No Two Days Are the Same: Friday

Morning

Despite saying last night that he would have a major lay-in today, Tiger actually set his alarm clock for 7:45am and got himself up at that time!  However, I didn't get up early today so once again, our expectations of each other are not quite synchronised -- more work needed there!

We had breakfast, completed our long-than-usual morning chores (we have a few additional chores on Fridays), and settled down to start work at 10:30am.  Tiger started on the second part of his science homework which involved researching on and writing about how clean drinking water gets to UK homes.  As usual, I asked him whether he needed my help.  When he said no, I went to the kitchen and started cooking lunch because last night's dinner was so well received that there was none left for today's lunch.

Tiger completed his research and wrote his report on the water treatment process.  He then brought his completed report into the kitchen and read it out to me.  It was spot on.  No mistakes at all.  I then asked him to prepare for his class this afternoon by looking through the topic, photosynthesis, as we waited for lunch to be ready.

Afternoon

Lunch was ready at 12:15pm.  Pan-fried venison with blueberry sauce served with mash and steamed vegetables (a modified version of this recipe).  Yum!

The rest of the afternoon was taken up by science class.  It is a small class attended by five children.  Two of them were absent this afternoon so it was almost like a one-to-one tutorial today.

I sat at the back of the class as usual, half listening in on the lesson.  Most of the time I read but the science class is always quite lively because of the many hands-on experiments and I find it difficult to concentrate on what I am reading.  When that happens, like it did this afternoon, I work on something else that requires a different type of concentration, such as drawing or hand-lettering.

During the 10-minutes break this afternoon, Tiger's science teacher was interested to know what I was reading because he has seen me reading the same book for weeks.  I showed him the title page and he became interested to know what a liberal education is.  I tried to explain it to him but felt that I have had a failed elevator speech moment.  He is an ex-school teacher and has a young son who attends elementary school, so if I have not explained the concept clearly (I don't always feel up to it), perhaps I have piqued his interest such that he may look into it more closely at his own time.

We arrived home around 4:15pm and my husband took Tiger out to a nearby skate park to play with the remote control car.  Meanwhile, I start drafting the blog post for today and changing the all the sheets in the house -- Fridays are all-sheets-change day so every towel, hand towel, bed sheet, pillow case, etc go into the laundry basket.


Evening

The boys came back in time for me to take Tiger to his swimming lesson.

It is 8pm at the moment, and we are just about to have dinner.

Next week, according to my calendar will be somewhat different from this week, so it is true when I say that no two days are the same for us.

No Two Days Are the Same: Thursday

Morning

I looked through Tiger's history homework last night before I went to bed, and saw that although he had written a summary of Mesopotamia well in terms of content and coherence -- a result I attribute to oral narration), his written narration is, well... sloppy.  His writing transgressed a few points (such as poor handwriting, careless spelling and a disregard for grammar rules) that warranted a "This is unacceptable.  You have to rewrite it." from me, which he was very unhappy about.

After breakfast, Tiger rewrote the summary in its entirety.  I'll be lying if I told you that he rewrote the assignment cheerfully.  No doubt he was seething with anger over the injustice of being made to write it a second time but he did it anyway, and the final copy was perfect.  It just shows that the poor quality of the original piece of writing was not due to an inability to write well but was caused by carelessness.

Afternoon

We then headed out to a centre where we spent most of the day with many other home educated children and parents.  I usually sit at a corner while Tiger attends his English and history classes as I like to listen in on what he is learning.  Sometimes I read my own book and make notes in my commonplace book while listening to the lessons (a skill that I developed in primary school), but more often than not, I make write out plans for the following week.  At the centre there is a waiting room where most other parents congregate as they waited for their children's lessons to end.  I usually join them at lunch break to socialise while Tiger has his lunch with the other children in one of the other rooms.

After class, we stopped by the supermarkets to pick up some groceries and reached home at 4pm.  I reminded Tiger that he had not started with his science homework yet so he buckled down and did a part of it (the other part he will complete tomorrow).

Evening

It was Tiger's turn to cook dinner tonight.  He is capable of preparing dinner by himself now so while he was busy in the kitchen, I wiped all the non-carpeted floors in the house.  Tonight's dinner was a modified version of Duck with Plum Sauce and Noodles.  You might have noticed that we always modify recipes.  It is because we follow certain dietary restrictions for health reasons.

Tiger was ready for bed by 8:55pm but he came downstairs in his dressing gown again (as he did on Tuesday) to draw a tank before he felt happy to go to sleep.  I read to him again tonight and finished the second half of the Samuel Morse story.

Before I left his bedroom, Tiger announced that he will have a big lay in tomorrow.  Hmm.

No Two Days Are the Same: Wednesday

Morning

My cup of tea arrived at 6:46am this morning.  The tea was very hot so I read a chapter from the book on my bedside table as I waited for the tea to cool down.  Today's chapter is on the topic of kindness.  I was soon engrossed in it and lost track of time, hence I was on the exercise bike a little later than yesterday, resulting in coming back in a quarter of an hour later too.

I ate my breakfast as usual then started on today's main chore: wiping windows and surfaces.  I break the household chores down to smaller tasks and aim to complete one major chore each day so that I don't feel overwhelmed by having to do everything all at once.

8:45am.  I was wiping the windows in my bedroom when Tiger came in to find out what the noise was (he's a light sleeper).  Seeing that it was just me, he went back to sleep for another half an hour.

It was 10:15am by the time he finished his breakfast and his morning chores.  We started with memory work, still working on the same three poems as yesterday.  After that, I read a chapter from The Golden Age of Myth and Legend while Tiger drew another helicopter.  No narration this time but we discussed the similarities between the stories of Pyramus and Thisbe and Romeo and Juliet.

Then it was on to the meat of the day: history.  We are still in the homework-completion mode, today it's history.  Tiger's homework from his history of medicine class has to do with Mesopotamia, so I thought it would be a good idea to start using the History Odyssey: Ancients (Level 2) curriculum that we have to go through the Mesopotamia section as part of completing his class homework -- I had a look at his homework requirement and found that there are a few overlaps.

Right before we started work, Tiger took put a CD into the player.  It was our music for the week: Mozart's Quintet for Clarinet, 2 Violines, Viola & Cello, in A major KV581!  Would you believe it?  The boy certainly has the right idea about things.

Afternoon

After lunch, we took a 30 minutes break after watching a documentary on ancient Iraq.  Our dining table looked like this at break-time:

We were to resume at 2pm, but my mother called right on the hour so she and I talked for 30 minutes as she updated me with news from her part of the world.

At 2:30pm, I was off the phone so I read another chapter from The Story Book of Science from which Tiger narrated orally.  At this point, my husband came home from work!  He has a flexible work arrangement such that he works from home half the time and today is one of those days.  Another half hour was taken up with us fussing about him before all of us resumed work - my husband to his work in the home office, Tiger and I back to the Sumerians in the dining area.

By 4:30pm, Tiger has completed four lessons in the History Odyssey: Ancients (Level 2) curriculum and said he has had enough of Sumerians and cuneiform for a day, so I asked him to take a break.  While he was enjoying the Blueberry Bakewell Cake (a modified version of this recipe) that I made yesterday and a cup of mint tea, I got started with dinner.

Evening

Tiger's final commitment for the day was tennis.

It was 8pm when we got home.  My husband had a work-related call to take then so we waited until 8:30pm to have dinner together.  This evening was a short one but we spent it together as a family, which is nice.

Tiger is in bed now, and I am going to join my husband to watch a movie.

No Two Days Are the Same: Tuesday

Morning

I was woken up at 6:50am this morning by my husband who brought me a hot cup of tea in bed.  We chatted for ten minutes until he left for work at 7am.  I sipped my tea for a few more minutes before getting up to spend 30 minutes on the exercise bike while listening to The Book Thief.

It was 8am when I came back in.  Not a sound in the house so I had breakfast and started to write the post about yesterday.

I heard stirring from upstairs at 9:40am.  I have almost completed my blog post so I stopped what I was doing to make some pancakes for Tiger.  Like yesterday, Tiger spent the morning completing homework from his poetry class, which consisted of researching into the poems of Christina Rossetti and Wilfred Owen.

Afternoon

Meal times are not too exciting when daddy is not around, so we had a 'working lunch' where we watched clips from BBC Nature on the birds and small mammals that we saw on our nature walk last weekend.  I had two boiled eggs for lunch so there was a lot of time for me to put together my menu plan for the week.

We took a half-hour break after lunch before resuming lessons at 2:15pm.

Since we forgot to start with memory work this morning, I made that our priority in the afternoon.  Most of the poems that were recited yesterday are in the "weekly" folder, which means that they need to be recited only once a week.  Therefore, Tiger only worked through the following poems today:

1. The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
2. 《古朗月行》 - 李白
3. The Word Party by Richard Edwards

When Tiger starts to work on memorising a new poem, I usually ask him to read it out loud first so that we can both listen to it.  Normally that is enough for him to pick out the basics such as rhyme, rhythm and structure.  This afternoon Tiger identified the rhyme scheme and the rhyming couplets from The Word Party.

We then moved on to oral narration where I read a chapter from The Story Book of Science and had Tiger tell it to me back, in his own words.

This would have been a quick five-minute task for Tiger were it not for the customary "Why do I have to do this?  Can't I just listen or read it to myself?"  We had been through this Q&A session many times before and he knows exactly why I insist on having him narrate after one reading.  However, I must admit that the level of concentration required for a successful narration is immense so I do understand why anyone would rather not do it if they have a choice.

Maths was next on this afternoon's school menu.  Today Tiger worked on fractions from RightStart Level E.  The lesson was more of a revision for him but as he completed it so quickly we had time to play two rounds of fraction game which helped to improve his mental accuracy.

After maths we headed out for Tiger's weekly table tennis session where I usually sit in the waiting/viewing room and read while the session was going on.

Evening

It was 6pm when we arrived home.  I started to cook dinner while Tiger alternated between fixing his remote control car and watching a documentary about animals that burrow.  When dinner was stewing for 15 minutes, I used the time to do a rapid dusting around the house.

By 8:30pm, Tiger had had a shower and was in his dressing gown, getting ready for bed.  Seeing that I was baking a cake for tomorrow, he decided to stay downstairs to draw a helicopter while following his go-to online drawing instructions.

At 9pm, my husband came home.  He is back late tonight as he met a friend after work.  The cake batter is in the oven by now and Tiger has finished his drawing, so all of us had a good chat before the boys spent some time together (fixing the shower and Tiger's remote control car) before Tiger went to bed.

I, on the other hand, had the pleasure of ironing.

I am very glad, though, that I have caught up with the post for today!

No Two Days Are the Same: Monday

The days are flying through like a blur for me, so for my own benefit (read: what have we been doing all day?) I decide to make a record of how we spend our time this week.

Morning

My alarm rang at 7am but I turned it off and went back to bed.  Tiger came in a little while later to ask me what we would be doing today.  I told him we would wait and see, but that I would like to get on with our routine as well, if that was possible.  He didn't sound too keen and headed back to his bedroom to continue with the game that he has started a few days ago.  I turned to look at my clock, saw the time and cried, "Holy cow!"

My husband has taken the day off.  He is the welfare manager around here, as in, he makes sure that we get lay-ins, have delicious breakfasts, and generally enjoy a good life.  This morning, while he prepared breakfast, Tiger and I started on our new readings.  By the time breakfast was ready (it took about 20 minutes), Tiger was halfway through his book while I had just finished the preface of mine...

Our meal times at home is usually a long affair because we have lots of discussions, especially when my husband is there.  Hence, by the time we cleared the table and started 'school work', it was 11:30am.

Tiger and I did our morning chores then started with memory work, which consists of him reciting poems out loud.  This is a new practice that we have taken on since September.  The idea is that Tiger will have a repetoire of beautiful poetry that he can call up at will.  Today being Monday (the start of a week), Tiger recited a few 'review' poems (i.e. those that he can recite easily) and worked on others that he is in the process of memorising fully.  The poems he reviewed this morning are:

1. From a Railway Carriage by Robert Louis Stevenson
2. Aunt Jennifer's Tigers by Adrienne Rich
3. The Land of Nod by Robert Louis Steveson
4. 《静夜思》 - 李白
5. 《早春》 - 韩俞
6. 《春晓》 - 孟浩然
7. 《游子吟》 - 孟郊 

The ones he is working on are:

1. The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
2. 《古朗月行》 - 李白

As Tiger attends a class on the history of medicine, I recently signed up for a free short course called Brief History of Medicine.  The first episode on prehistoric medicine arrived in my in-box this morning so I read it out to him.  Each episode is a one-page summary of the key development of medicine through history and takes only five minutes to read.  I signed up only because:

• it gives a good summary of what Tiger will be covering in his history class;
• it is a good, quick way to get us into the frame of mind to start the day;
• it is free;
• it is relevant to Tiger's class.

Tiger is given homework from his tutorial classes each week.  I am a stickler for completing homework before the next class and I told him as much.  Although Tiger is not a readily compliant child, he agrees with me on this point so he got on with his English homework, which includes an analysis of one of Obama's pre-presidential speeches.  I asked him whether he needed my help.  He said no, so I organised his class notes from last week's classes while he completed his homework.  I also started to cook dinner and had just put all the potatoes on boil when Tiger called me over to help him with a question on the use of a particular rhetorical device.

Afternoon

Tiger finished his homework around 1:30pm, by which time we were all starving so I heated up last night's dinner.  My husband joined us for lunch so another round of interesting discussion ensued.

After lunch, the boys decided to go for a walk.  I was volunteered to stay at home to wait for a collection service for something to be returned.  I did not mind that too much since Tiger and I had taken a few long walks over the weekend.

While the boys were out, I:

• listened to episode 3 of The Mason Jar while organising my collection of recipes;
• read about the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature, which led me to research a little more about her;
• registered Tiger to go on a few field trips;
• replied to an email from a friend whose son studies at a top school in one of the top three Pisa-ranked countries - we have been having ongoing discussions about the teaching methods and educational outcomes;
• made dinner; and
• deep cleaned the bathrooms.

Evening

The boys came home just as I sat down for a cup of tea.

Dinner was served soon after but our dinner session was longer than usual because:

• the boys filled me in with what they saw on their walk; and
• they hated the vegetable pie that I made so I had to make something else quickly and try again.  It was a case of "We love you but we can't possible eat this pie!"

After the drama of a rejected dinner, one would think that should be the end of my day but no!  My husband and I were informed that we were to attend a science class after dinner!  The two adults groaned, "Do we have to...?"  At which point we were reprimanded for having a bad attitude towards learning and told to get our act together by half past seven when the class would start promptly.

In the half-hour session, my husband and I were shown how the carbon cycle works, and quizzed afterwards to make sure we were paying attention.  Luckily we aced the quiz to avoid incurring further wrath from the teacher.  Nonetheless we were given two homework assignments at the end of the session, one of which was to "take proper notes" at the next lesson.  Our obvious lack of note-taking has been observed and highlighted.

After the late-night science lesson, it was time for bed.  Tiger usually reads to himself but tonight he was drawing so I asked him whether he would like me to read to him as he drew.  He said yes, so I continued where we had left off and started on the story of Samuel Morse and the telegrah.

That was our Monday.

Our Routine for Year 5

As we haven't started our new term yet, I am not able to write a day-in-the-life post.  However, I do have some idea of how our day should turn out when we start.

The basic structure of our day goes like this:

• Wake up
• Breakfast
• Morning chores
• Morning lessons part 1
• Break
• Morning lessons part 2
• Lunch
• Lunchtime chores
• Afternoon lessons

However, no two days are the same, as most homeschoolers will tell you.

The timetable above reflects the emphasis that I feel is needed in Tiger's Logic Stage years: English, specifically writing.  I have been very gentle with Tiger when it comes to the process of writing in his elementary school years, giving him time to develop his fine motor skills and build up his stamina to write more than one sentence at a time.

This past summer we have done a few dictation sessions and some copywork.  The outcomes of those far-and-few sessions show me that Tiger is now ready to write for a longer time than before and is ready for some formal instructions to get him started on the road to writing.  While some children are natural writers who can write long compositions with zero or minimal instructions, Tiger is not one of them, and he recognises this in himself.  To this end, he feels more comfortable having some kind of structure to guide him along (as do I!) and he sees the value of using a formal writing programme to bridge the (very wide) gap between his reading level and his writing level, so we'll be spending most of our time in the new year to develop his writing ability.

This seems like a U-turn from our more autonomous approach from a year ago.  It is in some ways, in that there are certain basic skills that Tiger needs to master before he can confidently progress onto the next level of learning.  Acquiring these skills (e.g. writing) isn't always going to be fun or easy, so if I didn't plan them into our week, there is a very high chance that they will get pushed aside and we will not have progressed at all on those specific areas by next summer.  The timetable helps us stay focused on our tasks but we are not bound by the clock to move to the next subject if and when a topic really takes our interest.  Homeschooling allows us to maintain a high degree of autonomy and flexibility in our learning approach while keeping a focus on achieving the goals that we have set for ourselves.

Having a timetable while maintaining an interest-led approach makes perfect sense to me but perhaps not so much to the reader yet.  Afterall, I do have the advantage of having all my plans, schedules, activities and calendar at hand so I have a clear view of what's going to happen.  We shall see how the new year pans out.  It promises to be a very busy and exciting year of learning.

Each year our approach seems to alter just ever so slightly:

• Year 2's schedule
• Year 3's schedule
• Year 4's non-schedule and how our day looked like

This post is linked up to:

1. The Homeschool Mother's Journal (8/23/14)
2. 6th Annual "Not" Back-to-School Blog Hop: Day-in-the-Life Week
3. Hip Homeschool Hop - 8/26/14
4. Finishing Strong #27 - Electives
5. Collage Friday - Who Let the Homeschoolers Out?
6. Weekly Wrap-up: Pre-Break Week

Hour by Hour

It's interesting for me to look back at last year's post to see whether and how our day is any different now so I've decided to join in with the fun at Simple Homeschool to record what a day looks like in our homeschool.  The link up will take place on Friday, February 14th. 


Between 7am and 8am
I was woken up by Tortoise kissing me goodbye to go to work.  I put my arm out of the duvet and felt the chilly air so I decided to stay in the warm bed a little longer.  Then, I remembered that I was going to write a post about our homeschool day so I jumped out of bed, in order to be able to say to everyone that I got up at good time instead of lazing in bed until ten o'clock.

By the time I freshened up, got dressed, made the bed, got to the kitchen, and grabbed my camera, it was about 7:17am.

I put the kettle on to make myself  a cup of coffee and to boil an egg.  My breakfast these days is one humble boiled duck egg, with an occasional cup of coffee.

I'm supposed to have stopped drinking coffee but I make an exception on days when I'm really woozy, and this morning was one of those moments.  While the egg was being cooked I switched my laptop on to answer emails and catch up on news.


Between 8am and 9am
By the time I was done with the first round of matters-of-urgency on the laptop, my egg was well cooked and the coffee was cold.

I added more hot water to the coffee and finished the egg.  Then back to the laptop to read more news, catch up on others' blogs, and start drafting this post.

Usually by now Tiger would have gotten himself up, but he didn't have a very good night last night (cold and cough) so I decided to let him catch up on his sleep and wake up naturally.  Meanwhile, I am planning out in my head what we would do today.  Right now I'm doing some research into the Chinese New Year Lantern Festival and ogling at the lovely Chinese New Year lanterns on Marie's post.  Ideas are starting to formulate in my mind...

Wait!  Did I hear a stir upstairs?

I held my breadth.  Tiger waking up means the start of another busy day of being 'Mum'.  Even after nearly ten years of being a mother, I still need to have the quiet stillness and alone time in the mornings to think about things and enjoy the silence.

The noise turned out to be the low rumbling of thunder outside.

How very strange.  We didn't use to get thunder in the winter, only in the summer. The weather here has become very erratic indeed.  Luckily we plan to start look into it again next week, once our Chinese New Year celebration ends on Friday.


Between 9am and 10am
I finally heard footsteps coming from upstairs.  Tiger is up.

I made some pancakes for Tiger's breakfast while he laid on the sofa waiting.  He really wasn't feeling too great.

After breakfast, Tiger went to do his morning chores. 

As I waited, I came across an interesting website that led me to a clip that gives me a glimpse of what some other homeschoolers might be doing:

Between 10am and 11am
After watching the clip, I decided to help Tiger with chores in the kitchen so that we can both start our day quickly.  Half the morning has past and we haven't done anything useful yet.  I'm not happy about this.

When the chores were ticked off, we sat down and made a list of the things that needed to be done, including outstanding projects that have to be completed.

Once we knew what's expected of ourselves (from the list), we sat down and started work.  We watched two episodes of Happy Chinese.  I paused the clips every now and then to explain new terms to him.  Tiger's Mandarin is improving rapidly, as noted from his increased ability to understand the conversations in the series.

Between 11am and 12pm
We had a break after the Chinese clips to drink water and to have a few minutes to ourselves.  Tiger laid on the sofa to read.

It turned out to be a very busy hour, with answering the phone call about a course enquiry for Tortoise, answering the door to a delivery, and answering emails about some field trips on offer.

By the time Tiger and I reconvene, it was already ten-to-twelve!!  Where did the time go?!

 

We hurriedly sat down to start on Tiger's Chinese homework.  We try to get the Chinese homework out of the way as early in the week as possible to avoid last-minute rush later in the week.

Between 12pm and 1pm
Nothing very much happened in this hour apart from getting on with Chinese homework.  There is usually quite a fair bit of revision to do for each new lesson before we would start on the homework proper

Each homework session takes a long time because we approach Mandarin learning in the traditional way, which is to make sure that Tiger completely understands each new vocabulary and text before we move forward to the next.  Every new character has to be practised stroke by stroke, in the correct order, until there is no mistake; each new word has to be pronounced in the perfect tone.  The reason I insist on this level of accuracy is because it is the nature of the Chinese language -- a stroke more or a stroke less will render the word incorrect, and the wrong pronounciation of a word can have a completely different meaning.

By quarter to one, we were both hungry.  Tiger was nearly done with today's portion of the homework, so I put the oven on to heat up lunch.

Between 1pm and 2pm
It was a quarter past one when we ate lunch.  Lunch was nothing fancy, just reheats from last night's dinner.

We usually take a break of between 15 to 30 minutes after lunch before we carry on with learning in the afternoon.  However, this afternoon Tiger decided to start working on a sketch for his bookclub's project straight after lunch.

He completed his draft shortly afterwards.  We discussed the draft in view of the project requirements and agreed that we would have to work on it some more tomorrow before we start putting the final drawing together.

Between 2pm and 3pm
We discussed a little about what we wanted to do for Friday's Lantern Festival.  I showed Tiger some of the ideas that I have found in the morning that we might want to do.  Then the sun came out!  We haven't seen the sun for days so we couldn't wait to get outside.

Between 3pm and 4pm
We ended up getting in the car and driving to another town to check out an oriental supermarket that I have heard about from a friend.  It was just as well that we went because we bought a few items that would come in handy for Friday.  The bonus was to know the location of the oriental supermarket so that we can get the specialised ingredients without having to go to Chinatown.

Between 4pm and 5pm
Once we arrived home, Tiger went straight to his room to play battles.  I reminded him that he still had a few more things to do before his 'school hours' are over, namely emptying the bins and doing a few Introductory Mandarin exercises on Memrise. 

Tiger completed the Memrise exercises just as Tortoise stepped through the door with a slice of carrot cake for me!  Blessed is the man who remembers to bring home treats for his wife!

After 5pm
It was time to cook dinner.  While the rice was cooking on the stove, I read aloud to Tiger who was playing battles.  Our read aloud normally happens at Tiger's bedtime, but as we have some catching up to do prior to attending the upcoming bookclub meeting, we've decided to have a few extra read-aloud sessions.  This was one of them.

After dinner, the boys continued their epic war game, which have been going on for days.  However, tonight everyone is not feeling well.  The germ has got to all of us, so we're all going to have an early night after having our cups of lemon-and-honey drink.

This has been a fun post to write, and I'm thrilled to see that two of my UK homeschooling friends, Claire from angelicscalliwags and Lucinda from Navigating by Joy, have also joined in the fun by writing about their days respectively:

• angelicscalliwags: A Day in the Life...
• Navigating by Joy:  A Day in the Life of Our Homeschool - with an 8 year old and a 10 year old

This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop (2/11/14)
2. Collage Friday - All About Love {and Ice}
3. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with More Snow
4. Simple Homeschool: Come share your homeschool day in the life!
5. The Homeschool Mother's Journal (2/15/14)