Category Archives: Homeschooling

A log of activities and happenings.

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Schooling Continues

I have a passel of pictures to upload once pictures are working again, but for now I wanted to say our approach to Kindergarten has morphed a few times now.

I’m glad I haven’t been saying each thing as we were doing it, but to recap, we began with the intent of hammering out the “3 Rs” during Nap-time so that it would be just me and Natasha, and got over with quickly so we could return to “regular life.”

The difficulty with that was we were neither of us in our best mental state during nap-time, and making school just the school work was too stark for Natasha.

So we’ve shifted to doing school in the morning, and we’re doing games during “school time.”

The kids have to be dressed before 9 a.m., but can play however they like until 9, when “Performance Today” starts on NPR.  I don’t usually have the radio going during the day (I like better the control the iPod offers) but so far I like the classical music (with the commentary/introductions) for the backdrop of our working time.

I have the younger two go off and play by themselves (all my children are *very* good at this) and we alternate the reluctant writer with games and other elements of learning that I’ve been given or am collecting from my reading.

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Not Ready to Go Away

School started today all across the district, so yesterday I told Natasha she’d be starting too.

This seemed to bother her quite a bit, and she said she wasn’t ready and didn’t really want to start Kindergarten.  She was so (quietly) intense about it, I was ready to say, You’re only 5, we can wait, before I got her talking more.

“I’m not ready to be away from you all day,” she said.  “I’m not big enough.”  Poor baby thought I was going to send her away to school (and with only one-day’s notice)!  I reassured her that I agreed she was too young to be gone, and that’s why we were homeschooling.

So we sat on the porch in the sunshine during nap yesterday and talked about what we would be studying today.

Today she excitedly told the mother of a friend that she was starting school today, and the fear seemed gone.  She wasn’t really interested in knuckling down to actual work when it was time (Can we play a game together first?) but since we’re doing such a focused (limited) time of work already, I didn’t feel a need (not yet anyway) to break up our school time with games.

So we had some “calendar time” where we practiced dates and the pattern of weeks; then I set a 15-minute timer and she worked on her letter tracers while I hand-wrote with her at the table, on a scene for my novel; then I had her pick which type of reading she wanted to do today and she chose to read aloud two stories from her sister’s “Beginner’s Bible.”

She wanted a nap after that (she ‘d been complaining of a tummy ache much of the morning) and now with all of them asleep after 3, I’m stuck again in my “mother’s quandary” of needing to actually wake a quiet house…so they’ll be ready to sleep at bedtime.

*sigh*

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Trying again to say this (Homeschooling from scratch)

I don’t want anyone to worry about my children’s education.

That said, I’m not very good at expressing myself when I attempt to dispel concerns.

Last Sunday a retired teacher noted the rapidly approaching school year and said, “I bet you’re really busy planning now!”

Did I say, “I began researching in January, stopped buying materials in March and simplified my curriculum in July”?

No.

I told this career K-2 teacher that no, I wasn’t in the midst of planning, that I was only going to focus on reading, writing and arithmetic (feeling that’s plenty for a 5-year-old), and as Natasha can already read and we do other activities together already, “school” wasn’t going to look much different than life right now.

I know this lady trusts me, but I bet you a nickel she’s trying really hard not to worry right now.

I love the books I collected for teaching, but the reality is that at this point they are more for my comfort and enjoyment than to apply on my own child (just yet).

Tomorrow I will be attending a meeting for “independent homeschoolers,” a group defined mostly by it’s members’ choice to homeschool apart from state aid or direction.

I’ve been asked by a number of people (usually more than once!) why I’m not “taking advantage” of all the “great programs” that are designed to “give me money” to “do whatever [I] want.”

The easiest out is the one my mom suggested  yesterday: it’s genetic.

Mom taught (and I learned) out of a random-yet-comprehensive collection of books salvaged from the school district’s annual text-dump (that, unfortunately, it doesn’t do any more).

My one experience with a structured curriculum, with daily assignments and a set amount to get through in a year was Calvert.  Two years actually: 4th and 6th, if I remember right.  I hated it and hope I would never do that to my children.  There was just this unmitigated *weight* of never being done.  Ever.  It just dragged on and it was impossible to get ahead.

And I thought it was horribly wasteful– you couldn’t use the curriculum or any of the books from one kid to the next (I’d never have the pleasure of watching my little brother re-live my misery) but had to re-buy the whole set for the next kid.

Anyway, I’ve been told there are other experiences to be had, but  as the mom/teacher, I’m going to stick for now with what I enjoy.  And that means playing at school before I need to, in order to prove to myself and anybody who cares that I can do this without someone “official” hanging over me.

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Kindergarten Curriculum Compiled

Well, after Saturday’s hunting trip through the bookstore, I have everything I could possibly need for our home curriculum‘s areas of focus.

Very specific things like the three grade-level artists and scientists will need to be supplemented by the library, but everything else is well-covered by what I’ve collected at Forget-Me-Not Books. ($.25-$1 per book)

  • Art
    • Drawing with Children
  • Health/Manners
    • Health, Safety, and Manners (From the A Beka Health series)
  • Language Arts
    • *Gobs* of read-alouds covering all subjects
    • The Reading Teacher’s Books of lists (original edition)
    • Untangling Some Knots in K-8 Writing Instruction
    • Stories, songs and Poetry to teach Reading and Writing
    • Games for Writing*
    • A Celebration of Literature and Response (K-8)
      • it maybe more for me than her, it still looks really interesting
  • Mathematics

    • Saxon Math K
      • A big, fat book that is a year’s worth of lesson plans, with activity sheets to copy in the back.
      • It seems to have a good ratio/emphasis on hands-on learning
    • Linking Mathematics and Language
      • Now doesn’t that sound like the perfect book for me?
    • Maths on Display (activities for ages 5-8)
  • Music
  • Physical Education
    • Not using a book
  • Science
    • Building structures with young children
    • *Gobs* of non-fiction read-alouds (covers the life-science basics)
    • Sense-able Science (integrating math and science in activities exploring the senses)
    • 2nd volume of a teacher’s edition Kindergarten science text. Covers basics of Physical Science in an outline/activity format.
  • Social Studies/History
    • Read-alouds about other times
    • Folktales– to talk about social responsibility, interaction and consequences.
  • Religion
    • Family bible* version: ESV. It’s what we memorize from (or are beginning now, as a shift from our hodge-podge till recently).
      • It’s what Jay reads, and what they’ve started using in this latest Sunday School class at church
      • We read bible stories/storybooks too, it’s just we wanted to settle on one version to read “straight” from so the memorization that happens without trying (I’m convinced this is where the majority of my memorization comes from) can begin to take root.
      • (Though I still prefer the Holman for my personal bible-reading/study, I like the ESV well enough I don’t feel like I’m competing.)
    • Navigators Topical Memory System* for now
    • Hero Tales*– trues stories from the lives of Christian heroes (Found Volume 1 at Guliver’s, and if we like the format we’ll probably continue with the later volumes.)

(*) marks things we didn’t buy at Forget-Me-Not. Not a whole lot.

Naturally some of the read-alouds (what I’m calling picture books that are “consumable” in a single sitting) came from sources other than F-M-N, but some did, so I didn’t note (*) those separately.

I feel compelled to speak the acknowledgment that I don’t expect to use all these book in their entirety in Natasha’s first year. But they all are books that begin to be applicable at this age, so I’m including them in my list.

The completeness of this list, from as random a source as a used-book store, is what I find so delightful and exciting about it all:

I am no longer “scrambling” or wondering what we will do when we knuckle down. And having more than I need, rather than less, is a very reassuring way to start.

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Natasha’s Kindergarten

I’ve gone through the FNSBSD “Curriculum Guide for Parents” and compared objectives for K and 1st grade, making a new set of objectives based on where NJ is currently at (she *so* has K Language Arts smoked. And half of 1st-grade’s, I’d say.)

Under this new organizing the only things she is doing exclusively at the the guide’s kindergarten level are Art and Science.

Each grade has a theme for art and a trio of artists loosely based on that theme.

e.g. Kindergarteners focus on self-portraits, and they “study” Van Gogh, I suppose because he had a famous one. Not too closely I hope. His is far from a G-rated story.

Three scientists are listed for each year, also.

Anyway, for this year at least, we’ll try to match these that her cousin will (in theory) also be learning since they’re the same year in school.

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All the Kids are Sick Today

Melody’s fever seemed to break last night, but she’s still coughing and emotional/clingy today, along with other symptoms.

Elisha has a low fever and isn’t keeping anything down.  We keep feeding and watering him “against orders” because Jay figures if the boy’s going to be throwing-up anyway we might as well make it less painful.

This is a new symptom that we hope doesn’t mean he’s got a different virus. We really don’t want a whole other round rotating through the kids.

Natasha registered a mouth temp of 104 when we took it this morning, but the Ibuprofen seemed to manage it and she’s almost normal again.

It’s interesting how she and Melody seem to feel fevers differently. Melody feels cold and shivery, wanting snuggled, while Natasha was irritable and hot, kicking off the blankets and complaining.

She, too, wanted Mother near, but not particularly to snuggle.

Elisha fell asleep again partway through the morning and while he was resting the girls and I got to play some memory (from some of these printed cards I pasted on purple cardstock) and started teaching them how to remember by cumulatively reviewing after each pair was turned over.

It was challenging at first, because the first 10 or so cards were all different. But that turned out to be a good thing once we started turning over duplicates, because everyone remembered where the matches were.

We didn’t keep score and we helped each other with what we were close to. So it was a neat time.

It was devolved by necessity after Elisha woke up. He’s getting better about not messing up games on-purpose, but now he’ll try to play and confuse things that way (the larger cards cover so much ground it’s easy to mess them up once they’re about half paired-off).

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A couple advantages of living near a “real” school.

So we really started school today, complete with a visit to the school library and playing on the playground.

I don’t know how we got away with this last one except it was so warm today we none of us wanted to stay inside, and then my impulsive self said, Why just go around the loop when we could go down the street to the school and play on the playground?

Which, of course, the children heartily seconded.

Elisha learned that he still could move in all his gear if he really wanted to (he had been abnormally passive last night’s and today’s walks sitting in the sled without reaction or attempts to escape).

Once I encouraged him a bit he was all over that equipment and I had the normal mom-dilemma of needing to decide who to “spot.”

~ ~ ~

After not-nearly-enough playing (I was getting antsy with nap-time growing closer and with Melody being sick– though she wasn’t coughing any more), I insisted we go in to visit the library, thinking that, if the administration was willing to share even if we weren’t enrolled, this close library would be an awesome alternate to the drive across town.

I hadn’t brought any ID, so I don’t know what I was thinking, really, but I probably had this vague hope the librarian I used to work for would still be there and I wouldn’t need ID.

Well, I found out today she retired two years ago (oops, I’m behind), but her replacement was a woman I met three years ago and she still knew how to spell my name (!). So I’m in.

It’s a delightful little place with a reasonable variety of books including lots of early readers which is good for where we’re at, but also full of derivative drivel for that level (any suggestions for good ways to say *NO* to the drivel?) .

We brought home some books from there today.

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Beginning Homeschooling

So I did my first “concurrent” lessons today.

One thing I’ve wondered as I think/plan for this new job (homeschooling) is how I will prepare different things for different needs.

While the girls were napping today I read some more of a homeschooling book and took a couple ideas from there to make some “Language Arts” games.

Natasha has fabulous sight-reading skills, so I used some 3×5 cards to write some sentence components. I woke her up “early” from her nap to practice making sentences.

One word to a card, things like “My name is Natasha.” And a couple punctuation and Capital-opening cards.

Each name in the family was on a card, along with Thorin, and a half-dozen cousins. And the words “cat” and “cousin.”

We probably spent 20 minutes building sentences with exchangeable parts like, “Abby is my cousin.” and “Elisha is a boy.” We did lots of sillies too, and included the card “not” in its proper place.

When Melody got up I had a “game” waiting for her too.

I’ve noticed recently she doesn’t have all her letters memorized, and (again following a suggestion from the book) I made little “matching cards.”

I cut some 3x5s in half and made five each of B,b,M, and m.

The idea is to help her recognize letters that are not at all alike, and gradually introduce letters that are more similar when she’s ready for finer distinctions.

She adored the matching and sorting and pairing (big with the babies). Took it with her to show Grandma, even. Natasha brought hers too, but she had forgotten to put the “not” in the game-bag, so the sentences weren’t as fun as they had been earlier.

This evening I printed off some nicely illustrated sight-word lists to go over with Natasha.

We did the first four pages before bedtime story, and she was surprisingly eager, considering they’re just *random* words, but I guess when you’re doing well at something that’s its own motivation to continue.

She got more than half right on the first go.

Currently I’m vaguely concerned about her reading orientation, and don’t know if this is something to look at “early intervention” on, or just let it “work itself out.”

I wonder if she could be dyslexic or else just not trained enough to focus first on the first letter. The wh-words she “sight-read” as th-words (where became there, when was then), and no came out as on.

Natasha also “read” us a (very long) story right after dinner. She went without a pause and I finally gave up on trying to transcribe, because I couldn’t keep up enough for it to be coherent. I just have this opening. (She was reading from a book where the pictures of animals and birds are made of numbers):

Once upon a time in a land no one had ever seen a farmer named Bill Dutson went out to his garden….”That must be a bird who can find easily where numbers belong.” [farmer speaking after seeing a bird made of numbers]
1-9-9-3-6-4-7—

Ah! That wasn’t the proper way!

Boy, he had never seen such things, but he knew a duck should never see such a thing.

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Homeschooling in Alaska

Dude. I am going with Option 1. (PDF)

Talk about simplifying my life.

I found some more teaching materials yesterday (reference and textbooks were half-off at Forget-Me-Not this week). Just went through that and what I’ve already collected, organizing them into an Excel sheet so I can find and keep track of what I’ve got and what I need.

Woefully short on anything math-related, but that’s okay, considering that what I want won’t be in the used book stores I’ve been collecting from. I’m very excited about the things I do have, and 60% ready to make my own curriculum rather than go with a premade pack.

The reason for this is mainly the hugeness of choosing a curriculum.

There are *so* many options I get frozen up, whereas the 1-3 books I’ve collected on a subject I brought home because I *loved* already.

My “next step” is to find a way to compare the actual content of a Kindergarten year and a 1st-grade year, to decide which Natasha should be doing.

I’ve reserved two books at the library to help with that.