Record-Keeping Format, and more

I like the way Faith logs her kids' daily academics in a weekly format. It looks like it would be more streamlined and less boring than the way I used to log daily. So I think I'll try it that way and see how it goes.

Also, I love Blogger's new gadget -- you can put a blog-feed on your sidebar which is *specific to that particular blog*. That is nice for people like me who have more than one blog. So my sidebar feed here is devoted to blogs that fit in the "learning notes" category, with Stephanie's blog "What I Knew Now" in sort of the alumna role since she is blogging about learning from a future perspective.

Incidentally, speaking of the neat new blogger changes, here is a warning for parents of young bloggers, and an update, by Love2Learn Mom. This is useful for me to know since I was thinking of having my YEar 7 son start a blog as a sort of narrative record of his studies. Just a thought, and a caveat.

One more thing -- this 100 Species Challenge is really pulling me in. Since we live in a national forest, it seems like a "natural" -- ha, ha. Besides, Kieron reading over my shoulder sounded interested -- and it might be a fun way for him to organize his nature study this year. Just thinking out loud.

Two Weeks Forecast

After putting together my calendar for the next two weeks, I realize that we only have ONE at-home morning before Thanksgiving. All the other days are taken up by traveling and by dental or medical appointments. Yes, that is life right now. Sean doesn't have ANY at home days before the vacation. Our family is not known for our ability to homeschool seriously in the afternoons. So we will have to do things "unseriously" -- in bits and pieces.

With that in mind, I think my supposed exam/review two weeks are going to be telescoped considerably -- alas for the best-laid plans of mice, and men.

What I am going to do, I think, is spend a day per subject on review and closure-type activities. This MAY involve CM-type "exams" or reviews. It could also be a matter of pulling together some similitude of a lapbook or notebook -- something I really wanted to try to do, and the erratic rhythm of next week may lend itself to scattered mini-books and/or notebook pages. Since I have only Kieron and the littlies next week, I may spotlight some areas that Kieron, particularly, may need work on.

I've discovered in the past that if I plan a week of review and then don't plan out specifics, I end up with a week of nothing. So I am going to try to plan out specific content to go over. Plus, at the same time it will be easy to lay out next term's work.

After Thanksgiving, we will start Term 2. I was thinking that this put me a bit behind my Year's Schedule, but I see that I thoughtfully provided a Catch Up Week so actually I will start Term 2 right where I had planned to. Hooray!

So, for the next couple of weeks I probably won't be doing the customary daily learning notes. Instead, I'll be posting by subject, trying to sum up what's been done and what is planned for next term.

Some Printable Forms I Made

I put a page over at Every Waking Hour called Forms I Am Using.

They are sort of similar to the ones I mentioned here, but are in PDF form.

Blogger doesn't seem to allow for uploading PDFs as Wordpress does, though I'm going to take another look when it's not after midnight : ).

Also, there is a Resource Page over there, though it needs to be updated....various booklists.

School Year Ticker

If you look at my sidebar, you'll see I took the "Savings" ticker from Ticker Factory to use to count the "school days" of the year. Yes, we learn all the time, but this is a loose way to keep track of where we are in the course of things with our formal academics. This is where I feel like I'm not quite an unschooler, but another way to think about it is as simple logistics -- helping me keep my brain on track, which is useful no matter what kind of schooling I'm doing.

It looks funny to see "ten saved, 170 to go" but then none of the other tickers seemed to be able to count the way I wanted them to -- the "event" tickers just count down by date and that's not what I want.

Paddy's Reading

This picture shows the books I rotated out for Paddy because I was getting tired of rereading the "old" ones again and again. This is easier than listing them all out. .... I can always do that later.



I put them at our bedside table and Paddy was thrilled to find them. We've already gone through all except Blaze; it will be interesting to see which ones he chooses to read again and again.

What's Going On in the Homeschool

We don't have any formal academics going on right now -- the boys finished their spring checklists just before we went to Ireland, which was June 12th.

Some of us are going on a camping trip later on in the month so I guess the bottom line is that we are on holiday. When we get back I will start pulling things together and getting the kids started with some basic 3Rs.

So this log will be rather quiet until August. I'm going to try to keep track of the kids' reading and anything else that seems to have recordkeeping value. A lot of times, these "off" seasons provide a wealth of experiences to build on.

Here are some articles on documenting "life learning"
I liked this one Is Football Educational? particularly since football is so big in this house and some of our relatives have made careers out of sports -- not as players but working in the field.
Here is an "Unschooling Curriculum" page at Sandra Dodd's website.