Summerish
Ahhhhhhh. Summer. I had no idea how badly I needed it until it was here.
Have you seen Pam’s summer planning printables yet? I’m loving them. Love-ing them. As in, they’re plastered all over my fridge to keep me on track.
Proof:
Honestly, with the twins being nearly 2 (TWO!!!), we are still in survival mode. I know– that sounds ridiculous. But it’s true.
I am hereby stating that homeschooling with toddler twins is nearly impossible.
It’s been so difficult to get to schoolwork during the actual school year, I figured we ought to do some summer school. But then I talked to Cindy for that podcast, and…
Well, now I’m starting to think we should just read a lot, enjoy our summer, and ride out these months where the twins are requiring all-hands-on-deck.
Actually, I’m betting our summer energy is probably better spent setting us up for success next year, rather than trying to squeeze in a little more math over the summer months.
I’ve got a few things on my summer radar as far as that goes:
- Get my kids set up with a math tutor— because God did not intend for me to teach math. Amen. I have a feeling this is going to make a monumental difference in my state of rest next school year.
- Make toddler busy boxes. I keep saying I’m going to do this, but then I don’t! I think we’d have a lot more success during morning time if we had some well-stocked toddler boxes to use for that time of day. I’m procrastinating because I’m afraid I’m going to have to go hang out on Pinterest in order to get started, and that makes me… isn’t there some laundry to fold around here? Or a bathroom to clean? But wait! I have 11 and 13 year old daughters, and they can do the Pinterest-ing for me, I’m sure. Yes. We will make these.
- Get next school year planned. It doesn’t actually take me very long to plan. I just don’t do a whole lot of re-inventing the wheel. Anyway, I got myself a pretty new notebook and printed out a slew of planning pages, so I’m betting I’ll get this done before June’s out. Then I’ll come tell you what I drummed up.
I’m doing my own fair share of reading kid lit this summer, mostly because I’m hoping to get an official booklist made by the time summer’s out, and there are still some titles I need to vet before then.
The boys love watching the diggers (for the record, called “siggers”) working behind our house. I think they’d stand there and watch all day, if they could.
Oh! And if you missed it, I just released my first Read-Aloud Revival Quickstart Guide to Great Conversations with Your Kids. You should grab it. :)
Happy summering this week, friends!
I cannot wait for the new Teaching from Rest…the first one was such a blessing to me…THANK YOU. How soon will the new one be available?
August 3rd! :)
Great post. I have been saying I’ll make those busy boxes FOR YEARS. Please post if you make them :)
I’m with you on the Pinterest thing…I just can’t get into it. It’s so overwhelming to me. I’d rather just search online generally for ideas.
I’m listening to the Circe Institute interview right now. It’s very helpful!
A friend of mine planned to do a busy bag swap a few years ago, but then she found sellers on Etsy who sold lots of them already done. Might be worth checking out to save time!!
Seriously. LOVE these photos – summer is in full swing over there! Primrose just looks absolutely beautiful in these shots. Yes, enjoy summer! Let the tide come in! summer is gain!!!
We are also taking a break, small break this summer. Probably a month. Life has been hectic around and we really need, I need a time of not thinking about school and then embrace it with all our might.
Sarah, what will you be doing during your morning and afternoon blocks? is it independent work (notebook spiral)? And, during Reading Time, is it independent or Read Aloud as a Family??
Enjoy your summer!!
I’m not sure I’ve ever stopped being in survival mode for the past 18 years ;-) It has to do with adding kids every 2.5 years, I think. Every time I get somebody to where they actually sleep ok at night, there’s another newborn to take his place. Plus a 2 year old to chase around.
Honestly, I look back on myself as a younger mom, when I had so many little ones all at once and the twins were little, and I wonder what I was thinking. I had such unrealistic expectations of what I ought to get done every day, when so much of my energy went to taking care of a baby and making sure the twins didn’t destroy the house or themselves. I wish I had stopped stressing about it so much and just accepted that it was hard and that was okay, our homeschool was never going to look like the homeschools I read about on blogs. I guess some of the pictures I shared from that time looked impressive, but trust me — sometimes what I put on my blog was the only thing we did that day. And of course you couldn’t see the rest of the house, or the fact that we were eating frozen pizza for dinner – AGAIN.
Anyway… I do have to say that having things for the twins to do will help you out a little, but maybe not in the way you think. I always had to supervise the twins’ activities 95% of the time, but the thing was if they had something interesting to occupy their brains for a certain amount of time and if they thought they were doing kind of the same thing as everybody else, they would sometimes play non-destructively for a little while after they got down from the table. And giving them something to do while I read aloud was also important. It wasn’t like they could sit there and play quietly for half an hour, but it did buy us some time occasionally.
My challenge right now with my current toddler is that he doesn’t ever want to *play* with anything… he either wants to be outside or throw things. We’ve had to put all blocks and Duplos up too high for little people to reach :-/
Yeah okay. I’ve read your comment at least five times. :) Actually, I think I’ll just start a whole ‘nother post about it, because truly- I’ve needed your perspective so badly.
Right now I feel like all I see is trees, trees, trees. Forest? What forest? (sigh)
Yes to everything Angela said. I totally had unreasonable expectations for my oldest son’s kinder, 1st, 2nd grade years when the twins were 1, 2, and 3. (Hands on activities!?) A big part also is adding babies. It just is hard. My biggest gift to my older children so far has been to sow then the importance of books, to teach them to read, then be a book provider, and they have learned so much by reading. So much that wasn’t planned but the books were there. Even when there were sick days etc. and now my boys are 7 and I’m seeing the spark growing as their reading ability grows – though they would always rather play catch or wrestle. All boy boys here.
That’s why your research for and writing about teaching from rest is so important. We have to have that perspective or we will overdo it (or try to.)
Yes! That’s what I am! I’m a book provider :-). Thank you for that term, Amanda; I’m going to tell my husband ;-).
Getting a math tutor was possibly the smartest thing I did for our schooling last year. And I will never go back. I pray you find someone awesome!
You told me that at the conference, and I have not forgotten it! I came home and told Andy, “my friend Elizabeth says it was a game changer for her.” :)
I have an 8 year old, twin 4. 1/2 and a 2 1/2 yr old. We listen to audio books downloaded from library often. Frequently using your ROR suggestions. However, they are starting to be unable to be in the car without being “entertained”. I dislike feeling that they cannot just look out the window or have a conversation. Do you limit audiobooks? Rules? Suggestions?
We haven’t been listening to audio books as much in the car lately, but only because the toddlers are so loud, we can’t hear anything! But before we had so many toddlers, we listened to audio books a lot. I didn’t worry too much- they may be entertained by the audio book, but they are also using their minds in ways that they may not otherwise, so we almost always listened to something.
If you wanted to put some limits on it, maybe consider saying audio books only for car trips that were longer than 15 minutes or something?
God bless you, Karen!
Aaaahhhh, I believe it – about still being in survival mode. My twins are 10 months now and I keep telling myself this next school year will be easier, but I’m just kidding myself, aren’t I? And I read in the comments above that survival mode lasts until they are 4. Okay, that’s good for me to hear, so I can be realistic about our upcoming school year. Yes, homeschooling with toddler twins is very challenging.
Thanks, Danielle, for sharing the link about toddler boxes!
Sarah- Thanks for posting some pics. I always love seeing your beautiful kids. :)
Um…meant to say my twins are 19 months now, not 10. :)
Ha! I thought so. I was sitting here scratching my head, thinking that your twins were not *that* much younger than mine… :)
So. Timely. Just finished conversation with 10 year old daughter about continuing math through summer. Just switched to Teaching Texbooks in February and I am amazed at her progress with almost zero involvement from me. Hallelujah. I was telling her how amazing she can convert fractions to decimals! And she learned it all by herself!! And does she want to lose all that progress? We have had an extremely rocky first two years of homeschooling for unfortunately unhappy reasons, not fun stuff ;) like cute babies! I think we have all learned invaluable life lessons but of course I am still struggling with what I think it “ought” to look like. I have been forced to a Big Picture outlook, which is how I think anyway, but sometimes what the outside world values can interfere with my mission. Thank you for this post and podcast link!
PS Teaching textbooks is my fourth math curriculum. Done. Love. Daughter who cries at math now just does math on her own.
I have 8- year- old twins. My mom had twins. My grandma had twins. It takes until they are 4 before you get out of survival mode. Really, it goes by in a wink. An exhausting wink, though. ;-)
I keep hearing that survival mode lasts till age 4, so there must be something to that. It makes me feel so much better to know that it isn’t just my own incompetency that makes toddler twins so difficult!
I TOTALLY agree with 4. I tell people that all the time. Just a couple more years, Sarah!
Yes, 4. And it’s still hard but you can start to breathe. It also depends how quickly there us another baby. I had one when they were three, then another when they were 5.5. For me, every baby means some habits, rooms, routines, behaviors fall apart and have to be retaught/relearned, so that lengthened the survival mode time a bit. Or I’m just incompetent. Anyhow, it was hard. Also my oldest was 4 just after their birth so we all had to make do a lot and it was all me as far as baby/toddler care for the twins. In many ways I am still catching up and they just turned 7! But it’s great in so many ways and such a joy to see their friendship.
To encourage you, my son had both of us in tears over math. Even when my husband, who was an engineer, took over it wasn’t much better. I thought my son would never graduate homeschool high school!
He took most of his senior year classes at a community college and suddenly something clicked. He began to understand math better. He eventually transferred to the major university near us where he received A’s in advanced math. He graduated in Computer Science and works as a software engineer today.
I had been told kids can begin to understand math concepts as their brain matures. He told me it was when he studied math with science that he could “see” a mental picture of how it all came together. Amazing.
Wow, that is amazing and so very encouraging. Thank you for sharing it!
Just popping in to say that I think it’s so cool that a little more than two years ago, you were lying on the couch growing twins and contemplating the whole idea of teaching from rest…and now you’re speaking about it at homeschool conventions! Just…cool. I’ve been following along on your journey from the time Posy was tiny, and it’s been really wonderful to see your blog growing (exploding!) and your influence among homeschooling mommas growing too. :-)
Oh goodness. It’s just crazy. :) And so much fun!
The planning pages are beautiful, thanks for the link! Can you tell me how “editable” they are? We don’t school on a normal Monday-Friday schedule and the sample pages are all M-F. Can you edit the headings on the actual download?
The headings aren’t editable, but I just asked Pam, and she said she will add one with blank headings to the set later this week. :)
Forgot to add that you might want to check out Math-U-See if you haven’t already. All of the lessons are on DVD, so your student can review them as often as needed. I know several families who use it, including ones where one or both parents are strong in math but don’t necessarily have the time to spend teaching just one child. The program comes with all levels, including Algebra. And, unlike other DVD programs out there, it is on grade level or higher. HTH!
Hello Sarah! If you have not checked out Teaching Textbooks for math, you should. It totally changed math in my household. I have five daughters and two of them are dyslexic. They do not have dyscalculia but really struggled with math until I found Teaching Textbooks. My older daughter has since graduated high school and made it through higher math, using TT, without needing a tutor. And I am in no way a “math person”! My 11 year old, who also struggles with dyslexia, is doing remarkably well. She rarely needs any help with math and is moving right along. I love your website and even after 15 years of homeschooling I learn something new every day! Thanks.
Thank you! We did use TT for a couple of years- it wasn’t a great fit for my oldest (she’s the one who used it). I may have to revisit it, though, now that she’s a couple of years older now…
Sarah, the information you dig up for us and share is invaluable. I hadn’t heard of the Exodus Summer Reading program but LOVE the sound of it (after having looked at their web page). Wow!
I’m going over to sign up for the membership site. It’s my way of saying ‘thank you’ in a concrete way for the quality and wealth of information you are always sharing.
Blessings!
Irina, you are so sweet. Thank you!
I’m so glad to hear that you are taking a break. After the twins and with the added baby, I went into an unplanned, unofficial, unschool mode. New additions always put a strain on my marriage and I felt that making that a priority (among other important things such as eating!) was one of the best lessons that I could teach at the time.
And in that time, I have learned SO much about my children and how they learn.
I’m not exactly sure where God will lead me on, but I have no regrets except any time I wasted worrying about it. Enjoy your summer.
Good plan. New additions always put a strain on my own marriage, as well. I love how you intentionally sought to nurture that this time. Tucking that into my pocket. Just in case I need it. :P
Your kids are so adorable. :) Love those squishy toddlers! (I have one myself. :)
Thanks so much for all you’re doing, Sarah. The RAR podcast is my FAVORITE!! I’m inspired by and get something out of every. single. one.
God bless and keep it comin!
Thank you so much!
You crack me up…although I am not with you on the math thing (I love it), I am fully on board with the Pinterest thing! I made toddler “bags” a few years ago and just put stuff in bags…nothing fancy at all…and yet it still worked! I got all the stuff at the dollar store! Good luck!
Oh…that’s what the other commenter said too :)
You can come teach my kids, perhaps? :) I would make you a lemonade after and we could sit on the deck and chat!
I will save you some time searching on Pinterest for toddler box ideas. Check this out. Links to where you can buy stuff as well as ideas from the $1 store:
http://www.icanteachmychild.com/what-to-do-when-naptime-ceases/
Thank you!
Awesome- thanks, Danielle!!