A typical school day

Some of you have asked recently what our school day looks like.  I’ve struggled over the last few years to find a sustainable routine for our school days.  Whenever I’ve come up with something I think will work, I either find that I’ve been unrealistic about how much we can do or I’ve over-estimated their attention spans or interest or a “life event” happens (illness, pregnancy, newborn, etc.)
But praise God, we’ve been keeping to a consistent routine for the last couple of months.  If you are interested in knowing what a typical day at the Russell home looks like, keep reading.   (No pictures here, just text.) Otherwise, go do something more fun. :-)
6:30 – 8:00 Pre-breakfast chores.  Get up, dressed, make beds, do kitchen chores, fold clothes if needed.  One child regularly gets up at least by 6:30 (sometimes earlier) to see Daddy before he leaves.  Sometimes the others do, sometimes they don’t.  I try to get up by 6 or 6:30 and spend some time reading my Bible, praying, and getting ready for the day.  Then, I’m out of my room by 7 or 7:30 to change diapers, feed the baby, and supervise the aforementioned chores.  Depending on how much time there is, I might start some supper prep or bread baking as we are getting ready for breakfast.  The older ones tend to read or play during this time when they are not doing chores (and sometimes when they are supposed to be doing chores!)
8:00 – 9:00 Breakfast.  Everybody is supposed to be done and the table cleared by 9.  Lately, we’ve been practicing math at the table by counting how many things need to be cleared (not counting each person’s own dishes) and dividing by 4 to find out how many things each of the 4 older kids needs to clear and put away.
9:00 – 9:30 After Breakfast Chores. This includes wiping the table, sweeping the floor, brushing teeth, folding clothes if it wasn’t done before breakfast, and taking care of bathroom needs.  For me, this time is spent changing diapers, assisting with teeth brushing, beginning supper prep, and getting things out for school.
9:30 – 11:30 School Time.  If baby got up early, he’s usually fussy by this time, so I nurse him and put him down for a nap.  Then we can do school relatively uninterrupted for about one and half to two hours.  During this time we work on Bible memory, handwriting practice, preschool, math, and individual reading.
 Bible memory.  During the summer we worked on Psalm 1 and the first part of Matthew 5 (the Beatitudes) together.  We read the passage each day, then worked on learning one or two verses a week.  Now that Awana has started, the four older ones are all working on different verses, so we had to modify the routine a bit.  I try to work with each one either during the 9:00-9:30 time frame, during individual reading time, or any other time when we have a few minutes.
Handwriting Practice. I started making my own handwriting worksheets with cool fonts that have the guidelines built in. (See www.donnayoung.org) During the summer, I had the older 2 practice their handwriting with the Bible verse(s) for the week.  Now, they are both learning or practicing cursive (one or two letters a day) plus practicing their printing with words from the letter of the week (more about that later).  Sometimes they practice on paper with pen or pencil.  Other times we put the page in a plastic sheet protector (otherwise known as a “diaper”) and practice with fine-tip dry-erase markers.  The six year old is learning printing with the letter of the week (capital and lowercase) and short words starting with that letter.  He is also working through the “Developing the Early Learner” series of workbooks by Simone Bibeau which includes some pre-writing and coloring exercises as well as auditory and visual discrimination activities.
Preschool.  I hesitated to do anything formal or elaborate with preschool for the 4 year old.  I started out with some extra SchoolZone pre-K workbooks I had, trying to keep it low-key.  He liked those so much, he kept asking to do more than what I had planned for the day.  How could I say no?  He and the two-year old really want to be involved in our school time, so I’m combining pieces of several different “Letter of the Week” preschool programs I got free from the web or really cheap in an Ebook bundle sale last year.  These activities include pre-writing activities (tracing lines, shapes, etc.), coloring, recognizing the letters (capital and lowercase) and the sounds they make, counting, and related activities that work on their gross and fine motor skills. (The two year old knows at least 2 letters -- “E is for Elaine!” and “B buh Brian!”)
In case you are interested, the preschool curricula I am pulling from includes:

• ABC Jesus Loves Me
• Animal ABC
• Encompass Preschool
• Letter Of the Week by Erica

Math.
I’ve tried a number of different approaches to math… and still trying to find the thing that fits each child, to make it fun and interesting rather than frustrating, stressful, and the subject to be dreaded.  And it also has to be doable.  I really liked the idea behind some materials I bought last year…but since it is very much “hands on” (which is what I liked about it), that means it is also teacher-intensive.  And with 3 or 4 different levels … well, that’s just not realistic in this season of life.  Not if we are going to do anything besides math. :-)
So, I went looking for something that would enable a bit more independent learning.  We are trying out a new computer program this year called CTC math.  I like that for one price I can have an unlimited number of students signed up, and we have access to all grade levels for 18 months.  This seemed like the most cost-effective way to go in regards to computer-based math programs.  I have one child at least who really enjoys math and thrives with computer based math instruction. So, he’s doing that, supplemented by some workbooks I found used at a homeschool store and various games.  The other two haven’t found CTC math to be quite as much fun, so I have been trying to do some hands-on activities to practice the same concepts in a more active and fun way. 
Individual Reading.
Each of the three older children gets some time alone with Mommy to practice reading out loud.  The older 2 have been working their way through short to medium length chapter books. The 6 year old gets to pick his own book (usually a picture book or and easy-reader book) and we take turns, alternating pages or paragraphs.  I’ve been pleased at how they have all been willing to tackle books and words that are sometimes a bit challenging.
Sometimes this reading time happens during the morning school time.  Lately, we’ve run out of time before the baby wakes up from his nap, so I try to do it after my nap and before Daddy gets home.
I use this time while they are reading to me to work on whatever crochet or knitting project I have going.
111:30-12:30 Free time. Free time for the kids.  Mom tidies up any school stuff left out, maybe checks email,  maybe does supper prep if needed, and gets lunch ready.  Sometimes, I recruit helpers. :-)
12:30 – 1:30 Lunch. Sometimes we watch some educational videos, or we review our geography or talk about life or whatever questions come up.  Lunch is usually leftovers from supper the night before or sandwiches and fruit and yogurt.
1:30-2:30 Read Aloud Time. I read stories to the 2 and 4 year old before their naps.  When they are down for naps, I read a book to the older ones while getting baby ready for his nap.  Currently, we are reading The Wheel On The School by Meindert DeJong.  As soon as baby is asleep, it is officially “nap time.”
2:30-4:00 Nap Time. Mommy takes a nap and maybe does a little bit of computer work if she wakes up early enough.  If we haven’t done individual reading yet, we try to it between 3:30 and 4.  During nap time, the three older ones can read, play with Legos, or work on the computer.
4:00 – 5:15 Fun with Daddy.  We try to do a “10-minute pickup” game before Daddy gets home (picking up all the toys, books, etc.).  When he gets home, he gives kisses to each one.  Some try to escape and make Daddy chase them.  Sometimes they can give Daddy quite the workout till he catches them.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we try to do some kind of exercise.  Usually bike riding, or else trampoline in the backyard, or going down the the corner parks to swing, kick balls or throw frisbees.  When it is bike riding day, the 3 older ones ride their own bikes, the next 2 take turns on the back of Daddy’s bike, while I roller blade with 2 in the double stroller.  On these days, it’s especially important for me to have supper ready to cook in the oven while we go out riding.  That’s why I try to do supper prep in stages throughout the day.
5:15 – 6:15 Supper.
6:15 – 7:00 Baths.  Sometimes I make the older ones take their baths earlier to help save time after supper.  One bathes completely independently, one needs just a little help, 2 can bathe themselves but need supervision to prevent too much playing, and the last 2 always get baths after supper because  they can be a little messy at mealtimes. :-)
7:00 – 7:30 Story time.  Daddy reads stories (usually) .  Sometimes mommy will if Daddy just has to work on something else.
7:30 – 8:00 Bible Time. We read the Bible together and sing a hymn.  Currently we are reading through a Chronological Bible, maybe 10-15 verses at a time, discussing what we’ve read as we go.  We are working our way through one of the hymn books we have.  I think we are on the third book we’ve done.  After we finish this one, we plan to focus on one hymn a week and really try to learn it.  It will probably be a hymn that we will sing at church that next Sunday. Ronnie slips in some music education too…recognizing key signatures, time signatures, note values, and sometimes note names. He also slips in some math -- figuring out how long the composers and authors of the songs lived. I nurse the baby during this time and put him to bed, then use the remaining time to knit or crochet.  We finish with prayer time, which is the two-year old’s signal for “Mommy’s lap!”
8:00 – 8:30 Bedtime. Time for the potty train, hugs, kisses, etc. and finally lights out!
8:30 – 10:30 Mommy & Daddy time. Mommy and Daddy finish up chores, sometimes do a little on the computer, take shower, and finally go to bed.

There you have it.  Probably  more than  you ever wanted to know about a Russell day.  If you’ve read this far, you must really love us, or you are really curious. :-)

Geography Study: France

In April and May we attended a free French class taught once a week by a lady in our church.  This presented learning opportunities for all of us…and for more than just the French language. 

It was very hard at first because she spoke only in French.  The kids didn’t understand at all what was going on, even when she used pantomime to try to demonstrate the words she was trying to teach.  I understood a little, but after a while my brain was tired of working so hard trying to follow along and went into “shut down” mode.  Some of the kids had gone into shut-down mode long before I did.  I knew they were frustrated and I was frustrated because I couldn’t really help them.  Also, I instinctively felt that this was not really the way I wanted to teach/learn a foreign language with my kids. 

But we had recently been trying to teach the kids to keep trying and not give up even if something is hard at first.  So, after talking with Ronnie we decided we would keep going in order to model this lesson.  After all, it was only going to be for 6 weeks and it was free.

It got better after a while, and we did learn a little bit of French.  (We only made it to the first 4 lessons due to illness in late May.) 

I also (re)learned why I have not gotten involved in outside classes and activities yet in our homeschooling adventure.  It is just WAY too stressful at this point in our lives to get everybody ready to go somewhere, be out all morning, come back just in time for lunch, and have the little one fall asleep on the way home and mess up the nap schedule.

This experience did, however, provide direction for our next unit of geography after we finished with South America…France, of course.

The Language

We watched some French vocabulary videos on YouTube, French Lab, and a children’s site used by our French teacher.  Later I found FrenchPod101.com which I think would have been good too.  We watched these while we were eating breakfast and lunch.  As frustrated as the kids were in class, I was surprised that they enjoyed these and kept asking to watch them.

I also checked out some French learning language resources from the library.  I liked this one the best.

Learn French Together by Marie-Claire Antoine and Gretchen Patterson

It came with 3 books and CDs, learning a few words with each lesson.  Each lesson had some activities and games to go along with it.  We only listened to a little bit of it, but it did help me with some of the words our teacher was trying to teach us. (I am a visual learner more than an auditory learner, so it really helped me to be able to SEE the words in print.  Also, with my exposure to Spanish in high school and my English vocabulary, I was able to see the similarities in the words and guess at the meanings just by looking at them.) If we ever decide to go back and really try to learn French, I would check this out again.

The Country

We read through most of this book.

 

 

Getting to Know France and French by Miriam Chapman. It introduced some of the geography, history, and culture of the France.

 

 

 

 

We also watched a small part of a travel DVD called Rick Steve’s France. I learned a lot about the different regions of France while previewing it, but I could not show much of it to the kids because of the immodesty shown in the “classic art” in the museums and on tours of the the famous beaches.

 

The Food

 

We had fun watching some of Julia Child’s French Chef cooking shows on DVD from the library. We laughed at her bloopers and marveled at how much butter she used! We didn’t really try any of her recipes, except she did inspire me to experiment with crepes again… and at least some of us enjoyed the results. (You can read more about that experiment in my earlier post.)

 

 

And Travis and I looked through a French cookbook…The Cooking of France by Matthew Locricchio. It gave very detailed directions for young cooks, and even emphasized used natural rather than processed food.

 

Books Set in France

We read a number of books set in France (Paris mostly) during our read aloud times.  I found a good list of children's books set in Paris, complete with reviews.  I couldn’t find all of the books on the list  at the library, and a couple of them I didn’t like so well, so we didn’t read them together.

Here are the ones we did like.

 Family Under the Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson

We had read this a year or two ago as part of our Sonlight curriculum.  This is a chapter book, suitable for my 9 and 7 year olds to read on their own. It is relatively short, but not one to be read in a single sitting.

It’s about an old hobo who likes being a hobo and does not want to be “tied down” with work or a family.  But he reluctantly becomes involved with a homeless family in Paris – a mom, 3 kids, and a dog.

We were even inspired to act out part of the story… pushing a cart with all a hobos belongings, building a fire, and cooking a meal in a can over that fire.

 

 

Dodsworth in Paris by Tim Egan

This was a BIG favorite.  An easy-reader chapter book (suitable for my 6 year old to read on his own).  There are actually 4 books in this series about Dodsworth’s adventures with a trouble-making duck in different cities (New York, Paris, London, and Rome). 

Here’s the review from StoriedCities.com which says it better than I could:

Tim Egan's Dodsworth easy reader series does a great job of introducing young readers to famous cities but without taking them on a boring walking tour. The delightfully quirky Dodsworth and his stowaway duck sidekick reminded me of a screwball comedy duo. Each humorous book follows the pair on their misadventures through each city. I liked the details Egan slips in, like how everyone on Fifth Avenue is smartly dressed, or how the duck inadvertently creates an impressionist painting in Paris by dancing on his artwork

La La Rose by Satomi Ichikawa

This picture book was a favorite, especially by the 2 year old.  It is quick to read, but you can also spend a long time looking at the beautiful artwork and the maps.

 

 

 

The review from Storied Cities:

Stuffed bunny La La Rose is "the inseparable friend of Clementine." But one day she falls out of Clementine's backpack during a visit to the Luxembourg Garden. Even though La La Rose must endure the trials of being tossed in the pond, losing her skirt, tumbling down a hill, being picked up by various strangers, she finally finds her way back to Clementine. In the process, we get a tour of one of the world's most famous and beautiful urban public spaces….
For kids who love maps (don't all of them?) the author has provided an illustrated map of the garden in the end pages.

 

Come Fly With Me by Satomi Ichikawa

Another picture book by the same author as La La Rose.  This one is about a toy plane and a stuffed dog who go on an adventurous trip through Paris.  We read it several times, but not as much as

La La Rose.

 

 

 The Cat Who Walked Across France by Kate Banks

I think I found this one while browsing through the library catalog online.  A cat’s owner dies and the cat is displaced to another home.  But it longs for its own home and walks across France back to its old house, only to find a new family living there.  Good ending – the new family adopts the cat and they all live happily ever after.

 

Anatole by Eve Titus

Another popular picture book among my crew, readers and non-readers alike.  I had to practice what I learned about French pronunciation in order to read this out loud.

I just noticed that there are more Anatole books…I’ll have to see if our library has any of them…

The review from Storied Cities:

Anatole, who regularly rides his bicycle into Paris to look for food scraps learns that humans do not like mice at all.Mon Dieu! Anatole, conscientious mouse that he is, decides that in return for a few morsels of cheese from a Parisian cheese factory he will leave his suggestions for improvement for each cheese variety. As you can imagine, the mouse's opinions are right on target, making the cheese factory incredibly successful. The factory owners make Anatole the VP in charge of Cheese Tasting, thus the little mouse is free to bring food home to his family, making Anatole the "happiest, most contented mouse in all France."

 

A Spree In Paree by Catherine Stock

A French farmer decides he wants to take a vacation to the city (like the city folks do at his farm in the country).  His animals decide to come along too to see the sights of Paris.  By the time they get home, the farmer has decided that vacation is a lot of work!  An amusing picture book.

 

 

Adele & Simon by Barbara McClintock

Adele and her little brother walk home from school, but little Simon loses all his things along the way. This picture book was BY FAR my favorite!  It is a great “find the hidden picture” book and the illustrations are excellent!  It’s also a good memory-exercising book as you try to remember all the things Simon started out with and try to figure out what has he lost now!  In the back of the book are maps and also descriptions of each of the locations in Paris that the children visit.  The illustrations are fantastic!  After we spent some time in this book, I was watching a French travel DVD.  When they showed a brief shot of one of the galleries in the Louvre, I instantly recognized it as one of the places Adele Simon visited!  I highly recommend this book!  It would be a nice one to own too.

 

Mirette on the High Wire by Emily Arnold McCully

Another oft-read picture book in this household.  A young girl helps the great Bellini overcome his fear and return to walking on the high wire above the streets of Paris.

 

Chasing Degas by Eva Montanari

I thought this picture book was a great, gentle introduction to some famous artists and their paintings.  I’m not sure the kids were too excited about it, but they did recognize one or more of the paintings when we went to Hobby Lobby and saw poster prints of them.

The review from Storied Cities:

In the painting The Dance Class, Degas captured for posterity a yellow-sashed dancer scratching her back. How embarrassing.  Eva Montanari makes this dancer the central character of her book Chasing Degas. After a rehearsal, the young dancer finds that Degas has left his bag of paints in the dance studio. She chases all over Paris after Degas, knowing that she must get back to the Opera House in time for that night's performance.
Along the way our dancer meets other artists: Renoir teaches the dancer about seeing color, Cassatt is busy painting her famous Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, Monet bemoans the changing light.
Several of the Paris scenes are cleverly inspired by famous Impressionist paintings (they are identified in the author's note).  Montanari's Impressionist-style illustrations are lovely.

Picasso and Minou by P. T. Maltbie

A picture book story about Pablo Picasso and his cat and how he moved from his unpopular “blue” period to the more popular “rose” period.  I thought it was interesting, but some of the pictures of his later weird artwork were disturbing to some of my kids, so we didn’t read it but once.  (The main complaint, I think, was that some of it looked like idols and the grotesque masks he had on his wall were kind of scary and reminiscent of things used in pagan worship.)

A couple of others that I read from the Storied Cities list but did not read to the kids were Oops! by Jean-Luc Fromental and

Oops!  shows how one simple accident (losing a bar of soap) leads to a long chain of events.  As I recall, it was a little hard to follow. It might have been OK, except it ended up with space aliens in a UFO coming to rescue the family and bring them to their vacation destination and I didn’t think we needed to waste our time on that.

Secret Letters from 0 to Susie Morgenstern is a story about a boy who lives with his grandmother and housekeeper.  His mother died when he was born and his father has been missing since he was one day old.  He leads a very quiet, protected life, not knowing much about the world outside his own apartment.  Then a new girl shows up at school and introduces him to her family of 13 brothers, the rest of the world.  Eventually he finds his father and they all live happily ever after.  I didn’t particularly care for the way the girl was pursuing the boy in a romantic way and dominating him. We could have dealt with that through a discussion of what is and isn’t appropriate and biblical in such a relationship.  But this book was no-go for me (at least at this time) because of several unnecessary and inappropriate comments/observations between the boy and girls in the story.

One last book…

Pasteur’s Fight Against Microbes by Beverly Birch and Christian Birmingham

Another title from our Sonlight curriculum from a couple of years ago, which we had not read yet.  It’s a picture book a little beyond the “easy reader” category.  I think it’s rated for 9 years/4th grade and up.  But my younger kids enjoyed listening to it and looking at the pictures.  A good story about how Louis Pasteur discovered the microbes that cause disease.

Well, that’s about all I can remember for now…we did all this back in May and June.  I’ve been wanting/trying/planning to write this post ever since then, but just have not had time.  My awesome husband took the kids (yes, ALL 6!) out to feed the ducks and play in the park this morning, then out to eat and explore this afternoon, giving me a much needed and longed for day off.  I was SO tempted to go with them this afternoon, but knew I really needed to have a break.  My soul has been refreshed by some worship music, my ears refreshed by quiet, and my mind refreshed by finally getting this blog post written!