I am a little worried that this post came off a little negative. Like I was gritting my teeth while homeschooling or something.

The truth is, while other commitments mean I really do not have the time to homeschool and keep my sanity, home schooling itself has turned out to be a pleasure.

I enjoy the T-Bot’s company and we have fun doing what we do. If I was a SAHM whose only other major pulls were Target and the laundry this would be a snap.

Now, for another one of my why-do-I-do-this-promoting-people-who-aren’t-paying-me-a-dime things:

I have mentioned that spelling is not a strong point. Although the T-Bot is slowly “getting it” he didn’t seem too convinced for a long time when I explained that half the time putting words together is just like his beloved Lego* . You join bits to build something that works.

We tried taping phonograms onto duplo blocks, which was OK except for the unbelievable amount of work it took cutting up those itty bitty bits of paper and sticking them on. Then The Wictor started crying because he wanted his Duplos back. So when someone recommended Reading Rods so I decided to give them a try.

Reading Rods are from the same company who make cuisinaire rods, which have always perplexed me. It was always difficult enough remembering addition and multiplication tables without also having to memorize what the pink rod or the blue rod was worth. But these are cool.

We ordered a Phonics Pack , which was about $20 including a folder with a tiny whiteboard and a cheapo whiteboard marker which I soon discovered to be a permanent marker but not before we had scribbled everywhere and couldn’t erase it. Also some cheap and nasty workbooks and a crayon. But that’s not why I bought them. I wanted them for the Reading Rods, which are awesome. There are single letters and phonograms (vowels and consonants are color coded as are groups of vowels) which should allow you to build just about any word you choose.

They snap together, like building toys. Even The Wictor has grasped that you can make words with them, and if his “words” are a little long and fanciful and quite frankly rubbish, we can build on that (geddit? geddit?). Baby Sister got as far as making her own name by herself, which is also a start.

We have incorporated Reading Rods into our daily spelling now, and while I can’t say they have made the whole ordeal easier, they have made it more fun. And it’s something we can do when the younger kids are home too.

Here’s a little exercise we did last week, when Baby Sister and the Wictor were home and wanted to have some fun too:

1. Everybody gets an ending and has to find additional blocks to make words.

2. Once we have made a word we write it on a piece of paper.

3. Then draw a picture to go with the word!

4. It was so much fun, the T-Bot wanted to do it again by himself the next day. This time I gave him the camera to take a photo of each word.

Then I printed out each photo and he drew a picture next to it on the paper.

Why yes, we are using the same words, because he didn’t remember how to spell them from the day before. *Sigh*.

Still - Reading Rods. Colorful. Cute. More fun than rote learning.

*(and it is at these times that I wish we spoke Spanish so that phonics rules would make sense all of the time. Who invented English anyway? Don’t answer that.)

I have managed to overstretch myself a little. This week I have at least one “extra” thing scheduled four days out of five on top of my normal schedule. I think the only way to get it all done is to go on autopilot. Much as I would like to blog I don’t have the time. I must write something, though, or else my Mom will worry (hello Mum!). So here is a picture of my cat:

Fiji. The Daddy calls him my Familiar because he follows me everywhere like a very quiet slinky little dog.

Oh, OK then, like a cat.

At night he sleeps on my pillow and purrs in my face. Strangely for a cat, his breath doesn’t smell.

In other news, we haven’t abandoned the T-Bot’s beloved science experiments. Here’s a fun one we did last week with yeast, sugar and water in a glass bottle. It blew the balloon up almost immediately.

I have been avoiding the project the T-Bot really wants to work on. Before you judge me, listen to why. He wants to build a rocket to fly into outer space. And I am scared of heights.

A few random things, because I feel the need for an update but last night The Daddy came home with not-one-but-two bottles of wine and then somehow after drinking the one it made perfect sense to drink the other, except the second one was a white and I have started to realize that white wine makes me feel less than good. Also, I may well have drunk more than my fair share of it and then worn thermal PJs on what turned out to be a very warm night and woke up this morning WISHING I WASN’T HAVING TO WAKE UP.

Dehydration is a killer and not a promoter of incisive thought, and the only rapid solution for me is to guzzle vast amounts of Gatorade. I happen to quite like Gatorade, but there was no way I was fitting in a special trip to the supermarket today so, *sigh*.

I suddenly realize that I don’t exactly promote myself here as the picture of health and vitality. Please know that behind the scenes I sometimes even eat fruit and vegetables and am a “Yoga Master”.  At least my Wii says so, during my six-weekly workouts, although it occurs to me that it also has the T-Bot convinced he is an ace at bowling when in real life, let’s just say he is very familiar with the gutters. But right now, I’ll take it.

At the moment I am drowning in parcels. Coming in, going out, of all descriptions. Family, you have been very  generous, and I can’t wait to see the kids faces on Christmas Day. I am so sorry I have to repay you by not managing to get your Christmas cards and in some cases, gifts, to you before the day in question. Um, Happy New Year? And truly, sorry…

I also did most of my Christmas shopping for the kids online this year and those boxes are arriving. I am secreting everything in our linen cupboard for now. (Look at me, all la-dee-da, pretending I have linen, rather than a motley collection of old towels and mismatched cotton bedsheets). Exactly how stupid am I? I forgot to remove the “linen” first. So that cupboard is fairly groaning and also I can’t find a towel without waiting until the kids backs are turned and hurriedly pulling everything out.

I am still getting Christmas orders, which makes me happy, and they need to get turned around and shipped out as quickly as possible also. Did I mention that the staff at the Post Office know my children well? Some shipping I can do online, but with my current setup it is not always possible. I need to change that, urgently. But sometimes change is such hard work.

Something else which makes me happy: tonight the T-Bot and Baby Sister are “camping out” in the T-Bot’s room. I put their mattresses down on the floor and they pretend the room is a tent. They went through a stage of wanting to do this quite regularly, and then T-Bot grew up and wanted to read in bed before sleeping, instead of snuggling in to tell ghost stories. He also realized at some point that little sisters are a pain. But he was in good mood tonight, and willing to tolerate her sharing his space. She went to sleep with a big smile on her face.

We are really getting into our stride with school, and now that we have a routine, of sorts, it is becoming more or less second nature. I am willing to admit, though, that it was a mistake taking Baby Sister out of “school at school” (as it is now called) on Mondays. I thought she could join in our activities but in reality, between her and The Wictor, T-Bot and I can never find a quiet moment to get anything done. So I decided that we will do what we can on Monday mornings, and then have science hour on a Monday afternoon.

This week we tried some activities from our Usborne Book of Science Experiments: we made a worm farm out of an old apple juice bottle and put pieces of cement and mortar chipped off the house into a glass of vinegar (scary, what vinegar will do to mortar in just a few hours). My favorite activity though, was a real crowd pleaser. We dropped raisins into a glass of Sprite and watched them go up and down, up and down, “like that man who tied balloons to himself and floated away” (T-Bot. What have they been watching now? ). Then, as usual, I got out the balloons. The Wictor discovered that if he threw his balloon onto the lawn over and over it would oblige by popping, and then he could whine for another. Baby Sister just wanted to bat her balloon and make it float. And the T-Bot made an artificial lung with his by putting it on the end of his Airhogs rocket launcher and pumping air in and out.

I know, that all sounds quite impressive doesn’t it? Come visit me on another day, when I will still be in my pyjamas at 11am.

More photos, today. If you are a cynical, cold-hearted person, just look away.

We started out drawing on our hands because we were learning to spell words with “TH” in them. On the spur of the moment I decided to provide a visual aid by writing “thumb” on the T-Bot’s thumb. Then he wanted all the parts of his hand labeled, so I did.

Which is how he came to draw on my palm (yes, the childish podgy paw is actually mine).

I am not going to pretend that the T-Bot is the most normal of children. If he was a toaster you couldn’t plug him in out of the box and then he would probably burn your toast, just for fun, before flicking it 3 ft into the air.

But he does have a really sweet temperament.

I don’t think I am going to let this boy leave home until he is at least 26.

I think I have mentioned previously that spelling is not the T-Bot’s strong point. On Friday I decided to try  a technique from the book The Visual-Spatial Classroom. I bought this e-book last week in the hope that it might help us with some of our - um - let’s say sticking points in our learning adventure.

The photo above shows our work with the ea sound, or phonogram. I wanted to use a word that the T-Bot would be enthusiastic about, and after looking through his books he chose the word beast. I asked him to copy and illustrate the word, then I wrote it and he made it beastly. We did some visualization, with him studying the page and then shutting his eyes and trying to see it in his mind.

Next we did the same with the word peas. In typical T-Bot fashion, he had to draw 120 peas as his illustration, and in the shape of an elephant. Sigh. Did I ever say homeschooling this child was easy?

Now you are dying to know if the technique worked, arent you? Well, I was semi-hopeful. And I guess it was semi-successful. The next day I asked him to spell beast and he totally missed the ea sound, which was what he was supposed to be learning. However, he also did not throw out a random string of letters in a panic, as he has been known to do in the past. He actually closed his eyes and spelled out b-e-s-t. Not p-o-t. Not l-m-n-o-p.

So we - or the technique - need a little more work. I’m giving this one 3 Stars and a Watch This Space.

.

******************************

.

In other news, are you desperate for ways to clean up your vintage china? I thought so! I posted all about it here. You’re welcome.

… provide them with the right color markers!

I ration out our shoebox full of markers and crayons otherwise The Wictor tips them over the floor and generally goes crazy. On Monday I was in a hurry and just grabbed a handful of random colors. Still, it does make for very modern looking cards!

And in the end, the real reason for making them was the handwriting inside. The T-Bot copied his text neatly, while Baby Sister made a good job of tracing over my pencil lines. And they didn’t even notice they were practising.

I didn’t want to like Kung Fu Panda.

I think it was Jack Black who put me off. Quite frankly, Jack Black does nothing for me. And this is one movie where you just can’t get away from him. Considering he is in the title role and all.

Still, The Daddy convinced me to view it tonight (the kids were watching for the 4th time) and I found myself laughing and then I found myself relaxing and … you know … believing. And then, instead of switching off halfway through, which was the original deal, the kids had to stay up late because I wanted to watch the end.

So, my verdict on Kung Fu Panda? You might find yourself liking it, even if you really really don’t want to.
.
On that note, The T-Bot has prepared his lesson plan for tomorrow, and was even gracious enough to write it all out for me so that I wouldn’t forget. And then he patiently explained it to me, because, although it is laid out so simply that even a fool could understand it, goodness knows we mothers can be dim witted at times.
.

.
“We need a punching bag, bits of wood so people can kick it apart, and lots of colored belts.

At 10:30 we do the punching class, at 11:30 I kick on wood with my karate class, at 12:08 we give colored belts to everybody. If they get a black one, it means they are a kung fu teacher.

Then we get to drink from the juice and water sprayers and use the claw swingers. ”

.
Oh. That’s OK then. I can relax. School for tomorrow is sorted.

And if the recession does cause a crime wave as promised, we won’t need to buy a dog. We’ll all put on our colored belts and throw our claw swingers about.

While other parents (Eryn being only one example) manage amazing projects with their children, right now I feel like my preparation time is at a premium, so I am going with whatever The T-Bot thinks up on the spur of the moment.

He never recovered from the sheer delight of the volcano we made during summer, and was determined to repeat the experience. So yesterday we did, only this time we made do with whatever materials came to hand, which meant an empty pepper container wrapped in paper and tape. Behold the cheapy volcano!

.

.
Guess which clever person mistook the yellow food coloring for red?
.

.
Still, all that froth had the desired effect on the dinosaurs: extinction.
.

.
Here is another of the T-Bot’s projects from yesterday.

Toast.
.

.
As in “We have to leave it for 19 days and see what happens” Toast .

What???? It’s a totally valid scientific experiment!  And thanks to IKEA, I didn’t even have to fork out for a petri dish.

I can’t believe how homeschooling has changed our family for the better. I can’t believe that I just wrote that last sentence either, but it is true. We are all so much more relaxed and happy. Starting with timetables -  there is no more scrambling in the morning to be ready for the school bus and I don’t feel I have to be strict about bedtime either, worried about how tiredness could affect the T-Bot’s performance the next day.

But obviously that is not the whole story. Mainly we are no longer on tenterhooks. Will he be upset going to school? Will he come home with accusing notes from the teacher today, detailing how he refused to work, neglected to work, was sent to the principal’s office? Notes full of undertones about how he is lazy, unmotivated? Will he climb off the school bus with his little hands balled into fists, angry? Will he wail all the way home, unattended, until he finally reaches a safe place where someone will give him a hug? Or worse, arrive home his face shuttered, eyes blank?

That is all I will say about before. We are now firmly in after and everything is OK. Home schooling would not even have been a possibility for me if the T-Bot was not a joy to have around the house. After a few short weeks at home he is calm, serene. When I tell him it is time for school, he sighs.  “Oh maaaaan!, not spelling! You know I don’t like spelling!”. But he sits and he cooperates (mostly … he is after all, a six year old boy and a little quiet resistance should always be expected… ), as we sound our way through words, even though it seems like torture to him.

The T-Bot is having trouble mastering spelling. He has no such troubles with math, or reading or science. His bedtime reading right now is an adult book, “The Human Body” and he has chosen to study in depth the chapter on pregnancy and birth. Thankfully, conception is not included. Let’s leave those explanations until he is seven.

Today we discussed ultrasounds and I showed him the first ever photos I ever saw of him, 20 weeks before he was born. In First Grade the school part of homeschooling should take up about an hour a day but between the struggle with spelling and all the extra research we have been doing we usually overrun by hours.

I have had my moments of panic, and they take me by surprise because panic is not really my thing. The problem is not with the homeschooling as such, it is with the impact it has had on my time. Hours a day which would previously have been mine to spend working, doing housework and running errands are now no longer there for the taking. I struggle to keep downstairs tidy while upstairs almost every single toy my children own is on the floor. Every evening I clear a path to their beds with my foot. There are piles of laundry in every nook and cranny and some usually sitting waiting in the washing machine. We have three Apple remotes and all of them are lost. Every day The Wictor asks for his favorite show on Apple TV and I lose another 10 minutes looking searching fruitlessly for those remotes before giving up.

But then the family rallies around. Today The Daddy arrived home to find me angrily pulling clothes out of the washing machine and immediately left with Baby Sister on a mercy dash to the supermarket for licorice, ice cream and fruit cobbler. When they returned, Baby Sister gave me big hugs and then all three children went off quietly into the yard to play. They play together so well these days. They have become a team. Somehow the washing got finished, the dinner got cooked. Bathtime and Bedtime passed smoothly and I decided to give myself the evening off. So really, all’s right with the world.

And then the change in the T-Bot makes it all worthwhile. This afternoon I asked him if he was happy. Usually this question would be met with a shrug, but he gave me a big grin and said simply

“Yes. You are taking good care of me”.

Could a parent ask for more?