When we came home from the Big Picture Conference I wanted to increase the relationship element in our family lifestyle.  It wasn’t that we didn’t make relationships a priority – I often “cancelled” our plans because of relational stuff – good and bad.  It wasn’t that we didn’t have fun together – we all enjoy a good laugh and roll on the floor.  It wasn’t that we didn’t enjoy each others company — what it was though was the always rushing through the day, pushing to get things finished, and striving to make it all fit and balance.  It was time to give it up.  Give up the rush, the push and the striving. 

 

The month of April has been relaxed.  We have only introduced some of the thought that I have had.  We have been on ½ routine (meaning I am teaching only ½ the content that I want to).  This week we pick up the pace a bit and add the rest.

 

Our plans for this week are:

 

Character First study on dependability (Discipleship studies)

For the children to do copy work and math as their Discipline studies.

Joshua needs to complete his Chemistry book while Jess, Nomi and Daniel listen to a “read aloud” about Louis Pasteur and cells.

We need to do another chapter in our Oral Communication course and prepare for an oral presentation at the end of the week with the Co-op.

Daniel needs more stories read to him – FIAR is my goal.

We have a family to visit with a newborn bub and seedlings to plant out.

We have our monthly Co-op on Friday.

 

As I get ready for this week I want to reflect on what my goals were for Term 2…

1. Reduce Reduce Reduce.  I want to reduce the amount of subjects we do especially if some of them can overlap.  We are reducing our Language Arts Studies and incorporating them into our Discipleship and Discussion studies.
2. Copy work – daily.  Initially this will be a focus activity – for the children to get used to actually looking at words and copying them.  We will then move into using copy work for proofreading.
3. Read Alouds – We are going to start with one – Science to start with though we will rotate this with History and sometimes literature.  At the moment though, I do have an additional Read Aloud connected to our Oral Communication studies.
4. Notebooking – a place to put all our papers.  Our papers are commonly called “Notebook pages” but are really narrations of some sort – either written (one paragraph to several) or poetry, or drawings, or charts, or something we make / hands on.  The idea is to relate something we have learnt to paper.  We will use several collated ideas on narration to get a variety of written expressions.
5. HOW Teaching Approach – I would like to share more of what I am learning and putting into practice another time but enough to say here that I want to start being very particular about using the 4-Mat process as I plan our lessons.  So far I have written up our Character study on Dependability this way.
6. One of the results of slowing down has been the games our children are playing.  Not only are Nomi and Daniel playing more imaginative games  but the four of them are playing more board games.  This has been unexpected but totally delightful.  I want this to continue.

 

 

I still have several challenges in front of myself

1.                  To read recreationally for myself

2.                  To declutter my “school” stuff (get rid of the school stuff, keep the life stuff!)

3.                  Show the kids my notebooking as I encourage them in theirs

4.                  Have a once a week, one on one time with each of my children for discipleship purposes.

5.                  To include the children in our meal preparation, and therefore teach them to cook

6.                  To pick up our routine with housecleaning