Eclectic Homeschooling: Week 1 of 2023

I need a way to document our homeschooling journey. Writing in my journal works, but if I am completely honest with myself, I love pictures associated with what I am talking about. I just read the two posts I wrote in 2020 about what we did for school, and I found it insightful. It was cool to see what we did, what were my priorities, and how much has changed.

Last year we were consistent overall with doing school throughout the school year. I am still super proud of that achievement. This year there are a few factors that might make that a little harder to do. Ean starts preschool, so now I am schooling 3 children. I thought going from 1 to 2 was hard enough! I have a new assignment at church that is emotionally draining for me right now. I get to talk to way more people every week than I am accustomed to. And we are having another baby in November. I am definitely curious to see how homeschooling will look by December. 

The biggest adjustment I am making this year actually came from not considering all these stressors, but from realizing we didn't have the funds to buy all the same curriculum we had last year. After a few days of agonizing over this, I got an email with a bundle of resources for homeschoolers, consisting mainly of unit studies. And then the brilliant idea came to me to take a bit more of an unschooling approach this year. I already use a modge podge of curriculum, why not make it a bit more modge podge, haha? So I decided not to buy any curriculum for science, artsist study, and music study. 

My fear is because I am not following a set curriculum for x amount of weeks, I will stop doing those subjects. But, I decided we will give unit studies a go this year, and if they don't work well for me, then we just won't do this approach again. That is the great part about homeschooling, right? Especially eclectic homeschooling. You get to try new things all the time to find what is a good fit for you, and for each of your individual kids. So I guess these posts will be weekly progress reports that will help me see the bigger picture.

Here is how things are going so far in Week 1 of our Eclectic Homeschool:

Monday: Labor Day. Thankfully Matthew needed to work on lines for his upcoming show, so we did school. Ira and Asa are finishing up their Summer Bridge workbooks that they have been working through all summer, so we didn't do anything from our Math, English, or Explode the Code curriculum.

Ira was the only one who followed directions, sort of. We were suppose to draw something we had seen that day. Ira drew Ean playing with a blanket in front of the TV...and then added tons of people afterwards. Asa drew a winter party. And Ean drew himself melting. We had a short conversation about creativity vs. following instructions, and how we can do both at the same time. We will see how the art lesson next week goes.

I chose to do art with them, and although I am not any good at it, I enjoyed drawing and painting. My artwork reminded me of this picture by Vincent Van Gogh. I might have a future in landscape/object art. People not so much. 😂 Actually, since people didn't buy any of Van Gogh's art until he was dead, I might not have much of a future in art after all. 

My alone time with Ean was hectic. Trying to learn how to do his school separate from the other boys is already proving to be more of a challenge than I anticipated. I am optimistic it will get better. 

The highlight of today (that I didn't get any pictures of 🙄), was a service project at a rehabilitation center down the street from our house. It felt so good to be able to find something we could do with the boys. The residents were happy we were there because of the boys. They made the day for those residents. I would happily do it again. 

Tuesday: I was so tired today. So snappy with the poor boys, who in hindsight were decently happy. I was just too grumpy to see it. Oh well. Tomorrow is a new day.

We did our first Spanish lesson, which was a huge hit.! They loved learning how to say three simple phrases. We will see if any of us remember by Thursday. 😅 

Ean really loves his morning notebook, but did not like his read-aloud alone time with me. I can't tell if he doesn't like read-alouds, or if he was just tired.

The highlight was going to the park and watching the boys take off their shoes and play in the stream. I need to take advantage of the warm weather to get in a ton of outside time. 

Wednesday: Still tired. Still cranky. Today was one of those days I like to call "Hey mom!" days. It wasn't even 8:00 AM and I had been "Hey mom!"-ed at least 100 times. I heard a homeschool mom in a podcast today talk about how multi-tasking meant keeping track of 15 different conversations at the same time. I felt so much discouragement over that comment. How will I ever be able to endure so many people talking to me all at once? In some ways having two little toddlers was super hard, but having 4 verbal children is so much harder on me mentally. I get by on days like today by constantly looking for times I can hide somewhere for a few minutes by myself. I am okay with hearing the boys talking, as long as they aren't talking to me. Conversations with them were so overwhelming and exhausting today. I hope they weren't upset by my impatience. 

On a more positive note, I did manage to get them out of the house, which helped today not be horrible. We went to two different parks. One this morning before lunch, and the other after our library trip. Both times they didn't want to leave, which I am so not use to. I off and on try to get all of us outside to complete the 1000 Hours Outside challenge. Usually, I have to beg them to stay outside for 15 more minutes, when we have only been outside for 30 minutes. To be at the park for over an hour without anyone bothering me was definitely a feel-good moment. I wish we had more time to be at both. Asa spent the whole time at the first park trying to climb a tree. He never succeeded, but he got close. I told him we can go back and try again tomorrow, so now I actually have to do it, haha.

We did all of our together activities at the table today, which felt chaotic because everyone kept talking to me all at the same time. It made me feel a little overwhelmed.

There was stuff everywhere, but I could easily track down the next book we needed. So in the end I felt a little bit more organized. Owen was able to do a truck sorting game, and that kept him busy the whole time. 

Did he follow the directions and sort them by color? No. But he managed to find all 4 excavators in a huge pile of trucks, and was super proud of himself. So I encouraged him to just match the trucks. He was able to do it mostly by himself! I was amazed! 

He just looks so proud of himself. I am so glad I printed off this activity a few weeks ago. It did exactly what I had hoped it would. Keep him happy!

Another positive point from today was I kept finding the boys reading to themselves. Ira is currently really into reading The Beginner's Bible and Asa just finished "reading" the 2nd chapter of "The Three Musketeers". Obviously I am not checking for comprehension. 

I am just encouraging him to keep going, because he is super motivated to read a chapter a day. I usually find him 4-5 times daily sitting quietly on the couch getting through a few more pages. I hope after he is done getting through this monster of a book, he might want to give some chapter books suited for his age a go. 

The thing I regret from today, was not getting in read aloud time with Ean. I don't know what is going on with him. Usually he loves sitting next to me while I read him some books. That is my go-to activity when he is having a hard day. But he is super resistant to it since we started school. He would rather play. I am going to observe him the rest of the week and see if I can pinpoint what is bothering him. 

Thursday: Surprise surprise I woke up feeling tired, grumpy, and snappy. I snapped one too many times at Matthew before he left for work, and he called me out on it. At first it just made me mad, but then I realized he was right. It wasn't anyone else's fault I was so exhausted, so I needed to stop taking it out on them. So, today was really different than what I had planned. 

After morning routine, I packed a picnic and water bottles and took the boys shopping. Afterwards, we stopped by a park next to the store and ate our picnic and played for a while. We were there for 2 hours before they were hot and tired enough to go home. 

As you can see, Owen found a way to automatically add a super lame tag to the bottom of each of my pictures, and I didn't realize until later that night. I have managed to fix it, but I am too lazy to crop them out. 

Anyway, I took some time to get in another row on a washcloth. I don't usually play with the boys or follow them around when we go to parks. First off, I get bored super easily and want to go home after 10 minutes when I do that. Secondly, I can use this time so much more productively if I am crafting or reading. I just try to pay attention to where they are at and take the opportunity for some quiet. Now that school is in, I don't have to make sure they are playing nicely with other kids, haha. 

They found a huge bug on a slide. I know nothing about bugs, so I took a picture and uploaded it to the iNaturalist app, and it told me what it was. Had no idea there was such a thing as a horned squash bug. The boys and I killed our fair share of regular squash bugs last year, so it was fun to learn about a new bug.

We looked at ducks at the duck pond, and I took some pictures of the ducks for us to ID from our guide book at home and then paint or draw in nature journals, but we didn't get to that today. Maybe tomorrow. 

We did our reading and workbooks after we put the groceries away. Ean was much more motivated to do his work. Maybe getting in movement at the beginning helped? Ira unfortunately was not motivated to do school. He seems to do better getting it done first thing in the morning.

Friday: Fridays aren't official school days. We just use them to catch up on anything we didn't get done during the week. We actually did pretty good this week. Ean is the only one that I didn't do all of the read-alouds, so we spent the morning at the "duck pond". Some other kids (I assume were probably homeschooled) showed up, so once again the boys didn't want to leave. I love watching them socialize with other kids and learn how to be good people without my constant pestering. 

Summary: We had a good first week. I was much grumpier than I should have been. I really need to prioritize sleep this next week to have a better week with them. We spent way more outside time than we usually do. I was looking at some photos from last year when we were playing in the snow, so I think that was unconsciously motivating me to enjoy the warm weather. I am not ready for bundling up to go outside. I can't wait to see what next week will look like for us!