Time to Rearrange the School Room Furniture

Fact: My son needs me to be in the same room 99% of the time in order for him to focus on required tasks
Fact: I tend to resent this. (I want the freedom of going to the bathroom or unloading the dishwasher while he is working on something)
Fact: If I am doing the same thing he is, his focus is better
Fact: I could benefit from some academic review
Fact: I don't like doing the same thing everyday
Fact: I feel a lot of pressure to show my son is doing as well or better than his peers
Fact: When I feel a lot of pressure I am impatient
Fact: The better my attitude, the better my son's
Fact: This list is getting long LOL
Fact: My son focuses better in a quiet, unstimulating environment
Fact: I have big pimple under my skin on my chin and it hurts
Fact: I am frequently tempted to do laundry when my son is on task, thus creating a noisy environment for my son.

Conclusion: I need to simplify, simplify, simplify. I need to find a way to keep me in the the room, doing the same kind of thing my son is, with out getting bored or multitasking and making sure the environment is quiet, and with out much on the walls.
HMMMM
I could move my computer to the school room but this would be a bit arduous. (I just learned how to spell arduous :) The more i blog the better I spell! )  I could move his desk in to this room but then why do we have a school room? After all having a school room is the main reason we moved homes. I could make this room into the school room/study and use the little room for the TV, we basically never use it anyway. (Again arduous) We could continue to use the little folding table as a desk for him, having him sit next to me while I am at this computer. (Again why do we have a school room then?)

I am out of ideas lol

Was a good but short week

Well it was a good but short week. My Little Man was picked up to go to his dad's house Wednesday night.
Anyway we do 4 things for school now, math, reading, writing and Arabic. Of course reading will really cover a multitude of subjects but for simplicity's sake we are calling it reading.
My Little Man's favorite thing to do for fun is read so why not base his education around that? He can read about history, geography, science, even math. Books have been written on virtually everything, and usually you can find a free ebook on the web on a given subject.
So the way I am setting it up is inspired by Robinson Curriculum or Self Teaching. The goal is for My Little Man to teach himself. So the day would eventually go like this, 2 hours math, then 2 hours reading, then an hour writing and working on an essay then an hour of Arabic.
The Robinson Curriculum is easily secularized but is Christian based. For math you have your child memorize addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts, then once in rote memory they go to Saxon Math 4/5. I don't know that we will use that particular math book but I have decided to follow that basic plan.
You can find RC book lists on the web, and most of the books can be found for free on the web at places like Archive.org. Therefore (what a fun word) we are using some of those books.
I assigned some books, made sure he knew my expectations regarding them and let him dig in for 2 hours. Currently he has been assigned McGuffey's Eclectic Primer,  How We Use Numbers, The Life of George Washington in Words of One Syllable , A Book of Nursery Rhymes, Usooluth Thalaathah, Al-FAWAID.
The only requirements I have are that he spend a little time on the first two i listed each day, do any activities suggested and that he spend 2 hours reading from the books assigned.  He can pick which books he wants to read and for how long.
For the writing I just have him fill one page. The ruler is that it needs to be mostly writing. He can draw pictures to go with what ever he writes. Eventually I will require more than just filling up the page, but for now it is enough. I do not correct spelling, or punctuation or even grammar. The point is just to write. And blessedly we have had no problems so far. Of the three day's we have done school like this he has written a letter to me each time.
For Arabic I had not planned to change curriculum but ran into the perfect thing for us, for free, on the web. Arabic is Easy the guy teaching it makes it, well, easy. He has videos here. He has made very nice PDF books for each lesson here is the first book.
My son finds them less dull than the Madina books. So far the vocabulary is almost exactly the same. And really we are stuck until he learns the vocabulary.  He just hasn't figured out how to learn second language vocabulary yet. I really need to learn the vocabulary so i can throw it in to our every day speech. I use kursi, kitab, shajara and this is occasionally but he needs to here them more, and other words. 
I am also helping him keep a record of his work. I am pretty sure that this will be very beneficial so I am making it a priority.
I would like him to work on Quran daily as well but at this point I think just establishing those basics is more of a priority and the point is to keep it simple. If i could get him an Quran tutor then I think that would be easy to accommodate with out detracting from the other subjects. I just feel like since he doesn't speak Arabic and doesn't even really understand the translations it can wait until he does understand one or the other.

Meeting Goals

So when you homeschool 2 kids, or at least these 2 you cover a LOT less material in the same amount of time, but I feel like we got a lot done this afternoon none the less.
I decided this week that I would just lay put the whole week for myself as a plan instead of daily plans. Today I kinda wish I had done the daily plan thing instead. On the other hand we covered Math for My Little Man, Science for both. Did some reading/science for B, Arabic for My Little Man, Social Studies for both and a little English for My Little Man. B also corrected has papers that I had checked, this morning.
Ideally we would cover English, Math and Science everyday and Social Studies a few times a week for B and once a week for My Little Man. Also covering Arabic and Islamic Studies daily for My Little Man. Health about once a week and making sure we use the computer each week as well, other than just reading our text books.
We will just have to see what happens tomorrow. Tomorrow is the play group day. At 11 we have the one that is just a few ladies from the neighborhood and at 3 we have the one that is for a homeschool group. Also B celebrates his birthday tomorrow.
B keeps coming a couple hours later than we planned and that bugs me. I talked to his mom about it today and told her it is just not worth it if he doesn't come when planned because it just throws off the whole day. Ideally I would like to start with My Little Man at about 8:30, B at 9:00 take breaks as necessary until 1 for a nice long lunch break and end the day by 4:00. This way we have plenty of time to take breaks, send one kid off with a break if necessary while I work with the other and still have plenty of times to do things together.
At least this afternoon was better than the morning. My school boys were in good moods.

I I put together the work boxes for the first day of school!

I I put together the work boxes for the first day of school! I also put all printed material into note books, 1 week per note book.
I still need to tidy the school room and get his computer all plugged in. I also need to print all the rest of the years school stuff and make myself an action plan so that I am organized and prepared.
In addition to getting ready for a new school year I am preparing for Ramadan.

Last steps to getting ready

Well it looks like I am finally ready to just print off things and purchase science lab items. Most of the items for science I already have and only 1 will cost more than $5. By far the most expensive item to purchase will be ink. I'd like to get a self inking system, and those run over  $100. Still, I think it would be well worth it.b

So I think I will follow a posting schedule. inshallah.
Monday: Cool Links!
Tuesday: Miscellaneous Lessons
Wednesday: Islamic Studies
Thursday: Arabic Studies
Friday: English Studies
Saturday: Mathematics
Sunday: Science