Our Homeschooling Method: A Work in Progress

Thank you for the nice comments on the last post. I really really appreciate them. Every single one. I'm going to try and follow up on the homeschooling specific comments because they brought up some good points. I even appreciate my mom's comment that pointed out my typos. I have many typos. If you listened to me talk, you'd know why.


OUR METHOD AND GUIDELINES


This changes weekly, so don’t take it too seriously! When we homeschooled Ana in New Zealand a few years back, I had no curriculum and no support… and it was hard. I don’t think she really suffered from the lack of structure or consistency, but it sure made me a little crazy. We basically just looked at the work she had been producing in school and chose to work on the things that we felt like she was missing, like spelling, handwriting, and multiplication tables. Pretty basic and not too exciting for her or us, but we also spent a lot of time outdoors farming and hiking, so her academics really took a backseat anyway.

Since that time, I’ve found out about lots of different curriculums and methods. The group I was hanging with in Washington were big Thomas Jefferson Education (TJEd) fans.  I won’t go into too many details, because I’m no expert, but the best thing I learned from that method is that you should mentor (not lecture) your children in their learning adventures, provide a learning rich environment, be a model of a lifelong learner yourself, and let them choose what they want to study. TJEd also recommends that the best learning comes from great literature, and when kids are reading, discussing, contemplating, and writing about great literature, things like spelling, vocabulary, critical thinking, and reasoning come naturally . TJEd has many great ideas and it’s a good place to go if you want to be kicked in the pants towards homeschooling. But, it’s not a perfect system for us; I won’t go into my qualms with this method or even try to sum up the many books about TJEd (I’ve only read two of them anyway), but I do really like two guides in our family’s homeschooling method that have come from it:

1. Kids enjoy learning better when they get to be in charge

2. Children (and adults) learn loads from good books


If I was a total TJEd’ed, this would mean that my kids would be free all day to learn as they please and I would facilitate their interests. (For example, if the kids wanted to learn about castles and nothing else, that’s what we would do. They don’t want to practice math? Then it’s not the time to practice math. They don’t want to work on their handwriting? Who cares—it can wait a few years.)  I know some great TJEd moms who have been homeschooling much longer than I have and they make this work with aplomb and grace. Right now, I can’t. So, these are some other points that we’ve worked into our framework:

3. Work with your kids to choose what subjects they will study and keep it simple

4. Make end goals together, but let the kids dictate the means


There are some things my kids would never choose to practice on their own: math and piano. My kids are actually really good at math and we are a math loving family, but they think they don’t like practicing, even though they do. The important thing for us is to keep the math challenging and fresh. 

5. Math is fun when it is hard but doable


My kids would probably choose to only play the harmonic and the drums, but in our family, we all play the piano. The end. We all wash our hands. We all make our beds. We all play the piano. If they want to be miserable the whole time, that’s fine. Luckily they usually enjoy it, and someday they will thank me.

6. You will play the piano. That’s what we do in this family.

I’m sure over time we will add to this list of homeschooling guidelines for our family. I’d love to hear yours!



THIS YEAR’s SCHEDULE AND SUBJECTS:

7-8am--Wake up, breakfast, normal morning chores and routines (make bed, brush hair, etc.), family scripture study... sometimes the kids don't get up until 8am, but that's okay

8am-Noon –Homeschooling

The kids set the timer for 30 minutes each subject and choose which subject they want to do when. There is lots of extra padding for breaks, doing extra time in a subject, helping with chores, etc. We just try to get the basics completely done by noon because they are not as attentive in the afternoon as they are in the morning.

Noon-5 –Lunch, adventures with the family, reading, games, playdates, or research projects. Or, if we’ve had to skip a day of homeschooling because of some pressing adventure or travel, we double up and do it in the afternoon of another day.

5-6pm --PE (Right now it’s Swim Team, every day)

          6-7pm – Dinner

7-8pm—Reading and play 

8pm—Bedtime

THIS is why I love homeschooling. It’s a perfect schedule for us… very simple, very flexible. The kids are very content with it as well. Plus, Po naps for most of the homeschooling time, and I have an hour to myself to exercise or read while the kids are at swim team. I hope we can keep this schedule all year because it is like graham crackers and milk. 

We (Jonah, the kids and I) chose five subjects this semester because that’s how the homeschooling program we are a part of requires us to delineate. Here they are and what we do:

LANGUAGE ARTS: 

1. DAILY SKILLS PRACTICE
The kids both have workbook based curriculum that they work out of and come to me for help. If I knew for sure that they would never be going back to public school ever, I would probably not use any language arts workbooks. But, I want to them to be able to score well on standardized tests, so we do it. They don’t mind it anyway. The workbooks have names like Daily Skill Builders and Language Smarts. I haven’t found any I just love, so I won’t make a recommendation, but I will say that it has helped to have three or four workbooks per child that are at their level. I used to require them to work out of each book each day, but now I just require them to spend 30 minutes a day working out of the books as they choose. They can even skip around within the books if they want to. The books help me see what the kids may not understand and need further instruction in, as well as giving them daily handwriting practice, whether they like it or not. I do not give them any sort of language arts lesson, but instead teach them through critiquing their work both in the workbooks and in their research projects. 

2. RESEARCH PROJECTS
Which brings me to the second portion of language arts, which is the kids’ self directed research projects. For each month or so, the kids choose something they want to study in depth (they’ve chosen “The Solar System”, “Dinosaurs”, and “Greek Myths”, for example), they check out books and watch movies and read and read and then they take notes, make a works cited, and plan out a way to display what they have learned. For the first month when the two kids worked together on a project, they made nine “short films” about the Solar System and the planets. This month, they both wrote puppet shows about their different topics. (I would love to see them do a formal report, create a portfolio of creative writing and art pieces about the subject, or do a formal presentation, but I let them choose, so I keep my mouth shut.)  I like doing this because the kids love it, it gets them reading non-fiction material, and they are putting their creativity to work. Plus, it gives them a reason to drag me to the library twice a week. There is no time limit or requirement for them with this portion, but they usually spend about two to three hours a week. 

3. READING
Finally, the kids love reading. (**I should point out that I am horrible at teaching kids to read. Both my oldest kids learned to read at public school. I tried and tried at home, but both of them resisted. However, a few months after being in school, they magically caught the reading fire and were off… I take no credit for their love of reading except that my husband and I love to read too, and we don’t own a TV and only one working computer. In fact, if we didn’t have iPhones, they’d probably be reading Les Miserables by now**) So, they read for a few hours a day, including in the car where each of them usually has 2-3 books on their lap. Lately, they have liked taking tests on the books they read online, on sites like magictreehouse.com and bookadventure.com. I also ask both kids to read aloud to the younger kids a few times a day.

MATH:

We finally received our math curriculum, which took two months to arrive. We use singaporemath.com. It is straightforward, simple, and quietly challenging. We (meaning Jonah and the kids…it’s great having a dad around to help!) do a math lesson every day. It’s about 15 minutes long. Then the kids complete the exercises in the singaporemath workbook that accompanies the textbook lesson. I also have about three math workbooks per kid that are from the Critical Thinking Company. These are math puzzle type workbooks and the kids love them. What nerds, right? Takes one to know one. Again, I just have them do 30 minutes a day of math. They do the singaporemath daily and the other fun workbooks if they have time or want to keep going beyond the allotted time.

MUSIC:

I used to teach piano lessons, so this is an easy one for me. The kids were in piano lessons with a different teacher at the beginning of the year, so that did have to be worked into our schedule, but now I just give them a 30 minute piano lesson as they ask for it, which is usually once a week. I use the Music Tree piano curriculum, and I love it. I had all my piano students using it back in the day. My kids had been doing Bastien with the other teacher, but they are really enjoying the new Music Tree books after the initial learning curve was surmounted. I also have Ana do exercises from Hanon even though she is not at the level where Hanon  is usually introduced. I’ll let you know how that turns out…

SPANISH:

We are fortunate to have Rosetta Stone online provided to us through our homeschool group. For two years, I had tried unsuccessfully to keep Ana’s Spanish progressing (she had been in a Spanish immersion school up until 2nd grade), including hiring a weekly Spanish tutor. Rosetta Stone has been straightforward and enjoyable. Cam didn’t love it at first since he was jumping into it with no Spanish background at all, but he’s finally getting the hang of it. I don’t know what the ultimate outcome will be, but at least they are getting exposed to a second language in a positive way.

PE:

The kids took some serious swim lessons at the beginning of the year, and now they are in swim team. We only let our kids do one  affordable sport lesson or team at a time, and we will stick with this one until they have a serious desire to try something else. It is great for me to know that they are getting lots of outdoor exercise every day, plus they are so clean when I pick them up, thanks to the pool’s steaming hot showers. The way our swim team works is that you pay a flat fee for the month and the kids are allowed to come as often as they like. We usually make it to four out of the five days. There are also Saturday swim meets, but we [thankfully] haven’t been able to do any of those yet because of a mix up with our paperwork.

Soooooo, what about the other subjects? This is a hard one for me. I would LOVE to teach my kids more ART (in fact, I had them in an art class last year, but it was too expensive)… and what about Science?!… Social Studies?!!….History?!… I was very worried about these too. VERY WORRIED. This is what scared me the most about plunging into homeschooling—HOW CAN I TEACH IT ALL?!???!  BUT, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that they are still fairly young kids. I can teach them all I want to about physics and world history and drawing… but unless they want to learn it, it’s not really going to mean anything to them right now. There is no context for them yet. Plus, a lot of this comes up in their research projects and fiction reading, so we discuss it and answer their questions as they come up. Creative endeavors like art and creative writing are explored in their loads of free time that they now have. I’m trying to relax and just let age and experience be the teacher, and I’ll be the scaffolding. Plus, you really have to relearn everything about history, science, and social studies when you get to high school, and then again when you go to a liberal arts college, and then again when you are married and reading Freakanomics while nursing a baby and making dinner at the same time.

So, yes. It is that easy. Did I make it sound easy? It' really isn’t that bad. It requires some time, but hey! I have all that time that I was spending driving the kids to and from school (well, they rode the bus, but it still felt like I was driving all the time), plus the time at PTA, school events and doing that blasted homework. As long as your kids can stay motivated, it is really enjoyable. Keeping kids motivated requires a whole blog post on its own, but so far, it has been easier when I let them be in control of their own learning.
Tomorrow or the next day, I will actually add some PHOTOS to these posts and quickly go through some of the best places I’ve found for curriculum and materials.