update

I finally get back to my blog.
It's the end of term 2 here in Australia. We have 4 terms a year, 10 weeks each. We are in winter, it is cold and wet and rainy and WONDERFUL which you can probably only understand if you couldn't remember the last cold AND wet, rainy winter you had. There's been a drought here- for years (well, we do live on the edge of a vast semi desert, but still!). Its been raining for weeks. Everything is coming alive. And our roof is leaking, in fact, my bedroom roof is leaking. Nothing a bucket can't handle.
I am happy with the way the homeschooling is going. I feel we have a good rythmn and routine going. I am feeling more confident, and at the same time I am still always tweaking.
This seems to be our routine at the moment:

First music practice, usually. Genevieve does piano. She won an eisteddford recently, for her own composition. Jared plays treble recorder, and his teacher is brilliant- she has him absolutely loving it- and he's not easy to please!

Both kids then do maths. First some sort of drill, then Singapore maths. Both like Singapore Maths, and so do I. It is so clearly presented, and not too much work. Still, they do usually spend about an hour on maths.
Then I work with Jared, age 9, while Genevieve, now a big whole 11, does independent work. She can do her Latin alone, plus Logic puzzles, Word Roots worksheet, one of her writing programs (Wordsmith Apprentice). Probably other things I cant remember.
Meanwhile, I will work intensely with Jared for about an hour. I will do Rod and Staff grammar 3- mostly orally, but he will do the worksheets- including some whiteboard work. Then, either Dictation or Copywork. A full page now (in his sprawly handwriting, anyway). He has come so far this year, and he really wants to write well. Then, its Latin- Prima Latina. I think we are both bored with this now, but he has learned a lot of vocabulary this year, and he is quite proud of it.
Then his reading out loud to me. We use a McGuffey reader mostly. He reads well.
Then, he is on his own to read for 40 minutes while I work with his sister.

I will do Rod and Staff with her. She hated it a while back. Now I think she is enjoying it a bit in spite of herself. She is very language orientated and enjoys sentence diagramming. But in the end, I think what she enjoys is the fact that I sit with her for a lot of it. I enjoy it- I am learning too. She and I are quite similar in our love for language.
Then I will mark her maths, go over any mistakes with her, and mark any other work she has done. Then I may help her with her outlining. She is struggling with this a bit. I may also get her going on her writing assignment- either from Writing Strands, or Imitations in Writing- Medieval Legends. She needs just a boost to get her started, then she is off writing on her own, and usually loving it. Well, not so much the Writing Strands.

We do History together on Mondays. SOTW 2, Medieval, listen to the CD chapter, do mapwork, colouring in together, and answer the questions in the AG. Then Jared has to give me an oral narration. He needs practice on this- I have been focusing on his writing skills. I feel he needs more practice doing oral narration before can write them down. So I write them for him still.

And Genevieve has to do outlining from Kingfisher. Yuk. Sometimes from SOTW instead. This week I relented and let her do a report from SOTW instead. I am going to work harder on outlining with her next week though. We have to get through this block.

Science is meant to be weekly but we have done only 6 chapters from RS4K Chemistry this 10 week term. We all enjoy RS4K. It is meaty, the experiments are well designed and explained. It feels deep, but doable. Some weeks we just dont get to it. However, once a month we go to the Power Museum and they learn all about physics with other kids, so I dont feel so bad.

I really had a burn out stage a few weeks ago. I felt it was all hard, dry work and no joy. I realised, what I was missing was the reading with them. We just didn't have time, except a few evenings, when we are tired anyway. I looked into Sonlight. At least now I know a lot about Sonlight, but I decided not to completely upheave and change curriculum (from the TWTM guidelines that I follow) and just ordered a whole lot of Sonlight books from the library. And we have been reading them, together. Some days, we miss another subject, just so we can read together. Even if the book isn't related to anything else we are learning. This shift has really helped me a lot to enjoy homeschooling again, and brought more joy back. They still do their own reading, but we all love snuggling on the couch and reading together. And the weather has been conducive to that too.

So, mid year for us and I am feeling good about it all. Gees, if only I knew what I know now, when I began homeschooling 2 years ago. Its been hard work doing all this learning, although I have been so passionate about it. There's no substitute for plain ol' experience though.