Three Weeks Down Already?
Oh, Dwight… you do have such a way with words.
I was going to make a comment about time flying by, but then I found that picture and got distracted by fun stuff from The Office. ‘Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica.‘ There’s even a tee shirt.*So* funny.
Anywhoo…
We’re three weeks into our new school year. How did that happen? Didn’t we just get done with Christmas? I am shocked and amazed – we’re only four days out from our first break this year and everyone is alive and well. As stressed out as our last few weeks of school were last year, I am exceedingly happy to report that this year is off to a very nice start. I’ve also lost 12 lbs. of 128 lbs. since Christmas, so I’m a pretty happy camper all around.
We’re still doing our crazy schedule – the kids have karate 2 evenings per week and on Saturdays, and I am training to be an NSO with our local roller derby team. My sister is a rollergirl; she’s been after me to come play but seeing as how I am an utter disaster on skates, I think it’s best that I keep my involvement firmly planted on the ground. Being a non-skating official lets me participate without risking my tailbone. In any case, practice is one night per week. If we weren’t enjoying it so much, I’d complain about being over-scheduled, but so far it’s working well.
Plans for this week include attending a performance by our local symphony, attending a half-day full of JASON presentations at our local college, learning about Groundhog’s Day and the history of (which are Candlemas and Imboc), and various crafting and lapbooking associated with, and working on solidifying those pesky multiplication facts. I found a video that uses your hands for quickly figuring out 6×6 – 10×10 facts, and a way to do ‘short’ division (because long division is absolutely killing LBB). I started arrays with PeaGreen, but he’s not so keen on them, so I will be looking for other ways to help him with his times tables (maybe Mr. Numbers?).
We’ll be winding up the week, and the first four weeks of school on Friday with a review of what all we’ve covered so far and a look at what we may want to change. I like my new lesson planner layout; the boxes for individual subjects are smaller, but they look *super* full when I write in them now, so it’s quite visually appealing. I’m still kinda disorganized off of paper, but on paper, I’m the bomb-diggety. We’re still using workbox plans, but I haven’t been packing the boxes like I was. We’ve been using a file box with hanging folders instead of actual boxes, but the boys say that they like the boxes better so we may work on going back to that here in the next few weeks. I’ll have to work on space though; the school room is crazy cluttered right now (we’re working at the kitchen table as I type). Luckily, tax season is right around the corner, so we’ll be doing some home improvement inside and out in the very near future. That means storage shelves, new paint and planning our garden for this year. Loverly Husband is even talking about building a greenhouse. I can’t wait!!
Now that school’s over for today, I’m going to curl up on the couch with a cup of tea and my Nook while the children are otherwise occupied in another room.
Warmly,
~h
Homeschooling, Year 2: Done!
We made it through our second year of homeschooling! We are officially done with this year (not this grade). Sorry for the lack of posting, but we’ve been making the most of our Winter Break, which is also our official break between school years.
I gotta tell ya, I am so glad for this year to be done. I love homeschooling, don’t get me wrong, but it’s definitely been more of a struggle over the past few months than it has been before. Part of that is me; I have been on antidepressants for a couple of years and have been needing to change my medication for a while now. I’ve done that and have added an anti-anxiety medication, which I wouldn’t have thought I’d needed, but have found is definitely helping. In any case, I do expect that with proper management of my own health, my stress level will decrease, which can only help things.
In other news, we’ve been quite the crafty-kins around here. I made some of the cutest little hand warmers for all of us from felt and rice. I used flower-shaped cookie cutters, but any shape will work. You can heat them up in the microwave, then slip them inside your pockets or even shoes to warm up freezing fingers or toes. It’s not nearly cold enough for that around here (we’ve only come close to freezing temperatures once so far), but I am sure they’ll come in handy in January & February when the Texas weather finally catches on that winter months are supposed to be cold.
December is a busy month for us; we celebrated LBB’s 10th and Loverly Husband’s 35th birthdays this month in addition to Yule and Christmas, both of which were amazing. LBB got to hang with his friends for his birthday and do some lazer-tagging, and the kids both got air-soft guns for Christmas in addition to a handful of video games and Kinect for XBox. I’ve been playing with my new Nook and Loverly Husband’s been on vacation this week and immersing himself in the world of Skyrim.
Though it may seem like it, I haven’t been neglecting school stuff. I updated the banner here at This Adventure Life for the new school year and spent a few hours last week updating my lesson planner pages and getting them ready to print and bind. I added the workbox plan sheet into my normal lesson planner since we’ve been sticking to that.
We’re also going to give the boys’ STARS planners another go this year; hopefully with better success. I think with the workboxes (which we will continue for this coming year), the planners will work a bit better. We’re continuing the goal of helping them become more self-sufficient with their school work; hopefully between workboxes and their planners they’ll have the tools they need to really take on more responsibility. We won’t be starting our new school year until the second week in January, but I’ll try have all of the new pages in an upcoming ‘lesson planning’ post sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Hope you’re all enjoying your break (if you took one), and felicitations for the New Year!
Warmly,
~h
One of these days, I’ll stop ‘getting’ organized and just BE organized.
I am generally an organized person by nature. I know that some of my friends might not believe this, but my mad organizing skillz comes in cycles. I start out super organized and stick with that for a while, then I start slacking a bit, here and there, then feel the carefully greased wheels of my life start slipping out of control and reign it back in again by getting re-organized. Rinse and repeat.
I have also noticed that there are times of the year at which I feel the need to take stock and make sure that what’s on the books is what really works for me and for my family in both our personal lives and our homeschooling one. The process of organizing things is centering to me. It’s empowering because I feel like I am taking control of things and putting myself back in the driver’s seat – being proactive instead of reactive; all good things in my world.
About, oh… 7 years ago or so, I was all church-y and fell in love with the ‘Managers of Our Home’ thing. Between that and FlyLady, I created a pretty in-depth household management journal. I’ve used it off and on over the past several years, most recently when the boys were in school last. When we started homeschooling, we kinda dropped everything and I realized while browsing Pinterest’s organizational awesomeness pins exactly how far we’ve come from being so on-top of things in the house.
Recognizing the lack, I’ve been working on bringing my binder up to date and though I still have some sections to bring current, the bulk of the journal is workable with minor updates here and there. Presenting {insert fanfare}: My updated and newly revised
Household Master Bossy Book!
Isn’t it perty? As much as I wish I could take credit for the ‘bossy book’ name, I must credit my dear friend SFK for this apt moniker. “Bossy Book” has become the nomenclature of choice for all planner-type books and calendars in our circle of friends.
{Quick Page-Border Tutorial}
I created the border by:
- Google ‘page borders’ or something like that and finding pictures that I like
- open a MSWord doc and set the margins to the ‘narrow’ pre-set
- then I paste the picture in, and sized it to the page
- then I clicke ‘insert shape’ and put a box over the textable area
- right-click box and select ‘table properties’
- set the color to ‘no color’ and transparency to 100%
- then I right click the box and select ‘add text’
- save the document with a descriptive name
I have a folder full of them. When I want to use it, I open the document that has the border I want and add whatever text and pictures, then click ‘save AS’ (very important to choose SAVE AS instead of save – this will create a NEW document in your files) and the folder I want it in. Once the new doc is saved, I close both documents, and when asked if I want to save the changes to to original, I click ‘no’, that way the original border is still there.
And, if you like my page, you can have one of your very own: Household Master Bossy Book Cover There’s no name, so you can run it through your printer and add your own or write it in and make it spectacular.
Back to the book tour:
I wrote that on the picture, then thought about the other kinds of info that might be in the book and decided that I wouldn’t necessarily want my Bossy Book to be open to someone who was babysitting. Then again, if I trusted someone with my kids, surely I could trust them with personal info, right? Of course, we haven’t ever used a ‘baby sitter’, so that’s kind of a moot point. If you want a ‘babysitter info’ page though, there is one here. There are other printables, too.
The picture on the left is this one, 1955 Rules for a Good Wife. I found it years ago and it’s as funny as it is frustrating/offensive. I’m glad times have changed!
The Daily Routines section houses all of my schedules and master lists of where we should be and what we should be doing.
The routine pages and concept are modified from the ideas at FlyLady.net. I joined FL for about 3 days, but the program didn’t fit me as it was then. I think it’s changed in recent years, I haven’t been back lately to see the updates. I got what I needed from the site and tweaked it to suit my own needs. If you’re really struggling to get a handle on things, then I would recommend FL – reading the site if not joining. There really is a lot of good motivational and get-started info there.
After photographing, I noticed that there are marker tracks on a lot of my pages (that’s why they look pink – they’re not). I keep the most often used pages in plastic page protectors and a (red) dry erase marker in the book (clipped to one of the rings). I use the marker to cross off things that are done, or that don’t apply for that day. I love lists, so this methods works for me IN SPADES. Plus, seeing a page full of ‘done!’ gives me a happy.
I used to keep my book open and in a central location. That used to be in the living room, but in recent months, it seems like our center is the kitchen, so that’s where I think I’ll keep it for now. Once it gets cooler and we can be back in the school room, I’ll probably move it in there.
Several of the lists are the same thing, just organized differently. I don’t use every list every day; the main ones I use are the daily routines and the 8-week plan. I didn’t take a picture of mine because the print is too small to show up, but mine is modified from Donna Young’s website; the Housework .doc format that I got from her site is the one I still use and it’s editable. I customized my version, but kept it all to one page.
The eight-week plan is basically one thing each weekday that is a little harder or out of the normal routine (like decluttering a high-traffic area, or clearing off the top of the refrigerator, or cleaning out a closet). At the bottom of the page is a yearly to-do – things like wardrobe inventory, holiday decorating, birthday planning and flipping the mattresses.
Yay for color coding! This is another list that I refer to often. I actually have two of them – one that’s arranged by person and one that’s arranged by day of the week. I do a lot of time-juggling right now, and I know that in the past, I didn’t feel as time-stressed. I am hoping that keeping this in mind will help eliminate that stress to some degree. The links are downloadable and customizable documents so you can have your own micro-management fixation, too.
The AM and PM Chores list is another ‘frequently used’ list. With sections for all of us, and things organized ‘daily, monthly’ weekly and yearly’, it’s a handy reference.
Chores – Instruction How-to List - this is an editable older version of our list. You can download and make changes to reflect ‘your way’ of doing things.
Yay for lists! A whole section dedicated to lists. A lot of my lists have been modified from Donna Young’s website, others from Microsoft Word’s templates and various others from random places on the web that I found eons ago and don’t remember now. I’ve tweaked and edited all of them, or just flat-out re-made them to suit my own needs. If you have time and a printer, you can make your own.
When I was making my book the first time, I kept blank notebook pages with titles on top (a suggestion from FlyLady if I remember correctly) and wrote down things on that page that I though I would use/need/refer to over the course of a couple of weeks so that I would have a really good idea of what worked and what didn’t when I actually made the permanent page. That was a really useful suggestion, and one that I recommend.
My inventory lists are downloadable and customizable: Refrigerator & Freezer Panty Household Items
These lists are extensive and not necessarily a list of what we keep on-hand. They’re also older; some of the things we used years ago, we’ve phased out in favor of better/more nutritious/greener alternatives, and some of the things we use now are not on these lists (I work from two computers - different versions of the files are on different computers). My book’s inventory pages are undergoing revision in the coming days and weeks. I’ll try to come back and update this post with my revised lists.
Another thing that I like about having the nutrition information on hand is that when I am dieting, I can easily plan what I am going to order before leaving home. Not all restaurants have their nutrition info available online, but some you can request a copy by mail from and others have sheets available in the restaurant if you ask.
More printables for you: Family Meeting Budget Worksheet Media Out/In Log (to keep track of things you lend out and thing you’ve borrowed)
Our medial record section has an info sheet (will update this post with that later) that is filled out and printed and kept in a page protector. I use sticky-notes to update most recent visit dates and other info that changes frequently. I punch holes in prescription info pages from the pharmacy and keep them in the binder, as well as all current physician info and insurance info. I also keep a copy of the boys’ vaccine exemption paperwork and notebook paper to log recent health notes for each person in our family. (TX vaccine exemption affidavit request page; for other states vax exemption info click here)
What!? Shut up; I like lists.
So. That’s my book. Any questions?
Now, I showed you mine… {leering suggestively}. But don’t send me dirty pictures. I just wanna see your Bossy Book and scavenge for ideas. Feel free to link to your blog, especially if you have pictures, links and printables!
Warmly,
~h
Math Journals
The first thing I ever saw about math journaling was on Integer Jim’s Math squad site. The journals there are totally drool-worthy and enough to make even a math-o-phobe like me get really interested in numbers and such.
I loved the idea of a math journal, and have wanted to start them with the kids since the beginning of the year but really had no idea where to start – what, exactly, goes into a math journal?
I was messing around on YouTube the other day and came across ZapplePi’s excellent two-part tutorial video on math journaling. It’s for the parent (or teacher), not the student, and it gives you an overview of how to help your kids start and keep and use math journals. He also has a ton of free resources on his website. I mean, really – a TON of them for kids 3rd-8th grade, including a PlaceMaths sample!
My kids are all about art journaling; I’ve posted stuff on that before, but math journaling is a little more intimidating. In addition to making it pretty, the information needs to be legible and useful. So I started fooling around with a notebook and came up with a few ideas. Thus far, I have a number line and the four basic math processes down – an explanation and definition of each process and an illustration, then the tables on the back of that sheet for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. In doing that, I really got inspired and more ideas started coming to me. I’ll make a page with fractions, geometric shapes, graphs, grids, angles… I can see just getting the basics down taking quite a while.
So with my handy reference journal in hand, I showed the kids what I thought they might like to add to their journals and they made a great effort! We’re intentionally leaving some blank space on each page so we can add more facts about that process as we go along. I can see ways for all kinds of interesting stuff to be incorporated this way. It seems that the more we add, the more we think about adding. This is similar to what happened with our history/geography folder – we have ended up using that so much more than I thought we would! I’ll have to post about that one, too.
Here are the kids journals. I was lacking inspiration, so I snagged a bit from Integer Jim’s ‘math adventure’ theme and used Indiana Jones and Lara Croft for the pictures, then made the lettering in Microsoft Word (word art). Fred’s with us again this summer; that’s her book on the far right. Since she’s here she gets to do school too. {wink}
I have to say that I’m pretty happy with their work! The pages look great and once we get a little more info in them, I am hoping they’ll act like a reference (similar to a dictionary) as they’re working. I honestly enjoy helping my kids when they need it, but sometimes, ‘Mom, can you…’ is just laziness.
Do you journal? Any recommendations? Link to your blog and post your kids’ journals!
Warmly,
~h
Copywork, Narration and Notebooking
We’ve been doing copywork and oral narration since we started homeschooling in 2010 and we’re planning on starting notebooking in the fall. In case you’re not familiar with the terms, let me explain:
What is copywork?
Copywork is what it sounds like. The child copies a passage as-is in their own handwriting. When they’re beginning writers, you start with simple things (name, address, phone number, etc.) and can progress to whole paragraphs. We started with regular notebooks and then went to Mead’s RediSpace notebooks to help my boys learn proper spacing in print. Now that they’re progressing to script, they’re still helpful.
Copywork is beneficial on many levels. It can cement an idea through repetition, it exposes a child to proper grammar and syntax and tons of other benefits as well. Copywork was one of the first things that we started with when we began homeschooling, and it still features today in many different guises. We often start our school time with copywork of some sort and then go on from there.
What is narration?
Narration is ‘telling back’. Basically, the parent/teacher reads something, or discusses something, then the child tells the story or passage back. You can facilitate the narration by asking questions like, “What do you remember about what we just read?’, or “Name 3 things from this paragraph”. You can help your child organize his thoughts by asking what happened first, second and last. Oral narration precedes written narration; Charlotte Mason recommends that written narrations begin around 10, however you know your child best. My oldest is 10 and we’ll be starting written narration (in small doses) this fall.
Here’s a nice how-to on narration from Charlotte Mason Education. I also found a nifty article from Mozart & Mud Pies on difficulties with narration. This applied for my oldest and the verbal cues to imagine the scene helped tremendously.
What is notebooking?
While I’m sure there are a hundred different definitions to notebooking, the way I see it is basically a collection of copywork, narrations, dictation, artwork, research and more, all on a particular topic. You can go into a topic with the intent of notebooking it, or a notebook can serve as a landing ad for your child’s work on that topic. One of the most awesome and inspiring examples of notebooking style homeschooling is Jimmie’s Collage. Every time I go there, I find something else that I want to try with my kids.
If you’re into lapbooking, you can easily combine notebooking; either with pockets or brads to keep papers bound into your lapbook. My kids do a fair amount of copywork and writing in their lapbooks already, so we’ll just continue adding more as we go along.
I found some great links on notebooking here.
Since my last post was on the sometimes value of worksheets, it got me thinking about the alternatives to them. I thought I’d post my thoughts.
Basically, I think I might have gotten a bit lazy. Worksheets are easy and pretty basic. I am considering working with the boys over the next few weeks to assimilate their math work over the last few months into their math journals. In looking through the worksheets though, while they certainly did the work (in one form or fashion), those types of worksheets are entirely unsuited to notebooking. The worksheets we’ve been using have been more broad-subject types, which is good in some ways, but bad for delving deep into a subject or topic for notebooking.
One of the advantages that notebooking has over worksheets is that the kids actually write more, especially when narration is part of it. The kids can write their own thoughts instead of merely answering questions. I think that it will be a challenge to get LBB to write, so we will probably work on dictation and copywork (he’ll dictate, I’ll transcribe and he’ll copy) until he gets the hang of it. I’m not planning on starting PeaGreen with written narrations until he’s 10 or so – another couple of years, yet – but we are going to start notebooking with him, too.
Putting together a good notebook – helping the kids – will be an experience for me. We’ve gotten pretty good at lapbooking, so I see notebooking as an extension of that; the next natural step. I’m looking forward to the challenge!
I’m curious, do you notebook? What are some of your favorite resources?
Warmly,
~h
History Passport
Since we’re starting our main history unit anew with ancients again, I decided to make a history passport for the boys. I’m pretty happy with how they turned out! I’ll tell you how I did it if you want to make your own, or feel free to use my template.
Like I mentioned in the Lesson Planning posts of late, we are using Mosaic with the Story of the World. We’re also doing a tour of the 50 states in geography, so we’ll get to use it for more than just history. I’ve found several images with travel stamps and country postage stamps that I’ll probably put into a document, print and then put through a sticker-maker so they can go into the books.
I made the boys’ passports in Microsoft Word. I made the margins narrow on a new document, then added a shape (rectangle), then copied it and placed another one next to it to make the cover and back of the passport. Then I added the text and background color, then a picture of the United States Seal (since we’re in the US. If you’re international, you could use your country’s symbol or flag or seal, or your homeschool’s symbol or crest – the options are limitless!).
For the inside pages, I created a new document and placed the same sized rectangles to make the page borders, then added a map for the background (edited to be ‘washed out’ looking) and added the lines to make the interior boxes. If I’d thought about it, I would have added text inside for ‘entry’ and ‘departure’, but I didn’t. I’ll write them in later. Once I was done with the shapes, I printed (which took some finagling to get them printed just right) and cut out, folded and stapled. Then I let the kids sign them inside. I may take the finished passports to be laminated next time I go. Leaving them closed and running them through will laminate the outsides and I can cut the opening again. We’ll see if that’s necessary.
I found some ready-made templates here:
and I have mine uploaded if you’d like to use it.
HistoryPassportTemplate_cover_ThisAdventureLife
HistoryPassportTemplate_inside_ThisAdventureLife
The boys are keeping theirs tucked into the corner of their desk calendar for easy access. So far, I hear good things about them; they’re anxious to start using them! If you’re using a pretend passport with your kids, please tell me about it in the comments. I’m interested in other things to use them for.
Warmly,
~h
Lesson Planning 2011 Part 3: The Extras
I know that from the previous posts about our 2011 school year, it looks like there isn’t much room left in the day for anything else. Let me rest your mind a bit by saying that I often over-prepare to some degree because I know that some of the things planned will end up getting scrapped in favor of something that works better. I blog as much for my own reference as to share; in several instances, I’ve planned on using two full courses of study but of course we’ll only need one. We may use bits from each or focus mainly on one or the other, but we will not complete both as full courses (unless we need to go back and remediate). Our daily schedule, while full, is flexible as is my general attitude. As we get more settled into homeschooling, I think it’s natural to step it up more.
Our extracurriculars for this year will be: Foreign Language, Physical Education, Health, Music/Arts/Drama, Triangle Homeschoolers Adventure Club, Community Service, Robotics, CurrClick’s Lego Club, Home Economics, TX Nature Challenge, Houston Wilderness Program, 4H, Science Fair, Summer Reading Club and whatever other interest the kids have that they’re motivated to look more deeply into. Some of this will be continuous and other things will be seasonal.
Many of these ECs will be in conjunction with a core lesson; TX Nature Challenge, JASET and the Lego clubs, for example, are science lessons. The TXNC may also count under ‘geography’ and ‘physical education’, depending on the activity and location as well.
Foreign Language
We started Latin a few months ago and we’ll continue with it this year. I found a great literature-based YouTube Series called Learning Latin with Virgil. It’s based on Virgil’s ‘The Aeneid’ and it’s been really fun and easy to learn. I don’t speak Latin, I was wondering how to work the pronunciation; this video series eliminates that worry. Since we’re doing this video series, I wanted flashcards for the boys to review in other places (so we’re not continually tied to the computer for Latin review) so I made flashcards for Lessons 1 – 4, and for Lessons 3 – 4. I’ll have more later on. I’m cutting them, pasting onto index cards and laminating them. I also found The Declension Song (lyrics), which we’re learning. I’m hoping that will give us a leg up when we start with more in-depth Latin lessons. I also found vocabulary flash cards at Flashcard Exchange. Eventually, we’ll move in to Ecce Romani (exercises and Teacher’s Lounge are good resources). The video series is quite long though, so it will be a while before we’re ready for ER.
Physical Education & Health
Getting exercise isn’t a problem for my kids. Having a PE curriculum is. Do we ‘need’ one? maybe not, but we’re going to put a little more structure into our PE plans this year. Our homeschool group will have a planned ‘PE class’ starting in January, but that’s only once per month. We’re going to use PE Challenge.org‘s website some, and PE Central for more game-oriented ideas. My friends and I are back on the weight-loss wagon starting now, so having to ‘teach’ PE to the kids is as much for myself as it is for them.
We’re also starting a comprehensive sex ed course this year. I found the FLASH Curriculum that is put out by the Seattle and King County Health Department. From what I’ve looked at, it seems to be exactly what I was looking for. It’s geared to 4-6th grade, and doesn’t skimp on sexual health topics. Naturally, I’ll supplement with other materials or discussions on topics that I find appropriate, but as a spine with good pacing, FLASH looks like it will work well for us. I’ve also added the Kids Health.org link to the kid’s computers so that they can look around and have questions answered. The Young Men’s Health and Young Girl’s Health are a bit ‘older’, but I like those, too. The videos, As Boys Grow and That’s a Family were also recommended.
Music, Art & Drama
The Core Knowledge books have a section on Music, presumably for all of their books. We’ll cover what is there as well as music study with Share the Music (grade 4). I also found a really fun set of mini-books on impressionist artists that we may take a week at a time and do a lapbook over the course of a few months.
The boys began formal piano lessons a few months ago with my grandmother who lives next door. She used to play in church when I was little and has really enjoyed teaching the boys. They spend about half an hour, 3 times a week with her in lessons and practice for 15-20 minutes the other 2 days. When we get a decent keyboard, then they’ll practice everyday.
I am also getting the Artistic Pursuits ( book 3) curriculum. It seems to be very highly recommended, and since I like art but know basically nothing about it, I think this will help me out a lot. We’ll also use bits from Masterpiece Art Instruction; their article, Art & ADHD was of particular interest to me, and countless crafts and art projects that tie into an academic lesson will be used, plus holiday and just for fun stuff from That Artist Woman’s Blog. I’d also like to add more theater into our lives; I found some Drama Links from A-Z Home’s Cool Homeschooling that we might be able to incorporate. Our homeschool group is talking about hosting a play in the spring, so we’ll see about that.
One of the things I am most excited about for this coming year is getting the kids more involved in community volunteering projects. We’ve found several organizations that are (HEARTS.org, 4H’s ‘Community Service Projects You Can Do!’, LU’s Cardinals C.A.R.E. Resource List) targeted towards children and homeschooling families; one of our homeschool group’s moms has volunteered to take the lead in planning on organizing events for this year.
TX Nature Challenge is a program coordinated by the TX AgriLife Extension office and the TX Forest Service. They’ve started posting ‘missions’ each year that encourage families to ‘view native wildlife, dip your feet in creeks, rivers, and draw and write about your observations while learning more about nature and science in your neighborhood!’ We participated last year and the missions for 2010 in our area are still up. Though the competition portion is over, we’ll continue working on them in our own time. The Houston Wilderness Program ties in, but is not connected with the TXNC; we’ve been able to do many of the HWP’s activities on the same day/trip as TXNC’s missions.
4-H offers plenty of learning opportunities; everything from lessons in government and parliamentary procedure to agricultural engineering, animal husbandry, archery and photography. I’m quite sure that we’ll find plenty to do with 4H this year, as well as our usual barrage of homeschool group field trips (we have a trip to Austin planned for the summer, camping) & Co-op. We also have other clubs through our group, like the Adventure Club, which is similar to scouting, and we’ll also be involved with the FIRST Jr. Lego League (ages 6-9) & Lego League (ages 9-14) and CurrClick’s Lego Club.
Texas Regional Science Fair – the boys won’t be competing this year, but LBB will be next year. I found several really neat idea books, so between them and the boy’s natural curiosity, I’m sure they’ll find something that appeals. Our homeschool group is planning a group-wide, informal science fair for June. I think the boys will be excited about it.
Changes to the Curriculum for 2011: I know, we haven’t even started and are already tweaking… such is my life! I have omitted Spectrum Science as a possible resource for us this year. I had the chance to really look at it, and basically, it’s a reading/worksheet assignment that will simply not work for my boys. They need more hands-on, and less lecture. I am going to use the E=MC2 Life Science book (it’s a free downloadable version) and if that goes well, I’ll purchase the next set.
For history, I am going to end up using Story of the World. I found the first 3 volumes at Barnes & Noble and got to look over them. I think that the ‘story’ format will work well for us. We’re using Mosaic to start; if that works well then we won’t use the SotW Activity Guide books. If it doesn’t, then I’ll look into them.
And so, with that, our curriculum for next year is complete. I hope that you’ve found something here that you can use; if you find something that you think I might like, please feel free to link in comments below!
Warmly,
~h
Lesson Planning 2011 Part 2: The Core
I consider ‘core’ the basic three: reading, writing and math; plus language arts (which includes phonics, spelling and grammar), science and history. Our daily schedule usually has all the above daily, with science or history on alternating days.
In my last post on this topic, I wrote about using the ‘complete’ workbooks as a guide. I really liked the math sections for both 2nd and 3rd grade in the HB series, and I think we’re going to go ahead and get them. We’ll still be using MEP as our main math, but the wkbk would be nice to supplement with, especially on days where I need an easy day!
We’ve pretty much given up on Saxon Math. I know some love it, but it’s just too overwhelming for me to use. We’re still using bits and pieces from it like the morning meeting, the daily problems and warm-up, problem or concept of the day – stuff like that, but as our main squeeze, I’m ditching it. We’ll also be using Math Mammoth, Lesson Pathways and Khan Academy videos for new concepts, and plenty of manipulatives for illustration and repetition. We’re still math journaling to keep track of math work and to serve as our weekly review. If you haven’t seen Integer Jim’s math journals, then do check them out – they’re something to aspire to!
The all-in-one workbooks also have spelling and LA, but I don’t know how much of that we’ll really use. We’ll be going back to doing an individual spelling lesson this year; I’ve let it slide as a stand-alone subject in favor of working on it through writing. That’s been going well and I think that my plan for this coming year falls into line with that method rather than the ‘learn this list’. My kids both have a hard time with spelling, so we’re going to go ‘old school’… as in, to the 1960′s. I have Power 2 Spell and Dr. Spello (this is 4th ed.; mine is 2nd edition and from 1968, but the table of contents list is the same). LBB has auditory issues, so I am hoping that going through this workbook will help him with slowing down his thinking a bit and really listening. Once we’re done with Dr. Spello, we’ll move on to Power to Spell 2. It’s a second grade level book, but I think they’ve ‘dumbed down’ the spelling words over the years. I have a more recent spelling textbook for 3rd grade and the words in it are less challenging than the ones in PtS2. In any case, both books focus on ‘hearing’ sounds and connecting them with the letter that represents that sound. I haven’t been able to find a link to the Power to Spell book that I have, but this is it:
I used printouts from SuperTeacherWorksheets.com for LA concepts this past year; I’m hoping that the workbook will help provide more direction for this coming year. One of the things I liked about Charlotte Mason style and about Moving Beyond the Page’s ‘year overview’ was that LA, science and history are taught in conjunction with literature; using the reading selections to highlight, illustrate or expound upon the lesson. I’d like to work towards that more this year.
For our main LA curriculum, we’re considering using English Maven in addition to the workbook’s LA section. EM is computer-based, which appeals to my boys, esp LBB. We’ve also been using KISS grammar to some extent, but it is hard to navigate and use without an extensive read-through and exploration before use. Once you’re used to it though, it’s a good (if incomplete for all grades) program. Honestly, I think that the biggest helper for my kids in grammar and LA concepts has simply been reading. The Core Knowledge books also have a good overview of literature and skills by grade, so we’ll make sure to cover those as well.
The boys spend at least half an hour reading every day and when we started homeschooling, I was reading to them every day as well. We’ve gotten away from that, so I really want to focus back on that as well. I’ve noticed a marked improvement in both of the boys’ reading skill since we’ve been homeschooling. We started reviewing basic reading skills and they’re taken off since then. I use some of the reading assessment tools from A-Z Home’s Cool Homeschooling to check their progress. I don’t know how ‘accurate’ they are, but it gives us a starting point at least.
The writing stuff will be a challenge. Both boys are great at dictating their thoughts, not so much at writing them down. This is an age thing, I believe, and we’ll be working on developing and improving both handwriting and writing skills more this year. We started cursive with LBB in M5 last year; PG is still working on D’Nealian print. We’re using Handwriting Practice books, along with custom-printed worksheets that I make (themed relevant to something we’ve been working on or will do). The boys both have email addresses and blogs for journaling online. We haven’t been as diligent on that as we might have been, but the goal for this coming year will be at least one blog per week. (Contact me for the link to their blogs. If you have a homeschooler who is looking for a pen pal, we can chat about that, too.) Journal prompts and handwriting worksheets also come from SuperTeacherWorksheets and whatever I may think of or they come up with to write about. For 2011′s school year, we will be focusing heavily on handwriting, note-taking and constructing paragraphs and reports in addition to daily practice.
Moving on…
I find science and history to be both extremely challenging and laughably easy to ‘teach’. I find it very easy to integrate both into the curriculum just through everyday ‘stuff’ – field trips are usually science themed and the world around us presents so many opportunities for delving into both of those subjects. That said, I find it hard to measure where they are because we’re not really using a linear system of learning. Not that that’s a huge issue or anything, but I am considering moving back to a more structured model for this year. Yes, I realize that this is more for my own need to quantify rather than a real ‘need’ for structure in these areas, but that’s how I roll. {wink}
For science, I am considering getting Spectrum’s 3rd grade workbook to use as a spine. I have our ISD’s science text books for 1-3rd grade (I found them at Goodwill), but they’re SO BORING, and quite frankly… simple. My boys are way past that level, so we need something a little more in-depth. I really like Moving Beyond the Page’s idea of integration of science and history into the LA work, so my plan is to work on doing that this year. I’ve also gushed about Super Science Concoctions in the past, and continue to extol its virtues. Fast, easy and fun; we’ve never been disappointed. I also have Jr. Boom Academy, which is similar to SSC and just as fun, as well as a variety of subject specific science books by Rosemary Althouse and Cecil Main (magnets, water, air, food, as we grow, colors) that have experiments and explanations of ‘how this works’ that we can incorporate into lessons this year as needed.
History ‘worked into everyday’ is easy. History as a ‘systematic course of study’ is more challenging. I really like The Well Trained Mind’s idea of history in stages; we’re current with 3rd grade (Late Renaissance – Early Modern (1600-1850) and will continue in that vein. MacroHistory has sectioned links that are great for timeline-making; we’ll be starting our scroll version this year. Mosaic, using SWB’s Story of the World was recommended to me; but SOTW seems to be pretty faith-based and I prefer not to use it. Also, there are three volumes (and several versions) of SOTW, so it’s confusing. Mosaic can also be used with Gombrich’s A Little History of the World; I’m finding that A Short History of the World by Alex Woolfe mostly works too. Again, the Core Knowledge books and the all-in-one will have some contributions to our curriculum this year; it will be as we get started that I determine how much of what we’ll actually use on a regular basis.
Learning Tools
A word about worksheets: they really don’t work for us – not in the traditional sense, anyway. We usually do them together, aloud and on the chalkboard (we have a 5′ long school chalkboard in our schoolroom). I may write the actual problem from the worksheet on the board or re-work it into pictures or symbols, or I may get the kids to write the problem or question out. I use the sheet to record answers and take notes from the lesson, and then file the sheet.
Lapbooks: We’ve been working on lapbooks for the last few months and will continue throughout this year, supplementing almost every subject with lapbooking fun. I love HomeschoolShare.com’s lapbook templates and unit studies. They’re easy to combine and mix-and-match as needed. HomeschoolHelperOnline also has a list of lapbooks, and you can’t help but be in awe of the resource list at Eclectic Education! KickButtMama’s master list of free printables is really spiffy, too. Practical Pages Lapbook Pages and Jimmie’ s Collage Minibooks also have a bunch of nifty templates that you can print, cut and keep handy for lapbooking on the fly.
Manipulatives: we use file folder games I have this book), computer games, diagrams, lapbooks, flash cards, puzzles, math manips (like tiles, geoboards, marbles, playing cards, stones, legos, abacus, fraction tiles, math mini-office, etc.), maps, posters, crafts and projects – literally ANYTHING that I find or the boys show an interest in to make learning fun, exciting, engaging and memorable. Sometimes, we find things that we enjoy, sometimes we decide in the middle of something that this is not for us and chuck it in favor or attacking the lesson from a different perspective. It’s all about trial and error and keeping an open mind.
I’d also like to recommend Topsy’s A Few of My Favorite (Secular Homeschooling) Things article from a few weeks ago at SecularHomeschool.com. Some of the resources listed there are too old for my boys, but I’m keeping them in mind for later.
Whew! That is a LONG list of stuff! I’ve been working on this post for weeks now and I am glad it’s all lined out. I’m sure I’ll be tweaking this more, adding and shelving things as we go, and I will have an ‘M1 Lesson Planning’ post with more detailed lists for the first 4 weeks going up as well. Up next: Lesson Planning 2011: The Extras!
If you’re lesson planning for next year, feel free to link to your blog in the comments so I can poke around!
Warmly,
~h
Our First Year of Homeschooling is Complete.
Incredibly, we’re more or less done with our first year of homeschooling. This week is the last week in my lesson planner (an oversight that is corrected in next year’s planner), and though we will still be doing ‘school-ish’ things throughout the month of December, we’re officially out of school until January 3rd.
I can’t believe that we’re already finished with our first year! Back in January, when I started on this path, I knew we were taking a step in the right direction. Even so, I remember feeling nervous about the actual day-to-day ‘doing’ of it.
Many of the websites I looked at in the beginning talked about how the first year of homeschooling is an exploratory year. They cautioned against buying too much or getting too entrenched in one method or mindset with the comment that the way you think you’ll homeschool often isn’t the way that ends up working for you. I’m so glad that I read those kinds of things because I found those points definitely to be true in my case.
I’m glad that we didn’t buy a bunch of text books; we rarely use them, opting instead for materials that aren’t so dry. We started our homeschooling year enchanted with Charlotte Mason style ideas. Books play such a central role in our lives, so that style fit in with what we were already doing by nature. We stuck with that pretty well until summer hit, which required a re-vamp as my niece was with us most days. I’d started to read more about ‘de-schooling’ by that point, too, so we fell into more of an unschool-y rhythm. Not ‘real’ unschooling, but as close to it as I’ll ever come, most likely. Then when the school year started up again, our homeschool group was getting off the ground and more active, so we moved more into unit studies and active learning through field trips and other non-traditional methods (though we have kept a fairly consistent level of book-work at home throughout). Over the last few months, we’ve also been doing more lapbooking and finding our groove with a more relaxed and mastery focused method.
It’s been interesting to me to work through the progression over the past year. We’re both not at all where I thought we’d be and exactly on-target. I’m extremely pleased with how the year has gone, with the work that the kids have done this year, and with the material we’ve covered. I’ve learned to be more relaxed – not so much that school slacks, but enough so that I’m not worrying myself ragged over being ‘on track’ with public school or so that the kids aren’t enjoying learning. I still worry about it, but I think they’re pretty well ‘on-target’ with their grade level, and that is reassuring. That’s my hold-out issue; staying ‘on-track’. I think that worry will lessen as time passes and we settle more into homeschooling.
There are, of course, some things that I want to get back in a better habit of doing. For the first few months, I read to the kids almost every day. Now, they read aloud every day, but I rarely read to them unless it’s something on the lesson plan. I miss that, so I will be adding more literature and story-time for next year – actually scheduling it so it doesn’t slide. More along that line of thought to come; I’m working on a Lesson Planning for 2011 post that will be up soon.
Aside from a curriculum to teach, there are some things that are essential for a new homeschooler. If you’re just starting out, here’s my list of must have items to make homeschooling ‘go’:
- a good lesson planner & calendar
- 100 quality pencils and an electric pencil sharpener. Click or pink erasers would not go amiss.
- skip crayons; opt for quality colored pencils
- case of copy paper or two and a quality printer and plenty of ink refills
- internet access
- Counting rack/abacus, globe or world map (globe is better), a comfy chair for Mom
Another thing I found to be most helpful this year has been establishing a firm support foundation, both in real life and on the internet. Meeting local homeschooling families has given both me and the boys a social outlet as well as afforded us more active learning opportunities via field trips and group events. In addition to ‘real’ hand-holding, I’ve found so many homeschooling moms who are willing to share on forums and through blog recommendations. You ladies have no idea how helpful you’ve been; how valuable and encouraging your experiences and stories and accounts of day-to-day homeschooling life have been to me. Thank you so much for sharing!
First Day of Homeschooling
Homeschooling, Year 1 is Complete
Without a doubt, this year has been a rousing success. It’s been such a joy and privilege to share our first year with you, dear reader, and I thank you for your comments, feedback and unwavering support! Homeschooling has been wonderful for us, and I am so grateful that we have this opportunity. I’m looking forward to sharing next year with you as well.
From our family to yours, Happy Thanksgiving!
Warmly,
~h
Standardized Testing
I don’t usually blog about issues that don’t impact my kids, but this one is different. We’re in Texas, where standardized testing (STing) is not required for homeschoolers… at this time. Who is to say what will happen in the future – but for now, it’s not an issue we have to deal with. Actually, since it is not required, I’m kind of opposed to homeschoolers voluntarily taking them, just because I can see how that might lead to legislation making it not optional in the future.
There’s such a buzz about STing all over the place that people seem to either not realize or forget that they’re really not a good way to ensure a minimum of education or gauge what a student has learned. Let me say right off the bat that I am in no way advocating standardized testing. I really think it’s faulty reasoning for schools to use STing results for making big educational decisions for many, many reasons. But I am curious as to what the alternatives to STing might be for large-scale operations and schools.
There’s a group on Facebook, Parents & Kids Against Standardized Testing that I found recently, and though I tend to agree with the premise, you can’t just take away the only method that institutionalized school systems have for ensuring (attempting to, anyway) that at the very least, all students in X grade know XYZ. It’s not a perfect system (by far) but I do feel that if you’re going to entrust your children’s education to the government, there would need to be some sort of system in place to ensure that at least a minimum of education is met. STing is the method that has become that system.
Is it a perfect system? No. Is it even an adequate system? Not really, no. For one thing, STing does not take into consideration any child who does not learn via lecture. If you have a child who needs manipulatives to really grasp a concept, then in most ISDs he’s just out of luck. The whole process of STing does not allow for children who learn outside the norm.
Another issue is the test itself; I have been on the pencil end of many, many “fill in the bubble’ tests where the question is designed to trick you or mislead you. Now,while some might argue that questions like that are designed to test reading comprehension or to punish you for not paying attention, have seen many that are designed so that there may be more than one correct answer, depending on how you interpret the question. Some even have multi-part answers that are counted incorrect if you only miss part of the question. I’ve even found some homeschool tests that are like that – that’s not ascertaining what the student KNOWS, it’s ascertaining whether the student can take a test. Then there are the children who simply do not test well, or have a harder time with reading comprehension or don’t learn well visually. Such a big deal is made during testing grades that there is an enormous amount of pressure put onto the kids to do well – starting at 8 years old – earlier even if you’re in a school that has lower test scores. As young as 2nd grade, they’re starting to hear about tests and practicing for taking them. I know a couple of parents with children who worried themselves ill – literally – before testing days. How can that be healthy?
I’m really not opposed to assessment tests that actually look at what the child knows. I use them for my kids to keep us on track. I use the state’s standards as a guideline to see what we need to cover each year. We may stray from that as the kids interests dictate, but we do make an effort to stay near the state’s recommendations.
I’m mostly just thinking out loud here. Obviously, in an institutionalized setting, it will function differently than homeschooling will. It’s not practical to have a delight-led class of 25. I just think that there are too many kids who fall through the cracks in the current system.
Warmly,
~h
Organized Mom is Disorganized This Week
… and by ‘week’, I naturally mean ‘month’. {sigh} I am playing catch-up in a major way… we’re 2 weeks into M6 and I just now printed out my reports for M5. (If you’re just tuning in, I use Homeschool Tracker’s Basic for record-keeping. We break for a week after every 6, and I print report cards because I am an obsessive-compulsive type who likes paper (as well as digital) reports to refer to when the need arises – and it does, often. More on that in a bit. If that’s not your bag, that’s cool – but you don’t get to make nasty comments… unless they’re funny. Funny, I can forgive {wink})
I’ve spent the last 2 or 3 weeks working with SFK and PB&JMom getting our homeschool group’s co-op planned and the calendar set for the next few months (and then coming home and updating the calendar and website). I thoroughly enjoyed myself throughout all stages of this event, but in working all of that, I have neglected my own planning. I have our 6 week arc down, but I do not have daily lessons planned for the entire mod as of yet. My poor lesson planner is nearly blank past this weekend, so I will be sitting down and filling the rest of that out over the weekend, I am sure. After all, how can we learn when we don’t yet know what we’re going to learn about?!
Something I have been meaning to address is, “How do you do everything that you do?”
This is a question I get asked often – or variations of. In the past month, I’ve been called everything from a ‘straight-up overachiever’ to an ‘android’… all in good fun, of course, but the question stuck with me. I’m sure it’s a compliment with a great deal of snark mixed in, but I get asked that often enough to want to answer it. I’m just never sure what to say that answers it without sounding like I’m either defending myself or bragging. So here goes…
First of all, I’d like to say that what I do is in no way a comment on what you do (or do not) do. My friends know this already, but I wanted to clear that up before I went any further. I’m hardly perfect and gleefully submit to pointings-out of my faults, but as Patchfire says in SmrtLernins’ Secular Homeschool Archetypes: The Organized Mom,
Organized Mom doesn’t know how not to be organized…
Truer words, my dear… truer words. I love Smrt Mama’s homeschooling archetypes post. I can easily identify myself. I could front and say that’s not me, but we all know it is, lol.
I don’t think it’s so much about the ‘how’ as it is the ‘why’. As I said, I’m an obsessive compulsive type who likes information in duplicate and in multiple formats (in case of a fire… or hurricane… or alien invasion…y’know. Whatever). I do not like surprises; the rare exception to that is if you can manage to keep me from detecting even a hint of it. Such a feat has only been accomplished once, and all credit to BFF, because she completely rocked that! As you would expect, I am not a spontaneous person. My calendar has actually had time blocked of for ‘something spontaneous’ in the past, I kid you not. This mindset extends to basically every aspect of my life.
That’s not to say that I am not flexible. I am more than willing to change plans most of the time, but I need my hours blocked off so that I know what my options are. That way, I can pick and choose what I really want to do and rarely miss out on something cool. This is the part that applies to homeschooling and why I am the way I am. I don’t want my kids to miss out on a unique learning opportunity. Why spend a week reading about the Civil War when we can go to a Civil War Re-enactment and live it? That’s so much more interesting and makes history tangible. I dig that.
I also know what I want available in our area. Though our individual group is rather small, the homeschooling community in our tri-county area is extensive. With 7 co-ops that I know of (just learned about another one yesterday!), not counting mine, that’s a LOT of homeschoolers. But none of the groups are working together as a team to pull resources that we could all benefit from. Each group individually might host a science fair or an art show – but what if we had enough participants from all the groups for a ‘real’ show or competitive fair? I just see potential know that I want that opportunity for my kids. Surely there must be other homeschooling moms who see this kind of void, and I can’t help thinking that if we all work together, we can fill it with something totally awesome.
I also know what it is that I want for my kids, and to an extent, what I want out of it as well. I enjoy homeschooling. I love researching and finding cool things to dry and make and do. I like messy projects and days where we chuck the lesson plan and snuggle on the couch with hot chocolate and literature (or I will when winter gets here, lol). I love teaching my kids – watching them finally ‘get’ something is absolutely amazing. I love that I get to spend time with my kids – hours per day that would be lost if they were in school-school – every aspect of it, though challenging at times, is right up my alley. Combine that with my personal philosophy about child rearing, which can basically be summed up with, “When you know better, do better”. I want the best for my kids, and I do my best for them. I’m by no means perfect, but I try awfully hard.
I think there’s also a good dose of learning from my elders mixed in with my outlook, too. When my babes were little, I held them all the time. No really. ALL the time, either in-arms or worn on me in the sling. This came about, in part, because I kept hearing my grandmother and her friends talk about how much they wished they had not listened to the ones who told them to put their babies down to sleep or on the floor for ‘tummy time’… about how fleeting the baby days are. I didn’t want to miss out on any of that, so I held them. When I was in school, my mother worked a lot and talked often about how much she’d only ever wanted to be a stay at home mom. Since I am a stay at home mom, I try to enjoy it to the fullest and not take it for granted. These kids grow faster every day and since I can’t slow ‘em down, I’m savoring every single step.
So, back to the organizational stuff, if you’re still wondering why I keep and print records, and perhaps more interestingly, wondering what it is that I do with them, you’re in luck. I print them to file so that I have a back-up if my computers and/or hard/flash drives bite the dust. I use them to balance myself when I’m planning our lessons. I print the Overview and can see how many hours were devoted to which subjects. We’re almost always math and science heavy. Our Reading and LangArts/Grammar are moderate and history is actually pretty light most of the time. That makes sense to me – I know where that comes from. Math is my weakest subject, so I overcompensate to make sure I’m not short-changing my kids on math skillz. Maybe too much. I think science and technology are vital to my kids’ futures and careers, and so they play prominently in our curriculum. I’m much more comfortable with the ‘Reading’ stuff. That’s my strong suit, and so I feel pretty confident in those areas with what we’re doing so I don’t focus as much on those. They are also my boys’ weakest subjects, so I can see that maybe we need to spend more time in those areas.
In a 6-week long mod (usually 24 days of instruction), we range from 67 to 82 hours of ‘classroom’ time. That includes the lessons and field trips that are in my lesson planner and sometimes I also count schoolish things that are done on non-school days (like a field trip taken with our homeschool group on our off week). There are also a zillion ‘other’ things that could be added, but I try to keep what I record just to actual ‘lessons’, if that makes sense. Being able to quantify our time like that lets me sleep at night instead of worrying if we’re spending enough time in school or on schoolwork.
Grades are a little trickier. They have excellent grades – but we don’t just ‘gloss over’ anything that they need to know. If we’re learning a math skill, then we stay on that skill until it is mastered. They may be ‘behind’ what other kids their age are doing, but I feel that mastering a skill now is far better than squeaking by with a ‘passing grade’ now and finding that your foundation is weak later on. And they’re not behind (in case you were wondering).
So anyway… this all sounded a lot better in my head, lol. I’ll stop here, though I welcome questions if you want to know something specific. I hope that this casts a little bit of illumination into the transparent depths of my psyche for you {wink}.
Warmly,
~h
Lesson Planning for M6 (Sept-Oct 2010)
Wow – we’re really starting to wind down into the end of our school year! Just in time for ‘back to school’ madness, we’re ready to start fresh on Monday.
If you’re just finding TAL, welcome! Let me explain a bit about this post. We are year-round schooling. Our school year begins in January and ends at the end of November. We school for 6 weeks (modules, or ‘mods’), then take a week-long break. I plan the kids lessons 6 weeks at a time, and usually post a ‘lesson planning’ post at some point before the new mod starts.
I find that planning incrementally lets me make adjustments as-needed during the year. I’m not planning so far ahead that if we stop on a subject and linger for a while, we haven’t thrown off the rest of the year. I use this post to remind myself of (and share with ya’ll) the links I’ve collected that I thought were so neat – this is to keep myself from coming across them 6 months after we’re done with that lesson and going, ‘Darn it!! I wanted to use that!!”.
Before we get into the good stuff, I wanted to mention a couple of things. I found this article – it’s only relevant in the ‘learning about lesson planning’ sense, but if you’re like me, the you might find it interesting. I liked the diagram – that first column of goals is quite helpful in knowing what ‘my’ goals as a teacher need to be in planning lessons for the boys.
I was recently asked if I use a lesson planner – I do. In fact, I consider it an essential part of keeping myself on track. What ‘on track’ means may be different from day-to-day, but I rely on my planner quite heavily. I keep it in my purse and use it to make notes (like I’ve said before, homeschooling isn’t something we do, it’s how we live) when we’re out and about, or to record notes for myself about the kids’ achievements or areas that might need addressing later on. I looked into the kind meant for classroom teachers and found that they weren’t really suited to homeschooling use. I tried the homeschooling ones on sites like CurrClick.com, but most are religious-y and as a secular homeschooler, that also doesn’t work for me, so I ended up making my own. I’ve added them here for you to see; feel free to print and fill them out for your own use. I take mine to a local printing shop and have the pages copied into however many I’ll need (and print them so that they’re front&back printed), then separate them into 7-six-week sections and add a colored page of paper to mark each mod. I put an evaluation sheet at the beginning of the school year, end of each mod and end of the year, print out a cover with our homeschool crest and put plastic on the front and back to protect it from wear and tear.
LessonPlanP1_ThisAdventureLife
LessonPLanP@_ThisAdventureLife
EvaluationPage_ThisAdventureLife
CurricRefSheet_ThisAdventureLife
Donna Young also has a page with a ton of printable planning forms for homeschoolers that I love looking through. Here are a couple of other pages that I didn’t make that I may add to next year’s book:
- Student Goals Worksheet (or something similar – I really like the idea of the kids having goals for themselves and outlining a strategy to reach them.)
- I am going to add a 2-page month-view calendar to the beginning of the planner – I frequently need one for planning non-school events.
I always put a school year calendar and a page for the kids to tell me about themselves (fun to look back on later – plus it’s a good place to add their picture for this year), and I add a page to list all of the books and resources we’re using this year and the code that I am using for that books (for example, ‘Saxon Math 3′ is ‘S3′) and any pertinent info (like reordering info for workbooks and such).
Once I have all my pages printed and copied and in the correct order (check once, twice, thrice!!), I have the book spiral bound with sturdy plastic covers. In all, the last one I printed cost around $15-$20, which is comparable to what I would pay for a commercial one, so I think that’s reasonable, especially when I have the features that I want in it – and no pages that I don’t!
I also made Student Planners for the boys for next year. found several online, but all were faith-based, so I made secular versions that are similar. Most of the clip art is ‘boy’ related; I may work on a girl version in the future:
STARSPlannerReadLog_ThisAdventureLife
STARSPlannerPg2_ThisAdventureLife
STARSPlannerPg1_ThisAdventureLife
Now, on to the links!! {fanfare}
One of the links I am SUPER excited about is this one from NASA, Virtual Skies. LittleBoyBlue has his heart set on being a jet pilot (on the days where he doesn’t want to own a grocery store or run an orphanage). Even though many of the concepts are clearly above his level of understanding, he’s interested in the subject and wants to explore it. Far be it from me to deny him access! We recently had the chance to preview ‘Legends of Flight’ at IMAX, so I’m sure that will come up in discussion as we work on the concepts in Virtual Skies.
We’re always looking for fun ways to work on grammar and parts of speech; Teachers Pay Teachers Open Marketplace has a free download of Grammar Comics volume 1 that looks fun. We found printable comic strips a while back and have been meaning to make use of them – maybe we can work on that this mod.
Grade Two Word Wall (Math words) – love this list!
The Homeschool Mom.com – How to Make a Time Line We’ve been using HyperHistory’s timeline online, but I think that the boys would benefit more from having one they can touch. That’s the only drawback to finding cool stuff online when you have (or are) a tactile learner!
Most of our resources will actually not change all that much for this mod. We’re still using LessonPathways for many of our lessons and augmenting with different websites and workbooks/sheets (listed on the ‘Our Current Curriculum‘ page). We’re planning field trips with our local group about once per week, most science or history based, so we’ll use those as the backbone to our lessons for those subjects. We started working on a lapbook for the US Constitution, so we’ll be continuing that as well. Overall, I want to add more lapbooking to our lessons; I think that’s a good way to cover and review individual units or specific topics – we’re going to give it a try, anyway!
I’ll be updating the curriculum page over the weekend, but as I said, much of it will stay the same. If you’re local and interested in the specific lesson plans associated with the field trips our group is doing, you might consider joining Triangle Homeschoolers’ Yahoo Group. We’ll be discussing lesson plans onlist there.
Warmly,
~h
Lesson Planing for M4 (June-July 2010)
Welcome back!
If you’re just joining me, then be warned – this post might get a tad overwhelming. Every 6 weeks, my kids and I take a break from school and relax… well, they relax; I plan our next 6 weeks! This is the time when I go back through all the websites and homeschool materials I have to refresh my memory on all the cool things I wanted to try and lessons I wanted to do with the kids. I usually post a lot of links and reference a lot of materials, so if you’re starting out this might be a good place to look to get ideas or to find spiffy little homeschooling gems that you might not have come across yet.
If you’re joining me again as I plan this next module, then I’d love to hear if my posts have helped you. I’d also love to hear from you about how you plan or what some of your favorite materials and resources are.
In scanning some of my earlier posts, I just realized that my previous “lesson planning” post had a huge mistake in it – the title is “LPing for M2″ and it was actually M3 that was being planned – so if you noticed that, then you get a gold star for having a keen eye.
So – we’re going into M4 – that’s our 4th six-weeks grading period. Our school schedule is year-round. We do 6 weeks on and a one-week break throughout the year, then take all of December off and start our new school year in January. We end up with a total to 7 grading periods, which comes out to about 165-ish days (we school M-Th). We’re going into our 6th month of homeschooling – I can’t believe how FAST the months have passed! It seems like we have just gotten started. Looking back at how much we’ve accomplished, I’m simply amazed. I didn’t really suffer with self-doubt about homeschooling (overly much, anyway), but it’s really nice to be able to look back and see just how much we really have covered. Last week, for example, we were discussing a friend who recently moved back to Michigan and how far away that is. We haven’t done a whole lot of geography on the map, but we have discussed in great detail the Great Lakes area in one of our lesson series. I was trying to tell the kids how far away Michigan was in relation to Texas, and I brought up the Lakes… and they totally got it! They had a whole discussion that reviewed much of the material we discussed months ago – on their own! That was such a gratifying “homeschool mommy moment”.
With summer coming up, we’ll have a unique addition to our family’s school days. My niece, Fred, will be joining us several days a week. She’s a “school-a-holic” – she loves school, and has requested to be allowed to participate. So I’m going to be planning some things for her to do as well. Since she and my oldest, LittleBoyBlue, are in the same grade (going into 3rd), it won’t really be any problem to add in lessons for her. PeaGreen is going into 2nd now (wow – my baby is in second grade!).
So, without further adieu… planning! {fanfare}
Okay, so… one of the main things we’re going to work into our summer is letterboxing. If you’ve read previous posts, you’ve probably seen it mentioned before. Basically, letterboxing is a treasure hunt. You have a notebook and a stamp (hand-carved or bought, your choice. It’s your personal stamp – your mark), and ink pad and the list of clues to find the box (and there are literally thousands of them, all over the world). Then you go out and find the box. In it, you’ll find a notebook and a stamp. You stamp your book with the box’s stamp, and mark your stamp into the box’s book and then hide the box back exactly where you found it so it can be found again. And that’s it! Unless you want to start making and hiding boxes (in which case you have a whole new level of fun to enjoy). Learn all you want about it at Letterboxing North America’s website.
The other thing that will be taking up a lot of the next 2 mods is the Texas Nature Challenge. It’s a 12 week, 24 state park “how many can you visit” challenge with a mission for you (the kids?) to complete. We snagged a nifty poster from the Big Thicket Visitor’s Center a couple of weeks ago. We stopped in by chance and learned about it by accident. It’s such a cool concept though that we’re really looking forward to sinking our teeth into it. The neat thing about these two projects is that they can be done in conjunction with each other. We’ve already completed 2.5 missions and are really looking forward to doing more of them!
Now, as for what subjects those things fall into, I’m filing them under science, geography, critical thinking, history, art… pretty much all of them! Different missions and different clues and locations for letterbox hunting contain different aspects of “school”. Sometimes we’re drawing, following a map, learning about the history of an area or object – the list is endless and i LOVE being able to have school be a living, breathing thing.
Of course, we’ll still be doing ‘real’ schoolwork as well. I still haven’t had time to delve into Lesson Pathways site yet, so that’s high on my list for planning this mod. I’m planning on using their Year 3 Math for LittleBoyBlue and Year 2 Math for PeaGreen starting at some point this mod. I have Saxon 3, but not all of the consumables, so I will be supplementing LP’s stuff with that. We were supposed to get into multiplication tables this past mod with LBB, but haven’t really sunk into them yet, so we’re going to start off next week (week 3 of M4 – already!!) hitting them hard and heavy.
Something else we’re starting is mock-scouting. I love the concept of scouting, but the dogma of organized scouting programs just don’t work for our family. So, we’re doing an ‘adventure kids’ type thing that mimics scouting in some ways. I started buying patches from the State Parks we’ve visited and am going to make a sash for them to showcase their achievements. I also found a bunch of merit badges (demerit badges, in some cases) that are fun and amusing that we’ll use as well – I want this to be fun and interesting – not plain ole’ Boy Scouts stuff. So I’m going to choose the badges that I like and come up with a worksheet/accomplishment/task/skill set for the boys to complete to earn them. I’m still working on this, so when I get it together better in my head, I’ll do a new post about it with links and such so you can see.
Another really cool thing that is going on this summer is our library’s Summer Reading Club. Their theme this summer is ‘The Reading Express”. In addition to encouraging the kids to read (20 books), they can log their time and compete for prizes from the mayor’s office and get an award for reading. There are also a TON of nifty classes, presentations and projects that they’re offering in connection with the club – and the best part about it is that it’s all FREE! If you’re not local, then check your library – they may have something similar that you can take advantage of. Our library also has a room (or shelf, depending on the branch we’re at that day) with books for sale – either donated or withdrawn. Usually, they’re super cheap. If you’re book hunting, you can usually pick up a text-book or two, and almost always find a handful of kids books to supplement your personal library for very little dough. Other places, like Barnes & Noble and Scholastic also offer Summer Reading Programs that might be worth checking out.
Language Arts: Mad Libs! Or, if you’re interested in playing online, you can use Wacky Web Tales, which is similar – and still fun! Of course, we’re still going to be doing more traditional LA work – I’ve been using EnglishGrammar101 for LittleBoyBlue, but I am thinking that it’s a bit too far ahead of where he is at. We’re into Unit 1, Lesson 14-ish, and he’s having trouble with a lot of it. Whether that’s due to inattention or inability, I am just not sure. I’m thinking of starting with Lesson Pathways Language Arts (which starts with Boxcar Children lessons, which I like) and trying some of the ProTeacher resources.
For History and Geography, we’re still using ‘A Short History of the World’ by Alex Woolf, and also using worksheets from SuperTeacherWorksheets – I use that site quite a bit, especially when we’re going to be schooling on-the-go. It’s easy to snag and print a couple of worksheets that coordinate with something we’re doing “in-class”. The library’s summer reading club has some history-based activities (like the Pioneer Lady’ mentioned in my previous post).
Science is going to be spent outdoors a lot this summer. In addition to the above-mentioned Texas Nature Challenge, we’re planning a trip to the Houston Museum of Natural Science and to several additional state parks. We’re also doing the Houston Wilderness Passport, which focuses on specific ecosystems in our area.
Other than that, we’re kinds going lite this mod. We’ve scaled back history and science to only 1 day per week each, and art and music are each 1 day. Handwriting is M, T, W and journal is at least 2 days per week. Math, spelling, reading, phonics - those are everyday. We’re trying to fit lessons at home with lessons out-and-about; since we have such a busy summer planned, it will be a challenge to get all our lessons in. So far, so good though. Tomorrow marks the last day of week 2 – Only 4 more weeks left in this mod!
I hope you found something useful in this post! As always, I’d love to hear what you think, or what you’re using.
Warmly,
~h
Lesson Planning for M2 (April/May 2010)
It’s been a while since I posted anything. Sorry about that! If you’re waiting to see what we’re doing for the next 6 weeks (well, 5, almost 4, now that the first week and a half of M2 is over!!), we have some new things that we’re working on that we started this week.
One of the new sites I found (courtesy of FreeHomeschooling101′s blog – link in sidebar) is EnglishGrammar101.com. It’s a fully lessoned-out plan of attack that your kidlet can do online, or you can print lessons out and. The site will score the lessons, and you can keep track. Neat-o! You know me; I’m all about record-keeping, lol. LittleBoyBlue is breezing through 100 Easy Lessons – I knew he would; he’s reading very well (surprisingly well sometimes – he recently finished the Halo graphic novel and a Zelda GN, and started on The Fall of Reach (which is a full-length Halo novel) and 100 EL is very, very basic. We started EnglishGrammar101 this week with Unit 1, Lesson 1 (and have completed Lesson 2). It’s good. I like it, at any rate. Since the first part is verbs, I found the Grammar Rock YouTube video of “Verbs” and we watched that. Fun, and it brings back good Saturday-morning-cartoon memories for me. When you click on the link, look in the left hand menu and choose “homeschooling”, then you can click the plus signs to expand the menu and you can choose a unit and lesson from the drop-down box. I let LittleBoyBlue do the lesson, then click “score” at the top (though you can click the question mark boxes at each line as you go if you’re reviewing or learning) and then write down the percentage (grade) and then print. We’re using the printed work as a review and reference to reinforce what we learned in the lesson.
Another is AAAKnow.com – it’s a math site that is divided into grade levels and subject areas. Again – it’s all online, fully planned out lessons and worksheets. PeaGreen has completed his other workbooks, so I was scraping the bottom of the barrel to find him something (I was about to go buy a workbook!!) when I found this site. He’s actually quite good in math, and we’re coming up on May where he would have ‘graduated’ to 2nd grade, so I think we’re going to finish out this mod and the next and start him in “2nd grade” in M5, which will come up starting in July. LittleBoyBlue is also very good in math (though he lacks discipline as evidenced by the 2 hours he spent on 20 problems today; some of that was my fault for not paying him enough attention) and as soon as he finishes the Math Minutes book, he’ll start on Saxon 3, but we’ll supplement with AAAKnow’s lesson plans as well. One thing I will mention is that the ‘practice’ portions will go on indefinitely – at least past 50, so count as your child does them as you go and limit it to whatever number you want to work with. We did 50, but could have stopped after 25 or so, once he demonstrated that he clearly has grasped the concept. I do like that there’s a printable progress report form so you can keep track of which lessons as you go.
We’re also using Multiplication.com quite a bit this mod. LittleBoyBlue is getting into multiplication tables and they have a nice little video that uses “cookie math” to explain the concept. It must work; he’s up to the 3′s already, and can figure out most of the problems I give him. They also have worksheets, pre- and post- tests to print and use.
I also found (again, thanks to FreeHomeschooling101) is a flash sight words site. It’s based on the Dolch sight words and many other resources use that as well – we actually had flash cards and sticky-notes with these words on them already, which makes it super easy to supplement with hands-on materials. I haven’t looked through the flash site fully, but what I saw, I liked. PeaGreen is having some difficulty with reading – I don’t know why. It seems like he was doing quite well in his classroom with the leveled readers that his former teacher was sending home, but for some reason he seems to have lost that confidence. He’s doing very well with the phonics lessons in 100 EL, but when it comes to spelling work (not the spelling itself, but the reading of directions or spelling sentences) or independent reading, he’s stumbling more than I am thinking he should be. I am hoping that drills of sight words will help reinforce his skills.
Another new development in our school is a return to handwriting as a subject all its own, independent of journaling and copywork. Both boys still have their handwriting books from school (McDougal, Littell’s Handwriting Connections for grades 1 and 2)
so we’ll continue to use them until they’re done, then we’ll have to find something to supplement that. LittleBoyBlue will be moving on to cursive writing soon!
Let’s see… I also bought A Short History of the World by Alex Woolf to use for History/Geography. It’s not comprehensive, but it does cover a heck of a lot – skims the surface of history, which I think is enough to get us to an area that one (or both) of the boys finds interesting – at which point we can dig in a little deeper. we’re still chronologically in pre-history and ancient history (here on the timeline – and can I just reiterate how much I LOVE the online timeline at HyperHistory?!) and the book is not strictly chronological, but we can supplement as needed.
I also have been looking for a way to assess where the boys are in reading – are they “on track”? Ahead? Lagging behind? I found several assessment tests – some more for “Language Arts” and reading speed/level, and some to give you a ‘grade/month’ number. I think the first one is probably more ‘accurate’, but the second one is fast and easy to use. According to it, PeaGreen is reading at 1st grade, 6th month (which is on-target for him) and LittleBoyBlue is reading at 3th grade, 6rd month level, which is ahead of his actual grade (2nd)… and I read at 12th grade, 8th month and beyond, in case you were wondering. {smile}
I’m planning on doing the other test at some point during this mod as well, which will give us an idea of which “level” books to give them when we’re choosing leveled readers. Right now I’m giving LittleBoyBlue level 3 books, which are chapter books, and PeaGreen is getting between level 1 and level 2 books, depending on the series. He’s harder to choose for; I want him to be challenged, but not frustrated. we’re reinforcing his skills with 100 EL as I said, so I am seeing small improvements – I think that will improve as we continue through this mod’s reading, phonics and grammar lessons.
Here’s something fun: BOOK IT – Pizza Hut’s reading incentives program for 2010-2011 school year (deadline June 30, 2010) http://www.bookitprogram.com/Enrollment/homeschool.asp Your kidlet can get free pizzas for reading. How awesome is that?!
Another freebie (thanks, yet again to FreeHomeschooling101′s blog – if you’re not on their FaceBook page, you REALLY need to check them out.) History Lesson plans - August 2010 DVD http://www.history.com/images/media/pdf/TDIH_Guide.pdf
If you’re looking for Earth Day lesson plans, check this out: http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/earthday/index.php There are lots of options, depending on your grade level and how involved you want to get. Of course, if you’re local to Southeast Texas, then you’re going to want to come out to The Barking Dog to support the Farmer’s Market that opens this May!
And one more thing… Lesson Pathways website is now FREE!! http://www.lessonpathways.com/Home They have TONS of info, including COMPLETE curriculum outlines by grade. You can pick and choose lessons, units or use their entire plan. So cool! I haven’t explored it fully, but there are some things I am pretty sure we’ll be using in the math section – I am sure I’ll find more awesomeness as I browse.
Overall, I’m feeling very good about this mod’s beginning. It always takes a few days to get back into the routine after a break, but now that we’re back, it’s going pretty smoothly. I think the boys are excited to have some new things to work on, and I know they both like doing computer work. Having the option to print is good, but paperless is definitely cheaper, and between the Homeschool Tracker program I use and online lessons, I’m using less paper and ink than I thought I would be. That’s a good thing!
On another note (for those of you who have been keeping up with the progress of out garden), we have definite PLANTS now – not just seedlings. From seed, we have tomatoes, onions, pumpkins, radishes, watermelons, avocados, jalapeños, basil, coriander, tarragon, radishes and cantaloupes coming up. It’s SO NEAT to watch! I’ll post pictures soon.
I hope that you find some of this useful when planning your own lessons and activities!
Warmly,
~h
Thoughts on Accountability in Homeschooling
One of the great things about homeschooling in Texas is the freedom parents who choose to educate their kids at home have. We don’t have to register with anyone if we choose not to enroll in Kindergarten. We don’t have to ask permission to pull our kids out of public school. We don’t have to be evaluated or take tests or hand in reports or samples of work to anyone. Homeschools are regarded as private schools, and like any private school, we’re pretty autonomous.
For those of us who have been indoctrinated into the public school system, it’s a bit hard to shift from the mindset that there will be some sort of testing going on to assess where your child is at the beginning of the year and again at the end of the year to see how much he’s progressed, to realizing that there really is no system for tallying accomplishments and improvements that gets handed to you when you decide to homeschool. Sure you can go look at the TEA website and get an idea of what your child would/should be learning in public school, but you have to look for it – it’s not handed to you.
On the one hand, that’s great. I think that standardized testing is a crock to begin with; though I realize and agree with the thought that there should be some kind of system in place to ensure that students in an institutionalized educational setting are getting a minimum set of skills and/or knowledge base, there has to be a better way of determining that information than the testing that schools (in Texas, at least) do periodically. It would also be nice if teachers had the autonomy to make decisions about the method of testing for their students based on their knowledge of the student’s ability without having to go through the red tape of having a 504 designation and IEP* if your child is a special-needs child. If you don’t have a special needs child, but do have one that just doesn’t perform well on written tests, letting the teacher assess the information orally or in some other format than the formal “test” would be a huge benefit to the student.
Aside from that, teachers spend half their time teaching kids how to take the test (dealing with trick questions and absolutes, etc), which means that there is less time spent on teaching the material they’re being tested on. Even on off years when there is no testing, they still do mock tests so the kids don’t forget how to deal with testing. Then there’s the level of importance that is placed on test scores. If you’re not a good test-taker, then you’re pretty much screwed, even if you know the material. I always got hung by trick questions – ones that used absolutes (always or never) or phrased things tricksy, and so I scored much lower than I would have if the question assessed my knowledge coherently.
On the other hand, there’s a certain reassurance in the testing. With it, you have a concrete starting point and yardstick with which to measure. It’s easy to look at the scores and see where your weak points are and where you’re good to go. Without it, there are no guidelines to go by, no system of checks and balances to help guide a parent/teacher or show her that she’s doing a “good enough” job in setting and reaching educational goals. There’s no one to have a conference with and ask how he’s doing and get tips and pointers on how to help shore up the weak areas. There’s no set list of skills or knowledge that must be learned “this year”. In a way, that’s bad. It means that WE (loverly husband and I… well, me) have to pour over websites and through curriculum outlines and decide what all needs to be addressed this year. WE are solely responsible for making sure that our kids are not lagging behind their peers.
Or do we?
Who’s to say that the way the institution has laid out their year and the subjects/skills the “right” way? The “best” way? Does my 1st grader really NEED to know Roman numerals this year? Or can that wait until we start studying the Roman Empire? Does my 2nd grader HAVE to study ‘whole language’ style (sight words), or can we omit that altogether and learn phonics instead? Or what if I have one child who does better with whole language and one who does better with phonics? Shouldn’t we do both in that case?
I think that’s another benefit right there – lacking the ‘paperwork’ to tell you about your child, you actually have to (get to?) focus on your child. You’re also not limited to the lowest common denominator when you’re homeschooling. In the classroom, rather than bringing the students all up, they tend to drop everyone down. That means that if your child is excelling, unless real effort is made in the classroom to tailor to that child to some extent, their potential goes untapped. At home, there’s no cap on learning.
Next year would have been our first foray into standardized testing. There’s a small part of me that would kind of like to have LittleBoyBlue tested – and I’m not ruling out buying the test-prep/mock TAKS book at Manning’s even though I am philosophically opposed to standardized testing. It’s expensive though, so I may not. And by that time, we may be on a whole different homeschooling agenda page by then. Who knows? I honestly don’t think that he would do very well on the test if he were to take it the way they give it. If I gave him the test, it would be piecemeal where we could and orally, I’m sure – my goal would actually be to assess his knowledge, not trick him up and see how well he tests.
I don’t really have a goal with this post. I’m still new enough to homeschooling that I can see the benefit in the way that institutionalized schooling operates. It must function the way that it does to meet the goals they have, and though they fall short and are in drastic need of a complete overhaul, there does have to be some form and structure there. Institutionalized schooling cannot mimic homeschooling without… well, so much is lacking to even come close. I really do feel that home should be the standard and everything else should measure up to that and not the other way around. Only when I can’t provide what my child needs should I start looking for someone else to help me provide for my child.
Warmly,
~h
* As I understand it, 504 is the designation in TX for students with handicaps or learning disabilities that allows modifications and accommodations to be made in the classroom for them to help learning/functioning. IEP stands for “Individual Education Plan” and outlines to modifications and accommodations that will be made for the child that the teacher must follow. That may not be entirely accurate, but it’s close.
Report Cards!
Today marks the end of our first learning module in homeschooling – and, thanks to Homeschool Tracker’s lovely (and FREE) program, I have report cards to prove it! Yay!! I have found that for lessons that don’t have a point value assigned or easily visualized, a “scale of 1-10″ works well, and I enter all tests 2 times so they count more (I didn’t know that was a thing to do until I read about it; apparently, it’s called “weighting” the grades…handy!).
I don’t remember if I’ve covered this before so if I have, please forgive the lapse in memory. If I haven’t, here’s a breakdown of our schedule. We begin our school year in January, so even though we’re technically in the middle of the 2009-2010 school year according to traditional academic calendarl, my kids aren’t really starting in the middle of the year according to our calendar. We’re using Ambleside Online’s curriculum (link in sidebar) and staging, so we’re officially in Year 1 with them as well.
January 3 (the first Monday), 2010 began the first learning module (“mod”) in our year. I mark off 6 weeks (that’s M1), then we take a one week break. We do another six weeks of school (that’s M2), and then a one week break, and so on for the whole calendar year. That gives us seven 6-week learning modules (instead of only 6 like “regular” school) and we stop at the end of November/beginning of December, depending on the calendar. Then we take the month of December off (except for maybe the first few days or so if the calendar is wonky that year), and begin the next school year in January. I haven’t done the math to figure up exactly how that compares to a traditional academic calendar – we end up with 168 school days per year; I seem to remember our former school’s calendar had something like 77 school days in a year (but that could be off).
Our school week is Monday through Thursday, and we test on Thursdays in Math and Spelling, and we do a mid-mod review at week 3 in Science, Social Studies/History/Geography (combined) and another review at the end of the mod. We go to the Library on Wednesdays and we also meet with our playgroup (weather permitting). Since we have a short school week, we try to schedule field trips for Fridays or in the afternoons so they don’t interfere with “class time”.
I guess you’d say what we’re doing at this point in time is “school at home”, though admittedly with much more flexibility than “real school” (that’s not to say that we will always “do” school this way, but it’s working for us right now, and so we continue). A lot of what we’re doing is oral, or comes from literature instead of text books, so it doesn’t feel like school-in-a-classroom, even though we have a mini-classroom here. I was reading about how some families started out with a dedicated homeschooling room/space and eventually abolished it because “school is life”… while I respect the sentiment, I know that I need to have “school” contained in one area and not taking up half my kitchen, and I definitely don’t want it cluttering up the living room! It makes me a much happier mama to be able to close the door to the school room and have my house company-ready (not that we ever have company, hermit that I am lately). That doesn’t mean that learning stops when the door closes – most of the kids’ craft supplies, and mine, too eventually has migrated or will migrate into there, so we’re constantly using the space for something, and as soon as I get a rug, I’m sure even more fun will be had, strewn across the floor. Today, even though our tushies were cold, we made Valentine’s cards whilst lounging on the school-room floor. It was nice!
So, like I said, today marks the end of our first mod in homeschooling. Even though this mod is short by 2 weeks due to the boys still being in public (well, charter) school for the first 2 weeks of the year, I want to stick with our calendar so I am marking M1 officially
SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED!
{bows to wild applause and whistles of congratulations}
Thank you, thank you… it’s been a journey, but one we were more than happy to undertake. {/smarmy speech}
I just can’t get over how impressive it all looks on paper! Well, impressive to me, at least. In 4 weeks, we’ve had 16 school days, and spent 67+ hours (it varies a bit by kiddo on the minutes) in official lessons. That doesn’t include the extra learning that happens just because we’re an inquisitive family… and just think – that’s 67 hours of almost PURE learning/instruction time – not 5 minutes of learning and 20 minutes of trying to get in a quiet, straight line so we can go to the next classroom/lesson. With only 2 kiddos, my time is pretty evenly divided between them, so that’s nearly 34 hours of one-on-one instruction time that each of my boys has had over the last month. If they were in school-school, taking out 30 minutes for lunch and 15 for recess, that’s 6.5 hours of instruction time per day (and that’s not counting the 5 minute between-class bells – so it’s actually going to be even less time than that). Anyway – with 6.5 hours in her day, a teacher with 25 students (the ratio at my kids’ former school) can give each child, at most, 26 minutes of her time per day. Over a week, that would be a whopping 1.3 hours per week; 7.8 hours per 6 weeks; 46.8 hours per school year. And that doesn’t include making lesson plans, keeping the “class” on-task, lining up, handling discipline issues, sick kids and emergencies, fire drills and other interruptions that plague the classroom teacher daily. Gee, based on that math, I could stop RIGHT NOW and my kids will have gotten almost as much time with their teacher as they would in school-school….
Seeing everything laid out like that is really reinforcing the idea that we made a good choice here. So… any friends out there who wanna make plans for next week since we’re out of school? 
Warmly,
~h
Record Keeping for Dummies
So I was browsing homeschooling stuff online and I came across this, Homeschool Tracker. It’s a free, downloadable program that you can use to keep track of everything from schedules to attendance to grades – awesome! I was struggling a bit with trying to figure out how to keep track of and “do”grades, and I think that this program is going to help with that. Anyway – Just thought I’d share.
Warmly,
~h
Updated to add: We’re on day 2 of using this and it seems to be working quite well, I’ve put in enough info to check out some of the reporting features like report cards and such, and it seems like it will be exactly what I didn’t know I needed! This week is the end of our grading period, so I am going to go back and add our work from the last 4 weeks and print report cards. I’ll update again after I do.
Workboxes, Week 1
I haven’t decided exactly how I feel about them yet. I’m thinking that we’ll give it another week and see how it goes. I am almost sure that the actual ‘box’ part is just adding an extra/unnecessary step; I’ve seen several versions of workboxing mods that use a single box or bin with manilla mailing envelopes to hold the work, and others that use hanging files, covered cereal boxes, and lots of other methods. Since we’re so limited on space, I am wondering if something like that might be better.
I am also going to have to figure out something else to do with the ‘done’ cards or tags… the process we have now feels like a bunch of extra steps that might be eliminated. I saw several people using velcro dots on the fronts of boxes (or on a sheet of paper inside the front of the box) to hold all the tags; I’m thinking that I might want to try that instead. I do like the chore cards though, so I may play around with that and see if I can come up with a better way to manage them. We have a chore chart in the hallway that I made months ago; we may go back to that style for a while.
Overall, I’m not sold on the system for us, but there are some things I like about it, so I’m not ready to scrap it just yet. I thought I’d do a pros and cons list this week and then re-evaluate next week. In the interests of disclosure, I will say that I have not read Sue Patrick’s book (creator of the workbox system), or attended any kind of lecture or class on them. I’ve just been reading about them since last year and checking out all the different mods and tweaks that I’ve seen in blogs and put my system together from what I’ve read. That may very well do Ms. Patrick a huge disservice, so please take my two cents on the matter with a spoonful of salt. {wink} I like the idea of the workboxes system. Ideally, it seems like allowing the kids to be completely responsible for their work makes me happy. I just don’t know how that will work out practically speaking with my kids.
Pros:
August 25, 2011 | Categories: Daily Review, Homeschooling Resources, Homeschooling Tips and Tricks, Lessons Learned, NVC, Product Review | Tags: commentary, homeschooling, homeschooling challenges, lesson planning, NVC, record keeping, schedule, SuperMom Complex, time spent in school, workboxes | 4 Comments »