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Starting Home School
Yep, we decided to completely swap to homeschool, we got our curriculum (we got extra!) and we are ready. What we learned quickly was the same as the old adage about too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the soup or whatever that saying is… both my husband and I teaching the same subject to one child that is 2e leads to lots of tears and confusion. So our first try lasted less than a week. I had read the instructions, participated in every group I could find that matched, searched information, and subscribed to sites…. my husband also was searching and was finding so many interesting things to go with too. Two sets of instructions didn’t go well, so we finally got it worked out and coordinated behind the scenes. One teacher and two planners….
We are now a few weeks into it and still run into days that are frustrating. Our public school had to close for a few days to re-evaluate after two days of being open which just made us feel better about our choices, but it didn’t make my son feel any less isolated. He’s doing great with the school work and we are really finding some cool things to work on. We have the same book that the school uses, but we ended up going with the Life of Fred series that my son loves! We are at the pre-algebra level and the first book tied it to physics, calculating the forces needed to move a safe down a hallway to start. The book ties the math completely to the real world using a story to make it exciting and then adds sections that are ‘Your turn to play’. My little one likes math anyway, so the way Life of Fred is written made it hard to get him to stop math for the day and move on.
The books that are included with the curriculum are below his reading level and have some activities that may be more ‘busy work’, so we are trying to figure out a better plan to deal with that. We’ve also decided to tie in some lesson plans to look at the election. The presidential election only happens every 4 years and has so many parts that it’s really good to look at what’s going on as we can see everything in action.
At one point for social studies (Egypt and Mesopotamia) my husband even worked out an archeological dig in our back yard. We’ve now done a few field trips that involved hiking in the woods by our house and also going to a local state park to collect items for science.
We did move a desk down to use for homeschooling, I was hoping it would free up our kitchen table for us to eat and not have to clean up schoolwork each meal…. but what really happened is the desk became a storage spot and the table is still the spot to do schoolwork. – And every meal everything has to be moved. We are slowly getting there though.
Homeschooling: Choosing a Curriculum for our 2e
We’ve enriched in the past, but this is our first year completely homeschooling. Choosing a curriculum resulted in us changing our mind several times. At first we bought a set of textbooks for each subject in the correct grade level. We could just make our own. I joined Facebook groups that were full of advice! We definitely wanted to stick with secular curriculum. I picked a set of books that seemed to fit well for topics that are going on now in the world, reading level, and grade level. Besides ELA, Math, Science, Social Studies, PE and Art. We added Coding and Spanish.
I AM MAHALA
Fahrenheit 451
I Will Always Write Back
Tom Sawyer
To Kill A Mocking Bird
Debating how to make sure we were meeting all the common core standards, we decided to add the website IXL. IXL sticks with the standards, making it a little easier to make sure we don’t miss anything. After adding IXL and receiving all the books I tried to line everything up…. but ugh! The Facebook groups are great for curriculum discussions also. Our local school district was still saying they were going back 100 percent in person with no online option.
One of my favorite Facebook homeschooling groups is Secular, Eclectic, Academic (SEA) Homeschoolers group. Curriculum recently has been a popular discussion. Moving Beyond the Page was one that looked good to me. Moving Beyond the Page is a complete homeschool curriculum for creative, hands-on, and gifted learners.
We decided to go with the Moving Beyond the Page (11 to 13) set for this year. The year is broken into two semesters with five units each semesters. Our first class day will start with ELA (The Pearl), Science (The Hydrosphere), and Social Studies (Egypt and Mesopotamia). For math we added the Life of Fred – which isn’t necessarily listed as secular, but we are going to give it a try.
We also have Tynker, Brainpop, and a few other subscriptions to enjoy! I’ve pulled out our old chemistry sets to go with and we are looking at Mel Physics right now. Time to start home school Monday!
Common Core? It’s probably not what you think it is….
With the new rush to homeschool I see people planning to homeschool that are in a rush to take a break from public school only for the Covid virus with plans to return. The comment I keep seeing is that they are want to do everything like school but they are not going to do common core because they just can’t do math like that….
Common Core was developed for schools to set a standard for subjects like Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, and Math in order to make it easy for students to transfer from one school to another having studied the same general lessons at the same time – so for example… 6th grade in science here in Illinois is following NGSS common core and will be learning about understanding cells as one of their lessons.
Any parent that wants to be able to transfer back to public school at the end of Covid Homeschooling should be aware of the standards for the subjects and grades that they are covering. Including more material is great! One misconception though is common core math. Common core math is simply the standards, but one of the things that changed with common core was for students concentrating on understanding numbers and operations as opposed to rote memorization of facts. By teaching an understanding of mathematics, by the time students reach high school, they should be able to grasp higher math concepts easier as well as scientific methods.
I know at our house we have trouble with the questions that involve estimating…. The questions always give numbers and then ask us to estimate. It’s not here’s a container that is this size filled with marbles, estimate how many marbles are in it. It’s instead, you have 100 people buying 12 tickets each, estimate how many tickets are bought? They want and answer like 1,000 but we always come up with 1,200 because seriously, we have the numbers! So for us that has always been our issue with common core math standards and assignments. I do understand what is being asked, but the way of going about it isn’t exactly the best way in us….
What I see most people object to though is the fact that numbers are disassembled. Addition like 13 + 7 is the same as 10 + 3 + 7. What’s funny is that some of us do that mentally and don’t even think about it. To me 3 +7 is 10. So as soon as I see the 3 and the 7, I take the 10 off and pair the 3 and 7 to get a 10 and I’ve got 20. If it was 33 + 7, I’d do the same sort of thing but it would be 30 + 3 + 7 giving me 40. That’s all they really are doing with common core. It just looks like a lot because to start with they write every step out. This is similar to telling little kids how to do just about anything. First you open the package… No there is a zipper type opening, don’t cut it, now take out just want you want… Wait put the package back in the fridge, don’t leave it on the counter. And step by step it goes. So yes, that’s where common core math goes. You can teach memorization, but the steps that students would learn early will have to get added at sometime.
Planning Curriculum
I just saw in an email that curriculum materials are the new toilet paper… Luckily we had started early. No matter what we do though I’ll second guess my decisions. We know we definitely want something secular, and we were hoping to follow the common core standards to be sure we cover everything. Sticking with, but adding to the current school year plan.
I had went onto Amazon and searched each of the topics I wanted to cover and then ordered a textbook for that subject and our grade level. I added books that had great reviews that looked good for resources. We had also gotten the common core standards for each subject from IXL. Our mistake we found was the textbooks turned out to be from before common core. They didn’t follow the requirements. We had hoped to stick with the common core standards to make sure and not miss anything important and to leave the option to return to public school when it becomes safe.
So far I’ve ordered a list of books that included the older textbooks, some additional workbooks that had great reviews, and some online resources. We had already signed up for Brainpop, quizlet, tynker and Mangahigh. I’ve now added IXL, Scholastics Science and Math magazine subscriptions (with the teacher online components), Newsela (the free log in so far), Medium (not sure if I will keep it), and I may add more.
For subjects, we made sure to look at Social Studies, Math, ELA (Reading, Writing, and Vocabulary), Science, and I added Spanish and Computer Coding. I’m still looking at what to include for art and PE. I have a subscription to Craftsy for myself, so I may use some of those classes for art. Finally for PE, I think we can pick sports this year and look at how they are played and also look at some health and healthy eating topics.
I’m currently using chalk to plan out our schedule. Our goal is to record everything we can to be sure to document everything we do. We are debating how to evaluate progress, but we are hoping the IXL subscription will help with that.
No Distance Learning Available?
Our school came out with a draft plan and it doesn’t include distance learning. The school mentioned possibly including distance learning for students that are home bound for medical reasons, but that lets out a lot of families. Most families are torn on going back to school. I know our family really wants the social and believe me I’d love to have the ‘free’ time each day, BUT I also worry about the virus and the lack of social distancing with our school planning to have all the students go back full time.
We do like our current school, though I have to admit as an older parent we do seem to have a completely different mindset from a lot of the other parents. That being said, I just can’t risk my child going to school, when it seems even getting takeout is a huge risk right now.
So the planning begins! For us, I’ve started joining homeschool groups on Facebook, though I’ve always kept up on the information in the past. I’m also still following the news from our local school district just in case something changes. If they were to offer virtual as an option we would quickly pivot. I also have though about any letter ‘withdrawing’ stating that we would like to include part time services of any remote activities that the school offers. Our state does include include in their plans that homeschool parents can request to be included in the local school part time. They included that for sports and driver ed, but I’d love to use it to my advantage.
I’ve also went on Amazon and ordered the books for each of the classes that I though we needed for our grade level, checking each review along the way. I included: ela, vocabulary, writing, social studies, science and math. I also ordered a few workbooks to go with as well as some hands on activity books that included geography. I’d love to get started planning out the first couple weeks. I’ve also gone on IXL to pull up the standards for each topic, for us 6th grade level and I’m creating a planning board in Trello to make sure I don’t miss anything.
Once I have my first week planned out I’ll share it.
Puzzle and Visual Skills
Growing up my family did a lot of puzzles. There was always a puzzle on a card table sitting out in a room that we could drop past and spend a few minutes or several minutes to give it some time putting it together. Recently a friend posted a puzzle board that had drawers on each side and a couple edges, so I was excited to get one ordered. I can keep it on the coffee table and move it off when I want to use the table. I somehow thought the whole family would get excited to join in. So far I’ve completed one puzzle and I’m still by myself…. and my skill have gotten rusty. I feel like I need to practice a lot more.
Working with a puzzle I think helped me develop better skills for processing images in my mind. By high school I enjoyed taking notes writing backwards. I never completely understood that others couldn’t write backwards – Even now I don’t completely understand how it could possibly be difficult to see backward writing and have a hard time reading it. Looking at the letters A P backwards and forwards is just as easy to recognize.
Over time I’ve gotten a little out of practice, but I still enjoy writing backwards when I have a chance.
About Me
I am a SAHM/WAHM of three boys ranging in age from 16 to 32. We are working on saving enough for college at the same time as dealing with school and our older independent kids. I author a few blogs, including http://teched4kids.com. I have in the past taught computer information technology classes for the local university and taught workshops for kid's in technology education besides being the Kentucky State FIRST LEGO League Championship Coordinator from 2005 to 2008. I now work as a computer consultant, run a handmade home business, and am available for workshops. Life here is always an adventure!
