on how well they outfitted their castle.  For example, they add two points if they remembered to include a dungeon, and subtract two points if they forgot.  Once they've gone through all the cards, the game ends and the player with the highest point total wins.

I wanted a chance to play, too, but it didn't seem very fair, because I knew exactly what everyone else had put in their castle, and what the cards called for.  We agreed that I would use our Fairy Tale Castle puzzle, receiving or losing points for whatever the puzzle creators remembered to put into the puzzle.  Let's just say that the Fairy Tale Castle wasn't designed very well for a siege, but it was fun anyway.

This puzzle, by the way, is a remnant from the days when I believed that all boys should have gender-inclusive toys.  No one plays with it in this house now-a-days.  For more on that, please read my post about Boys and Weapons!

This game was fun, and didn't take very long to play.  The longest part of this entire exercise was reading about the castle and getting the boys to label it.  But they absolutely loved doing that part, and they remembered so much more than if we had only read it.  Thinking about what they would need, labeling and listing everything, and then finding out through the game what was missing was very instructive to them, and they won't soon forget this material.

I'm so happy we took the time to do this!  It was well worth it.

Could my child be dyslexic?

 I always knew one of my children was a little different.  At age two, he could quickly complete complicated puzzles that his six year old brother struggled to put together.  His mind just saw the way it had to be!  He was incredibly smart and continually amazed us with his mechanical mind and ingenuity.

When I began teaching him to read, though, he struggled.  He changed b's into d's and 9's into 6's.  More telling, though, was the fact that he couldn't remember little words.  If he was reading "Tim and Tom and Mary and Jan" he would have to sound out the word "and" every single time.  He could not remember it from one second to the next.  I had him informally tested, and he "passed".  We were told he was not dyslexic.  That put my mind at ease for a short while, but not for long.  Signs which could not be explained any other way continued to crop up.

He skipped words or even lines while reading, as if they weren't there.  He read words backwards.  He added letters that weren't there, or deleted ones that were.  He ignored punctuation marks.  Reading and spelling became a horrible chore.  We had him tested again by a trained psychiatrist and found out that he was, indeed, dyslexic.

At first I was stunned.  I had feared this was true.  I had known it somehow, deep down.  Yet the truth still felt like a punch in the gut.  How would this affect him?  What would this mean for his long-term future?  Could we handle this?

Although it did not feel like it at the time, receiving that diagnosis was a blessing.  We could finally begin to understand what we were dealing with and address it in ways that are making a difference.  My patience increased exponentially overnight, as I realized that he really was doing his very best, and as I began to see school through my son's eyes.

I am grateful that I found some excellent programs for him, even before I knew for sure that he was dyslexic.  The psychiatrist was shocked that our son was less than a full grade level behind in his reading and spelling, and he attributed that to the strength of the programs we were using.

Dyslexia is not diagnosed only by a child being behind...it has to do with the discrepancy between the level he is working at when reading and writing versus the level he is able to work at when those components are removed and he is listening and speaking.  There were 8 grade levels of discrepancy between those two points for our son....so although he wasn't very far behind his grade level, he was miles away from living up to his potential academically.

It has been a year since he was diagnosed.  We've kept the good, and improved on the rest and this school year has been our best year by far.  Our son is thriving, and is actually up to grade level now in his reading.  His spelling is coming right along, and he is achieving spelling success every week rather than constant failure.  We are using things like My Audio School to address his core content needs, and Writing with Ease to help him learn how to communicate on paper.

I thought there might be a post in here somewhere, but I can tell already that there is a series here.    I'll look forward to sharing more soon about what we've been doing with him to achieve encouraging results academically as well as a much happier school day for both mom and son.

In the meantime, if any of this rings a bell for you, check out this post on Symptoms of Dyslexia  
on the All About Spelling website.  Perhaps that nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach is a wake-up call.  I didn't want to face the truth, but it has truly set us free.  Now we are working with our son's strengths and helping him learn how to accommodate for his weaknesses.

Another way to narrate...

The Bath house of Mohenjo Daro

Charlotte Mason teaches that a child should tell what he has learned after reading a book. This narration is meant to be done in his own words, rather than in the Classical style's question and answer format. We use both methods in our homeschool.

Sometimes it is hard to get my little boys to narrate to me. The idea is that they would tell about the things that they felt were interesting or important, but sometimes they get self-conscious and don't know where to start or what they should say.

 Enter the Hands-On Narration Activity.

This is a re-creation of the ancient Indus Valley city Mohenjo Daro, within its city walls.  I couldn't tell you at this moment what each lego represented, but he certainly could! And that's the point...

If I ask my boys to "set up a scene" depicting what they learned, they are overjoyed and race off to comply. When they tell me about their scenes, I find out quickly how very well they have been listening. No detail is too minute to share, as they have been careful to incorporate everything they remember into their scene.

Here, they used blocks and plastic dogs and cats to set up a scene from our reading about the Mayans.

They love these opportunities, and I love seeing their creativity and hearing them tell me in detail about what they have learned.

Everyone wants in on the action!

The Multiple Personality Mom

As women, we often experience a wide range of emotions on any given day. To our husbands and children--and even to ourselves--these mood changes can seem like multiple personalities. You may meet some of your "other selves" in this encouraging, allegorical podcast.




This podcast (written last year for The Ultimate Homeschool Expo) is 19 minutes long. To listen, press play in the widget box, or click "visit my call" to download to Mp3.