Homeschooling through illness

When mom or one of the kids has a cold, it is a good idea to lighten the school schedule for a few days to give everyone a chance to rest. But when the illness takes days or weeks to diagnose and even longer to treat, it is impossible to stop schooling until we get well.

Last Thursday morning, we were working on a Spanish lesson and I began to feel sick in my stomach. I spent two hours in agony but then felt better. This has happened several times over the past few months and I was sure it wasn't food related so I decided to go to the doctor. I spent half of Friday at the doctors office and was exhausted that afternoon so still no school. Appointments for various scans filled the next week and I was feeling poorly so we didn't try to do any school work. A week and a half has passed with no school and now two more appointments will kick off our new week.

My kids have got to do some school so I am trying out some modifications to teach them with less stress. Here are some of my ideas and I would love some suggestions from you.

1) Workbooks: we occasionally use Explode the Code for reading and Kumon workbooks for math, so the kids are at least familiar with the format.
2) DVDs: Our Spanish lessons are on DVD. We are finishing up one and starting a new level which is hard but if the kids at least watch, they are getting good exposure if not really learning.
3) Experiments: We have several of the little Usbourne science books. I can mark a place in one and someone can read it to the kids and have them do the simple experiment.
4) Audio books: Our history program book is also available as an MP3. I'll burn that to a disc along with the activity page from the Story of the World book.
5) Classes: we attend a homeschool co-op one morning per week and the science museum homeschool science class one afternoon per week. We also have music class for an hour every Friday and visits to the YMCA for PE.

Now I just need to write down the assignments and have them ready to go in a box to take to the house of the kind person who is going to watch my kids on certain days.

Any other ideas to help keep up school work during this time?

Planner Section 5: School

Lesson Planning Diagram

As a homeschool family, this section is one of the most important to keeping my days running smoothly. The first page in the section is a weekly plan. I made a list of the subject we wanted to cover and the time needed to commit to each per lesson (usually 15-25 min.) Then I made a chart with five columns, one for each day of the week. I divided the columns into three rows: morning, afternoon, evening.

Morning activities tend to be done with all of the children, afternoon activities are done when the baby is asleep and evening activities are for the whole family.

Finally, I plugged the subject names from the first list into this chart. It became clear that I was trying to fit too much in, so I limited our morning activities to an hour and a half, the afternoon to two hours and the evening activities to an hour.

In the end, I had to prioritize the list of subjects* I was trying to study with the kids and eventually reduce the number of days we do art and history, the two lowest priorities right now. As the kids get older and more independent we'll make more time for these subjects. At this point I just want them to learn the basics and learn to love exploring my Father's world.

*My list of subjects for 1st grade is Bible, Reading, Math, Spanish, Science/Nature Study, Music, Cursive Handwriting, History.

Homeschool Lesson Planning: Long Term or Short Term?

I have tried a few ways to keep our homeschool lessons on track. I started out on paper, writing down what should be done in each subject on each day for the next month and I tried Homeschool Sked Track, a free online lesson planner and grade tracker that helps you plan the whole year at once and track grades. Neither worked for us at this stage in homeschooling.

Finally I combined the paper method with the organizational style of Sked Track to make my current planning program. We have been using it for seven months now and it has worked beautifully for our family and here is how you can do it.

Start by getting out all of the books you use for school. For us, this includes MFW 1st, MFW K, Right Start Math, Story of the World, etc. I also keep on hand my Planner turned to the weekly outline (Monday we do this this and this subject, etc.)

Then create a document in a word processor and enter these headings:
Week of: January 9-13 (this is at the top of the whole document)
Day: (this goes at the top of each page)
Morning: (these three go on every page)
Afternoon:
Evening:

Now you can plug in the subject names that you do each day, ours is from the weekly outline:
Morning:
-Bible
-Memory Work
-Spanish
-Housework

Afternoon:
-History
-MFW K
-MFW 1st
-Math

Evening:
-Kindermusik
-PE

Save this as a template so you only have to create it once and can copy and paste it as often as needed throughout the semester.

Long term planning is done by My Father's World and Right Start Math because we know we want to complete the entire books within a year. So I do the short term planning to determine which days of the week we will be completing lessons and working towards our goals.