Homeschooling the Tween Years..The Joy and the Beast

We are in the middle of homeschooling our three tweens, yep that is them in the picture, our family is composed of 13yo, 12yo and 11yo. I am here to tell you that the tween years can be wonderful, yes today is a good day. Tweens are fun to be around and can be fun to teach, it all in how you handle it. Tweens are wonderful to do messy, complex projects with-they have learned the art for the most part on staying clean or they have learned what happens when they make a mess (this is when you are suppose to make them clean up). Most of the time if you are in a joking, fun loving mood they will be too.

I am here to tell you that you can love this time in your homeschooling life- I have been told by several wonderful hsing authors, whose names escape me, that this is the time when you are to work on all things they did not get while in elementary school. It can be considered a time of remediation or catching up, for instance one of my tweeners has a hard time in spelling so they are trying to get a handle on that. One is playing catch up in math so they can be on grade level. No we did not put everything on the back burner, we have become more structered in our science and history and started to take things to a deeper level.

This time is also a time when those sweet little tweeners become slightly hormonal and can be irrational at times. I am here to tell you that is normal, it will not and for the most part should not be tolerated. It can be very frustrating for the poor tweener who does not understand why they are so angry and why you totally lost when they stumped upstairs and why are the now sweeping the garage, driveway and deck. You can rest assured that eventually it will sink it, sooner or most likely later depending on the gender of the tweener in question.

But I am also here to tell you that to homeschooling a tweener can take more time than there elementary age counterpart. So if you have a friend, we will call "can't-make-her-mind-up-takes-an-hour-to-get-her-off-the-phone" Sally it might be an upsetting time for her. Tweeners take time to homeschool mostly because the just don't injest information they injest chew it around awhile and then have questions about their conclusions. So while they were in elementary school you could read that chapter of the wonderful history book and be done, tweeners might say, "Wow I understand now why the south was so upset about the ending of slavery, it was because there economics depended on that free labor!" Yep sometimes tweeners can be heard saying such wonderful things! This is the time when you need to make use of the wonderful answering machine and caller i.d. they are wonderful inventions made to take care of the infestations of Sally's that we all seem to know.

Tweeners are also able to take on more the responsibility of their work becoming theirs-yes that will take some training but it can be done, if I can do it with my kids anyone can do it. I do make daily schedules for readings and "core" subjects but for history I give them a list of things to be done at the end of the week and for the most part they are done. This did not happen over night it took a couple of months but we normally all sit down and do some work. They are normally reading history while I am doing some grading or working on some co-op lessons. That way they see me working also and know they are not alone in the tortures, I mean work.

One great advantage with older tweeners is you are able to plant seeds and watch them grow. Sometimes a tweener might be come up to and say things like, "My friend "such and such" is going with "such and who." Don't overreact don't lose it, you can say simple things like, "I hope she doesn't get hurt, I really hope she guards her heart." Leave it at that and watch how it sometimes bloom, one of my tweener experienced this and has learned from her friends heartache (yes it 13yo) and just doesn't seem that interested in "relationships." One my other tweener discovered that he can listen to others without being defensive, one day that tweener went out and tracked mud all over the place. The tweener cleaned up the carpet with help from a spotbot and vacuum but left the downstairs, tweener was told twice to clean it up by me (twice is my limit with this kind of thing) and the count down started. Forty-five minutes until dad got home will he make it?? Well oldest tweener said to him at 15 minutes until dad came home, "Tweener... ohh, my dad is going to be home soon!" That was all it took, the seed was growing...your work must be done or there will be consequences (yes I could have lost my mind with him to get it cleaned up sooner).

This can be a trying time tweeners are known for making their moms lose their minds at least once per week. I do and it is o.k. this too shall pass. With three tweeners I am only losing my mind once per week I think that is pretty good. And contary to popular belief you can take a mental day, I did this last week, actually it was a mental morning and the homeschooling police did not come for me. We got together that afternoon and it was fine and mom didn't say anything that tweeners might chew on and grow into something it wasn't meant to be. Tweeners also sometimes need a "mental" day remember they are going through changes and I have read, again somewhere don't know where, that when a child goes through "changes" their mind totally reconfigures they WAY it thinks and all its connections. So they are going through some "mind" issues at times, so when they give you that look like I totally forgot how to add fractions even though we have been doing it for 6 weeks, they might have.

So again to recap this can be a wonderful time for you and the tweener and gee if you are lucky enough you can all be hormonal at the same time. But honestly it is a great time, to be enjoying their growing minds, their discovery of the outside world and to plant those seeds. I did not really enjoy the elementary years with my kids, should have but just didn't, but as I look ahead and realize I only have seven years left in this chapter of my life, I must enjoy what we have left. Next year the oldest tweener will be in high school and soon the tween years will be gone. So please enjoy your tween and be able to laugh with them and be able to enjoy their antics because tweeners are filled with them. Love this time with them because it will be gone before you know it!


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Week in Review week 25.....8 more to go!

No pictures of math this week. We did math but I always show pictures of it. So this week I will share our week of poor spelling. We are continue to work on the research papers and they are all written and will be edited this next week, I just have to make copies of the checklist challenge for the older too.


The queen's spelling test, she didn't learn her "individual words" none of the kids really tried in spelling this week UGH. Spelling is not a strong point for the boys but normally queen does really well and begs for harder wordsL

The wacky princes test he once again has misspelled his "individual" words at the bottom of the page.

The chef's spelling test, so much work to be done with this one. Notice how he misspelled spelling test at the top.UGH cute huh?

Here are some pictures from Sunday of the formation of the Hindenburg, yep it is big! We only have paper mached (is that a verb?) about 1/3 of it and will work on it again Sunday to try and finish up the first layer. And a funny, the wind was blowing really hard on Tuesday night after we worked on it, and I had left it outside in the sun to dry and forgot it was out there- Wednesday morning I get up to find the thing rolling around the backyard LOL. I kept that funny to myself until now!





Next week we will continue studying WWII and will actually get to the start of it :) Finally! The chef to be (who is doing WWII lightly) will be studying in addition Joe Louis, who was heavyweight boxer of the year and the invention on the ballpoint pen. See this is why I love TOG who knew the ballpoint was invented during this time, well I surely did not! The Wacky Prince will be studying WWII more heavily than the chef and will in addition learn about the ballpoint and Pablo Picasso. The Queen will be heavily into WWII will also study War of the World and Pablo Picasso.

In addition we hope to get our paper mache finished and painted. We are also editing our research paper and hope to have them turn it in next week. We have the Friday off from co-op for Good Friday :) so it should be an attainable goal. CQLA is going good too, it is a lot of work for my boys and I think we will finish it out but when we are done we will use their sister program Meaningful composition and Easy Grammar and Daily Grams (cheap and easy) with it.

Wordless Wednesday

the inhabitants of our garage roof

**added info: NO these cats are not all ours, our cat is in the house watching them. The lady next door feeds these feral cats, they don't get in our yard most of the time because they are scaredy cats and we have 2 little dogs :)

Monday
egg pie
hashbrowns
bacon

Tuesday
chicken scampi
alfredo noodles

Wednesday
Burgers
fries

Thursday
hot dogs with chili

Friday
beef taquitos
spanish rice
refried beans

Week in Review week 24.... 9 more to go :)

Our week was a busy one we studied Hitler this week as we gear up WWII in our studies. Did I mention I hate studying the World Wars? But as soon as we get through this the quicker we will be done. This week we gathered supplies for our big World War II project, we are going to make a paper mache of the Hindenburg. So we made our list and gathered our things. This is our first big paper mache project, excpet for my oldest son who made a naked mole rat last year for a co-op project
Here is our supplies and we will begin shaping tomorrow!



Here is our math for the week:

We had a snow day for co-op yesterday. Guess what I did? Well I napped all morning long after partying all night with Mario Brothers Sunshine, very unhealthy addiction I am sure. So Friday I took a Mario fast and went to bed and 10 am. Snow day! I would like a refund, we maybe got a 1/2 an inch not enough to even bother going out and playing in. Ohhh well maybe next year :)

Menu Plan Monday

Monday-eggs bacon and hash browns
Tuesday- Chicken Fajitas
Wednesday-tacos
Thursday-oven fried chicken
Friday-something quick and easy and yet to be determined :)
Saturday-spaghetti

Project 2008

Alright we have finally moved and have been in our house for 30 days, so it is now time to organize and declutter and make it all have a home. I am going to start this in the kitchen, the pantry is very small and not deep at all and for a family of 5 with 2 growing boys we need a neat pantry to store more food!



This is the lower part of the pantry. I know it doesn't look messy but there is a lot of wasted sq. footage.


This is the upper part of the pantry


OHh and this is the laundry room off of the kitchen isn't it ugly!! IT must be covered up! This is a long and narrow kitchen and you will see more pictures of it further down. So that is my project for March. I hope to go through all the cabinets and rearrange and get it more organized and decorated. I will also try and get the laundry room organized as you can see it is very tight in there