The year of organized homeschooling has come to a close and now we can have a peaceful, joyful Christmas. More than that, I hope that by employing these challenges, you have enjoyed a more peaceful year. If you didn’t get to many of the challenges this year, there is always next year! Plan 15 minutes into your calendar during the weekdays to take action and next year can be THE year for a more organized homeschool. Here’s what to do this week:
#1 Discuss stress and God’s peace
Go over this short explanation of stress with your children. Talk about how you each experience stress. One interesting new research finding is that if we don’t believe that stress is negatively affecting our health, it doesn’t affect our well-being, even if stress levels are high.
While the word stress isn’t in the Bible, the Bible has a lot to say about fear, worry, and the peace of God. Find a verse to memorize that will help you when dealing with stress.
#2 Christmas Eve
#3 Christmas Day
#4 Discuss the joys of the season
I have a journal that I used to record the best memories of that year’s Christmas. Sadly, I got away from the tradition. But this year, I will ask the kids to complete this journaling printable I created. It will be fun to read them together in future years.
I have a little bonus mission for you to end the year.
Review the past year and set new goals.
Tom Dixon wrote about goal setting for Psychowith6 and Michael Hyatt has created free videos around goal setting. I love to set goals because they can turn what feels like a humdrum existence into an exciting adventure. I want my children to know how to set goals as well. I absolutely LOVE these student goals forms from Baking, Crafting & Teaching.
Finally, I want to wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year. It’s been a privilege to take this organized homeschool journey with you. Do you know someone who could benefit from this series? Please share it with them.
My youngest three kids read Mr. Popper’s Penguins for the literature class we do with another family. Two of my kids also completed a unit study using the book through a larger homeschool co-op. They enjoyed it, but I was stunned when the book unexpectedly came to life for my family. I will share some ideas for turning the book into a fun winter unit study, but I will end with the information that really brought the study to life for us (and no, we weren’t sent a penguin!).
The Book
You’ll want to start by getting Mr. Popper’s Penguins from the library, or purchase it in paperback or digitally very inexpensively.
My husband’s friend, Paul Dowkontt, recently wrote him and other friends about his research and visit to a penguin colony in Antarctica. The kids and I were so fascinated by Paul’s superb writing and photographs that I asked if I could share this with you. If you enjoy it like we did, please comment so we can let Paul know. I have added a couple of notes of explanation.
We’ve been making good progress on assembling and testing our ANITA instrument. On Sunday we were given our first day off. My friend Dennis the Ice Driller has a good friend who does penguin research out at Cape Royds. She arranged for us to go out with her for the day to see the penguin colony at Cape Royds. We went by snowmobile. The 25-mile trip out there took us about an hour going non-stop.
Here’s a map of Cape Royds.
This is the McMurdo parking lot for snowmobiles. It is at the edge of McMurdo Sound. Observation hill (Ob hill) is on the left:
Getting our snowmobiles ready for the trip:
Here we are strapping down the survival bags to a sled. Because the weather can change so quickly here in Antarctica, we are required to take survival bags for everyone, radios, and all our ECW gear. The survival bags contain tents, sleeping bags, and food. We radio the McMurdo firehouse our destination, departure time, estimated return time, and number of souls going. If a storm would kick in, we might not get back to McMurdo for a few days. If we don’t report back in by our estimated arrival time, they will send out the search-and-rescue crew to find us. Safety is of primary concern here in Antarctica.
I am ready and excited to start our snowmobile trip. I’m wearing all my ECW gear, including “big red” parka, wind pants, bunny boots, gloves with liners, balaclava, wool ski hat, and helmet.
On our snowmobile, Dennis the ice driller was the driver and I sat behind him. He weighs about 230 lbs and I weigh 136 lbs. I had about 10 inches of seat space while Dennis kept complaining that he didn’t have enough room. As soon as we started, it became clear that I had to hang on for dear life. We were travelling at about 25 MPH. The sastrugi on the surface of the sea ice gave us constant bumps, jolts, and sideways jarring. After my first 6 breaths, my sunglasses and helmet visor fogged up completely. And on every bump, my wool hat under my helmet slipped slightly down over my eyes. After the first 8 minutes, it was lights-out for me until we reached our destination.
After an hour we arrived at Cape Royds. Dennis and I are both 63 and neither one of us could move to get off the snowmobile because our muscles had stiffened up during the long jarring ride. I finally fell off sideways and then waddled around like a duck for a minute or two. This is our arrival at Cape Royds:
Cape Royds is on the coast and is a roosting site for Adelie penguins. Walking out to the penguin colony:
In 1908 there was a British Antarctic Expedition led by Ernest Shackelton. [Here’s an article for kids about Shackleton.]They built this hut here at Cape Royds. In the past, we were allowed to enter all of the original expedition huts. Inside, they were “frozen in time” exactly as they had been left in the early 1900’s by those early explorers. Today, we were not allowed to enter this hut in order to preserve its historical value.
Fortunately, Google has given us a 360-degree tour of the inside of the hut!
Boxes of food stacked outside the Shackleton Hut from the British Antarctic Expedition of 1908. Roast Mutton was on the menu.
This is the Adelie penguin colony. We were not allowed to go close because it is a protected area. Researches have permits allowing them to walk amongst the penguins. Because they have no predators out of the water, the Adelies are unafraid of humans walking amongst them. Our host researcher, Jean Pennecook, does Skype video calls to school classrooms back in the USA while surrounded by Adelies. The kids love it.
Adelies are cute little penguins about 20” tall. They walk with a funny waddle and with their wings spread out wide to the side. On the ice, they waddle and also slide on their bellies. It amazes me how they can get around this rugged terrain with such short legs. In the water, however, they swim with great speed and agility.
I was surprised how far the Adelies had to walk from the colony on land out to the open sea where they could feed. The frozen sea ice extended over a mile and took them a long time to get to the open sea. Here are two Adelies walking back from the sea:
Cape Royds also has a hut used by researchers. It has an outhouse, a phone to McMurdo, and some cooking facilities. The researchers usually stay in tents because the hut is small. They can stay out here for a month or two during the Summer roosting season, getting resupplied by helicopter.
Do you have company coming for the holidays? Even if you don’t, this week we will get your house company clean (well, I’m actually not going to come and help you, but I can tell you what to do!). The holidays will be more enjoyable if everything is in order. But don’t worry. The process will take less time than you think.
#1 List rooms that require extra cleaning
Ask the kids to help you come up with the list. Sure, you could do it yourself, but this is a good learning opportunity for them. Where will your guests be spending their time? Discuss how to prepare for guests with your children.
If you won’t be having guests, what rooms could you clean that would give you a sense of peace as you celebrate?
Include appliances as well. For example, when people come to my house for Christmas, they want to put things in my oven and refrigerator. That means these appliances need special attention.
#2 Declutter
Most of you are about to acquire more stuff–whether it’s gifts or outright clutter from a white elephant game or two. Either use this time to declutter company areas of your home (like the fridge) or to make room for gifts you’re likely to receive. This is a great time to teach the kids to declutter and to make it fun.
#3 Team Clean
There are a couple ways of team cleaning that I’ve used effectively. First, the whole family works together. We go room by room and I give instructions to each child. It’s amazing how quickly this gets my house clean. The key is NOT to allow a child to leave the room. Instead of saying, “Please take this upstairs,” have them put the item in the next room that you’ll be cleaning. Most mothers reading this will know exactly why I have this rule.
The second team clean approach is to have kids pair off. I like this approach less, because it requires that I check teams’ work. I may also have to show each team what to do. But if your children are great about doing theses cleaning chores and they already know what to do, this kind of team cleaning can quickly get the house clean. If you choose this approach, you may want to have each room or area that needs special attention on a 3 x 5 card and hand one to a team to accomplish. When we team cleaned this way when I was a child, we raced the other team. There was an adult on both teams, however, so keep that in mind. It does motivate!
#4 Team Clean
You say you didn’t take the time to do the previous steps and company is coming TODAY? Use this two-hour checklist to whip the house into shape. If you all work together, you could easily get it done in less than two hours.
I was reading a question posed on Mark Forster’s forum about whether doing the opposite of what others generally do is effective when it comes to productivity, and I realized that I have found that it is. Here is the advice I have NOT followed with great results.
#1 Collect all your to-do’s into one trusted system.
The gurus who preach this haven’t met people like me who can produce a potential task a second.
Every time I’ve followed this advice, I’ve become overwhelmed and have shut down. It becomes impossible for me to sort out the things I must do from the things I would like to do. A someday/maybe list within the same trusted system doesn’t work for me either. I need to keep all of my ideas and potential tasks in a separate place, so I don’t become confused. Right now, all of my legitimate tasks go into ToDoist and everything else is added to Evernote. Evernote is a great place for me to put things to cool off. I find there are very few of them that I want to do anything with when I review them later.
While it’s a good idea not to have your tasks in many different places, keeping absolutely everything in one place keeps me from getting things done.
#2 Get everything done on today’s list.
I’m like so many of David Allen‘s clients who are desperate for a “win.” But defining win as getting everything done on my list for today does not work for me.
Predicting the demands on my time for any given day is as accurate as a weather forecast. Things happen. People and circumstances can keep me from getting everything done, but so can I. I have no way of knowing when I will run out of gas physically or emotionally. Of course, I do what I can to improve my energy levels, but some days I’m unpredictable. I suddenly need a nap or idle entertainment to recharge.
When I use this principle of completion to evaluate my productivity, I feel like a failure and am less motivated, not more. Instead, I schedule my tasks using Timeful and if I get MOST of my tasks done for the day, I count it as a win.
#3 Don’t procrastinate.
Of course, there are times when procrastination makes more work for us and leads to strained relationships and poor self-esteem. But I’ve learned to be grateful for procrastination.
Procrastinating has kept me from working on projects that I wasn’t committed to. Sure it would have been better if I had said no in the first place, but sometimes I don’t consciously realize that I don’t want to or shouldn’t be doing something. Procrastinating has also lessened my workload. Many times I have put off doing something only to discover that it didn’t need to be done or someone else did it. Procrastinating on purchases has saved me money as well. I buy a tiny fraction of things I add to my wish list on Amazon. I allow the desire of the moment to cool. Mark Forster’s Do It Tomorrow is contrary to the advice not to procrastinate with excellent results.
Procrastinating isn’t always a bad thing and can actually help me get more done.
I’m someone whose energy and achievement are directly tied to being challenged. I would rather delegate many things I AM good at, because they’re boring and tedious. Things I’m not good at inspire me. I want to learn how to do them so I can get more done. A second problem I’ve found with delegating things I’m not good at is I lose control. My productivity slows down on specific projects as I wait for the delegated work to be done. I can also be taken advantage of by people who know more than I do, because they can tell me how long something will take and how much it will cost and I won’t know any better.
While delegating is the right choice in some circumstances, I’ve found that much of the time I shouldn’t delegate what I’m not good at.
#5 Don’t change systems frequently.
The typical advice is to find one approach to managing your tasks and stick with it. Fiddling with your system just wastes time, the gurus say. But as someone who intentionally changed systems nearly every week during A Year of Living Productively, I learned that doing the opposite has been very effective for me.
Looking back at the times I’ve changed approaches to tasks, one thing is clear: I didn’t make changes during times of high productivity. Instead, I made these changes when my productivity and motivation were low. I would read a new book, try a new app, or scour the Internet for a new way of thinking about work and BAM, my productivity would dramatically increase. I got out of bed excited to use my new system and found myself getting twice as much done.
Rather than being a means of wasting time, changing systems has been a consistently effective way for me to get more done.
How about you? Do you do the opposite of the standard advice with good results?
Language arts is arguably the most important subject to teach. Thankfully, there are so many wonderful free resources out there to teach it! I’m sharing 100 links that include hundreds of worksheet, game, notebooking and reference pages for you to print. I’ve organized them so you can use them to teach grammar, handwriting/copywork, literature, phonics/reading, spelling/vocabulary, and writing.
You’ll want to pin this post for later because it contains links for students of all ages. Please visit my Pinterest board for graphics of all these printables and the iHomeschool Network bloggers other 100 list posts.
For those who keep a traditional school schedule, half the school year is nearly over. It’s time to see how far we’ve come and to determine if any changes to our curriculum would move us forward. Simple Homeschool and The Mommy Mess both have great questions for us to answer as we do this mid-year review. Upside Down Homeschooling shares a free mid-year review printable just for this purpose.
#2 Discuss changes for what doesn’t work
If you’ve determined that a particular curriculum doesn’t work for you or your child, you don’t necessarily have to quit using it and buy something else. Would you like it better if:
You did half of the exercises / activities?
Your child began using the curriculum independently, with others, or with you?
You used it as a supplement, pulling out the most valuable material?
I’ve used all three of these approaches to a curriculum that at first didn’t seem like it was working and have had great success. I encourage you not to wait until after Christmas to make the change. It may make a world of difference in how you see the curriculum.
#3 Research options
Sometimes, no matter what you do, a curriculum or teaching approach just isn’t the right fit. Then it’s time to do some more research. If you did the curriculum challenge, you may want to return to the information you gathered then.
#4 Purchase / List items
Fortunately, many curriculum providers have materials on sale and many homeschoolers like you choose now to sell their used curriculum. You may pick up a bargain.
How have your curriculum choices been working for your family so far?
I’m a Christian psychologist turned homeschooling mother of six. My life can be a little crazy, so I look for sanity-saving ideas to use and share. I hope you’ll read my About page to learn more.
