Love Me, Love My House

I am having a very blue day. I can't seem to get on top of it and the least little thing just sends me into a tailspin. After the massive tidy we did this weekend to be ready for Grant's birthday party,the house has reverted to its natural, landfillesqe state. This is creating a tremendous amount of stress for me: though why I should complain about a lego-induced ankle sprain every time I walk through the living room is completely beyond the comprehension of the little perpetrators.
I feel trapped in this house, and the fact that the house is too small, and has been too small for some time now, is not making the claustrophobic feeling any better. Maggie woke us at 5:55 this morning -- that, thanks to one of my parents' dogs, who is staying with us for 10 days while they're on vacation. Barking at a quarter to 6 does tend to wake sleeping babies. It also wakes sleeping husbands, who then threaten to strangle said dog if it wakes him on any subsequent mornings. It is going to be a long 10 days. As if that weren't enough, my sister called and asked if we'd keep their hamster while they go on vacation for 10 days. Honestly, I could just see the veins bulging on Tim's forehead at the mere suggestion. Fortunately, she found someone else after I told her that I couldn't guarantee the hamster's safety (heck, I couldn't even guarantee I'd remember to feed it).
Now I am left feeling like I just can't get it all together. I can't seem to get on top of the house for more than a few hours and although it isn't an extension of my identity, it sure feels like one. So this is me: shabby, cramped, messy, frankly grimy in spots, perpetually disorganized and badly in need of repair/renovation.
Somewhere along the line I have lost something, some essential, critical part of myself. Somehow I've lost myself in the morass of laundry, mopping, dusting, bathroom-scrubbing and cooking.

A Breakfast of Doritos

I hate PMS. I have had almost no appetite today except for an odd assortment of totally unhealthy stuff: Doritos, rye chips, chocolate-dipped macaroons, etc.

Not a speck of healthy food has passed my lips today yet, unless you count the milk I put in my coffee this morning.

Worse than that, I have walked around all day feeling like my head is going to explode. I have zero patience with the kids, and even less with all the household minutiae that demands my consant attention. And, true to form, I have taken on one of those futile organizing tasks that make me feel like the hamster on the wheel...all week I've been trying to clean off the part of the kitchen counter where everybody dumps their stuff and I still can't see the actual countertop. In fact, you can't tell I've done anything at all, even though I have physically cleared it THREE TIMES since Saturday.

The learning experiment continues. It has been less enchanting for me this week. I enjoy the lessons, enjoy that the kids want to do it, but it's frankly difficult to do the prep and the research necessary to do it right. I am having a heck of a time getting anything else done during the day and I am having to spend nearly 2 hours designing activities, researching, printing, etc. to be ready for the following day.

A cleaning lady would be a tremendous help right now.

And Another Thing...

It just hit me that the kids watched almost no television this week, except for the odd Veggie Tale in the a.m. and Curious George/Clifford while I showered. They probably reduced their overall tv consumption by about 2 hours. Holy crackers; they've been watching waaaaay too much boob tube.

Maybe, just maybe, the improvement in their behaviour is tied to less tv? Could it be? I remember about 15 years ago I babysat for two different families when they went on vacations sans kids. One family had kids who never watched tv. Never. The other had kids who rolled out of bed watching videos. The no-tv kids were soooo much better behaved than the tv kids. Coincidence? Not sure. Seems unlikely, especially after watching my own kids this week.

A Week of Surprises

And the biggest one so far has been Grant.

My little boybarian, the one who frequently destroys things by the simple expedient of picking them up, the one who finds more trouble to get into than a sackful of chimps, this wonderful, difficult, awesome boy of mine absolutely thrived this week.

He wanted to do activities, he asked for paper to practice writing his name. He proudly taped his work to the living room wall. For the last year he has driven me right out of my tree with his inadvertant naughtiness and all he needed was a semi-bastardized pseudo-homeschooling program. Who knew?

I have to admit, my children have fought less with each other this week; Abby Kate has even shown signs of latent maturity by helping her brother with his work. I, who am so structured myself, totally missed this crucial principle: kids do well with structure.

One of the best things about the week was actually the scheduled cleaning activities. Over the course of the week we mopped, cleaned the bathrooms, put away laundry, dusted and tidied the living room...for the first week it went much better than I'd expected. Abby Kate totally took initiative and put her own laundry away after watching me explain to Grant how to sort his clean stuff in stacks and put in his drawers. That made me immensely proud. Some stuff was longer and more drawn out than if I'd done it myself and certainly their least favorite activity was tidying the living room, but when do they ever do that except under protest? The house still looks like 3 messy kids live in it, but it's progress.

We learned a lot of cool stuff about the ocean this week, worked on patterns and addition and odd/even numbers, practiced following directions, made models of jellyfish, made a jello aquarium with sharks in it, watched the coolest video of an octopus fighting a shark and generally expanded our understanding of the natural world. Kinda neat.

I have total respect for people who do this all the time. And I am profoundly grateful that I live in a community with excellent public schools.

Day Two

went pretty well, though not as smoothly as yesterday. I am enjoying the planning and prep so far, but not enough to want to homeschool on a permanent basis. Today we talked about sea turtles, which was fun for me and they had a good time with the on-line games I found (who knew there'd be sea turtle-related games out there for the asking? I guess you really can find everything on the internet).

I am trying to make things a little looser and more fun around here. Certainly the instructional stuff helps with that, but I am finding that it's hard to get other stuff done at the same time...stuff like laundry and cooking. Hmmm. That's a drawback, of course.

Two more keys to my success are going to be a) earlier bedtime (10 p.m. vs. 11 p.m.) and b) a judicious use of caffeine in the afternoon. Those two things coupled with the planning and prep are what's going to see me through. Tonight I have to double plan for Wednesday and Thursday since I'm out with Angie tomorrow night.

Day One...

of the Great Homeschooling Experiment is over and I think it went pretty well.

Some of the materials I wanted to use are being shipped, so I had to scramble around a little to find some stuff to do today, but once I decided on dolphins (mainly because I have a great Level 2 reader called Amazing Dolphins that I thought I could build on) things came together nicely. The afternoon looked like this:

1:00 Maggie went down for nap
1:00-1:30 Kids and I mopped kitchen, half bath and front entryway
1:35-1:40 Quick snack
1:40-2:45 Dolphins -- read dolphin book; Abby Kate read 5 pages aloud; played dolphin memory game; Kids made dolphins out of Floam; Abby Kate did writing practice with dolphin body parts and freewrote a sentence about dolphins, Grant circled the correct body parts when directed; kids did coloring sheet about dolphins as a listening exercise; observation of differences/similarities with plastic dolphins, whales and sharks.
2:50 Maggie woke up

I could not have asked for a better timetable. We had a few hairy moments with the kid mops, mainly because G wanted to mop the walls, doors, counters...but a time out later he decided he'd rather toe the party line than give up his mopping privileges. They loved learning about dolphins. Heck, I think they just loved being busy in a purposeful way, rather than shoved in front of the tv. We did a little learning, a little art (Floam: what is that stuff?), a little cleaning. Just what I'd hoped.

It's all going to hinge on my preparation. If I am lax, it won't work. And, as I remember so well from my teaching days, it never hurts to be overprepared with more than you think you can actually get done. I really wasn't sure we'd finish everything today, but we did and it gives me a good gauge for what I need to come up with each day.

My biggest fear is that I will get pooped out pretty quickly, having to prep so much, but if I build in some days off -- like for library visits and playdates (and whole weeks off, like during zoo camp) -- and if I am consistent about planning and printing what I need, I think I can pull it off. It seems logical to make my summer revolve around Habitat as a theme, rather than more discrete subjects like rainforest, desert, ocean. Habitat is specific, yet general enough to encompass a lot of stuff, and it lends itself to a wide variety of activities in all the disciplines.

Tomorrow will be different; Maggie's morning nap will be our cleaning time, so the instructional time in the afternoon will be longer. Not sure yet how this is going to play out, but I am encouraged after today.

June Came in With Rainclouds

Oh my, has it rained. I am sick of it.

So I am posting a non-rainy picture to boost my morale. Abby Kate went from "Don't let go, Daddy!" to figure eights in the driveway in just a week's time. I am so impressed. That face just says it all. Her dad calls her Pink Speed, and now it's truer than ever.

Okay, so summer is starting in 3 days. When I ran my ideas by Tim last night, he said "So you're basically going to homeschool them for the summer." That gave me pause for thought. I guess that's more or less what I'm proposing, but I always think of homeschooling as a very neat, orderly, quiet sort of thing -- all the stuff my kids aren't. They're loud, boisterous, and messy, so when I visualize these activities I picture a certain amount of arguing, a lot of jockeying for position, several attemps at going off half-cocked, and me needing a handful of Motrin at the end of it. Still, I'm going to give it the old college try. Win one for the team and all that.

One thing I have to commit to is pre-planning, to the extent that I lay out materials the night before and write up a lesson plan just as I did when I was teaching real school a hundred years ago (of course, I taught high school, so I spent a portion of my classes trying to wake people up, rather than trying to calm them down as I do at home). Trying to organize this stuff is half the battle. I realized this morning that I don't have anything even remotely resembling a planner -- which, although not strictly necessary, would make me feel spiffy.

I was working on "Improving the body" last night and came up with this list:

• water balloon fight


• dancercize


• bike ride


• hopscotch


• go for a walk


• swimming lessons


• wash van


• play tag


• p.m. at the pool


• Rookies Class -- a 4 week sports exploratory, 1x/week

I'm pleased that I, the consummate couch potato, was able to come up with some good stuff.

Under "Improving the Mind" I have:

• zoo camp


• individual reading time


• writing/alphabet practice


• kid science


• library visits..and the coup d'etat:


• Spanish lessons

This really is a coup. My sister, who is an elementary Spanish teacher and general foreign language goddess has agreed to do Spanish with my kids once a week, all summer long. Sweet.

For "improving the soul/spirit" I have:

• painting class (Abby Kate 1x/week for 4 weeks)


• rubber stamping


• card making


• paper punches and glue stick


• watercolor painting


• working with stencils


• sidewalk chalk


• playdoh


• scrapbooking


• Vacation Bible School


• photo safari/photo scavenger hunt


• making placemats

This is more unfocused. I have posted before about my hate/hate relationship with crafts, so the fact that I have trouble figuring out what to do here is not a huge surprise. Still, if I keep the activities focused on my themes -- oceans, rainforest, desert -- maybe they won't be so scattershot. I, personally, love to do crafts, but supervising children doing crafts gives me a stomachache. We shall see about this area of my plan...

Next post I am going to map out what I think a typical day will look like.