Category Archives: Homeschool

Learning at home with a second-grader and a fifth-grader.

Homeschool

This week in homeschooling: A little bit of Shrek, a little bit of cake

Today marks the end of the first three weeks of our sorta homeschooling year, and things are going pretty well. We start every morning at 9. More of less. Poppy’s classes are meeting on Zoom, so she has to be there at 9. Pete and I have a little more leeway, but we’ve been starting by 9:30 every day. We all take a break at noon and eat lunch together, and that’s reliably one of my favorite parts of the day.

The first two weeks of class at Poppy’s school were in-person orientation for the kids who plan to attend in person, after spending the first six weeks of school entirely online. She’s not one of those kids, so her first two weeks were pretty boring. Classes started in earnest this week, though, so she’s had more work to do. And she’s been happy about that. She’s taking Math 2, Intermediate Art, Intermediate Theater and honors English 2 this year, all from the dining room table. I’m not so involved with her day-to-day, so I can’t tell you exactly what she’s working on right now. I do know that she’s reading “Julius Caesar” for English and that her theater class watched a production of “Shrek: The Musical” today.

Pete and I had a few difficulties during the first week, but we’ve smoothed them out for the most part. I was scheduling breaks here and there, but we found that he does better when he can take breaks when he feels like he needs them. So he has three “tickets” each good for a 5-minute break that he can use throughout the day. He usually takes one 10-minute break at some point. The other thing that made a huge difference should’ve been obvious from the start: Snacks. We now have a snack basket in the room with us, and I keep a cooler with some drinks out there, too.

(And by “out there,” I mean in the studio that is now our schoolroom. The previous owner of our house was a puppeteer who built a small studio in the backyard in which to craft puppets. We are eternally grateful for the space, especially now, even though it may or may not be haunted by puppet spirits. Incidentally, Pete learned in his study of Greek and Latin roots this week that the fear of puppets is called pupaphobia.)

If you’re interested, here’s a bit more about what Pete and I have been doing in his hybrid homeschool year:

Language Arts

Pete likes to start his day with reading, and this week he finished “Allies” by Alan Gratz. This one was all free reading for him, and he said he enjoyed the book. Next week we’ll start doing more in-depth reading with a return to Reed Novel Studies. We’re starting with “Piecing Me Together” by Renee Watson.

We’ve also been doing Spelling Power, English from the Roots Up and Writing Strands daily. That sounds like a lot, I think, but none of the three takes a huge amount of time.

Social Studies

We’re using History Odyssey’s Early Modern curriculum, and this week we learned that the Thirty Years War was brutal. We’re still reading the recommended text, but we’re supplementing it with Crash Course History videos when we can because the text is really dry.

Math & science

Pete is taking math and science through our local school system. The courses are asynchronous, which means there isn’t a designated meeting time for instruction.

Math and science both run through the local school system and are pretty similar. Pete watches some instructional videos and works through some questions before taking a quiz. The science curriculum has been a little more interesting than math, because the teacher has assigned some hands-on stuff. The same teacher facilitates both classes, but the instructional videos are recorded by different people. Pete calls one of the math guy Frank, but I don’t think he’s named the science guy yet.

Coding

The coding class is taught by someone at an undisclosed location, and Pete hasn’t been terribly happy with it. It’s also part of the school system’s virtual academy, but it’s not taught by someone in our district. We don’t know exactly where she’s based. The class is mostly just text on the screen, and there isn’t much explanation for why a particular piece of code does or doesn’t work. I haven’t been terribly impressed with it, and Pete finds it frustrating. The good news is that it’s a one-semester course, so at least he only has a few months of it.

Cooking

We’re doing a Kitchen Lab once a week, using the Young Chefs Club boxes from America’s Test Kitchen. The first recipe we made was for Cloud Eggs — basically an egg yolk baked on top of a meringue. It was pretty but tasted not-so-great. Today we made a Magical Chocolate Flan Cake. I’m hoping it’s better than the eggs were. It has to chill for at least 8 hours, so it’ll be tomorrow before we know for sure.

Homeschool

What seventh grade and tenth grade look like at our house

This time last year I was filled up with angst because Poppy was about to go to public school for the first time. She was going into ninth grade after being homeschooled from kindergarten through eighth, and I was worried.

Turns out I had no need for concern. About that, anyway. She did really well in all of her classes, she made friends, and she loved being there.

And then in March everybody was at home again.

Poppy and Pete finished out their school years with remote learning. Poppy did fine with it. Pete had a harder time with it. But the year ended, and then we spent the summer cocooned at home as much as possible, trying not to worry too much about what the fall would bring.

And then suddenly the time for worrying about the fall was upon us. Would school return as usual? (No.) Would we feel safe sending the kids to school in any format? (No.) Should we just homeschool everyone again? (No.)

In our area, school is most definitely not returning as usual. Everyone is going to be doing remote learning to start, and then some grades are going to alternate one week in the classroom with one week online while the high school students are going to be exclusively remote.

So Poppy didn’t have much of a choice about her year, other than Homeschool or Not Homeschool. She opted for Not Homeschool, so she’ll be enrolled in the same school she was in last year. But she’ll doing it all from the dining room table. She’s not particularly pleased about it, but she was happy to find that she has classes with friends. She’s taking:

  • English II (honors)
  • AP World History
  • Math II
  • Biology
  • Spanish
  • Intermediate Theater
  • Digital Design & Animation
  • Intermediate Art

    • As for Pete, we don’t feel safe with the alternating-weeks plan and evidence from the end of last year would suggest that he wouldn’t fare well in an all-remote environment. So we’re going to do a homeschool / remote learning hybrid. Our school district has had a “virtual academy” option for several years, and last year they opened it up to homeschoolers as well. He’s basically dual-enrolled as a homeschooler and a public schooler. Here’s what he’ll be doing:

    Social Studies

    We’re using History Odyssey’s Early Modern curriculum.

    Language Arts

    We’re going to use Spelling Power, English from the Roots Up and a bunch of literature studies. We might incorporate Writing Strands, too. I haven’t decided yet.

    PE

    I don’t have a set curriculum for PE. It’s probably going to look like a daily family walk or exercise-based video game time.

    Virtual Academy

    I am extremely happy to tell you that Pete is going to take math, science, coding and art through the virtual academy. Coding and art are one-semester electives, so he’ll have coding the first semester and art the second.

    I feel pretty good about the plan we’ve made for our household. It’s going to be a strange school year for everyone, and I don’t think any choice is the right one. We’re all being forced to compromise, and I think we’re all making what we believe to be the best decisions for our kids.

    blessings, Current events, Domestic Blitz, Family matters, Homeschool

    It only took me three days to cry

    I feel like I’ve been holding it together pretty well through this. I’m worried, of course, but I’m trying to take it day-by-day and not panic. I did break down a bit this morning, thinking about far-flung family members and wondering when I’ll be able to see them again. Honestly, it was whether I would see them again, because I am dramatic and I’ve read to much post-apocalyptic fiction.

    But! My mood improved, and there were some Good Things. Such as:

    Good things

  • Driving around with Poppy
  • A relatively smooth start to virtual schooling.
  • Poppy attending a tae kwon do class through Zoom.

    • Virtual school days

    The school district officially launched their Virtual Days today! Pete had forgotten to add a few of his classes to Google classroom, and one of his classes had an audio meeting that we weren’t prepared to join. He popped in at the last minute. We had a couple of other bumps that were partially technology and partially emotional, but overall the day went OK.

    A tour of local Target parking lots

    Oh the things that are qualifying as entertainment. We ran out of printer paper, so I ordered some for curbside pickup from Target. Except when I got to Target, they said “Oh no, you ordered from the other Target!” So Poppy and I drove to the other Target, which had our order. But on the way there we got a text saying our order was ready at the first Target! Mayhem! At least we got to drive around a bit.

    Quarantine eats

    We had a ridiculously luxurious dinner this evening. Delicious as it was, I wish that circumstances hadn’t made it possible. The restaurant where my sister-in-law works had to close because of the virus, and they cleared out all the food and sent it home with the employees. She brought us ribeye burgers, steaks, bacon, Lion’s Mane mushrooms, Brussels sprouts and purple potato gratin. I grilled the steaks and burgers, sauteed the mushrooms with shallots and garlic and warmed the gratin in the oven. We’ll be back to standard fare tomorrow.