One Less Thing...

     I do not know how it happened.  I do not even remember a turning point.  I just know that it happened and I have been taken over. 
     When I was in college, I lived in a 900 square foot, two bedroom, two bathroom apartment.  I had a tiny dining room table and just the basics.  A bed for myself, a bed in the guest room, a sofa...well you get the idea.  I have pictures from that time and I can even remember what my apartment was like, but it seems so foreign now. 
    Now, I am overwhelmed.  I am sorting through things.  I am trying to get rid of as much as possible in preparation for a move in the future.  It seems to be never ending.  There is really so much stuff.  I have tools for every possible need.  I have craft gadgets galore.  I have sorted, resorted and put items aside that must go.  Every day, someone walks by a box, pulls something out and insists that we cannot live without that particular item.  I am exasperated.  How did we become so needy?  If all of these gadgets, tools and extras are so important, how did I survive without them twenty years ago? 
    The answer is simply.  CHILDREN. The days when you could simply bring a child home with just a few items of clothing, bottles and diapers are gone.  Now you must have an approved car seat, a 17 position high chair, a super silent battery operated swing, a bouncy seat, a bassinet, a crib, wipe warmer, diaper disposal unit, changing table... I could go on forever. We doubled our household goods when we had a 7 1/2lb child.
    And so it began... after the cribs, wipes, sippy cups and other gear, we moved up to preschool items.  The table that converted into an art easel, the swing set with safety seats so the children did not fly off to Kansas when we pushed them... okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but it made me giggle.  We purchased booster seats for our dining room, a booster seat for travelling to places with less than sparkling booster seats. (WHY were we eating at places with dirty booster seats?)  Plastic shoe boxes filled with fat crayons, fun dough, stacking blocks and other preschool appropriate toys.... it just goes on and on. 
    Now the big one.  We have GIRLS. This means lots of clothes and accessories.  We don't just have a pair of shoes, we have sandals, flip flops, white dress shoes, black dress shoes, brown loafers, tennis shoes and whatever else can be marketed to girls.  We have millions of hair accessories, tights, hats and purses.    If you have sons, please do NOT tell me how many shoes your son has, unless you just WANT to hear me let out a little whimper. 
   I have girls who also like science and bugs and outdoor things. This means I have dolls, stuffed animals, a remote control dragonfly, a remote control dinosaur, Knex, jewelry and of course, the greatest evil ever created, Barbie and her teeny tiny shoes that somehow puncture the soles of adult feet.
   I have been getting rid of things daily. I am serious. I have a mission.  I am going to live more simply. I am going to have an easy move.  I'm not kidding.  Do you sense the desperation?  I envision myself duck taped to a rock with a fishing pole.. I am trying desperately to reel the line in, only to discover that this is some sort of horrific fishing pole with three lines pulling in different directions at the same time.
    I am from a military family.  I can reduce. I can pack.  I have had the most organized moves ever.  My last move I actually still managed to have inventory lists taped to the outside of each box.  I'm not yet ready to simply toss things in bins and hope we eventually find everything.  I am not yet ready to treat our move like a scavenger hunt. 
   Thank God we are not moving just yet.  I still have time.... I just need to get rid of a few more things...

K12 Second Post

    Our experiences with virtual school.  Let me make a tiny disclaimer...

We are not experts. We are still new to the virtual school program, curriculum and all this entails.  We have in no way completed any scientific research. This is simply our personal experiences.

   There, now I can enjoy myself as I add this little update.

First, let me say we have already made a few adjustments.  In our classroom area, I placed an assortment of shelves from around the house.  There are some taller shelves and some shorter shelves.  Ok, enough.  Originally, we had placed all of the textbooks, workbooks and other materials on two lower shelves next to the work table in our "classroom" area.  Bending over or sitting on the floor quickly became annoying for all of us.  We simply moved the school books to a shelf at eye level, and then filled the now empty lower shelves with clearly labeled plastic bins and totes filled with art and science extras.

    The second most helpful change we made:  Especially with my younger child, we began to see that she would be producing a LOT of worksheets and writing assignments. Rather than have her notebook become overstuffed and cumbersome, we created a file bin.  We found a cute shelf storage bin for $4.00 and filled it with file folders.  Each folder has a child's name (which I have blurred in the photo) as well as a subject.  Now, at the end of the unit, each child gathers all of her assignments and places them in the appropriate folders.  We can find them again quickly for semester review or to copy and send work samples.

      We have the storage bin on the table in this picture because we had just created it and added paperwork, normally, it resides on a shelf. (The table was a garage sale find.  It is a small breakfast sized table with a leaf that we found a garage sale.  The top was scratched and water stained.  We used to use it as a board game table, but this summer, we sanded it down, cut up extra scrapbook paper into different sized squares and decoupaged it. We sealed it with a heavier polyurethane since it would be used daily.. VIOLA! Fun project for us and a wonderful workspace for the girls.)

   In this photo, my older child is working to the left with a laptop and my younger child is working in her notebook on the right.  To reduce the number of times my younger child would be searching for the right workbook and the right pages, I made one other change.  The workbook pages are perforated, so I put dividers in her notebook and on Saturday or Sunday, I tear out an entire Unit from each subject and hole punch them.  I add them to her notebook along with more filler paper at the back. This may seem petty, but my younger child has several workbooks. 

   Another disclaimer:  She is not bound to her chair for the entire day.  She must still get up to get her textbooks or other resources. This simply reduces the silly hunting in between lessons. 

    Now, something I was secretly worried about. One of my children drives me bananas.  I knew that she had a great deal of difficulty sitting still.  I also knew that because she does complete her work, her teachers had made certain concessions.  She was permitted to stand, wiggle, and walk around her desk within a certain very small radius as long as her pencil was on the paper and she was working.  I grossly underestimated how much this would annoy me.  I allow it, because she simply works better when she is permitted to wiggle, but it really has been difficult for me to adjust to her need to move her body while she is reading and writing.

    I mention this because your child may have a habit.  It may be foot tapping, wiggling or whatever else children can come up with.  Your child's teachers may have even mentioned it to you as it may have been a distraction in the classroom.  Guess what? It is your problem now.  You get to be the one who decides if it is getting in the way of their ability to learn, or if it is simply an annoyance.  You get to decide if you are allowing a habit that will cause problems for your child in the future.  My child can sit and act well at dinner, so I don't get it, but it is what it is.  She will wiggle and complete her assignments, so she will continue to wiggle.

   We have also made a few adjustments to the schedule.  In a regular school setting, children often line up to walk to PE, or line up to walk to art class. Yes, the older children typically only have one recess, or an afternoon snack time.  Anyway, I do have them get up and move around after each lesson whenever possible.  Sometimes they simply want to move on to the next lesson, but we have added a few "leg stretchers" in between.  It helps greatly with their ability to pay attention and more importantly, they enjoy their work better when it is broken up a bit.

    There have been a few other glitches here and there. One of my children did not click on "submit" at the end of her scantron test, so it did not ever register.  Yes, we went past the deadline and did not realize it, but her teacher said it was okay and to just redo it.  We have had two appointments to schedule around so far and that has been wonderful for so many reasons.  We just picked up where we left off. One of them was a pretty intense dental emergency, so that child had a "light" day. 

    All of my questions and/or concerns have been addressed.  There are solutions for everything we have come across.  If it takes my child 5 minutes instead of 30 to complete an activity, she can make up the attendance time with related activities. Just as a for instance, one of my children really likes to read.  She gets 6 hours of classwork completed in 5. What do we do about attendance? She can count her reading time toward her Literature attendance.  The other child may watch a show on the History channel that is similar to her History unit. Viola, she gets to count that toward her History attendance... once her work is complete.  These extra activities do not get counted until the required coursework is complete.  It would be pretty foolish to have logged 6 hours of attendance in History and have no work completed simply because your child likes that channel.  When this was explained to me, I was reminded that in a typical school, children do not sit with pencil to paper for 6 hours per day. There are other activities, other art projects, other videos and movies as well as all of the time used for bathroom, lining up, recess, etc... If I want to add an activity to supplement the material that is being covered, it is not only something I would have ordinarily done, but now my kids get class credit also. BONUS.

   This will be the third week of school. We are still new, but already we have found a comfort level.  Monday is a holiday, so we can take the day off or do some school work to get ahead.  We have not decided yet.  That is the beauty of this.  We have options and flexibility.  I can see where this would quickly become a spiralling nightmare if "procrastination" became a regular visitor, but if you are doing what you intended, and that is spending the time educating the children, this is filled with bonuses.

   I also have another blog if you would like to read more detail about our virtual school adventures.

    http://ourk12days.blogspot.com/