Category: Homeschool (Page 2 of 2)

It seems that one of the most difficult parts of staying at home, and of teaching at home, is scheduling the days so that each topic is covered sufficiently and so that all the other interests and necessary chores are done.  I know the importance of having a schedule, but I also know that moms and children at home can’t live or die by the schedule! A schedule must work for your family and it must be a tool that can be shaped to fit the family.

Once you get a good schedule alter it as needed so that it truly is a working tool instead of a task master for your family. If it rules your family, its not really a tool!

I find that pre-printed forms are a huge help to me in planning. I use Donna Young’s forms exclusively. She has a form for every task you may have in your home or homeschool. I personally use her Colonial style forms. If you like her forms, consider donating to her site or purchasing her cd that contains all her forms!

Here is our 2009-2010 Schedule.  You are welcome to take it and change it up and make it your own.  I have two students this year, 5th and 9th grades. You may also want to take a look at our Daily School Schedule and Focus Room Schedule. This is the first year we have used a Focus Room Schedule. What it entails is taking one room per day and everyone pitching in to clean and organize it.

6:30 Mom up, dressed,quiet time, devotions, check email and message board, coffee.
7:30 – 8:30 Kids up, personal grooming, breakfast and cleanup.
8:30 Morning chores (for more ideas about assigning Chores see this article: Children and Chores the Heart and Mind of A Servant
– Children: clean up breakfast table, dishes in dishwasher, 10 Minute Tidy in bedrooms, feed animals
– Mom: laundry, correspondence, tidy bedroom, ironing

9:00 School begins (see daily school schedule for details)
12:00 – 1:00 Lunch and clean up
1:00 Independent assigned reading, quiet time, outside time.
2:00 Everyone cleans the focus room of the day (See Focus Room Schedule for details)
2:30 – 3:30 School work
3:30 Chores then Free time
4:00 – Dinner prep – set table, help in kitchen
6:00 Dinner
7:00  Individual evening chores then Family Time, Baths and quiet time in bedrooms before bedtime.
9:00 – 10:00 – bedtime

Click here for ideas and help with your daily school schedule.

You remember getting your daily schedule when you were in school. 1st period homeroom, 2nd period history, 3rd period Spanish and lunch, etc., etc. Homeschools need a daily schedule too and the challenge really comes when you have to schedule two or more children. The most students I have ever had to schedule and work with daily at home is 4. oh, and I had a baby in tow when schooling those 4. This year I just have two students so our schedule is not very complicated.

You can borrow my schedule and change it up to work for your family. We use a Charlotte Mason/Classical style of homeschooling. What that means in practical terms is that we don’t always have the typical classes that you find in a traditional school. We have Bible study, nature study, assigned reading, copywork and narration in addition to the more traditional classes of science, English, mathematics and history.

One big lesson that I have learned in my 17 years of homeschooling is that we don’t have to have every subject every day! We do have math every day. We do read and narrate every day.
We have science every day beginning in the 9th grade.

That’s where the every day stuff ends though. We have Nature Study three days per week. We do copywork two days per week. We have art history and art two days per week. Normally we have a Bible Study three days per week (this year we are studying Romans) but sometimes we switch it up with a Hymn Study. We study Latin three days per week as well.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday:
9:00 – Math (Algebra and Gamma Math-U-See)
9:30 – Latin (Latina Christiana)
10:00 – Science (Apologia Biology and Apologia Zoology plus Nature Study)
10:30 – History (Tapestry of Grace Year 3)
11:00 – Reading and Narration (Selected Reading)
12:00 – Lunch
1:00 – Bible Study, Reading, quiet time, outside time (Romans, Hymns)
2:00 – Focus Room Cleaning and Organizing
2:30 – English (Myths, Legends and Tall-Tales, Pathway Reader 5th grade)€
3:30 – Free Time

Tuesday and Thursday:
9:00 – Math
9:30 – Copywork (Spelling Wisdom book 1 and 3)
10:00 – Art (Rod and Staff, Tapestry of Grace and other projects)
11:00 – Art history (Tapestry of Grace)
11:30 – PE and Health (anatomy and physiology, YMCA 3n1 program)
12:00 – Lunch
1:00 – Reading and Narration (assigned)
2:00 – Focus Room
2:30 – Independent Reading, Independent work (This is catch up time used for reports, research, etc)
3:30 – Free time

Here is a list of all our curriculum for this year. I am adding it here in hopes that it will help some of you who are searching for ideas and information and perhaps help you see what these particular curriculum choices are like.

5th Grader:

Math-U-See Gamma

For History we are reading selections from A Child’s History Of The World which go along with the 9th grader’s history topics so that we can have a class discussion about various topics and ideas. I will include map work using the Tapsetry of Grace maps, and also hands on work using TOG Fine Arts lessons.

My 5th grader will begin Latin this year with the 9th grader, she is ready for it, though most of her work will be vocabulary words.

Science this year will be selected reading from The Usborne Science Encyclopedia and adding worksheets, experiments from various online sites and class discussion.  You can also find the Usborne Science Encyclopedia in the Internet Linked version so that all the searching is done for you!  The Amazon description says: “Designed for the Internet generation, this reference book includes a thousand recommended Web sites, providing a gateway to the vast amount of knowledge on the Internet. The specially selected Web sites aim to enrich the content with video, animation, sound, interactive experiments and on-line quizzes.”

Science also consists of a nature Notebook that my students work on all year long. A description of nature Notebooks can be found here and for a look at an internet Nature Notebook look here.  We just use blank pages in a sketch book for our notebooks but you can get really fancy and do it like this.  I guess the ultimate Nature Notebook is this book.

Spelling, vocabulary and Copywork (copywork is for handwriting practice and for exposure to the writings of great men and women) will be accomplished through Spelling Widsom book #1.

We will be using Pathway Readers 5th Grade English this year called Living Together.  A more indepth grammar program can be found at Rod and Staff in the R&S 5th Grade English program, Following The Plan.  I have used that for some of my 5th graders and have found that I like the Pathway better. The R&S program is much like public school grammar texts so if that is what you are after, it might be a good choice for your 5th grader.

9th Grader:

Algebra

Biology

Latin

History The world during the 1800’s. This will satisfy his world history requirement.

Spelling, Vocabulary and Copywork

English 1 – Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends.  We will be using several books and online information.  We will use the site MacBeth’s Opinion for their suggestions.  The books we will be using to start the year are:

A Landscape With Dragons

The Natural History Of Make-Believe

The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales

The Blue Fairy Book

The Orange Fairy Book

The Brown Fairy Book

Various other fairy story books to compare.

So that’s the year pretty much.   I do have some field trips in mind including theater performances and historical tours.

What are you using this year? Are you finding everything you need?  Are you having trouble deciding?

I am definitely one of those people who needs to plan, for if I omit that crucial step, I am lost and wandering the rest of the school year. I don’t make hard and fast plans, our school is quite flexible. But I do like to know where we are going and be there by the end of the school year so that I can report to our Umbrella School that we have fulfilled our state requirements.

Most curriculum that you can purchase comes already laid out in lessons. I used to think in my early years of homeschooling (we began in 1991) that since the school year was 36 weeks long, we needed 180 days of each subject, every year. That is not however the case. What we need is enough lessons to use the curriculum 1 to 3 times per week.

So what you want to look at in your curriculum is how many lessons are offered and how you can divide them up over the course of 36 weeks.

For example: We have a Biology curriculum by John Holzman that contains 43 different chapters and topics. It is a High School level course so I combine some of the broader topics like The Plant Kingdom and The Animal Kingdom and then in general try to cover one topic per week with this curriculum. One topic per week in High School Biology usually does translate to 5 lessons per week!  But that is the exception, not the rule.  Most non-High School subjects only require 2-3 lessons per week.

I don’t think it is imperative that your students cover every topic every day. I have found that Math, Grammar or English and Reading are the only topics that need daily work. Other subjects can be studied 2 to 3 times per week.

Good ideas for schedules can be found at Simply Charlotte Mason.

When I set out to plan lessons for a subject, and I have divided the lessons into weekly groups as explained above, then I have to be sure I am teaching each lessons to its full potential. That’s pretty easy when you are using something like a math textbook or science textbook. But it gets a bit more complicated when you are using things like books, maps and worksheets.

The first thing you must do is to look through all your material for a particular subject and set some goals. What do you want your child to understand? What will help your child understand? Are there any extra materials you need to acquire for your child’s benefit? Once you have those broad goals set, you will need to break them down into small goals.  If teaching your child about geography you might take several weeks to learn how to use a map and learn about longitude and latitude before moving on to identifying particular countries.  Then you might take three lessons to make salt maps.

Be sure to write all your ideas and plans down so that you can tweak and modify them later.

One of the easier subjects to plan without a set curriculum is vocabulary, spelling and copywriting. I use Spelling Wisdom for all three of those subjects. Once a week I dictate a passage from the book. The student writes down the passage as I dictate. Words that are misspelled are added to a spelling list which is studied. Later in the week when the student is confident he can spell all the words, I dictate the passage again. Any misspelled words are studied again. We don’t move on too quickly to the next passage until he can spell all the words correctly.
For vocabulary use, we study the words. The student copies the work carefully and practices writing the word in sentences of his own.

In what areas do you struggle with lesson planning? Are there some subjects that you need help with planning? Lets see if we can put our heads together and find some answers!

Every homeschooling parent learns eventually that there are a million or so choices out there when it comes to curriculum. There are also comes a time, after looking through 50 catalogs and 150 online sites for material, when every homeschooling parent just wishes someone would take their hand and say, “Here, use this, its the best.” Oh wait, all the curriculum publishers already do that.

No one is truly out there blazing the way and making sure that your child is learning as well as he could be. As nice and helpful as some of those publishers are, they are out there trying to make money to pay the bills. So it is important that you do your own research and discover what your child’s learning style is. I talked a little about learning styles in my last post so go find it. Basically, you want to know if your child learns better using a workbook, being read to or watching videos or if he will learn better with lots of hands on activities. Most good curriculum contains something for all these learning styles.

But once you figure out how your child learns, you can find curriculum that is more tailored to him. For example; once I discovered that most of my children learn best by reading and then by doing some kind of activity, Tapestry of Grace was my choice for History, including Church and Art History.

Obviously I haven’t tried everything out there in the way of curriculum. But what I have tried and liked I will tell you about in the next two or three posts. I will give you resources as well. I hope you find something here that helps you make the important decisions about curriculum for your children this year.

The Three R’s
Readin’…. Ritin’……. ‘Rithmatic

And now you’re thinking, “I am not looking forward to this woman’s viewpoint on anything, she can’t spell!” The fact is, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic are the most basic and usually the easiest to find a good curriculum for. So why are so many people having struggles finding something for their children that works? I have two theories.

First, most of us go to this avalanche of materials and try to sift through them all, not really knowing what we are looking for, but trying to find a curriculum that looks like it has everything in it. And we get frustrated and end up with something that may or may not work. Sometimes its the luck of the draw. What we should do is to determine what is needed by the child and whether the curriculum provides it. And second, we assume because our child is in 5th grade for example, that he should be ready for multiplication and division and thrust it upon him when he really may not have had the foundation laid firmly and may not be prepared for multiplication and division.

How do we determine what our child needs in math, for example? Well, because of the graduation requirements in most states, there is a scope and sequence** of math facts that a child must learn. And he must build on his knowledge each year and make at least an average grade in math each year so that he will be able to graduate.

Ideally, you would start your child out in kindergarten and first grade with appropriate math facts and build on those facts with new and more advanced facts each year. Then by the time he is in the 9th grade, he is ready for Algebra.

But what if you don’t know what level your child is on in math. Let’s say he is in the 6th grade and you are not convinced that he understands multiplication, much less fractions and place value. You have a decision to make; what level to place him in so that he actually learns. In math however, if the foundation isn’t firm, if he has not learned the foundational facts like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division…. he will have a very difficult time moving on into fractions and decimals.

What you must do is find and administer a placement test. Several curriculum suppliers offer them, some at a few and some are free. Here are two that are free
Alpha Omega Placement Tests

Math-U-See Placement Tests

Both of these publishers’ placement tests will tell you where your child needs to be in THEIR curriculum, however, just a quick perusal over the curriculum will show you where the child is in the great math scheme of things.

If you had rather forgo the placement testing, a good way to see where your child is and pick up where he is weak, is to use free printable worksheets from online. Start with work that you know he knows how to do. Give him one worksheet per day and have him complete it in a reasonable amount of time. Increase the difficulty of the worksheets daily. You will soon find out where he is struggling. Here is a good place to find progressively difficult worksheets:
Math Drills
The Math Worksheet Site – my favorite
Super-Kids Math Worksheet Creator
Math Fact Cafe

Once you have determined where your child is struggling, you will want to back up from there. For example, if your child is struggling with multiplication, you will want to back up to addition and subtraction facts and work forward again. Give the child some success with worksheets, workbooks and even a math text book and then push forward into multiplication slowly.

Some families like a no-frills math some like lots of color and pictures in the text. You need to know your child and what he needs. My children don’t do well with funny pictures and silly rhymes with their math, it is distracting to them. So we have always used a no-frills math approach. some of the math curriculum we have used with success:
Rod and Staff – Thorough, well done, easily understood and economical. No color pictures, but lots of line drawings. Teachers book, student book and workbook available in grades 1 through 9. Flashcards available as well.

Ray’s Arithmetic – Set of 8 books. First published in the late 1870’s, still a great math program. Economical. You can purchase the whole set or one book at a time. The Parent/Teacher book was written by Dr. Ruth Beechick. This series will carry a child from 1st through about 10th grade but does not include Algebra.

Math-U-See – I really can’t say enough good things about this math curriculum. It is everything that my children need in a math program. It contains clear, concise written explanations, manipulatives and a DVD for each level where Dr. Demme teaches an actual class and is very careful to explain new concepts clearly. You can purchase a teachers book with answers (and solutions for higher math problems), DVD, manipulatives, student book and test book for each level usually for around $100. The really great thing is that by purchasing a new student book you can use this curriculum for subsequent students.

The question I am asked most is, “Do you like Saxon Math?” Well, I have used it for several years in fact and NO, I don’t like it. I am not a math person, I can do it but I am not gifted at explaining it to others. I found Saxon math to be a program where the publisher assumed that a math teacher was using and teaching the program. I also found that the skipping around from concept to concept was distracting for my children. Until they had mastered a concept we needed to stick with it. I prefer a more basic, clear and sequential program.

As I go through all this information, feel free to ask questions or comment.

Next up: Reading and English Programs

**scope and sequence – the overview of everything that is taught in a school year and the order in which it is all taught.

Where do I begin to discuss a topic as huge and diverse as Homeschool Curriculum? I’ll just tell you what I know. After 16 full years of homeschooling I have tried a lot of different brands of curriculum. But first things first. Here are the most important lessons I have learned about curriculum.

There are three areas which you must satisfy in choosing Homeschool Curriculum:
1. Cost.
2. Effectiveness for the children.
3. Ease of use for you, the teacher.

These have been my four constant observations through the years of homeschooling:

1. One curriculum may not meet all the needs of all your children.

2. If you have just one child, you will still probably make some mistakes in choosing curriculum before you find curriculum that works for your child.

3. Your child/children will grow and the brand of curriculum that worked two years ago or more may not work as the child gets older.

4. Homeschooling isn’t cheap.

Now about that last one; I am a frugal person. I want to save money and get the most for my dollar in all things, including curriculum. With homeschooling curriculum you don’t always get what you pay for it…. but that is highly subjective. What is “worth it” to me may not be so to you. You can see that it is essential that you read, read, read about a particular curriculum. Read reviews, look at examples. Take advantage of free samples. Talk to parents who have used the curriculum, join Yahoo Groups and ask lots of questions so that you can satisfy those first three areas I mentioned.

Don’t be discouraged if you buy a curriculum and it doesn’t work. Check your sources and make sure you can return materials if they don’t satisfy you. If you end up with something you can’t return, try to use it and if you just cannot, look for resale opportunities like these:
HomeSchool Buy
Homeschoolers Buyers Co-op
Veg-Source
PaperBack Swap
HSLDA Curriculum Market

Keep your homeschool materials in good condition. Not only is it a good lesson for your children on taking care of their possessions, material in good condition brings a higher price if you decide to resell it.

Different kinds of learning styles will need different kinds of curriculum. You will need to read about learning styles and then determine which kind of learner your child is, then you will need to find out what kind of learner a particular curriculum works best for. Since Learning Styles is a very important part of teaching and many homeschoolers are using that information to teach their children, most curriculum brands address learning styles on their web sites or in their catalogs.

A child’s learning style is how he or she learns the best. The usual styles are:
Visual Learners: Learn from seeing
Auditory Learners: Learn from listening
Tactile/Kinesthetic Learners: Learn through moving, doing and touching

There are lots of ways to find out what kind of learner your child is, and you probably already have an idea of how he or she learns. My favorite resource for this information, and more truly important homeschool information, is the Elijah Catalog Resource Guide. You cannot order books from this catalog, it is out of date in that regard, but the information in it is priceless, or in this case, $5.95.

Knowing your child’s learning style will be of great help to you as you choose curriculum.

If you have more than one child, and if it were a perfect world, you could use one curriculum with all those children all through the years. Sometimes it has worked out for me like that. One example is Learning Language Arts Through Literature. We used this curriculum with all the children until I found something that we liked even better, Rod and Staff.

It was the same way for history in our family. I used to work for hours to get a history curriculum built every semester that I felt was covering everything the children needed to know. Then I found Tapestry Of Grace. I think TOG would have worked nicely for my older children as well but I didn’t find out about it until about 4 years ago.

Because of differing learning styles you will most likely need to have different curriculum for each child or at least use what I call add-ons. Add-ons are hands on activities, extra reading and projects that will help all your learners get the most out of a curriculum. One great add-on that we use quite a bit is called Lap Booking. THIS is my fav Lapbooking site!

Next time I will discuss particular curriculum and our experiences with them in hopes that it will help you make good choices for your children this year!

Homeschool conference audiences love Marcia Somerville’s practical tips for homeschooling with a large family. Marcia is the mother of six children, now ages 18 to 28, all of whom she homeschooled throughout their grade-school lives. All have gone on to do well in college and professional lives, and are joyously walking with the Lord.

Marcia’s message is life-giving. She shares both principles and practical tips for balancing your family and positioning yourself and your children for greatest success. While the salvation of our children belongs to the Lord, we still can do things that give our children the most joyful experience possible in both homeschooling and in the process of becoming Christians. We are not all alike in our seasons or stations in life. Marcia’s tips give you a wide variety of new thoughts on which to draw as you plan for next year’s homeschool year.

Click here to sign up for Tips for Teaching a Housefull.

Are you ready for another year of school? This year begins the Britton household’s 17th year of homeschooling. We began in 1991 with a 3rd grader and a 6th grader. Those little boys are now godly grown men, gainfully employed and a blessing to their Dad and me. Since that time I have managed with God’s grace to educate 3 other children and now have just two at home in 5th and 9th grade. This will be the first year in 17 years that I have only had two students.

When we started homeschooling, I was so apprehensive and not at all convinced that I was capable of teaching my children. There was a lot of good encouraging information available at that time but homeschooling was a relatively new venture in the 20th century and no one really had all the kinks worked out, they just had some experiences and some ideas about how to do it. One of my favorite books at the time was Cathy Duffy’s 100 Top Picks For Homeschool Curriculum: Choosing The Right Curriculum And Approach For Your Child’s Learning Style. It is updated now and still a great resource.

Linda Dobson is a new author for me and I like her book, The Ultimate Book Of Homeschooling Ideas. Its a good resource for any homeschool packed with creative learning ideas for children ages 3-12.

Now if you, like me, find yourself in the strange and wonderful land of homeschooling teens, this is a must have book: Homeschooling: The Teen Years: Your Complete Guide to Successfully Homeschooling the 13- to 18- Year-Old by Cafi Cohen and Janie Levine Hellyer. There is a lot to think about when a homeschooler enters the highschool years. My 4th child just started 9th grade, so I have been down this path several times. College is looming, state laws, credit hours and transcripts are all staring you in the face. This book will help you walk through it correctly.

Some other good books for the high school years are: College-Prep Homeschooling: Your Complete Guide to Homeschooling Through High School by David P. Byers, PhD. and Chandra Byers; Complete Guide to Online High Schools: Distance Learning Options for Teens & Adults by Thomas Nixon and Homeschooler’s Guide to Portfolios and Transcripts by Loretta Heuer.

There are all kinds of books and magazines out there to offer support for the homeschooling parent. My favorite homeschooling magazine is The Old Schoolhouse. I have written for them in years past and have had lots of good interaction with their staff. The editors are all homeschoolers themselves! And they get out there and find out what homeschoolers want. Right now you can get $5 off a subscription to the Old Schoolhouse!

Another great resource for homeschooling books and creative toys of all kinds is Vision Forum. I have bought numerous products from Vision Forum, from little girls hats and dolls, to books about throwing tomahawks to biographies and everything in between. I have never been disappointed in the quality of their products and those products have served us well in our homeschool.

These are just some of the basics of homeschooling. My next article will be about the wild wonderful world of curriculum and how to go about choosing something that your child will be able to truly learn from.