Fitting It All In

Fitting it all in does not just mean the school work I want the boys to do, nor does it mean how to juggle all the house cleaning, laundry, shopping, cooking and anything else that needs to be done.  Fitting it all in also includes having regular free time for myself so I do not feel so overwhelmed all the time.  When I have found free time on a regular basis, I find that I can and do have the energy and drive to actually do things such as cleaning, cooking and laundry without feeling so pressed for time or doing it begrudgingly.

There is always room for growth, no matter how much we work on improving, so even a seasoned homeschool parent is constantly learning and trying to improve things.  I have been looking for ways to make everything work, including making things more calm in the evening.  What I did not count on is that I have not only made my evenings more free and open, my days are calm AND we are fitting in more things!

When I first started homeschooling (over 7 years ago now,) it was not much of an issue.   As I mentioned before, but will recap briefly again, I used a regular school-like curriculum with textbooks, workbooks and tests.  I had one boy I was teaching, and we were able to complete everything in a couple hours in the morning and perhaps another hour in the afternoon. It became tricky once the younger boys were old enough to start school as well.  If one boy needed 3 or so hours of my time, then two boys needed at least 6 hours and 3… well, I was starting to wonder how I would be able to teach everyone.   We ended up doing some unit study/notebooking for two years, and that was a bit better, for I could actually include all three boys into most lessons, even though they were on various levels.  Those worked well for the years we did them, but I still was not happy.

Most of you know by now that we are doing the Ambleside Online (AO) curriculum, which is a Charlotte Mason (CM) based curriculum.  This style of teaching was calling out my name, and calling very loudly.  Not only is it a rigorous secular schedule and not only is it G-d based, meaning I do not have to worry about evolution based teaching, it also focuses on short days – 1.5-2.5 hours in the younger years and 3-3.5 hours in the older years. And when the boys are old enough, they actually do most of the work themselves and only come to me at the end of the readings to discuss and narrate. This means, I have plenty of time to teach all three boys, and by this time number 4 boy was already here, I had time to get our Judaic learning done as well!  That really made such a difference, not only on time, but with my mind, I was more at ease.

The change in the curriculum helped a lot, however, I was still very busy until bed time.  With children actually in the house and using it all day it gets, well, used, Baruch Hashem!  The drawback to it getting used is that there is more to clean up at the end of the day.  I felt I needed to stay up late just to chill out and de-stress and that is not the best for shalom bayis when my wonderful tired husband kept asking me when I was going to be ready.  I would feel rushed to de-stress and that is very hard to do!

There are two other changes I have made this year to my schedule and after just a few weeks, I have noticed such a tremendous and wonderful change.  The first change was in our schedule.  It is so easy to schedule one lesson after another – especially when it is going from one child to another for then the children can get breaks and I can get everything in that I want.  There is only one small snag in that theory, and that is… it does not work.  Even though we ONLY need 15 minutes for one subject and 20 afterwards with another boy, unless the children know how to pretend they are on an assembly line, it just won’t work.  Period.  Murphy’s Law will come into effect all the time, guaranteed. A child will not find a book (even though they had 15 minutes to get it,) a younger child will need attention, someone comes to the door, etc.  What happens then is that you feel like you did not get what you needed done and you feel like a failure.

This year I got smart.  Actually, it was more of luck, but yes, there was a little bit of smartness as well.  No matter how long we need for a lesson, I give it 45 minutes!  So, even if I need 15 minutes, I do not schedule anything else for 30 more minutes.  I did this for as my youngest needs more attention, this gives me the added minutes to cushion in time for him.  It also gives time for all the other distractions -CFAP Syndrome (Can’t Find A Pencil,) CFTB Syndrome (Can’t Find The Binder/Book,) IJNTBN Syndrome (I Just NEED The Bathroom NOW,) etc.  In other words, it gives the boys just a little bit extra free time during the day, with a less stressed Mom.  Even if the boys are all ready and I am all ready, I still give them the rest of the 45 minutes and we all love it!  It is cute watching a boy looking at his chart and saying “XXX we have 15 more minutes, come, let’s do YYY!”  The nice smiles on their faces somehow makes it all worthwhile.  I think it is the idea that playing is now mutar, now permitted, and they do not have to ask me to play or read or whatever, that is *their* time and there is even less CFAP, CFTB and IJNTBN Syndromes now!

I also started something else.  I did this a few times last year and it worked nice, and so this year I decided I was going to do it every week.  I make a list of meals and the grocery list on Sunday before shopping.  I was worried that I would forget or things would just happen and it would not get done, but I think that since I was determined to do this for the right reasons AND (and this is the most important thing,) I was ready for it, Hashem has helped me out so far.  Yes, I know friends that already do this and I even had at least one of them suggest it to me before, but I was not ready.  After really thinking about it and letting it simmer in my mind for many months, I am now ready.

This works wonders for not only do I have all the ingredients I need for the week, I do not have to worry or wonder what I am making for supper, this huge relief has been lifted from my shoulders.  I also have found that I do not mind making something that takes a little extra TLC for supper for I don’t have to spend the time thinking about it which gives more time to cook, if I so choose.

Now, I’m not saying now that I seem to have more free time that my house is spotless, I’m just saying that I have figured out how to keep the status quo and give myself regular free time.  At the same time, I am slowly (albeit very slowly,) working on raising the status quo.  I’m positive I will eventually get there. 🙂

Our “First Day” Take Two!

Today was our first “real” day of school.  Yes, we did do school last week, however, Room613 did not start until today so it was our first day with a full schedule.  I was very impressed in how the day turned out.

We started the day with our davening.  It was cool today so most of us wore a sweater.  I thought it was a beautiful morning to daven outside.  My youngest has been into wearing at least his lion hat costume all day.  I have told him he needs to wear a kippah or hat for he is a Jewish boy.  Once he found out his lion hat worked, he has turned into a lion, only taking it off for nap times.  My Lion loves to daven.  He has his favorite siddur and loves to sit and stand and daven.  He is not upset in the above picture, he is putting his whole neshama into davening.  It is just that no sound comes out of his mouth.  He was so into davening this morning.  He is my inspiration. 🙂

Instead of Parsha, this week we are learning about Rosh Hashanah.  I did not want to do the same kind of thing as we have done in the past.  We have learned about Rosh Hashanah for years now, printing off various workbooks from chinuch.org.  I went online to chinuch.org last night to see what I could find.  I found some nice learning sheets, however, they were one to two page sheets.   So, I decided I was going to choose something different to learn about each day.  Today we learned about the 10 reasons we blow the shofar during Elul and on Rosh Hashanah. At the bottom was the option to re-write each reason in the child’s own words.  Unfortunately, I had only ink in the printer for the one paper, so we just talked a bit about Rosh Hashanah and then talked about the 10 reasons.

Tomorrow we are going to look at the worksheet talking about the explanation of Yamim Noraim Prayers.  This one is geared towards 6th and 7th grade, but I think all three older boys can appreciate it to an extent.  The explanation booklet can be reduced in size to fit into a machzor so the students have a handy guide to make their davening more meaningful.  Our new ink should be coming in this week so I will be able to print it out for each boy.  I am not sure how long it will take us to go through this book, it is only 9 pages long.  If needed, I will find something else to do on Thursday.  Oh, and I cannot forgot the little one!  Yes, I almost forgot, he is more than big enough to make projects and sing songs that my older ones are too “old” for!

The school day worked out well.  At lunch time, I was thinking that, ” Wow, I was still so relaxed!”  I remember how busy and full the days were last year.  This year our schedule seems more relaxed – longer, more to do, but relaxed.  I finally learned not to stuff the time to the hilt.  I scheduled a lot of time for each subject.  I will say, it does help that the boys have a set schedule on Room613.net.  Rabbi Resnick has 30 minutes classes with 15 minute breaks in between each class.  Altogether, that is 45 minutes from the beginning of one of his classes to the beginning of the next class.  I purposely limit the amount of time spent for each lesson – 15-20 minutes for the younger ones and 30-40 minutes for the oldest (though often times it takes less time for him.)  I added extra time so that I would have time to give attention to our 3 year old.  This, I believe, was one of the best things I have done for our schooling this year.  I had time to spend with the youngest, and I did not have to harass the older ones to get out the books for the next thing, or get going to Room613.  I could see how each of the older boys looked at their boards and they seemed so much more relaxed.  I do not know if this more relaxed atmosphere had anything to do with how my one boy did in math, but my tantrum prone boy had not a single tantrum today – not even during math when he kept getting one question wrong.  He just sat there and said, “hmm….” and tried again!

This afternoon I was reminded how vulnerable we all are.  Actually, I think there were many, many people who found out.  We have a few websites that are hosted on Godaddy.com.  Godaddy is a company that you can register domain names on as well as provides hosting and other related services.  It is fairly large.  This afternoon, there was a hacker that shut down all of Godaddy’s sites – at least thousands of sites were down starting after lunch.  The individual who was apparently responsible took sole responsibility shortly afterwards on Twitter.  There were many people who rely on websites hosted by Godaddy for work.  I too was wanting to do some stuff.  However, I realized that everything that happens, Hashem makes happen for a reason.  I then realized that I needed to do some paperwork to send into our school district.  If my website was not down, I would have forgotten yet again about the paperwork.

Coincidence? Of course not!  However, I do not think thousands or millions of people needed to be affected just for me…at least I would hope not.  I also know that this person I cannot really be mad at for this person was just the messenger.  Yes, he had the option of doing good or doing not good, it was his choice – as I like to tell my children, but Hashem wanted Godaddy to go down, it would have gone down in a different way if this person decided to use his amazing talents for a better use.  All afternoon I tried seeing if the websites were up yet, but it did not get me anxious, I was not too overly bothered by it.  At least not the 3 hours it took from when I learned about it to the time my websites were back up and running.

In the end, all my paperwork got done, I just need the ink to arrive at my doorstep to print it out and I realized how my mind’s perspective had an amazing effect on me and how I handled a situation.  Perhaps this is something that I need to try keep in mind when we have little situations arise at home.  There are things that happen that are out of my control, even if I try.  If I remember that Hashem is ultimately in control, there is no reason to get upset at individuals.  There are things that are supposed to happen and these are tests for me.  I know, that is much easier said than done, however, perhaps if I try to keep that in mind, there might be a few times where I can look at my beautiful boys and say “that is what they are supposed to be doing.  How am I supposed to react, how do I get what I need done the proper way?”  Perhaps my stress level will keep down a little bit (and stave those grey hairs away a little bit longer! 😉  )

I definitely know that how we feel definitely rubs off on others.  Was it that I was in a calm mood today that helped my son get through his math in such a wonderful way?  Was it all the time in between classes?  I am sure they both had a lot to do with it.  I definitely would prefer how today’s lesson went over any other day we have had.  Let’s see what tomorrow brings. 🙂  As I am trying to get myself ready for the coming year, I hope that I can grow just a little bit.  In the meantime, I need to read to my Lion for he tells me he cannot read yet.

Wishing everyone a sweet year – A L’Shanah Tovah Tikatevu – May you all be inscribed in the Book of Life!  Have a wonderful Rosh Hashanah!

Re-Evaluating

The last week started off wonderful.  After our wonderful relaxing time at the park, we went to bed with the news that a friend of ours got engaged. We were, of course, very excited for him.  When we first met him, he was in college.  During the years he was in college we got to know him fairly well and always enjoyed his company.  He has since left town and is working.  We have had the opportunity to talk to him occasionally since then and we are impressed at how much he has grown since we first met him.  Yes, I know, years and experience will do that to a person, but there is also the influence of everyone around you as well.  I felt that, or perhaps it was just that I hoped that, we had some small part in this growth.

I then got to thinking about my own children.  Parents are always wanting to do the right thing, to raise the best children, to instill all the good middos.  The question is are we doing it?  I have been busy working on our new school schedule this week.  It is a great time to think about the direction we are all heading and what needs to change.  I do not think it is a coincidence that the new school year happens to be at the same time Rosh Hashanah is.  (Well, not including exceptions such as South Africa and Australia!)

Three days of work and I think I have a fairly good schedule.  I believe I have learned stuff myself and have learned that even though technically we can get everything done by a certain time, life happens and it will not work.  I have remembered to put extra time in between each subject to leave room for boys not working like robots and taking a bit of time to find their stuff that is in their drawers, as well as to leave time for a certain 3 year old who demands attention at seemingly the “wrong” time, which really is not the wrong time, it is just that is his way of reminding me that I have forgotten about him, or so he thinks.

Aside from schedules, I also am in the yearly process of trying to rearrange our school area to make it the best it can.  Someone on one of my email lists sent a photo of their area – a 4×4 Ikea cubicle.  That way it makes things easy to organize.  We cannot purchase anything at the moment, so I’m trying to make my 3-shelf cabinet work very similar.  Each boy has a shelf for their books.  On top, I have drawers for things such as paints, pencils, erasers, and other non-book type items.

All that was the easy part.    The harder part is looking back at what worked for each child, and what did not.  How did I handle each child?  I definitely learned a lot this past year.  I too have grown.  How do I handle my three year old when he needs attention?  I have made sure I incorporated extra time in between subjects.  I have also included time where a brother gets to play with him and keep him occupied.  How do I handle an older brother who can get difficult?  I have found out that he also craves One-on-One attention.  That might sound funny to a homeschool parent who teaches each child separately to begin with, but it is so much more that meets the eye.  This child functions so much better and is a lot easier to teach when no one is in the room, or at least not moving (i.e. reading a book by himself and not talking.)  Math is best done after everyone is finished and I can give him my 100% attention and not be interrupted by others.  Giving extra chores when the wrong behavior is exhibited I found is a good end to many tantrums and keeps me calm.

It is also a time to look at the direction that each of us is taking.  We have made several changes throughout the year on how we run our daily lives (outside of school,) in order to try to steer our children along the right path.  When we see a negative trait peeking through too much, we have tried to correct it.  However, a new school year is also a good time for new road markers for the boys seem more readily accepting, or rather less suspicious (and therefore less arguing about our new rules), when we can find an excuse to incorporate the new road markers in with a new school year.

The introspection does not stop here.  Amid all of the work I am doing for our boys and our new school year, I also need to find a few moments to look at myself.  Am I the best parent, the best teacher, the best wife, and the best friend that I can be?  Yes, I have already done part of it by following the steps above, but there is more to do.  I have to work hard on being the best me I can be so that, IY”H, our children can be the best they can be.

I was mistaken!

As I was pondering on the last post I did, I bumped into some information on the latest physics find on the Higgs boson particle.  I like physics.  My minor in university was physics.  That thought of physics reminded me about a picture that my husband took of me during our 10th anniversary trip to Wales.  We were walking around an old castle and I sat down in the middle of the courtyard, under, yes you guessed it, an apple tree!  The funny thing is that as I sat down, waiting for my husband to take the picture, an apple fell down.  Yes, Newton’s law of gravity works even in Wales!  So, yes, I have sat under an apple tree before and pondered and yes, another picture had to be taken with the said apple, and yes, it was delicious. 😀

On another note, I’m very actively working on next year’s stuff.  For some boys, I have basically all the materials, for another, I have decided that I need to do an interim year before he is ready to move up.  And for another, I have come to the conclusion that even though he will have just turned 3, he needs to have his “schooling” as well (whatever that means, and most likely it means more Mommy-Son time, reading a story here, playing a puzzle there – and calling it “school”.)

As I look back on the previous year and see what worked and what did not, the main thing that stuck out that REALLY helped was a schedule that was written down.  Having it memorized did not cut i; we had to have it in front of us so we could see it.  The only problem with that is all the papers!  I had printed off a schedule for each of the 3 older boys, and one main one for me, but the boys never knew where their schedule was, and the main one was sometimes very hard to find as well.  (I found it today cleaning – lost it the last 2 months of school, but it was right there where we usually kept it!)

I got an idea from a post that I read recently, that I had seen before, but it never clicked really well for it entailed printing out a whole year’s worth of stuff – and hoping I would not lose the binder in the meantime!  However, I finally figured out how to make it work.

I just ordered 4 – 11×14 white boards – one for each boy.  The idea is that I will write the schedule in permanent marker for each boy on their board and then post them on the living room wall.  Then, each boy can check off what they have accomplished as it happens or at the end of the day.  On Friday, if there is anything we missed, they can finish it for we do mainly a 4 day weekly schedule.  Afterwards, they can erase the board and it is ready for the next week.

I have also realized that I am the kind of person that needs to have everything ready at the beginning of the year.  None of this “I’ll print off 2-3 months’ worth of work at a time,” for after the 2-3 months I never seem to find the time to print it off, and we are always trying to work around that,  and printing it off is many times cheaper than buying a used book. (Note: We use books that are out of copyright and are usually available for free on the internet.)  I have also found out that many times (not always, just many,) I can print 2 pages on one page, double-sided, therefore saving some ink (for the font and pictures are then shrunk) and half the paper!  Most of the time I just use our b/w printer, however, if things are easy, I might print a picture or two from the book in color to spice it up a bit and make boys happy.   *Note: Make sure you test out a page first before doing a whole book.  You don’t want to find after printing it all out that the print is almost too small to be read, even by you.

I am very happy with how things are going.  I have had to rearrange some of my thinking a little bit.  For example, I know that I will probably have to purchase more ink before the summer is over, but I also know that the new ink will last me the entire year.  I also have other ideas on how to rearrange our school cabinet to make things better and easier for all of us.  I think these few changes will make the difference for next year.  I guess I will just have to wait and see.  Next summer I will assess it and go from there.