Starting back with homeschooling 2009

Here in New Zealand we are in the last couple of weeks of our summer holidays and so I am starting to plan and prepare for the coming school year.

I went out last week and bought the kids some fresh exercise books, pens, pencils and erasers. We are using text books this year and will be writing into exercise books so I also got some of that plastic sticky book covering stuff too as a bit of a treat for the kids. Our new text books also arrived from CBD just before Xmas and the other day I cleaned out our school room and put all the new things out on the shelves and cleaned all the desks and surfaces in preparation for school in a couple of weeks time.

Since then the kids have seemed very interested in their new books and are constantly flicking through them and actually seem quite excited. Having a nice tidy school room all set up and ready to go has made me start to get a little bit excited too. I have done all my planning and written up a daily and weekly schedule for us.

But then I look at Mr.Dynamite (ds1) and think "Whoa, how on earth am I going to contain this wee man and keep him from totally disrupting everything!" LOL

Some of the ways I have prepared for that issue is to plan out our daily timetable so that it works in with his naps and for the times that he is awake and we are still working I have a variety of toy boxes which I will alternate and hopefully he will be used to his playpen by then too. Although he isn't all that keen on being contained in there at the moment. LOL

Over the summer holidays I have been working on better establishing his routines so that he is now having a good 1 - 2 hour nap in the morning and another of the same length in the afternoon. I intend on getting the bulk of our focused and more challenging school work done during his morning nap then leaving the older kids to finish up the rest of their work independently. We will have sports activities most afternoons so will hopefully tire bubs out then so that he has a good afternoon nap when we return home that way anything else requiring my uninterrupted time and attention can be completed during this nap.

When dd7 was little but had stopped having naps she would have quiet room time or watch a video while I was working with the older boys although then the boys were both young and only did 20 minutes of focused learning a day. Other things I did as she got older was to set
her up at the dining table with playdough or bubbly water in the kitchen sink which usually kept her busy for up to an hour. But I think Ds1 would probably try to eat the playdough or swim in the sink if I did this with him at the moment though. LOL

We will be starting back on the 27th of January the same day as the schools here but we will be taking another month off in February or March to have a holiday with dh who has worked 12 hour days 6 days a week right though the summer trying to meet a contract deadline. This is a big incentive for the kids to knuckle down and get as much done as possible in order to have a holiday with their father.