Secular Thursday: Sometimes, Life Just Sucks.

So I've just realized how nonexistant we have been lately. The homeschooling is still going, with Lily now learning how to write in cursive, and Iris now actually writing. We are all learning Chinese, German, French and Spanish and I have an entire curriculim for both of the older children. Things have just been full of fail.

I can't remember if I mentioned this in earlier posts or not, but my husband was laid off of work in May of last year. Almost a year later, 11 months yesterday to be exact, and he still has not been able to acquire a job. Since then I worked two part-time jobs at a measley 7.25/hr as well as going to school full time on top of helping my husband with the girls' lessons. I crashed and burned miserably, failing two classes, missing a month of homeschooling, getting fired from one job and quitting the other. I have been so brain dead this past year that I surprised my husband when I told him the only connection Mexico and Puerto Rico had were the ones who came on a boat; the Spaniards and Africans, but that the natives were Taino in Puerto Rico and Maya and Aztec in Mexico.

Sometimes, life just really sucks, and homeschooling gets thrown in there. I feel sorry for the girls because I feel like I have failed them. My husband and I have been looking for work constantly and studying for our own classes that we haven't put much detail in our lessons. Experiments and themes that would originally only take a couple of days at most, take anywhere from a week to a month. The schedule that we had been following went right out the window. Everything is a mess and I am surprised 90% of the time when my children come out with something I actually taught them this year, like Iris properly writing her name in manuscript and Lily writing hers in cursive.

I am grateful that we are relaxed in our lesson plans enough to deal with what we have been hit with. Because of our losses, we've had to make a lot of changes, such as getting on welfare (booooo!), and getting ready to sell our house. (boo again!) Within the next couple of months we will be moving out of Iowa to live with my mother-in-law in Texas. Between packing up our things, teaching my children new languages, getting my youngest to talk, and going to school myself, it feels like things are on the brink of falling apart. Days have been stressfull and I long for the days when we could easily go through our lesson plans.....oh, wait. We never easily went through our lessons, but life seemed much simpler then.....

On the bright side, Texas homeschooling laws are the best!!! <3

2010-2011 Curriculum

I can't afford it. No matter how cheap someone can find it, we just do not have the money to buy any sort of curriculum in any subject. So, what do I plan to do? Completely pull it out of my butt and do the lesson plans myself. I think my brain just imploded.

I am at a complete loss. OK, maybe not a complete loss, but I'm still at some sort of a loss. Lily is supposed to be in pre-K next year. She was going to go again to the preschool that she is going to now, but she's been deliberating because shes been bored out of her mind. We are almost completely done with her Kindergarten workbook. She's been retaining everything; I'm super proud of her. So for now, I will be "reviewing" most of what she's learned in pre-K and K, and starting 1st grade work with her next year. There are some things I want to make sure she understands and has in her head before "leaving" Kinder.

I have NO IDEA what 1st graders learn, so I'm pulling ideas out of thin air right now:

• I've planned time for Foreign Language (which will be Spanish, French, German, and Chinese)
• We will have time for Phonics/Reading, Writing & Spelling, sentence structure
• addition and subtraction as well as skip counting; sequencing and sorting
  
• I'm thinking of covering the Human Body for Science; muscles, digestive system, nervous system, skeletal system, endocrine system, the like. The weather and seasons, astronomy, states of matter.
• Start off with US history in the fall, starting with the States, and then Iowa and Nebraska and working from there. Later doing Britain, medieval times, Ancient Greece and Rome.
• I want to make time for art, music, and physical play.

Once I have a schedule set out for when to do what and for how long (like Foreign Language will be an hour long: 15 minutes per language) I'm hoping to be able to plan out the ENTIRE year. If any of you readers out there do, or have done 1st grade, what have you done and do you have any advice? All comments are welcome!

Quick Note

Rant of frustration:
Why are all nearby conferences and conventions Christian-based? I am Pagan, and either way, I am a secular homeschooler. Religion will be kept out of our teaching until my children are old enough to understand and choose their own faith. As many religious paths will be discussed when they are older as possible. I just wish there was just ONE conference/convention that wasnt centered around their Lord, Jesus Christ. I have no problem with Christianity, it is just not the sole basis part for my curriculum.

/rant