I haven’t forgotten you!

My apologies that step four of “Starting the Homeschool Journey” has not been posted yet!  In all the muss and fuss of the holidays I have misplaced my notes on Curriculum Fairs!

I am steadily but slowly digging us out of all this mess.  We stopped yesterday when Sam saw me preparing stuff (in the hopes of starting schooling again on Monday) and she decided she wanted to start back to school right then.  UGH… so we sat down and did a few worksheets, which turned into several sheets, which turned into reading many many books!  Other than laundry and cooking supper, not much else was accomplished.

***For those moms out there feeling discouraged because your kids don’t seem to be “getting it”…. wait…  Sam didn’t “get” clocks or time when we did it a few weeks ago…  drove me nuts…  but yesterday she was answering the questions like it was the easiest thing she’s ever done.  Even dared to call it boring.  Seems once the information moved into her long term memory it made more sense to her.  Maybe she just needed to let it all sink in.     Don’t give up!  It comes back to them later!***

While we all wait for me to find my information, and my house, and my schedule….   I have a question for all the homeschooling parents out there….

Which have you found works better:

A little bit of each subject each day?

or

A chunk of one or two subjects on a specific day (more like college classes where you have math on Tues/Thurs and English on Mon/Wed)?

Starting the Journey-Step Three “Curriculums and Methods”

Step One
Step Two

Curriculums and Methods

One thing you probably noticed while you were finding friends and learning your child’s learning styles is that we all do it differently. Some of us use textbooks, some are more strict and classical, some are very relaxed, some “appear” to barely do school at all. That’s because, as homeschoolers, we are blessed with the ability to customize our curriculum and alter our methods to best fit our family situation and our children’s needs. Even when your state requires testing or virtual schools, you, as the parent, still have options.

Currently, we are probably in a mix of Traditional and Unschooling. We do workbooks, but we also just randomly study what we are currently interested in (see the post about tornadoes). We are planning to try out a full, and somewhat structured, curriculum next year for First Grade. I personally am making this change more for me than for Sam. I think having a guided curriculum will help me feel more secure that we are, in fact, learning something. Even then, I don’t expect to do everything in it, rather I expect to compliment it with lapbooks, field trips, and random research.

Homeschool.com has a great list and descriptions of different methods of homeschooling.

They also have a great list of curriculums and links! (One that I noticed is not listed is Christian Light, I was put on to this by a friend who uses some of their subjects with her youngest son, whom is easily distracted by colorful pages. Christian Light’s workbooks are simple and in black and white. Christian Light has no website, but a catalog can easily be requested by phone. I’ll try to find their phone number and post it here soon.)

Check out the homeschool groups you’ve joined from step one, ask your friends. If you already homeschool, then please leave a comment letting us know what worked for you!

Remember, just because you pick one today doesn’t mean you can’t change it tomorrow. We’ve been homeschooling for all of three months and already I’ve changed the game plan twice. I had no idea she would pick up on new stuff so quickly, and I had to adjust in order to keep it all interesting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Step Four-Curriculum Fairs will be posted after Christmas!

Starting the Journey-Step Two “Tuning In”

Previous Post–Step One-”Plugging In”

One of the great things about home schooling is the ability for parents to customize learning to fit the individual child. Learning is very individual. This leads us to today’s topic: “Tuning In” Learn Your Child’s Learning Style.

I am a very visual learner. Classes taught through flat lectures and book reading left me wanting and easily distracted. I remember very little from most of my classes. However, the Physics teacher who threw erasers across the room and asked us “how fast was that moving” definitely motivated me! The English teacher who often filled extra class time with coloring exercises (in high school) motivated me! We would color the picture, then see who could come up with the most creative caption. To explain “Job Costing” in college, my professor lined us up like an assembly line. She gave the first person a piece of paper. They were to fold it in half, pass it on, and get another piece of plain paper to fold. The next person did the next fold. In the end the final person had a paper airplane. She would let us fold and fold for about five minutes before yelling “STOP”. We would then calculate the cost of the half finished airplanes. This is where my love of cost accounting started. I love teachers like that. I have friends, however, that do not like to learn this way. Sit them down in the middle of the library and they will practically learn by osmosis. We have different learning styles.

Before you start home schooling, and before you decide what methods or curriculums to purchase, you should take a moment to tune in to your child’s learning styles.

I have collected a couple of great links to help you in this step.

Understanding Learning Styles

Learning Styles, Modalities and Strategies

Learning Styles from EasyFunSchool

Determining Your Child’s Learning Style

Next tip: Selecting a type of curriculum and method!

These tips and more are available from http://www.hslda.org ’s free booklet “You Can Homeschool!”

Starting the Journey

While the girls are on their Christmas break, I thought I’d take some time to post some tips on getting started on the journey.

Today’s Tip: Find other home schoolers.

While I was pregnant with Samantha, I discovered that a church friend of mine was a home schooling mommy. I had NO idea! I was so surprised to find out that she was home schooling FOUR kids in different grade levels. It still blows my mind that she can do that and still keep up with all the other activities in her life. She is an avid baker, they maintain a small farm, cares for elderly family members, is active at church, etc. Phew! I’m tired just thinking about it.

She has been sharing with me the joys of home schooling for years now. When I was anxious about making the move, I called her. When my mom was undeniably upset about our decision, I called this friend. Friends are good.

Last summer, I was turned onto CafeMom, where I found several home school groups. These groups share information about schooling on a budget, classical schooling, eclectic schooling, places to take field trips, and more! Another place to find groups is on Yahoo. I did a quick search in Yahoo Groups and found the home school group that we now meet at the park. This group offers a Latin class for the older kids once a week, and afterwards they all go play at the park. They recently organized caroling at the local nursing home. If you’re looking for a more official organization check out www.hslda.org/laws (the Home School Legal Defense Association) and click on your state, then select the organizations tab.

We live in a small town, and it did not take long before “rumor” got out that we were seriously considering moving to home schooling our daughters. The home school moms seemed to come out of the woodwork! I think most of us would be surprised to see how many families near us home school.

Keep in mind that we all home school differently. Use these new friends as a sounding board, a shoulder to lean on, and pick a group that will let you pick their brain. Home school moms respect the fact that all families are different. You don’t have to follow what I did. It may not work for you. That’s what so great about these groups. It is an easy way to see what has worked for someone, and find new alternatives if what you were trying suddenly stops working.

Next tip: Find your child’s learning style….

Taking Tornadoes to the Craft Table

| View Show | Create Your Own

With the house being pretty much clean, I decided today we would be a little more laid back. It’s Friday which is a special day, because Friday means Daddy can stay up late and play, and he’ll be home when we wake up in the morning.

After reading “I Am Responsible” last night, Sammy apparently had a slight change of heart and went about brushing her hair and her teeth without being told. She also fed the cat and dog and fussed at me for making her bed when that was her job. (I didn’t tell her it was her job, apparently the book did) I had to do a few things to get read to take Christmas pictures, so I sat the girls down at the craft table with some printer paper and asked them to draw me some tornado pictures.

Here’s what I got in return:

Samantha’s Tornado (with a pig)

Jolene’s Tormaydo (with a rat, and I think it’s a cow…not positive)–that’s not a typo…that’s what she calls it A Tor-May-Do

Then Sammy made me a Christmas Card, here’s the front:

and here’s the inside:

Down the left it is supposed to say something about being on Santa’s good list, and the other side is something about watching out for Santa…

and then Jo colored me another rat, or maybe it was another cow… again, I’m not sure. I asked, but her answer kept changing:

Jolene watched in amazement as I scanned her drawing and put it on the computer. She thought that was the coolest thing ever!

Technorati Tags: coloring, kids, tornadoes

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Quarters to States to Aviation to Tornadoes….

I guess today’s lessons went pretty well. What started out with a simple observation on a quarter ended up with a lesson on tornadoes….or as JoJo calls them–TorMayToes

Here’s how it started:

Sam finds a quarter, and informs me that there is a guy walking past a house on the back of it. I stop what I’m doing and investigate the quarter to find that it is one of those fancy state quarters with North Carolina on the back. I explain that the picture is of an airplane, the first motorized one, and the man is one of the Wright Brothers. We talked about how it happened in Kitty Hawk, NC and that momma had been there on Kill Devil Hill and that maybe Daddy could take us there one summer. (she wasn’t done with me)

Next, I took out our old faithful New Book of Knowledge and look up the Wright Brothers, which led us to aviation, and right there in the book was the same picture that was on the quarter! She thought that was awesome! (but she still wasn’t done with me yet)

So I went back to the book of “W” to see if the Wright Brother’s section had anything fun to read about (it was lacking in the picture department) and on my way back to their page Sammy noticed a picture of lightening-appropriately shown under the “weather” page.

That’s when she saw it, the picture of a tornado, and that was the end of special quarters, North Carolina, and those two Wright Brothers. Jo joined the conversation at this point and I skimmed through the book trying to find tornado information that wasn’t totally over her head.

Now I’m spending time finding online sites that will tell her more. She is more than a little miffed that the program we put on her computer talks about weather but NOT about tornadoes… so the search goes on…

Here’s what I found… we should have a lot of fun with this:
National Weather Service-Playtime for Kids
Web Weather for Kids
National Geographic Kids-Storm Chasers
Weather Wiz Kids
Scholastic Weather Watch
FEMA for Kids: Tornadoes

At least three of these sites all had the same “Tornado in a Jar” experiment so we gave it a try…It’s been over 1/2 hour and they are still playing with them. Sam figured out how to get it to work first. I realized about ten minutes ago that if you hold your jar up to the window (or a light) after you spin it you can see the “tornado” better.

Right this very minute, Sam is running through the house yelling “Hide, Hide, get the children, get the pillows, a twister is coming!”

Man, Homeschooling is SO MUCH FUN! (some days at least)

Technorati Tags: tornadoes, kids, teaching, home school

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Ok, I let them out…

I finally got off my behind and took the girls outside. My kids are six and three and personally I would have no problem letting them play in the back yard alone. They know where they can go and what they can do and aside from the occasional “she took my toy” we have no problems. Unfortunately, because I live on the main strip through town and because my in-laws are terrified of someone driving up and snatching my kids from the yard, I go outside with them. And I sit…. for sometimes hours, doing nothing. Sometimes I’ll rake leaves or try and take a book or even my laptop. These are the days they insist upon interacting with me constantly. So I gave up doing “something” by myself for watching them play by themselves.

I guess today the cold medicine had finally kicked in and I decided to TRY and do something with them, preferable something educational. Taking some advice from a few other moms I broke out the sidewalk chalk and started writing math problems out for Sam. She quickly noticed and began writing the answers beside the problems. It wasn’t until I got to 7 + 7 that she started getting lazy, wanting me to draw dots for her to count.

I made an attempt to show her that 2 make a pair and 4 makes two pairs, and 2 and 4 are even numbers….but… she thought I was coloring in a hopscotch for her and her mind went off of math and back onto playing. So I gave up for a few minutes, stole off into the laundry room and moved the laundry into the dryer.

I returned to find them running around the house like crazed chickens. Jo’s little legs didn’t stand a chance at keeping up with Sammy’s long legs and Sam was taking way too much enjoyment out of lapping her twice. I must have been inspired by the ideas I keep reading on all those great homeschooling blogs because I quickly stopped Jo and yelled for Sam and informed them we were going to play a new kind of Simon Says. I sat down on the picnic table’s bench and shouted “Simon Says touch something that starts with “T” !”

Sam seemed confused for a minute then darted for the tree. Jo, not yet familiar with her letters, promptly followed her sister. “Simon Says touch something that starts with a “B”!” Despite the ball, basket, bike and bucket in the yard, right in front of them, it still took them a while and what she found was a BUG. Well, it’s a b word! She threw me for a loop when “Simon” asked for a “G” word and she touched the ground, with a smile.

She played for about fifteen minutes, running to and fro; I think Jo lasted about five. At least I can say that I kept my promise of taking them outside AND we did get some work done. Now if I could only get around to finishing the cookies!

Technorati Tags: kids, homeschool, home school, outside, play, math, simon says, chalk, games

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Teaching the Periodic Table

We’re no where near teaching the periodic table, but I came upon this in my HEAV newsletter and thought I would share it.

“1.4 Free Lessons on the Periodic Table – Begins Soon

A science teacher turned homeschool mom is offering a free series of lessons for all ages on the elements of the periodic table. She hopes to introduce the subject to children early and teach them (and their parents) not to fear science or to view chemistry as a “harder” science. After all, chemistry makes up the world all around us!

The lessons will be in the form of a newsletter sent twice a month. Each newsletter will focus on one element, sharing such things as the history of the element’s discovery, interesting facts related to the element, information for the advanced learner, activities, and anecdotes/jokes common in the chemistry field or that pertain to the element. Each installment will also offer ideas for presenting the element to your children and both educational and humorous links for further reading and information about all sorts of topics.

See the website for more information and to sign up for the free lessons newsletter.

www.HowToTeachScience.com

www.howtoteachscience.com/postcardsignup.html “

Information, Legislation & Resources!

Technorati Tags: homeschool, home, school, chemistry, periodic table

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Siggy/Profile Graphics… just having fun …more to come!

Well…  when I’m sick, bored, or feeling like being a slacker (which is all three today) I like to play with my PhotoShop….

so here are a few graphics that I made for whoever might want them.  I don’t REQUIRE a link back, yet,  but one would surely be appreciated.

You can save it or just copy the link location.  I tried to put some nifty html in here so you could just copy paste, but WP.com doesn’t seem to allow it.

Enjoy!

Why bother?

Why am I even bothering to try and do school today?

This is how I feel today…. I should be letting school go. I should be letting the house go. Momma’s sick and she should be just letting it go. But I can’t. All of a sudden today I’ve decided we’re behind and I must catch up. Today I have decided the laundry needs to be done and I need to finish the sugar cookies and I need to balance the check book and finish that graphic for my other blog and…..

I need to just go to bed. I need to just pile them in my bed, put on a movie and take a nap.

But I won’t. I know I won’t. I’ll probably be back to blog later.

Oh! One more thing… Big Hugs to Heather at http://gracedbychrist.com for the link to your kids portals. We found Whit’s End and that did hold their attention for about ten minutes… long enough for me to refill my water bottle and find the tissues.