Minimalist Homeschool Expo!

Dr. Art Robinson was a minimalist homeschooler before it was a "thing" 25 years ago.  Watch this interesting video on homeschooling with his curriculum and see how easy and freeing it really can be!  

ALL six of his kids went into science majors (Chemistry, Vets etc) and ALL of them got PHds early.  Amazing family!

Dr. Art Robinson Explains the Robinson Curriculum

You can get the Robinson Curriculum here.  It's available online now so you can have either a PC or a Mac. ;)

Why We Don't Homeschool In The Morning Or How To Make Your Life Easier!

I was thinking this morning about how nice our days are and then that made me think about when I first started...don't even want to tell you how long ago but let's just say Bush and not George W. (dubbya) was in office.  

What I found was that EVERY so called "expert" or homeschooling mom would tell you (and still do)  is what I like the call "The Homeschool Mom Protocol":  get breakfast, do chores and then start school and be done by noon or 1 (lunch time).  I tried this...really...for years I tried this.  And every morning SUCKED!  I started thinking that if I had to fight like this to get crap done I'd rather send the kids to school and if you know me, that's pretty bad since I'm a HUGE proponent of homeschooling.  

And then....



I decided to not do anything but let the kids play first thing in the morning.....
    ......And our life began to look like what I thought homeschooling could be. 



Then I got wild.....and I started asking the kids what they wanted for breakfast instead of me dictating what they were going to have.  We made out a list of things they liked to eat and what days they wanted them (for my sake)..........and mornings got even better!  No fighting about not wanting oatmeal~

And if that worked......I asked them what they liked for dinner and we made a weekly chart for it.  My cravat on this was it had to be easy or in a crockpot.....and our nights started becoming better.  Daddy's started coming home to a happy house.

now we were on a roll.....we decided that they would do some math and english before lunch and then.....
 .....before dinner they'd do Science and Social Studies and more joy prevailed!


my point???

Stop looking to the "experts" to tell you how YOU need to run YOUR house.  If the kids are running around the house madly first thing in the morning, maybe you need to do afternoon school or even Gasp!!!  evening school!  Maybe you do all your work after dinner!!  Just reading that for some of you may seem like a relief and for others you are cringing right now.    If your kids are full of energy, maybe break everything into small pieces like,  just this one and now run around and come back for the next one or give me the answer while your jumping rope!  But either way...ask your kids what THEY would like to do.  How would it feel if your husband told you exactly how to vacuum or grocery shop or some other thing?  Wouldn't that be annoying?  You bet it would!  So why not let the kids tell you what they may like to do.  What's it going to hurt?  Probably nothing so why fight over it?? Seriously!

Better a dry crust eaten in peace than a house filled with feasting--and conflict.

                                                                            NLT  Prov. 17:1

A bowl of vegetables with someone you love is better than steak with someone you hate.
                                                                           NLT Prov. 15:17


Now go!  Find your families' joy!

Still Sick and Curriculum!

Homeschool has been puttering along and I'm glad I took a more RC (Robinson Curriculum) approach a couple of months ago to the 3R's because I'M STILL SICK!  WTH!  I went back to the Dr.'s only to find out that they didn't dose me correctly on my med's so I had to start a new round of antibiotics.  I can finally hear but still am struggling with congestion, sore throat and ear problems.  So concentrating on the 3R's has been a real blessing. 

The new Sonlight Catalog came and it made me think a lot about where I was with school. I love that RC uses just a booklist and you let your kids free to read as much as they want.  I love the old books but I also knew that it didn't have a lot to offer the younger years until about 2nd or 3rd grade when your child is reading well enough by himself.   I also knew I wanted to add more modern books.   Plus we love read aloud time around here.  I've always used FIAR with the kids and they learn so much from it.  We love the books, I love that it takes very little time and kids really remember what they've learned.  But I also love Sonlight.  I have Core 4/5 and Core A and we had to shelve Core A last year as it was just over my oldest head.  We haven't really followed the 4/5 schedule because it jumps around soooo much that I found it annoying.  I left out the science books so the kids have had free reign to just "read" and look at all those pics over the last year.  The Bernstein Bears has seen ALOT of wear...but I was feeling like it was time.  Time to pull out Core A and dip our toe in to see if my oldest was ready.  He was!  He really loves the Boxcar Children and has even been able to follow Hero Tales which was a complete bust last year.  I attribute all of this to the fact that I've been using the RC list as a read aloud list and been reading those older books to the kids over the last six months (and he's older of course!).  In case your wondering how I used the RC list I picked everything that was about 3rd grade and below and read them to the kids at whatever time of day I had available.

So now I just have to figure out how to incorporate all my favorite curriculum's into my "perfect" curriculum.  So far what that looks like is morning: 3R's, Sonlight stuff and then afternoon FIAR time and read alouds from RC all day.  It's working pretty well and it SEEMS like a lot when I'm saying it but the reality is it takes maybe 1 1/2 hours a day to do all the 3R, Sonlight & FIAR stuff.

Whew! off to go blow my nose...

Horribly Sick!

Well I'm not normally horribly sick but for almost a month now I've had some nasty cold that will NOT go away!  I blew out my eardrum so now I'm slightly deaf and I still have some sort of head cold.  After a round of antibiotics and homeopathy I'm not sure what's going on.

On the homeschool front I've been trudging on and thankful that i've switched all of our 3R's over to the Robinson Curriculum so it's been easy to keep that going.  We've done our Five In A Row the whole time as well but I haven't been documenting it on here.

We've done:

Valentine Bears - we used Homeschool Share
Anna's New Coat
Mirette On the High Wire
St. Patrick's in the Morning - we used Homeschool Share

and right now we're on

Down, Down the Mountain

whew!  time to go lay down...again!