Starry Sky Ranch

The Home Mgt Journal Project

    I have been working on my Home Management Journal for some months now. Actually I have been working on several of them - for myself and dear friends. This is hardly an original idea. A few moments on the web will net a number of hits to these binders. I thought it might be helpful to articulate what I loved and what I really didn't love about the whole concept. Why would a woman who professes disdain for running a home like a factory even entertain the idea much less spend months creating one? Well here goes....

   It all started last summer when I saw a similar binder online. I was intrigued, as I usually am, by super-organized women and their methods. The reason I was intrigued was not to turn my home into a bells-on-the-hour, finely tuned machine however.  Initially the motivation was a bit morbid. It occurred to me that if something tragic happened to me there was really noone on the planet who could easily jump in and take my place. Granted there is probably no 'easy' way to do that in a large family, but still, I realized I was storing a LOT of information in my head.  If I went, it was all going with me.  Twenty years of trial and error, of tweaking techniques, of who needed vitamins, of what size the kids were, of how-to-run-this-place. 

    It also occurred to me that while dying is not a common thing for me <g> it DOES happen that my husband or children need to step in and help for varying amounts of time when I am down for the count due to pregnancy complications, postpartum, a child's surgery, or some unforeseen excitement around here. Even when I am right here there was always some question about when a job was really finished or how to do a task properly or what was expected from school each day. Having all that written out would seem to eliminate a lot of stress on everyone's part. No more surprises or misunderstandings about expectations.

   I bounced the ideas off of Jen and Elizabeth and we all realized these were very real issues in our homes. While you might be able to wing it with a couple children and a fairly static schedule you can forget smooth sailing if you have a full house and a deployed dad or a pregnant mom or a child with health issues - or how about several of those things! We needed to spell out how things were done and when they should be done. We also realized that we had children who might not have just absorbed by osmosis all the homemaking knowledge that had taken us the better part of two decades to accumulate. It wasn't that they weren't awesome kids. But, they did not have the benefit of the years of experience we did. It would be so nice to have a place to share with them what actually worked and what we valued. It would be nice to be able to pass it on.

   So the project began. I had a few priorities for the journal. First it had to be practical. Volumes of papers weren't likely to be waded through. Only the most useful everyday info was going in here. Second, it had to be pretty.  REALLY pretty. It's all visual for me. True confession - I just can't stand the business like forms for housekeeping and menus etc readily available online. They looked sterile and generic to me. If I used those there was a very real possibility that this binder would end up like many of my day-planners - a necessary evil I looked at as rarely as possible. To prevent that from happening I decided to make scrapbook style dividers and covers and to search the net for the nicest clip art to illustrate the pages. While the binder was my nod to the need for order and structure, the look of it was my statement about resisting the institutionalizing of education and the home.

   Since I was making one for myself I figured I would make multiples and share with my friends. Each of us got a theme.  Mine is Vintage. Jen's was more Country Floral (see pics left).  Elizabeth chose Susan Branch since her daughter Mary Beth loved her graphics.(I will link to Elizabeth's as soon as she has the pics uploaded) The same fonts (different for each of us) are used throughout on all the forms to lend visual continuity.  The end result was some binders we could all live with and use daily with a smile. I have been using mine for some time now and feel comfortable sharing the repro's if they are of help to other women. I am going to begin uploading today but will likely need to break up the posts over the next several days due to time constraints. I hope to put the downloads on the sidebar as soon as possible also so they are easy to access.

   Meantime - you can download (for personal use only please) the Download vintage_binder_dividers.doc in Word documents. You can also download the divider labels in ovals if you prefer Download mcd_dividers.doc . The label sizes are ready to go for index labels. I glued a bit of glue stick to the backs to make them stick in the clear label holders. The filler pages, which will be posted shortly, are all in Word Fonts so they should be viewable and printable on any pc. Though mine are in Victorian fonts you may want something different. You can highlight the document and change to a different font easily. The clipart is from all over. It cannot be used for resale.

    I will send the first section's filler pages and lists - Housekeeping - in the next post.  Enjoy!

Ten Random Facts

Rebecca tagged me so will give it a whirl on the off chance noone has anything better to read about today.  ; )   

Ten Random Facts About Me:

1.  I am an only child. Yes, an only child who now has more children than the woman in the shoe by some people's accounts lol!

2. I can't swim. Not for lack of trying. I took lessons as a child - and flunked. My husband tried to teach me when we got married.  He swore by summer's end he would have me swimming.  At summer's end he said,"You're right.  You sink."

3. Though my children listen to classical, christian, and folk music I do know the words to about every pop song written before 1985. I am a closet Queen and Elton John fan. Shhhh!

4. I was a pom pom girl in high school.  I have the pictures to prove it. ; ) 

5. I was an exchange student to Holland the summer between my sophomore and junior years. Learned alot about life, Europe, atheism, loneliness, courage and self sufficiency that summer.

6. I showed horses growing up. Had a beautiful Half-Arab/Half Thoroughbred gelding whom I adored. Starting riding at 4. Stopped at 18 when I got married.  Didn't ride again until last year. It's not like riding a bike.

7. I am claustrophic to a fault. I avoid elevators like the plague. I have been known to walk up flights of stairs in labor so as not to have to take the elevator.

8. I have given birth to 8 babies with no drugs.

9. I love all things Irish. I am half Irish from both sides of my family. They may not have always been functional but hey - good genes <g>

10. I talk too much. Allen would add I interrupt way too often as well. Can I help it if people pause too long? Sends mixed messages doncha know?  Oh well, I've got a lotta words stuck inside.  That's why we blog right?

I am so way behind on mail I am not sure who has been tagged. Jen I am tagging you for sure! If any of you post your random facts please link up so I can read them!

Bye Bye Birdie

We had a fowl tragedy this week. It was very, very cold overnite and even though the sun was up it was still cold while we were milking and feeding in the morning. I had gone back to the house to strain milk and Moira came to say Alannah needed me. The littlest chick wasn't well. She brought her in to the house to warm up since it looked like she had been by herself through the night and was hypothermic. We tried the hair dryer trick and then put her under the heat lamp for a bit. She seemed to rouse ever so slightly but in the end she gave up the ghost. She was holding her own in the coop but having been hatched and incubated alone she never was accepted as part of the flock.

My poor Alannah. : (  She feels every loss so keenly. The other children seem to have a certain emotional detachment from agricultural loss but Alannah is just like I was as a child. Every small bird fallen from a nest, every puppy rejected by its mother, every cat who met a bad end, they all broke my heart. I can still picture every kitten I lost growing up. I can still remember the orphan foal who died, the ducklings with the birth defects. Ugh!  Though somehow instead of hardening me it fostered a maternal instinct that is intact as ever today.  That is my wish for Alannah.  I hope she can channel this tenderness and mercy into something incredible as she grows. In the meantime we have the world's luckiest chickens. : )

Sandpaper letter extension

   The little boys had a blast with a couple of extension activities we saw online.  For starters the 'sandpaper' letters are actually felt. I got the felt letter stickers from Walmart in the sign making section (where they have stencils and mailbox stuff).  I laminated index cards and stuck the felt stickers to the cards.

    Aidan knows his alphabet and is reading by now but he enjoyed identifying the letters by touch only.

    Kieran worked on the letter sounds for a bit and then he went on to practice making the letters on the cornmeal tray.

Record Keeping cont'd

 

This pic shows my one-two punch for record keeping. In the last post I shared our weekly goal chart and the notebook for recording what actually got done in detail. This pic shows where it goes. I got large accordian files to store loose papers and projects as they are finished. The files are labelled by person and subject. I also have a file for "this week" which includes odds and ends in progress. We love binders for notebooking but love them less for looseleaf paper. The notebooks are saved for keep-it-forever projects like the book of centuries, the religion notebook, the geography copybook etc. Math, grammar drills, and so on go into the file to verify they are covering those areas. Binder/notebook pages often start out in the accordian file and eventually I will assemble them into the permanent binder when we have enough page protectors to house them.

   This system has a lot of advantages over the binder-for-everything plan which we tried years ago. No more binders with pages half ripped out for starters. I always felt that was instilling a habit of carelessness.  Many papers were lost as well. Page protectors for every single math page are impractical to say the least and add way too much bulk for everyday work. It also takes time to reinforce holes and sort into binders. Better to do that when you have saved up a bunch of work. The file takes seconds to open and deposit the work. At year's end you can close it up and label it and put the whole file into permanent storage for high school transcripts if need be.

The school chart

   The Montessori homeschool list was discussing record keeping and I was asked to post my checklist. Decided I would post it here while I was at it.  This year's record keeping is very simple but we have been able to keep up with it well. I have this chart Download school_weekly_goal_checklist.doc  which I print out for the girls. They can still self-select but it helps to remind us all of the types of things we want to cover each week.  I took the categories from places like Ambleside Online and our Montessori work so its a CM/Montessori mix.

   The red boxes represent the daily seatwork time. The rest they try to hit throughout the week. We don't do ALL these things every week, admirable as that would actually be. However, I keep the crossed off lists and use them to see if some areas are getting neglected over time so we stay relatively balanced. (academically anyway ; ))

  I also have one composition notebook - per Dr Raymond Moore's suggestion -  I use as a journal of sorts to write down which pages were done and titles of real books read etc each day. We are enrolled in a private umbrella school and need to keep a calendar so monthly I refer to the dates in the notebook and transfer them to the attendance chart thing. I had once tried composition books for each child.  That was too hard to keep track of and we do much group work so it had to be reentered multiple times.  This way it goes in once for the day. Older kids write their own entries which helps too.

   We have tried computer programs and spread sheets and you name it over the years. Nothing beats ten minutes with the composition bk imo!

Christmas gifts for less

Care to spend about 40% less on your Christmas gifts? Pick up a Sunday paper this week! Your local Michael's, Hobby Lobby, and Joann's Fabrics generally run catalog flyers in the the Sunday paper with a weekly 40% off coupon.  The catch is you can only redeem the coupons for non-sale items and only one item per visit. This is fine news for gift shopping however since most of the items I would normally buy are often not the loss leaders in the flyers.

If you haven't actually walked all the way around one of these stores let me suggest a couple aisles that caught our eyes last week. First of all, the doll section. Michael's had an American Girl look-alike doll for $15.  I kid you not. With the coupon that comes to about $9. Less than a tenth of the original AG dolls, which though lovely DO in fact get ratty hair and lost limbs. I can testify to that. : /  There was a wall of clothing and accessories to go with the dolls, none of which remotely resembled a Bratz doll wardrobe. If you want authenticity you can purchase the lookalike doll at Michaels and get a vintage dress from AG.

Further on in the toy aisle there were classic wooden toys like lacing beads and alphabet blocks. There were also a number of kits - science kits, construction kits, pencil by number, beading, mini looms, pottery kits, hand sewing projects, and more.

In the actual stitchery section there was also a find - Jean-e-ology iron on embellishments for skirts, tops and of course jeans. You can take a simple homemade skirt, purse, etc and give it chain store appeal for about $3.  Or $1.80 with your coupon <g>  My girls were ALL over these fwiw.

Hobby Lobby has a similar offering and Joanns has a bit less. I plan to make a weekly visit to at least two of these stores while the kids are at piano lessons in coming weeks.  Assuming I can keep shopping - sigh! The spirit is willing but the flesh is.... contracting. : p 

The When of it all

Cheryl asked some really good questions:

<<Do you have specific time scheduled for presentations and observing the dc? What do the older dc do during this? How do you keep the younger dc quiet and busy while the olders are doing their work? >>

I have to preface my answer by saying what I do now is not what I did when most of the children in the house were under school age.  Right now, we do have a scheduled seat work time in the mornings. The older children take turns playing with Brendan for half hr intervals so the rest of us can work together.  I rotate through the other children getting them started on independent work and listening to them read or drilling math facts, checking work, etc. Aidan and Kieran also work on their manipulatives and games - usually at the kitchen island which is too high for Brendan to reach. The table is just asking for trouble! <g>

When my oldest began homeschooling we had a baby and 3yo in the mix. I didn't attempt to do a set school time during the day though we did do lots of library story hours, walks, art work, manips, and so on. Allen would give the babies a bath after dinner and Colin and I would do any concentrated learning like phonics and math then. It was plenty of time for a very young student. Later we added his brothers' nap time. By the time those times weren't enough we had kids old enough to start taking turns with the current baby.

So my big thought?  Get lots of self instructional materials for starters. If a good chunk of your curriculum requires interpretation by the teacher there is a problem. It is the curriculum's problem however - not your family's! Ditch it if you plan to continue to grow your family. Be flexible on when things happen. There are often lulls through the day when littles wear out, take naps, or lay low for a span.  Tuck learning into those times rather than trying to squeeze your toddlers into a pre-set academic schedule.

As to the Grace and Courtesy presentations - I tend to unschool these <g>.  Can we unschool Montessori?  I guess I do.  While we are getting cleaned up in the bathroom I might say "hey, do you remember how we open and shut the cabinet door?" (insert demo) When we getting ready to run errands I might say, "How do we behave in the store?"  Some time before expecting guests you can role play things like welcoming and sharing toys.

We also like to occasionally bring up 'dilemmas'.  For instance a sub had told me the children in my co-op preschool room were beginning to get a bit rowdy. When I returned to class we started with our story as usual, then before going to the trays we talked about the room rules (one material at a time, one child per material, taking turns) they all rattled off the rules. Then I asked them to consider possible situations like, "What if you REALLY want the game a friend is playing?"  "What if they are taking a LONG time to finish?" After thinking through how they would handle these scenarios they all did remarkably well at handling them when they occurred.

Drilling these things works well at home too. They get a charge out of practicing it seems and remembering the appropriate way to do things. Aidan came up to me Friday morning and said,"Every time you ask me a question today I am going to say 'Yes, mom!'" A delightful prospect <g> 

Observations?  All the time. The kids are kinda hard to miss. ; )  Seriously though, a notebook helps if you have a lot going on. You can make notes to yourself as little problems arise like 'work on please and thank you'  'need to practice looking adults in the eye' 'towels on the floor - work on how to hang them this wk'. I try not to 'go off' the first time I notice problems but use that as a springboard for demos and discussion in the coming days.

I will say it helps tremendously to catch them remembering the right way to do a thing and to comment about it. A simple "Wow you are really careful shutting the cupboard door," or "You shook Mr Jones hand when he introduced himself, that was really brave!"  really makes their day and encourages them to practice what they learned.

Hope that helps, Cheryl! 

B-bops

Brendan has discovered his siblings CD player.  He is remarkably adept in using it too! He knows how to make it start and stop by himself.  He also knows how to dance to the music. (He did not get this from his father lol! ; ))

Gentle Discipline - Montessori Style

We have been discussing positive discipline at our house a great deal lately. In the Montessori method the utlimate goal is to develop self control in the child. This is a goal, however, not a starting point. As Sunrise Montessori explains that an undisciplined and unskilled child is not free but a slave to his lower emotions. Montessori would identify that lack of discipline as related to excessive frustration rather than assigning a character flaw to the behavior. Building the child's confidence through skill work and creating clear rules and an orderly environment filled with mutual respect often eliminates the problems. She did not advocate the abandonment of correction as is sometimes thought. In fact she says, "We must check in the child whatever offends or annoys others, whatever tends toward rough or illbred acts."  See (Montessori Discipline chapter V)

It is pointed out in this article Discipline: Developing Self Control  that some children do not find this process smooth and painless. Children are individuals and some come wired with more neurological challenges making the transition to self control a rockier road to travel. The advice generally given remains constant however - model the ideal behavior yourself, explain the purpose for the requested behavior and require it to be repeated, remove the audience for undesirable behavior, remain calm. The main question in the teacher or parent's mind should be "What does this child need to know?"

Some tips I am trying to incorporate into my own parenting are:

First, not taking undesirable behavior personally. Easier said than done. It is all too easy to get annoyed and as though the behavior is targeted at you precisely to make your day harder.

Second, getting down on eye level with the child when correcting. Scoldings hurled from across a room are usually met with an equal amount of attention and a fleeing child. If it is worth correcting it is worth correcting well. Taking the time to look a child in the eye seems to send the message that this is very important and worth their consideration. It hopefully also says that the child is important to me.

Third, the Covey principle - be proactive vs reactive. It seems that the most bothersome behaviors occur when the kids have not been properly instructed in the correct way to do a thing. The Grace and Courtesy lessons are key here.  Practicing opening and shutting doors and drawers, folding clothes (a work in progress here ; )), making a request, expressing unhappiness, roleplaying possible scenarios before heading to the store or church all lead to much smoother interaction for us. We can take the time to teach it or take the time to correct it.

Along this same line I have found that offering choices (between options that are equally acceptable to me) wherever possible really has made life more pleasant here. Would you like carrots or celery? Would you like a red shirt or blue shirt today?  Would you like to do some reading or math?  I have good odds of getting one of two very desirable reactions and they feel empowered. Win win. : )

Finally, to express requests in the affirmative vs the negative.  A for instance - "Please walk" vs "Don't run".  Apparently children do not process the negative well so they tend to miss the 'don't' part and hear the 'run' part.  That explained a lot. ; D  If the child continues to ignore the positive request then the appropriate next step would be the eye level discussion of why walking was important and having the child explain what the consequences of running might be.

I like the comparison this article Respect makes between being an authoritative parent and an authoritarian parent. You can command respect by your consistency and respectful demeanor but do not need to lord your position over the child. An effective tool for earning this respect in my opinion is a very small word - sorry. Since self discipline is 'a goal and not a starting point' even adults are still progressing, though hopefully further along the path, towards that destination. Occasionally fatigue and frustration get the best of us and we slip. We say something less than kind or respond abruptly. Children have an enormous capacity for forgiveness however and we too often forget to appeal to it. Or, worse (and I speak with experience here : / ) it is too easy to say "I am sorry, BUT" and then go on and on about why the child really did cause the problem anyway.  That is no apology in the end.

One other thought about the Respect article is that parents often feel frustrated that children behave better for strangers than they do at home. They most often interpret this as a need to send their children to spend the day someplace else.  The oft repeated refrain is "I can't get them to do anything."  There are usually two things at work here. One is that we generally treat strangers better than we do people closest to us. That is not acceptable for parent or child and if that is the case then we need to re-examine our interaction. The other consideration is that we do feel more able to express our true feelings with those closest to us. I have often wondered if it was truly desirable to have a child hold in all those feelings the way they tend to with strangers only to have the dam burst later. If we can accept the child's negative emotion without taking it personally and help him to express it properly, it would seem to be benefit him more than if there was no acceptable outlet.

Anyway, enough rambling.  If you have any other positive parenting links do share!  Thanks!