My MOTH Schedule

After 7+ years of homeschooling and hearing boat loads of recommendations, I finally broke down and bought the MOTH book. In case you aren't a homeschooler or are a homeschooler who lives in a cave, MOTH stands for Managers of Their Homes. It is a "how to" scheduling book written by Steve and Teri Maxwell - business owners, convention speakers, and a homeschooling family of 8 children.

I guess you have to know me to understand what a HUGE leap this was. I have always been more of a "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of girl with an unwritten schedule floating around in my head. I have a rough plan for our days, but the idea of a rigid schedule is frightening and a little suffocating.

This year however, I am teaching 3 different grades at home as well as a co op class on Fridays, shuffling the girls to field trips and club meetings and taking care of our maniacal (yet somewhat better trained than last year) dog. Somewhere in all that craziness, I needed to fit in personal time (you know - time for Bible reading, exercising and showering) and at least make an attempt at cleaning the house. Add to that my own leanings toward ADHD, an ADD husband and at least one ADHD daughter and you can imagine the fun we can have around our house without a routine in place. We decided that if the Maxwells could run a business and homeschool their children while maintaining their sanity - they were probably the ones I needed to go to for help.

I haven't ironed out all the kinks yet, but here is the rough draft of our new schedule (in case you were interested). The white spaces in the middle of the third/Evening sheet are free time. I wanted to leave myself some wiggle room in case school went longer than I anticipated or there was some other interruption to our day.


Morning / Midday / Evening


Now all I have to do is FOLLOW the schedule and we'll be good to go.

Writing the schedule wasn't all that difficult. The idea is to make a list of all the things you need to do in a day/week, assign each task a block of time (typically 1/2 or 1 hour) and then fit them all on your schedule like a giant puzzle. The book was great because Teri gave lots of good advice about how to handle various scheduling issues, getting your children to work together and getting the dreaded chores finished. She also did a great job reminding me about what my priorities are - something I often forget when life gets too busy.

As I said, the process was not difficult, but it was time consuming. However thinking it through in this manner helped me plan for our weak areas - namely, what I want two of the girls to do while I'm working with the third. "Go play in the other room" just wasn't cutting it anymore! Right now I'm working on planning activities for the girls to do together during that time - like movies, legos, playdoh, drawing, etc so they have a little direction to their playtime. I was also able to schedule computer time for everyone (so I don't have to answer that question 100 times each day) and there was even time left over for an hour of family fun each night.

I'm just saying a prayer that it will all work!

I always thought the MOTH book was a little too expensive, but honestly, it will be worth every penny if it brings some semblance of order to our house and cuts out just 50% of the "what are we doing next?" questions.

Outdoor Hour - Challenge #2

We are actually a week late finishing this challenge, but we did give it the old college try last week. We made it home early from a Thursday afternoon meeting so I thought we would wander down to the mailbox and do our listening exercise before TS Fay brought bad weather our way. So the kids piled out of the van and we headed down the drive only to be overcome by mosquitoes and fire ants. I don't think I'll ever get used to living in the Florida countryside. So after being delayed a few days by supposedly impending nasty weather, today was take two for Challenge #2 and a good time was had by all.

I don't know if you can hear the brook bubbling in the background, but it was probably our favorite stop on the 45 minute walk. If you look at the drainage pipe, you may be able to get a glimpse of the little lizard we stopped to watch. He was pretty quick though. You can definitely hear the wind, crickets, frogs and birds. It was a pretty noisy day!

Sydney was overcome with the sights and sounds of our walk today. I think she's a nature girl at heart even though she tries to deny it. She fell in love with this view, imagining another world just underneath and behind that dying bush in the background. She's decided to use it as the setting for her next book.

Her descriptions for what she heard, saw and felt were, rustling (the brook), beautiful woods and a soft, small flower. Her favorite finds on the walk were the wildflowers that were growing along the drainage ditch. Unfortunately the big tractor was out today and nearly mowed them all down.

Delaney seems to have the most fun chasing after frogs, collecting nuts and picking flowers for her sisters. She wasn't impressed by the sounds of nature, but the lizards, bugs and anything else she could touch definitely caught her attention. It was hard for her to put her impressions of nature into a few words, but she told me that she heard "crickety crickets", saw lizards that were "yellowish, reddish, stripey-ish" and felt the wind. Her three word description of the wind was actually several sentences and involved a bucket of water. I don't know how her mind works sometimes, but she has a very vivid and detailed description of what the wind felt like against her face. She was taken aback by all the water in the drainage ditches along the side of the road. It's funny how we live so close to the Gulf of Mexico and the world's most beautiful beaches, yet the kids think standing water in a drainage ditch is the best thing they've seen in a long time.

Sadey - eh - she'd rather be in the house. But I don't blame her because the mosquitoes go after her regardless of how much bug spray I bathe her in. Poor kid. She was thrilled with one of the weed/flowers that we picked by the side of the road and this leaf though. I think she'll have more fun with our walks once the weather cools off and some of the bugs die down.

Adventures in MFW - week 4

We had so much fun this week learning about Jesus as the Light of the World, studying Native Americans and making tepees and wigwams.

This week's Bible study focused on John 8:12 "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." We also read Exodus 12:21-22 and Nehemiah 9:7-12 and discussed how God led his people through darkness as a pillar of light. I reminded the girls of a study we did a few years ago when we learned that a shadow/darkness is caused by the absence of light and that when we have Jesus (the Light of the World) there is no darkness. We also decorated a candle with this week's Bible verse and use it as our centerpiece. How fitting!

We had a pretty full week of history! We read North American Indians and learned all about the different tribes. Now that we live in Seminole country, this was particularly interesting to the girls. We continued reading our Squanto book, learned a little bit about sign language and made our tepees and wigwams. Sydney had a good time coming up with a story to put on her tepee the same way the Native Americans might have decorated their homes.

This week's science lessons were all about the stars. We read Psalm 147:4 which says that God decides how many stars there should be and what names they should have. We learned that there are more than 200 billion billion stars in the sky and decided that we have no idea how many that must really be. According to our book, if everyone in the world named 50 billion stars we still wouldn't come close to naming them all...That's A LOT of stars! We also spent some time discussing the speed of light and how long it takes for light to travel to the moon and sun.

We finished memorizing "God Bless America" - even Sadey knows the words! We also plowed through some more art, spelling, math and language arts work this week. Fun, fun, fun!

Advenutres in MFW - week 3

Moving right along...

This week we talked a bit about Jesus' character. We acknowledged that the Bible tells us a lot about His birth, His ministry and His death, but not a whole lot about what He must have been like as a child. We did discuss Luke 2:51-52 which mentions that Jesus was obedient to Mary and Joseph after the incident where they "lost" him while coming home from the temple. I made an off-handed comment about what it would be like to be Jesus' mother and wondered out loud if he was fussy or got into things he shouldn't have. Sydney and Delaney decided that He wouldn't have done that because He was perfect and climbing on furniture would have been a sin. We are raising some very deep thinkers. They did decide that fussiness probably wouldn't have been sinful if he was crying because He was hungry or needed a diaper change :)

Our history focus for the week was Jamestown and Pocahontas. The girls loved this and managed to talk me into watching the Disney Pocahontas movie. They were surprised at the differences between the movie and what they had read about in their history and library books. They are at the stage where they are understanding that movies aren't always 100% true, so I was happy that they noticed the differences without me pointing them out. We also watched a movie about Jamestown. I forgot to write it down, but it was a re-enactment of what life at Jamestown would have been like for those early settlers.

We began reading Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims this week, continued to work on "God Bless America" and kept moving along in science, art, math and language arts.

Adventures in MFW - week 2

Week two was all about Jesus and Christopher Columbus. What fun!

Our Bible lessons for the week served mainly as an introduction to Jesus in the Bible. We looked at both Old and New Testament verses that described God's promise of His arrival and how He was named.

Our history lessons this week were fabulous. We had so much fun learning about Christopher Columbus and his ships. We read about him in our history spine Exploring American History and read a story about what sailing across the ocean would have been like for some of the earliest settlers in our other history book American Pioneers and Patriots. We made 3 ships out of foil and tried sailing them across the tub and then discussed how hard it must have been for the sailors to make it all the way across the Atlantic Ocean with no motors on the ships.

We all know there is no such thing as coincidence, right? Well I was astounded to see God's hand at work when I found out that a replica of Columbus' ship The Nina "just happened" to be docked at the marina the very same week we were studying Columbus. So the girls and I met up with other members of our homeschool group for a tour.

I read Pedro's Journal to them which is the fictionalized story of one of the boys on Columbus' ship. I was reading it at the same time as we read Columbus' journal so we talked about the differences in the entries and how that may have related to pride, morals, and/or point of view. I think they are starting to see that two people can tell the same story in very different ways (although these two books were quite similar).

We also did our first science experiment this week. We were trying to learn the effect of salt on water so we added salt to one glass, none to another and then had to guess in which glass an egg would float. We spent some time discussing the scientific method and used the experiment as a good introduction to recording our theories and observations.

To round out our studies, we did the usual art, math, language arts and also began learning the words to "God Bless America."

Adventures in MFW - week 1

I've been trying to figure out how to blog these first few weeks of MFW since we actually did them during the last school year and then reviewed them last week. After much deliberation (sort of) I decided to blog them all separately so my MFW blogroll buddies will have an easier time searching for whatever week they may be interested in locating. Enjoy...I know we did!

So here's week 1 of Adventures

Bible ~ We spent a great deal of time this week discussing names and their meanings because this year we'll be focusing on all the names of Jesus (Light of the World, Bread of Life, Lamb of God, etc). To drive the point home, B and I wrote each of the girls a letter explaining how we chose their names and what their names mean. We also made "name" necklaces to remind them that they are special to God.

History and Geography ~ This year we are studying US history, so what better place to start than the Pledge of Allegiance? MFW recommended a great book called I Pledge Allegiance by Francis Bellamy with commentary by Bill Martin Jr and Michael Sampson. The book was fabulous because it defined what each word meant, line by line.

We also constructed our time line, learned how to read maps, labeled continets and oceans on a world map and read about Vikings and Leif Ericsson...and we watched the Veggie Tales movie Lyle, the Kindly Viking - because we can't resist a VT movie when it ties in so nicely!

I think the girls' favorite part of their first week was getting to dive into the Book Basket. The idea is to get 5-10 books from the library relating to the topics you are studying for the week and then let the kids look through them at their leisure. We do have a scheduled 15 minute "Book Basket" time in our day, but the kids definitely spend more time rummaging through the books than that. Sydney read all the Viking books on the first day and Delaney loved looking at all the pictures. As you can see, even Sadey had a good time.

We also did math, science, handwriting, spelling and art - but that's not nearly as fun to talk about.

This blog interruption has been brought to you by...

Tropical Storm Fay!

No, we did not get 3 feet of rain and I'm not even sure we got 3 inches, thank goodness! But we have been dealing with lots of little storms and tornado watches so I turned off the computer for a few days *gasp* I have lots of updates and photos, but that will have to wait until I get some extra time to post. Which isn't right now, in case you were wondering.

Oh ok - just a few!


Here's Sadey being...well Sadey!


Delaney hard at work.


Sydney and Delaney goofing off on "B" day.


Our TS Fay rain gauge. Feel free to "ooh" and "aah" over the massive amounts of rain we received.

Pizza and a Benadryl chaser

To celebrate B's birthday (yet again), we had Build Your Own Pizza night and we all had a blast.



The ingredients: pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce (for Sadey), alfredo sauce (for mom), pepperoni, red pepper, mushrooms, black olives, broccoli (for mom), mozzarella and parmessan cheese. We put the pizzas together assembly-line-style with mom and dad helping with sauce and cheese.

They all turned out great!

So do you think Sadey liked her Pizza? She's never had it before, but she passed all her milk trials for the last two weeks so we let her have some too! Boboli crusts don't have egg or soy and we used her regular spaghetti sauce since our pizza sauce had some soy in it. I can't believe she ate the whooooole thing! We did give her a shot of Benadryl after dinner...just to be safe.
Just one more lovey-dovey Daddy shot for the birthday boy. Happy birthday, B!

Ah-Ah-Adam

Speaking of hard to believe - Sadey began preschool this week! She was so excited about getting to do school work like her big sisters. We are using Heart of Dakota's Little Hands to Heaven curriculum and it's been going well. We began the week with her having no clue what an A was, progressed to her insisting that A says "meow" and just this morning she told me that Ariel was taking a nap on her A. Progress, no?

She did a lot of coloring, cutting and pasting but had the most fun just walking on her giant letter A and making the letters with her body. We read about Creation and learned a new song from her Singing Through the Bible cd called "God Made the Universe." It's a catchy little song - all the girls loved it and I even find myself humming it throughout the day :)

Stay tuned for buh-buh-Boat......

Happy Birthday, Daddy!!!

B has to work tomorrow, so tonight we celebrated his 38th birthday. Or, as his cake would have you believe, 28th (with 10 years of experience).
Happy Birthday, Dad!!!!!

Sadey couldn't eat any of that delicious looking double fudge cake. Poor baby. We've been trialing her on milk and milk products for the last few weeks though and tonight was the first time in her 3.5 years that she's gotten to eat ice cream. We actually gave her some orange sherbet because I wasn't sure if she'd like plain old vanilla. Who would???

I'll let you decide whether or not you think she liked it...