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Homeschool

This week in homeschooling: A Q&A at soccer practice

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Homeschooling at ButterscotchSundae.com

“My wife and I have been talking about that,” said the dad at soccer practice. “So how do you do it? Do the kids have to take a test every year or anything?”

People frequently have questions when they learn that we homeschool. Every now and then they’re a little judgey, but for the most part they’re just curious. I’m usually happy to answer to the best of my ability, even if the questioner is just being snarky.

The “have to” stuff is pretty easy to answer. Our state doesn’t have the most draconian standards for homeschoolers, but there are a few rules to follow. Yes, I told him, homeschoolers do have to take an annual standardized test here; Poppy and Pete did theirs just this week. We also have to register our homeschool with the state, we have to operate on a regular schedule during at least nine months out of the year, and we’re required to keep attendance records on file. Our state also encourages — the state emphasizes that word on their website — homeschoolers to, among other things:

  • Offer instruction that is similar in quality, scope and duration to local schools. I haven’t spied on our local schools to see what they’re doing, but I think we’re doing fine on this one.

  • Do at least five hours of instruction with the students every school day. Maybe once they’re in higher grades, but we’re definitely not sitting down with the schoolwork for five hours a day right now.

  • Log 180 days of school every year. We do this, mainly because the kids and I like having a goal.

  • Keep a daily record throughout the school year detailing the time and information covered for every subject, every day. I’m really, really glad this one’s just a suggestion. Ahem.

    • The “how to homeschool in general” question is always trickier for me to answer, because there are roughly 1 billion ways to homeschool. You can get a curriculum-in-a-box or do school online. Unschooling, Charlotte Mason and Classical Education are all popular. Or you can take aspects of lots of different curricula and philosophies and cobble together what works for you, which is what we do.

    Here’s a bit of what we did this week:

    Language Arts

    Pete is making good progress in “All About Spelling,” and depending on the day he’s either enjoying or enduring “First Language Lessons, Volume 2.”

    Poppy started the “Wordly Wise 3000” vocabulary program after finishing her spelling book a few weeks ago, and she’s working her way toward the end of “Growing with Grammar: Level Three.”

    Math

    The woman who administered the kids’ testing this week had some suggestions for us on the math front.

    Poppy isn’t behind, but she’s ahead of grade level in everything else and just at grade level in math. The test administrator said RightStart Math would be a good fit for her. We only have a month or so of school left this year, so I’m not switching it up just yet. Poppy will be trying it next year, though.

    Regarding Pete, she said he ought to be doing more challenging work. I gave him the next two end-of-unit tests in his McRuffy book, and he only missed two out of the combined 30-plus problems. So we’re accelerating his progress a bit. He’ll be skipping the rest of the current unit altogether, and we’re going to skip lessons here and there in the next unit.

    Reading

    Poppy’s reading speed is off the charts, but her reading comprehension isn’t as strong. I know where she’s coming from on that front. We’ll probably both be well-served by the reading comprehension book I ordered for her.

    In read-aloud news: We’re still reading “The Mysterious Benedict Society” by Trenton Lee Stewart, and I still don’t love it. This kids do, though.

    Extracurricular
  • Pete tests for his yellow belt at tae kwon do tonight!

  • Our homeschool co-op has a Field Day every spring. This is the first year that we’ve been able to go, and the kids loved it. There was a soccer skills challenge, a long-jump station that turned into a high-jump station, a sack race and a hula-hooping station, and there were a couple of different relay races. The most popular “event” seemed to be rolling down the giant hill next to the field, though.

    • The test administrator — a former elementary school teacher who homeschooled her five children — said we might consider committing four days a week to our core schoolwork and using the fifth day to do things like nature walks, projects or field trips. I like that idea a lot, and I think we’re going to incorporate it next year.

    How was your week?

    Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!

    Homeschool

    In which we study “Great American Artists” at homeschool co-op

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    We’ve been attending our homeschool co-op since 2011, and I’ve taught or assisted in a class during every session since. Like so:

  • Fall 2011: Co-taught Outdoor Games and assisted in the History of Video Games.
  • Spring 2012: Taught “Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Other Things That Go.”
  • Fall 2012: Assisted in “Story of the World” history and Clay Exploration.
  • Spring 2013: Taught “Superheroes 101.”
  • Fall 2013: Co-taught a baking class.

    Which is as it should be, considering that it’s a “cooperative” learning environment. Five of those previous classes were rambunctious, though, and at the end of the last session I was ready for a break. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to teach anything in the spring session.

    Then the time to enter classes into the system arrived, and there weren’t enough classes to go around. So I tried to think of something that would be the very easy-peasiest thing for me to do. That’s when I remembered that MaryAnn Kohl’s “Great American Artists for Kids” was sitting on my bookshelf. And that’s how we added this to my homeschool co-op curriculum vitae:

  • Spring 2014: Teaching “Great American Artists.”
    John Singleton Copley's "Watson and the Shark"
    John Singleton Copley’s “Watson and the Shark”

    Yesterday was the second co-op day for the spring, and I can say without a doubt that this has been my least stressful co-op experience so far. There are four 9- to 12-year-old girls in my class, and using Kohl’s book means all I have to do is gather the supplies and hand them over because the research part is already done.

    I was very impressed with the kids’ work this week, and I thought you might like to see it. In fact, I’ll be sharing the results of our art class with you over the next 8 or so weeks. Let’s go!

    John Singleton Copley & narrative drama.

    Last week we started talking about John Singleton Copley. Copley was a well-regarded portraitist in his day, but the painting we focused on is what Kohl calls a “narrative drama,” or a picture that tells a story. “Watson and the Shark” is based on a shark attack that took place in 1749 in Havana. Fourteen-year-old Brook Watson was swimming in the harbor when the shark attacked him. It took three attempts to rescue him, and he lost a leg in the attack. He went on to become the mayor of London. Way to bounce back, Watson!

    Anyway, we watched a National Gallery of Art video about “Watson and the Shark” and then did some brainstorming to think of thrilling tales that the kids could illustrate. They declined to use the ideas my fellow teacher and I offered up — bear attacks! volcanic eruptions! a bear fighting a volcano! — instead choosing to use a favorite book or their own imaginations for inspiration. They spent the rest of last week’s class sketching their exciting scenes, and yesterday they finished their sketches and added color using oil pastel crayons.

    Four works in the style of John Singleton Copley

    I think they did a bang-up job.

    (Please send me any and all of our own narrative paintings, especially if they feature bears and volcanos.)

    • Homeschool

    What do homeschoolers do all day?

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    I thought I’d change our (kind of, when I remember to write it) weekly homeschooling update up a little this week. Instead of writing about individual subjects, I tried to jot down a bit about what we did every day. This is by no means an all-inclusive accounting. That would be far too tedious for all of us.

    Monday

    It was a very grey, very rainy Monday, and we didn’t get started on schoolwork right away. Once everyone was finally breakfasted, dressed and ready to go, we gathered at the dining room table, where Poppy worked on her grammar and Pete and I reviewed some phonograms. He’s mastered all of them but one; that tricky Y makes lots of sounds. Then we moved on to Pete’s grammar. He’s nearing the end of level one of “First Language Lessons,” and I’m trying to decide whether to order level two or to look for something else for him.

    The Imperator, upon which Nichole great-grandfather came to the United States. Alex Duncan photo, courtesy EllisIsland.org.
    The Imperator. Alex Duncan photo, courtesy EllisIsland.org.

    Next Pete tackled his math, which was a quick worksheet on addition and skip-counting, and I sat with Poppy while she practiced her piano. We met up again on the couch to read this week’s history lesson about immigration to America, after which we pulled up the Ellis Island web site so I could show the kids the ship that brought their great-great-grandfather Maurice to the United States in 1920.

    Then we took a break. Pete retreated to his room to listen to the first Harry Potter book and play with action figures, and Poppy spent some time with the Kindle in her room. After lunch and some chores — laundry for Pete; unloading the dishwasher for Poppy — the kids worked on their handwriting while I read them most of a very long chapter of “The Mysterious Benedict Society.” Pete went back to his action figures afterward, and Poppy recited her memory work and did a few Duolingo Spanish lessons. And then we took another break.

    The kids eventually did the rest of their work; Poppy was still doing her math when Rockford got home from work. Sometimes the kids make their school days very long.

    Tuesday

    And other days they get everything done really early. By 1:15pm, the only schoolwork they hadn’t finished was handwriting, Poppy’s poem recitation and Pete’s grammar. Go kids!

    They ate breakfast Tuesday morning and then just started lining ’em up and knocking ’em down. They would’ve finished everything before lunch, but when we pulled out the history notebooks to work on their timelines I realized that I’d neglected to print and add the section covering 1882 to 1880. Whoops! So they played while I printed the pages and then disassembled and reassembled the timelines, and then we worked on the day’s history project.

    Tuesday’s work also included:

  • A Teaching Textbooks math lesson on the computer; one page in her spelling workbook; reading a chapter of Growing with Grammar 2 and completing the corresponding assignment; piano practice; tae kwon do; and soccer practice for Poppy.
  • A math lesson on counting-by-5s and telling time; spelling review and starting on the next step of All About Spelling; and tae kwon do for Pete.
    Wednesday

    I know school happened on Wednesday. I’m sure of it. I just didn’t write anything down.

    Thursday

    I turned my alarm clock off on Thursday morning, and by the time I’d gotten up, gathered my wits, etc., it was already 10 o’clock and the kids were deep into a game that involved ID cards, lasers and bypassing security systems. They were getting along so well that I just let them play. I did laundry, played Scrabble on Facebook and pulled the too-small clothes out of Pete’s dresser, and we didn’t start on schoolwork until lunchtime.

    We kicked things off by reading a few pages of “If Your Name Was Changed At Ellis Island” while they ate. It’s about what the immigration process was like in the early to mid 1900s, and we’ve talked a lot about what it would have been like for G-G-Grandpa Maurice. I wish someone had written down his Ellis Island story.

    The kids did their weekly Lego Quest Challenge after lunch. This week’s theme was “Metamorphosis.” Pete made a vehicle that turns from a four-wheeled cart into a three-wheeled scooter into a boat, and Poppy made a car that turned into a tower. They were most interested in the video posted on the Lego Quest site showing another kid’s creation’s transformation, so the next thing we did was create a few very short stop-action movies. We were so caught up in our film-making that we nearly forgot to go to tae kwon do, and the kids now want to do nothing but make stop-action videos.

    Friday

    I did wake up on time today, but it was with a brain-squashing headache. I had a bunch of grown-up stuff (finances, ugh) to get done, too, so here it is nearly noon and the kids are playing in their rooms and I’m writing this and browsing through the newly embeddable Getty Images, and we still haven’t started school. Friday is always our most free-wheeling day anyway, though, so I’m not stressing about it.

    Here’s a smattering of what will eventually happen today:

  • Poppy will take a spelling test.
  • Pete will review phonograms and work on segmenting short words.
  • They’ll each do a math lesson.
  • We’ll finish reading “If Your Name Was Changed at Ellis Island.”
  • Poppy will write a letter to someone.
  • We’ll make the stop-motion “Star Wars” video that Pete has spent his morning planning.

    • One thing that definitely won’t happen today is Pete’s grammar, because he reached the end of “First Language Lessons: Level One” yesterday and Level Two (with which I decided to proceed) isn’t slated to arrive until tomorrow. He’s pleased to have a day without grammar.

    I noticed a trend as I read over this again: We have not been getting to work any where near the crack of dawn lately. I think I’m just going to have to accept that we are not early birds. But that’s OK; I don’t like worms anyway.

    How was your week?

    Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!