The Homeschool Blog Awards Memoir entry for today is routines.

HA!

Ha Ha Ha! I say

I do have a schedule that I set up in HST Plus. We haven’t gotten into that routine yet. I’m still working to convince him he has to actually sit and do work and put more thought into what he’s doing. He reads well and gets the point quickly so then he figures he can walk off. Where is his teacher?!?

It’s working out to be math, grammar, writing, history, science, logic, and Bible reading every day. Vocabulary 3 or 4 days for a short time. With lots of reading in there. He thinks there should be a lot more time each day dedicated to playing video games.

The good thing is he makes his own lunch.

http://homeschoolblogawards.com/2008/09/homeschool-memoirs-3-routines/#mce_temp_url# to see what others are doing.

I came across a link to Homeschool Memoirs and a new way to use blogs for homeschoolers to relate. The first one was Aug 20, write about myself, how long I’ve been homeschooling and why. Actually, they specifically refer to the Momma. I’m really the aunt but the rest is the same. Let’s start with why I’m homeschooling:

My nephew Connor moved in with us January 2008 and spent the last half of the school year going to Bailey Middle School near us. He finished 7th grade, barely. We agreed he’d go home for the summer and return in August. After an enlightening conversation with a friend at church I decided to try home schooling him for 8th grade to see if that environment works better. Given the time and effort spent working through his homework and then trying to figure out if he actually handed in the homework, I am not sure home schooling will be that much more effort.

We are now on day 3 of our homeschooling. I think things are going pretty well. I didn’t drop all subjects on him at once, and he’s going to stay with my mom next week so it will be a few weeks before we truly see how this schedule is going to work. But he’s doing pretty well so far.

In addition to homeschooling, I work full time from home. I spend a lot of time on conference calls so we built doors to my office so Connor and I don’t disturb each other. I am also in semester 4 of a 4 semester EMBA program. January should be a breeze after this year. I have been married to an absolutely wonderful man for 15.7 years and we are looking forward to many more years. I’m also active at church, sing in the choir, and play handbells. The full handbell choir is fun, and the quartet handbell choir is a blast.

Yesterday was our first day. It went pretty well. This week is “start whenever you get up” and that means that he gets up, makes his lunch and starts his day. Yesterday he went for a walk between lunch and school, but Fay is making it pretty wet here so no walk.

Yesterday he looked over the Kingfisher book and read the 4 introduction pages. He also worked on the poem writing assignment. He needed help with coming up with quality adjectives and I worked hard not to help him, but I could sympathize with him, I struggle with that myself (which means I wasn’t good help even when I made suggestions). He also did his Bible reading and surprised Anthony with some of his insights over dinner.

Today he will finish the grammar pre-test and start Algebra. I had been wavering between scheduling everything and being flexible and last night ‘schedule everything’ won. I entered the grammar and math assignments in the Homeschool Tracker, now I just need to get science and logic in there. It is nice to be able to print out his assignments, see what I need to copy for him to take to Mom’s next week, and also see what I should expect to have handed in for me to grade.

The other area I expected struggles with is that he has to read more than he plays his computer games. Walking or playing outside is good, schoolwork is great, time with friends is very good. But those are all separate. For any time he plays a video game that day, he has to do extra reading for longer. Yesterday he read at least 1/2 of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (his choice) and he got to play his PS2. Anthony found a good novel about Pompeii, which fits in with the visit next Saturday (9/6) to the Pompeii exhibit at Discovery Place and the Roman Army Festival down the street that weekend. We’re trying to convince him that it is fun to read (and that Naruto comic books aren’t bad but don’t count as reading).

Thanks for all the prayers and encouragement. I’ll post back progress and we’ll see how things go as we progress. This week should get us introduced to the schedule, then next week he spends with my mom. I have copied and organized all his assignments for next week so no textbooks will go and possible get left behind.