Our Chore "System"

I thought I’d share the most effective chore system we’ve ever had as this topic has come up on several lists lately. I wrote down every chore I could think of on individual cards. At about 4:30 in the afternoon I sit down and flip through the cards to see what needs done that day. I pull these out divide the harder ones into two piles and put what seems appropriate for a 4 and 6 year in two other piles. I then call the kids in and hand them their pile. They go do all of the chores, bring the cards back when done and I check them and have them redo anything needed.
When the younger ones finish their chores they are free to help the older ones, but the older ones are not allowed to use any coercion methods to get their help. The older ones know that as soon as the younger children are trained they will take on more chores and make less work for them, so they very readily encourage the help and teach them to work. Also, if any of the children are done with their chores they are also free to come and help me with mine. This is most often done when I am baking anything. Kamron gets the most help from the little ones, because he offers time on his bed/fort for those who help him. Aubrey usually just pleads with them, which sometimes works, but we are also working on helping her to get cooperation through other means.
I also no longer pay for extra chores. If there are extra or unusual jobs that need done I write it on a card and hand it to them, during chore time. The kids do get an unconnected allowance for being a hard working member of the family.

A sample stack of chores for the day might be:
Kamron (11yos)
Wash tables and chairs completely
Vacuum all floors
Clean toilet
Clean out old food in fridge, wipe down shelves
Tidy frontroom, look around edges and under things
Change kitty litter

Aubrey (9yos)
Vacuum edges of all rooms with hose
Sweep and mop kitchen floor
Clean entry hall
Take everything, except maps out of car and put or throw away
Take out garbage

Brennen (6yos)
Tidy hall
Pick up room and make bed

Logan (4yos)
Make bed
Use wipe and clean all doorknobs and light switches

During this time I am typically tidying/reorganizing a certain area of the house, folding clothes and making dinner, while supervising or reteaching how to do a chore. That is our simplest, yet most effective method to date.

Overheard at Our House This Week

I took Seth, 2 yro, with me to Aubrey’s dance class. He started talking to everyone. He walked up to a man and gestures to me and says very matter-of-factly, “That’s my sister.” Then he does his fake laugh and says, “Just kiddin’, that’s my Grandma.”

Seth got in the car after church today. He looked at Dad and says, “Dad you are my hero. I understand you.” He has been walking around telling everyone he understands them lately.

I told the kids we were going to have a pie. Four-year-old, Logan jumped up and asked if he could help make it. I took it out of the oven and said it was actually already done. He looked at me and said, “how can you make it so fast?” I smiled and told him I had bought it already made. His eyes grew wide and he said, “Mom, you are so cool.”

Sethie told me a story today. It went like this, “Once upon a time, there was a car. It went fast. Amen.”

Logan asked me today, “If I wash my hands and then they touch each other, are they still clean?”

Three of the kids went to friends' houses, Logan, 4, and Kamron, 11 were left home. Kamron allowed Logan on his bed/fort, where they developed a secret handshake and a secret club. He shared his candy and they played. Pretty soon I hear Kamron say, "Logan, I am so glad you stayed home today, I didn't know how fun it was to be with you." Logan just offered a huge hug and said, "You are my biggest bud."

Aubrey asked me if she was attractive. She then went into the bathroom and came back with globs of gel in her hair. Oh, my. "I want to look really nice today," she explained. Ummm.

Brennen has discovered a new talent-he can burp on demand...loudly. Kamron's friends were over and at first were much impressed, and then after awhile the oldest one said that was enough. See, it isn't just Mom that gets tired of some of the antics of boys.

I taught Kamron's class in church today. What a fun lot of boys! Before class Kamron asked me if I would only be teaching one week or more. The boy next to him, with one of those wrinkled expressions, asked in an undertone if he wanted his mom to teach him. Kamron replied, "Yeah! She teaches me at home, then she could teach me here too, it would be great!" After class, they asked me to teach again next week, Kamron's reply was "woohoo!" It's nice to know he likes having me around.

Crochetted Vests for Fall

My children love to match, so I made the three younger boys these coordinated fall vests. Each vest is trimmed with the color of one of the other vests. I made Brennen's last and didn't realize how tall he was getting, so the stripe got added for extra length as I ran out of yarn, hey it's hard to gauge when you are just making it up as you go=). They love them and have worn them to church for the last three weeks in a row. My oldest asked for one too. He also asked for a suit as he likes to dress up for church. I opted to get him the suit, instead of making him a vest, as I didn't know how it would look on a boy his age. I thnk a knitted vest would look better on the older children, so if I ever learn to knit, maybe I'll make them all another set.


The next thing on the hook is pink... I hope to finish it next week when we are traveling to Utah for Thanksgiving.

Anniversary

Kevin and I have been married 12 years! We took a few days to go to Yosemite alone. We had only a vague plan and no reservations. The only thing left was unheated tent cabins which the clerk told us were $100 a night, not willing to pay that we went to the car and called a reservation line and booked one for $50, then went back to the counter and told them we had reservations.

We hiked as much as I could as a six month pregnant lady. Kevin took lots of pictures, getting half dome from many angles. We drove up to a mountain point that overlooked the valley, which was particularly beautiful.

I wish we could have gotten more pictures of the animals. We saw families of mule deer that didn't flinch when we came within ten yards. We had two raccoons come and look at our dinner plates. We saw watched a crow repeat its call over and over in the Sequoia forest, and we saw an animal that had the markings of a raccoon, but the build of a ferret. It was rather nice, slow and peaceful.

Safetyville

We had lots of fun at Safetyville this week. The kids were taken on a one hour tour. After the tour the kids got an hour to explore and practice what they had learned all throughout the miniature town.
They got to raise and lower the guards for the railroad tracks and practice waiting for the train to go by.
They got to practice dialing 9-1-1 and talking to the operator. The emergency they described was always the same, "my brother broke his neck."
They got to practice staying on the sidewalk.
They learned to stop-drop and roll.
Sethie's favorite part was just hanging out on the railroad tracks. It took a lot of convincing to get him to leave these.

They were setting up for Halloween, so we got a picture with their props.

Needle Felt Pumpkins

I feel like I am in catch up mood lately. You know that phase when you are running behind on everything rather than actively planning and working your plan- ie., doing those things that are most important. Last week I planned to do several fall projects with the children. They have been begging me to do more with the wool, and I keep saying I would get to it. So one day at almost bedtime, I invited them all on my bed and told them we would make pumpkins. I showed the older two how to use the barbed needle and then I helped the younger three. It was so cute to watch them all concentrating, and they were so pleased with their results.

Create your own visitor map!

Another House Offer

We are putting an offer in on another home. I would love this one, 5 bed, 3 bath, 3 car garage, two story, quiet neighborhood, near a nature walk and creek, and also a park, has five fruit trees and a raised bed veggie garden on a larger lot. We are offering more than asking but I am not going to hold my breath. To all those who think this is a great time to buy, it is, if you have infinite amounts of patience as your papers sit on a banker's desk for months until they get around to it, in the meantime you have to hope the house doesn't foreclose, and your lender stays in business long enough for the whole deal to come together. I feel like I'm boxing-round two, here I come. Lots of fun.

Brennen Lost His First Tooth

He was coming up with theories as to where the toothfairy gets the money-she flies around at night and picks up all the money people have lost on the sidewalks when they were walking around. Then he told me he knew what she did with all the teeth-she builds sculptures which she then lowers to the bottom of the ocean, so if you swim down there will be many beautiful things to see. He then said, "but the toothfairy could be my mom, it is something I will have to investigate further."

What My Kids Do When I Am Working

So what do my kids do when I am on a webex meeting for work?
They build blanket lands in the backyard...

or they draw all over themselves with inkpads.

I'm grateful for mute.

Needle Felting

As I am studying wool, I have been wanting to learn about needle felting. The younger three boys and I took a walk in Old Town Elk Grove and saw a little art studio that was offering a class on needle felting. I jumped at the chance, and learned a lot of the basics from it. I made this rabbit, which took about six hours. I did not have the finer gauge needle for the finishing, and I am not sure how I like the front fluff, but as my kids played with it all of the real rabbit hair in the front came out anyway, it probably looks better now=). My daughter wants a dog to go with her dolls (who are on a wagon train, right now, and need a good guard dog that can also hunt), so I will probably work with her to make that next.

Tech Museum

We went to the Tech Museum in San Jose a few weeks ago. This is a really neat museum! There were very few other people there so the kids pretty much got the run of it. Everything was hands on and included things from interactive globes that showed the effects of recent disasters, design stations for robots and roller coasters (the kids then got to ride a simulation of the roller coaster they designed). It had a room on earthquakes with a simulator, a computer/shadow interactive wall, where you could catch the shadows which would then interact with your shadow, a wall of music, etc.
Here is Aubrey using a pulley and ramp in tandem with other children who used various other simple machines in a system they set up and designed to get a ball from one place to another. She and Brennen spent over an hour on this exhibit alone.
Brennen is using a remote control to guide an underwater robot, which is similar to one that might take pictures of the ocean floor. In another part of the museum he used a computer to build six different robots for different purposes, such as deep sea, outer space etc. That was the exhibit he was most absorbed in.
Logan is next to the jet pack simulator. To be honest I can't remember what this one was=). It is a cross section of something that goes into space and the kids could climb in, that's all I remember of this one.
Kamron is working in the green energy room here. He had to tweak solar panels so that the maximum amount of energy could be gathered from the sun. In that room the kids also built windmills, placed them in wind tunnels and watched the gauges to see how much energy they could get from them. They also had to build water wheel type things to be placed in a dam that when the maximum amount of energy was produced it would light a tower all the way to the top. So much of this had to do with angles of the various things that it was a nice tie-in to what he is studying in math also.

I had an interesting question I had never had before as a homeschooling Mom. I was talking to a mom and when she found out I was pregnant with my sixth and I homeschooled she asked, "So are you just hoping they turn out?" As always the perfect answer didn't come right then, I said something about not going on a hope, but I was pretty sure everything would turn out alright. As I thought about it later I have to wonder who is going more on hope-the parent who turns the child over to another adult, because that is the adult assigned to them and that adult is supposed to follow somebodies goals-not the parent's goals, not the adult's goals-just somebodies that have come down to the adult in some almost unknown fashion, and doing this six hours a day, nine months a year is what will help make these kids alright. Hopefully. Or is the child more likely to turn out alright when under the direction of a self-sacrificing parent who is constantly monitoring the growth of character, knowledge and skills and tieing them into the goals the parent has for that child and the goals that child has for himself? The second scenario may have hope involved, but it certainly has more hard work and careful thought than the first. In either case there are no guarantees, but I think in most cases the degree of parental involvement and child's ability to have a say in where he wants to go in life will bring more growth towards positive ends than another scenario.

First Wet Felting

The kids and I tried our hands at wet felting last week. It took us longer than the directions said (about 2.5 hours total), so we had to break it into two days.
We took wool roving, and soapy water, then built up a ball.
We took turns squishy the ball in warm soapy water. Here is Seth having his turn. Playing in bubbles, what more can a two-year-old ask for?
After covering the ball with plastic we added the next layer and squished in soapy water again. This was repeated for the remaining four layers.
After this was all nicely worked and squished, we cut into each layer forming the flower. We then rinsed it and set it out to dry.
Here is the final flower stacked.

New Introductions in Preschool

I work from lists-many lists. I have just received a large order of Montessori materials and was researching logical orders of introductions, which I placed on a list. I then decided to add some of the other areas to the list. This list would be appropriate to start between 2.5 and 4.5 years. It is not going to all make sense, but for those familiar with the Montessori materials, and some Waldorf materials they may understand it. About one new item is introduced a day. After the item/lesson is introduced it is left out for the child to work on as he pleases. When items are no longer appropriate for the boys they are removed from the preschool cupboards, to be reintroduced later as is, with variations or not at all. Without further ado, here is my list-



Knobbed cylinders
Stacking blocks (pink tower)
Color box 1
“Los Pollitos,” “Lavender’s Blue” 1-3, “Knives and Forks” handrhyme
Art Folders 1-1

Cuisenaire Rods staircase
Tactile boards match-gradation

Fabric Box 1
Storytelling with props
Matching seeds
Baking Bread
Baby to Mother animals matching
Poetry memorization 1
Mozart Mouse 1 Music time

Japanese Painting Board
Pour beans
Geometric shapes
Mozart Mouse 1 Music time
Water Color Painting with yellow and story
Geometric insets
Art Folders 1-2

Nuts and Bolts
Music with parachute etc.
Sorting bears by color
Pouring rice
Classify shells

Wet felting
“Cabballito Blanco,” “A Wise Old Owl,” “Skip to My Lou”
Storytelling with props
Magnetic sorting
Baking
Spoon beans
Color wheel
Mozart Mouse 1 Music time
Poetry memorization 2
Fabric Box 2
Geometry gradation of sizes
Dusting
Leaf rubbing
Art Folders 1-3
Sound cylinders
Set up nature table
Mozart Mouse 1 Music time
Sand and paint wooden animal
Folding a napkin
Sorting bears by size
3-part language cards
Poetry memorization 3
String beads
Knobbed cylinders extension
Is it an insect file folder
Storytelling with props

“Arre, caballito,” “The Lion and the Unicorn” “Little Mice”
Watercolor painting with blue and story

Art Folders 2-1
Sound cylinder extension
Mozart Mouse 2 Music time
Change nature table
Sorting by size blindfolded
Using a large dropper
Modeling beeswax
Walking the line
Stacking Blocks extension
Color Box 2
Baking
“Aserrin, Aserran,” “Good King Arthur,” 2nd version of “Head and Shoulders”
Poetry memorization 4
Tongs

Using a small dropper
3-part language cards
Mozart Mouse 2 Music time
Fabric Box 1 extensions
Art Folders 2-2
Classify quadrilaterals
Carding wool
Linking cubes matched to numbers
Sponge transfer
Setting a table
Color Box 2 memory
Change nature table
“La luna es rednonda,” “Old King Coal,” “Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Grow.”
Storytelling with props

Pour water
Spindle box
Hand spinning of wool
Color wheel extension

3-part language cards
Baking

Overcast stitch on board
Mix colors with dropper
Poetry memorization-5
Mozart Mouse 2 Music time
Watercolor painting with red and story
Silence game
Hole punch

Straining
Sand Paper numbers
3-part language cards
Art Folders 2-3
“La viejita,” “There Was an Old Woman,” “I Travelled Over Land and Sea”
Storytelling with props
Tokens matched to numbers
Baric Tablets-2 boxes
Bookbinding
Running stitch
Coloring with block crayons
Wash chairs
Quanty Graphing
Knobbed cylinders further extensions
Mozart Mouse 2 Music time
Using a funnel
Sculpey clay animal
Tactile boards-blindfolded
3-part language cards
Hammering
“La Mariposa Linda,” “The Queen of Hearts,” “Show Me Your Handwork”
Scale
Make Numbers out of pipecleaners and beads, Syrendell
Folding paper
Sandpaper letters
Change nature table
Art Folders 3-1
Stamping
Mozart Mouse 2 Music time
Poetry memorization-6
Sounds cylinders gradation
Fabric box blindfolded
3-part language cards
Wash table

Magnifying images to match
Watercolor painting with yellow and blue and story
Screws and screwdriver
“La arana pequenita,” “Come Out to Play,” “In and Out the Bonnie Bluebells”
Baking
Comparant graphing
Flower arranging
Geography sandpaper cards
Cutting
Braiding
Storytelling with props
Art Folders 3-2
Smelling cylinders
Mozart Mouse 2 Music time
3-part language cards
Pressure cylinders
Weaving
Comparant graphing with symbols
Baric Tablets blindfolded

Color box 3 gradation
“Cinco Pollitos,” “Cross Patch,” “Looby Loo”
Polishing coins or metal
Baking
Command cards
Mozart Mouse 3 Music time
Watercolor painting with yellow and red and story
Art Folders 3-3
Poetry memorization-7

1-10 in tray, teach odd and even
Knobbed cylinder-memory
Change nature table
Sandpaper letters match beginning sound to words
Baric Tablets extension with 3rd box
Beeswax modeling
Mozart Mouse 3 Music time

Tweezers work
Command Cards 2
Mystery bag
Storytelling with props
Finger knitting
Moveable alphabet
Fraction skittles
“Este chiquito,” “Dance to Your Daddy,” “A Tisket, a Tasket” with dance
Watercolor painting with red and blue and story
Match words to pictures
Hundreds chart-count
Baking
Fingerpainting
Poetry memorization 8
Hundreds chart find numbers
Change nature table
Mozart Mouse 3 Music time
Hundreds chart skip count by 2

Links of Free Resources

The charter school I work for begins Monday. Some of the students do not have there orders in yet, so I am required to give them options that they can do while waiting for the orders. As part of that I compiled some of my favorite links by subject. I only put in the ones that are free. I thought I would share that here, also, in case others are in the same boat or are just looking for something else.

Free Resources from the Web

Language Arts
http://www.englishgrammar101.com/
http://www.childrensbooksonline.org/library.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page Books in the public domain
http://www.mainlesson.com More books in the public domain
http://www.loc.gov/index.html Library of Congress
http://librivox.org/ Free audio books
http://www.sylvandellpublishing.com/sitelicense.php?sc=R2OFNK Picture ebooks
http://www.geocities.com/gene_moutoux/diagrams.htm Diagramming sentences

Math
http://www.livingmath.net/
http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mep/default.htm Free complete math program
http://themathworksheetsite.com/ this site is predominately math, but also has worksheets for other subject areas
http://www.mathfactcafe.com/
http://www.superkids.com/aweb/tools/math/
http://www.mathwithlarry.com/lessons/lesson001.htm Video lessons

Science
http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/
http://www.oplin.org/tree/
http://www.sln.org/
http://www.sciencebob.com/index.php

Social Studies/History
http://www3.canisius.edu/~emeryg/time.html A variety of timelines
http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/
http://cagle.msnbc.com/teacher/ Studies for political cartoons

Art
http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/
http://harmonyartmom.blogspot.com/
http://www.rolandcollection.com/films/ Films on art

Music
http://www.classicsforkids.com/shows/past.asp
http://www.gmajormusictheory.org/Freebies/freebies.html Free Piano Music by levels
http://intelli-tunes.com/free-teacher-resources.php
http://www.essentialsofmusic.com/main.html

Foreign Language
http://www.mamalisa.com/?t=eh

Handwork
http://www.visionforum.com/hottopics/multimedia/enn/archive.aspx Videos

Typing
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/

Complete Curriculums or Eclectic
Complete Curriculum with links to Many books and activities available online free http://www.amblesideonline.org/
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ site for free unit studies, lapbooks etc.
A list of books found online and in the public domain found in all subject areas http://oldfashionededucation.com/
http://www.homeschoolfreebie.wholesomechildhood.com/ This site offers one new freebie each day that is about anything homeschool related
http://www.easyfunschool.com/
http://www.kidzone.ws/
http://ldshomeschoolinginca.org/gbp.html This describes the Great Brain Project that can be adapted to any subject
http://universitiesandcolleges.org/free-online-college-courses/
http://donnayoung.org/index.htm
http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/free_printables.htm
http://www.eduref.org/Virtual/Lessons/


Religion
http://www.christiananswers.net/kids/clr-indx.html Coloring pages
http://www.gardenofpraise.com/bibllnks.htm
http://www.padfield.com/photoindex.html Upper grade Bible Study

Running Record

During my early childhood education I was introduced to the idea of a running record. I have really liked this way of recording a child's actions, and have used it periodically since my oldest was born. All you do is follow the child around for five to ten minutes or so and write down everything they do.

Here is one I just did of Seth at 2.5 yrs:

Seth was getting into something, his sister said, “No, no Sethie.” He looks up at her innocently and says, “I Fred.” Then he came in and told me, “I Mom.” I said, “No, I’m Mom.” His response was, “You Seth, I Mom.” So I began to pout and said, “Mommm!” He says, “Yes, sweetie,” in the cutest high-pitched voice. I told him I wanted my nana, “I get it, sweetie. You tired?” He ran off to get his blanket, but soon got distracted by a book. All of the characters in this book have noses. This is very exciting. He points to several noses and says, “a nosey, a nosey, a nosey.” He shouts, “Nose!” in delight. He sees Thomas the Train in a picture and says, “Thomas! Thomas where are you?” He begins commenting on other pictures, “He’s going swimming. Ooo, what shall he do? He hab a train, Thomas. Thomas! Thomas? James, where are you? Come here Thomas. Shoo, shoo, choo.” He looks up at me, “You want a milk? You want to go to sleep?”


The nice thing about these records is they can show how many words the children are using, what their interests are, and how often they move around. It is like a little snapshot in words.

Artist Studies

This term our artist is Casper David Friedrich. He is not someone I had ever heard of before, but I tend to pull my artist from previous years Ambleside recommendations, so that I can glean from the archives, and because we often start school before the current terms works are selected. Over the summer the older two learned cursive, so I used the idea from Queen Homeschool and interweaved artist study with cursive. I had the six paintings printed at Walmart as 8x10’s. I then typed in a cursive font a sentence about the painting or the artist for them to copy each day. I put all of this in a pronged folder. On the first Friday of a painting study the children are asked to do a blind placement sketch of the painting. This is when the children draw as much about the painting as they can remember without looking at it. On the second Thursday and Friday the children are asked to attempt to recreate the painting as best they can with whatever art medium they choose. They may look at it this time.

This was the painting from the first two weeks:

Here is Aubrey's recreation:

Brennen is doing our typical method of study which is to once or twice a week study the painting and then hide it and tell me all he can remember. To this we occasionally add some other form of narration such as sketching, acting out the painting or discussing it. For him it is a short ten minute a week study. He spends two weeks per painting, six paintings by one artist. The older children have done this since the beginning and we love the collection of beautiful paintings that are now familiar friends, which we have gained.



This is the painting we began studying last week and are continuing this week. Brennen's blind narration was, "There's a guy on a rock and there is fog, and mountains. There's two mountains in the fog. It's light and there's a little tiny bit of yellow in the fog."

For the younger children we use the “Childsized Masterpiece” program. This is a Montessori type approach to art study and builds from matching paintings, to recognizing paintings by artist to learning to recognize the different schools of art throughout history. These are kept in folders and worked on as the child desires or as I reintroduce them, so there is no schedule. Even Seth is able to work at the second level with these, which is to match different paintings by the same artist, and differentiate them from paintings by other artists. We work with six pairs at a time as any more does overwhelm him.