A New Year and A Giveaway | Homemade Homeschoolers

January 6, 2009

Well, the Holidays are over and we thoroughly enjoyed the time off. We gave the kids two whole weeks free of “official” school. Although there was plenty of baking, music, socialization, and shopping thrown in! My very favorite thing about this time of year is having the luxury of just relaxing with family. Not many other times of the year can I do this and not have the nagging, guilty feeling that I should be doing something more industrious. I allow myself to just sit and talk without worrying about laundry or dusting or lesson plans. I love it.

All this relaxing being done now, I hit a bump when it comes to getting back to daily “normal” life. It is a difficult thing for me to return to a proper schedule or routine (Not to mention getting back into blogging and the daily operation of this website)! Being about halfway through the school year should be a good time to reevaluate our educational plans and what has been working or not working. But, for some reason this is difficult for me to do. I need advice. Sooo, that being said, we have a little contest for our homeschooling friends. In return for your help and advice, we are having a giveaway of our “Thank You Notes” lesson and stationary. Here’s what you do before January 13:

Leave a comment here on this post sharing your experiences and sage advice on how to make the best transition from holiday mode to school mode! How do you plan, how far in advance to you prepare, how do you prepare the kids to start, or do you even allow your kids time off? Let us know!
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Any new email addresses added within that week, will be entered into a drawing to receive our “Thank You Notes” set for free. We will put all the email addresses in a hat and have the kids draw a winner! We will contact the winner Wednesday, January 14 with your free download! So, leave those comments to help me and the community as a whole. There’s plenty of others in the same conundrum! Tell all your friends!

Happy New Year from Homemade Homeschoolers!

Filed under: Daily Life, Giveaway, HMHS News,

Posted with extra love by Shelly at 3:37 pm | View Comments so far

Valerie Neal

We usually slow down in November, doing a fun unit study on Pilgrims, Thankfulness, or just fun. Then in December focus on the Advent season, this year we also did a Live and Learn Folder on A Christmas Carol, then watched the movie.

To get back into the swing of things, we keep an eye on the calendar, and the Friday before getting back on track I start reminding everyone.

As for evaluating, I keep 2 planners, one on paper and one on computer (for year end print out). I keep some pages in my paper panner that are for "notes" and for things I see along the way. Some may call these goal and/or evauation sheets, I just call them notes. I watch along the way for what is working and what is not working, check heart attitudes, and if it is not a heart issue I tweek it imediately so it does not become a heart issue. We changed Math midstream this year, what we were using had worked fine in the past, but my son just became bored and was falling behind. I looked around and found something a little more challenging and "exciting" and went with that.

I am always keeping my eye out for what is out there, and looking for "free" and on sale things to pick up along the way, which works better for us as we cannot afford a big expense once a year. I also have to watch that this does not become to time consuming, as I could spend hours on the computer. We buy some new, some used and have started using ebooks. Yes, ebooks use ink and paper, but you only print out what you need and need less shelf space and can buy ahead when you find a good deal.

Hope I did not go on to long, I have just found that keeping an eye on things as I go takes less time in the long run than spending the summer to evaluate, research, and then scramble.

Valerie Neal
Jenni Saake - InfertilityMom

We school "year round" with a nice long planned break from Thanksgiving through New Years, another couple of weeks around Easter and a few weeks off in the summer. We also have enough flex in the schedule to take occasional long weekends or other random days off for special events, field trips or just family down time.
Danica Bailey

Experiments! Anytime we take a break I try to use fun things to get us back into the mood. We're pretty much unschoolers but we do have some formal things we do (math practice, writing practice, spelling) and doing experiments works great for us to get a little formal back into the day. ;)
Ann

We did less in December, and didn't stick to our schedule much...but now we are back in the swing of things. Having a little trouble transitioning from one activity to another, so have started using games as a reward.
Ann

We didn't totally give up up schooling for December, but did a lot less. Now that we are back in the swing of things, I feel like I am starting all over, my son fights me every step of the way! My answer to him is: let's play a game. We are doing our phonics and reading first, then playing word Bingo, and that gets him ready to move on to the next projects. HE doesn't know that it is still schoolwork! I'm only just in my first year of home schooling, so I'm sure that there are other ways to get kids motivated that I haven't thought of yet.
Nancy

We took a two week break in Dec. My dd & I found that it gave us a needed break from "everything" and a time to so enjoy each other & prepare for Christmas. During the break, I took time to set up our New School Plan from Jan to June. I give her a lesson plan one week at a time; but, I do a month up at a time so I am always a little ahead of the game.
Nancy
Teresa B.

We give ourselves a long break, doing very light school in December so we can really celebrate the season without worrying about the other topics. We just started back this week. I have all of the assignments planned/set in the computer, but I assign things only several weeks at a time. I don't want to fall behind in my lesson plans so this way if we need to go over something again because we didn't get it or circumstances took us away for a day, we can catch up easier.

My kids seem to do better attitude wise with the structure of a schedule. So after having a month of non-schedule, I think we are all ready to go back to school with little problems.
Shelly

A child that actually volunteers to get up earlier?! Wow :) But talking it out with the kids is a good idea. My eldest would certainly have some input. Thanks for your comment!
Kristi Flanagan

One thing I tried this year was to ask my kids what they thought - how was the year, what we should do differently. I actually asked them at the beginning of the school year and again after winter break (yes we took one!). One thing my oldest son (12) and I came up with was for him to get up earlier than his sisters so that we could have total one-on-one time to go over the lesson plans for the day. This has helped tremendously - with my stress level and his feeling like he has my time to ask questions. The other input from the kids is for more art lessons, so I'm working on incorporating that.