Five More Years

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I hinted in my post about 2022 in review that we have five more years with the kids before they both go to college. Actually, it is five years with the youngest. The oldest is in ninth grade, which means we only have three more years with him at home. I am not counting the next semester.

Christmas tree with gifts

Our 2022 Christmas tree with some of the gifts for the kids

When our oldest was eight years old, I wrote a post about having him at home for 10 more years. I re-read it recently and smiled. He is 15 now. Where have the last seven years gone? Continue reading »


Planning and Executing

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Many homeschooling wars are lost because of the way we plan and execute the plan. Every homeschool mom is different. Some are more organized and others are free spirits. It works well as long as you keep at it.

LEGO Calendar

For me, I need a plan. Then, I need to execute the plan. Last but not least, I need to relax when things don’t go according to plan. Continue reading »


Registering for the New School Year

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In Tennessee, one must register to homeschool either with an umbrella school or with the local public school system. Umbrella schools typically cost around $50-$110, while the Superintendent’s Office is free. Some umbrella schools will ask you to test with them once a year. The public school will only make you test in 5th, 7th, and 9th grades.

Painting Clocks

The kids painted seven wooden clocks for newly remodeled rooms at Zoder’s Inn and Suites.

Our umbrella school is Berean Christian School in Knoxville. We can register by mail because we have been with them for at least three years and do not have a rising Kindergarten student. Continue reading »


The 7 Minute Life Daily Planner Review

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The 7 Minute Life is a company specializing in time management and productivity. They produce The 7 Minute Life Daily Planner and this post is my review of this product.

When it comes to planning and organizing, I am the first in line. There’s a running joke between me and my husband about my passion for planners. You do not want to know how many planners I have tried and used over the years.

7 Minute Life Daily Planner Cover

The 7 Minute Life Daily Planner is different from something you would pick up at Walmart or a bookstore. The regular features of a planner are there, of course, but then there is the front matter of the planner – that’s where you take the time to actually sit down, relax, and understand yourself and your goals.

First things first… Why this title? What’s with the seven minutes? Well, research shows that the average adult has an attention span of about seven minutes. Isn’t that scary? Regardless, the idea is to take seven minutes every day and plan your day, especially certain projects that absolutely must be done.

Continue reading »


How to Come Up with 4 Hours of Homeschooling Kindergarten

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Some states ask homeschoolers to perform four hours of instruction in each of the 180 days of school they must report at the end of the school year. Tennessee, where I live, is one of those states.

State officials do not ask for specifics on what we did each day during those four hours. However, for my own sake, I keep tabs on what we do daily and how long each activity took. I use a simple notebook on each child, even though my daughter is in preschool and, as such, her instruction is not “official.”

Now, let’s define instruction. Any time knowledge is imparted, instruction happens. Children do not receive instruction only if they are seatead at a desk with their textbooks opened at a specific page as directed by an adult licensed as a teacher, who is standing in front of a blackboard or white board or SMART interactive board.

Children learn all the time. It’s what children do. They learn. They haven’t been around much, so most of what they see around them is new and exciting. Our task as parents is to surround them with positive, age-appropriate sources of information, according to their learning styles.

My daughter, a preschooler, joins us for most activities, so I use plural when I describe what we do. Here’s how I come up with four hours of instruction for my son, who is in homeschool kindergarten.

 

First Hour

30 minutes – Bible. This represents both our morning and evening devotional times, during which we read stories from age-appropriate Bible curriculum, learn hymns and praise songs, memorize passages of Scripture, pray, and do crafts or activities that will solidify and make real the knowledge of God. This time also covers those precious moments throughout the day when we talk about God because they ask about life and I direct their minds to the truths of the Bible.

30 minutes – Home Ec. Think making the bed, taking dirty clothes to the hamper, putting toys and school supplies up at the end of the day, dusting, wiping the table after meals, doing laundry, setting the table, stirring the oatmeal I cook for breakfast, pouring flour from the measuring cup into the mixing bowl for pancakes, pushing buttons on the blender filled with yummy ingredients under my supervision, learning to mow with daddy, emptying the dishwasher… I could go on and on. Home ec. skills are life skills which establish habits that will make them great spouses and parents and responsible adults with healthy self-images. Instruction happens throughout the day in small bits. I have approximated this to be half an hour daily.

 

Second Hour

1 hour – Romanian (mother tongue). I speak with them in Romanian 90% of the time I am with them. I also read to them in Romanian. It adds up to more than one hour a day, but I keep it simple for recording purposes.

 

Third Hour

30 minutes – Recess. Why not? If they count it as school time in public schools, we can, too.

30 minutes – Reading with mommy. I read picture books and various readers to them. We worked our way through “Before Five in a Row” and SimplyCharlotteMason.com reading lists. Now we are working through “Books Children Love.” Sometimes I have my son read a page or a whole reader, depending on how motivated he feels that morning.

Fourth Hour

30 minutes – P.E. Every day, as long as it is over 46F and dry, my children spend time outside on their bikes or doing various ball activities with me or with each other. Today we played a bit of tennis, for instance. Catching, throwing, rolling, and bouncing a ball are important large motor skills. Some days they bike the Gatlinburg trail. Daddy and I run alongside them. It is four miles both ways and we do it in 70 minutes, including a five-minute break when we turn around at Sugarlands Visitor Center. Great cardio workout. When it’s warm, we go to the pool. Every other month, they take swim lessons.

30 minutes – The 3Rs, i.e. formal instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic. Ten minutes per subject is plenty for a five-year-old. A child’s attention span is their age in minutes plus one. So a three-year-old can focus for about four minutes and a five-year-old for about six minutes. I make sure I don’t push my son beyond his limits. We might take a break and talk about something (he always has a story to share) before we go on to the next concept. We will probably do fifteen minutes per subject in the second semester; by then, my son will be six.

 

Fifth Hour

30 minutes – Reading with daddy. This is a nightly routine which happens after supper and just before bedtime.

10 minutes – Music. I play classical music for them throughout the day, during meals, or in the car. If they are interested, I tell them it is Telemann or Handel or Mozart etc.

10 minutes – Arts & Crafts. They make cards for different events and people on a regular basis. They draw, cut and paste in their lapbooks. They decorate their bedroom according to their fancy with old ribbons and scotch tape. They paint. They draw with chalk in the driveway.

10 minutes – Science. Once a month, they take a class at Ripley’s Aquarium. Nature walks or simply being in the yard provide an opportunity for spotting insects and animals. We melt ice. We make popsicles. We grow butterflies out of caterpillars we mail ordered. We write in our nature journals. We learn to cook and can and garden.

10 minutes – Foreign Languages. I tell them things in French and Spanish every day. Simple things. “Thank you” or “here you are” or “please” or whatever simple phrase I may use in Romanian, I repeat it in French. Or Spanish. Or English. I find myself saying the same thing in three or four different ways. Sometimes I make them repeat it, but other times, if we are hard at play, I just say it and we move on. We also repeat the days of the week and the months of the year in several languages for our calendar activities.

As you can see, I easily come up with more than five hours of “instruction” per day. Which means that I can leave out certain activities based on what we have on our schedule as a family that particular day. Activities can carry over for recording purposes, too. It works out well. I told you homeschooling was a flexible endeavor.