Homeschoolin' - Fall 2010

I've been meaning to write up another post describing this year of homeschooling, but just haven't gotten around to it until now. It's pretty similar to last year except that Simon is now in 3rd grade and Gwen has joined us for a few formal lessons as part of Kindergarten.

Prior to last year there was a big difference in how much school we planned in August and how much we actually got done as the year progressed. Last year we felt like we hit a sweet spot where we accomplished pretty much what we planned so this year we took the same approach.

Here's what our days look like on Mondays through Thursdays:

7:00am: Wake up. I drag the kids out of bed and drop them on the couch in front of the TV. They are allowed to watch 3 short shows while they wake up. During this time I usually either clean the house or, if I'm too darned tired, I go back to bed until 8:30am when they come to get me.

8:30am to about 10:30am: Lesson time.

• First Simon does his spelling. We ask him to do one page a day from the Spelling Workout series. This year he's on book D. He generally does this on his own without my help.
• Next he does his English Lessons. We use Jesse Wise's First Language Lessons, volume 3 for 3rd grade. We did volumes 1 and 2 in the past couple of years and have been very pleased with them. This involves learning a lot of basic grammar rules and parts of speech along with memorizing and reciting short poems, such as Robert Louis Stevenson's My Shadow.
  
• Following that Simon does his writing lessons. For this we use Susan Bauer's Writing with Ease program. We're on the grade 2 version of this series for two reasons. First, only volume 1 existed last year when he was in 2nd grade and second, he was initially having a bit of a hard time with writing. He's doing a bit better now and I'd like to somehow skip up to "grade level" for him, but I don't want to push him too fast with it. Overall, though, I can't speak well enough of this program. There's a great emphasis on reading passages from classical stories and then working together to summarize the passage which he then has to write down (generally 1-3 sentences each). I think the skills it is building are invaluable and are progressing at a nice slow pace for him.
  
• Sometime during this part of the day Gwen does her reading lessons. Just as we did with Simon, we've been using Susan Bauer's Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. It is a phonics approach which does an excellent job of slowly building on each previously developed skill. She's picking is up very quickly and does a great job of sounding out the words she doesn't know yet.
  

I should note that even though it takes us about 2 hours to get all this done, most of that time is spent "taking a break". Each individual lessons takes 10-15 minutes and then they run around and play for 15-20 minutes. I try to keep a close eye on their attention span and don't ask them to sit still for longer than they can do so comfortably. As I write this they are playing "Secret Agent" in the giant cardboard box our new recliner chair came in which I cut a door and air holes into. They filled it with blankets and pillows and are trying to convince "Secret Agent Daisy" (our new kitten) to play in the box with them. (Daisy thinks they're nuts and would rather hide behind the couch.) When I'm done writing this we'll go finish another lesson.

Around about 10:30 we do one of two things. Either we get out of the house to go shopping or playing somewhere (The mall, a local park, a McDonald's Playland, Apple Orchard, etc.) or we decide to hang around this house and just goof off here. If we stay home then how they spend their time is up to them. They might watch TV or play video games or they might spend the day drawing pictures, playing pretend games, reading Garfield books or whatever they like. I used to worry that they watched too much TV or played too many video games, but they seem to self regulate that pretty well. And, even if they are watching TV it is usually something like Martha Speaks or Cyberchase which generally teaches them much more about language or math than I'm doing myself.

Then, about 2pm Mommy comes home from work and we have 1/2 hour to all spend together before I have to go to work myself. While I'm gone Mommy does Math, Science and Arts & Crafts with them.

For Math we're still using Singapore Math, which totally rocks. They are both a year ahead of their grade level. Simon is using the 4th grade books and Gwen is using the 1st grade books. Simon is able to complete his required 1 lesson per day pretty much on his own. Barb has to help him a bit with long division, but he's pretty darn good already with fractions (thanks to Cyberchase!) Gwen can't read the instructions yet so Barb has to help her with those, but she's really picking up basic addition and subtraction and learning things like ordinal positions and whatnot. In fact, Gwen has been so excited about math in particular that she is about a month ahead of where we planned her to be right now. She's something like 3/4 through the first book, which we planned for her to finish by Christmas. Both kids appear to have their mother's innate math skills and my appreciation for the finer things in life... like video games.

For science we're still looking for a curriculum we like. So Far Barb's been doing ad hoc projects like raising butterflies or visiting local nature centers. That portion of our lessons is still pretty unschooly, but we plan to research to find something more formal.

Then, I get home from work around 7pm or 8pm. Around 8pm the kids get the "3 shows before bedtime" warning where they can have another hour and a half of PBS shows (or the Simpsons or Scooby Doo) while Barb and I collapse in bed and watch a movie.

This is a bit different on Tuesdays because we have now joined the cub scouts. Barb and I are both assistant den leaders and we go to meetings at a local elementary school. This has been a ton of fun because the whole family is invited and there is even another 5 year old girl there for Gwen to play with.

That pretty much describes Mondays through Thursdays. On Fridays we don't do lessons at home at all. Instead we've signed the kids up for lessons at Palaestra. This is a private local homeschooling organization that offers classes for homeschoolers of all ages all day on Fridays. They both have a 10am class and an 11am class.

Simon is taking "Literature Explorations" in which they read two novels over the course of the semester and discuss them with added short writing assignments. They are currently reading the Newberry winner "Lilly's Crossing" which he seems to be enjoying. His second class is called "Molecules in Motion" which is a science class focusing on Chemistry.

Gwen is taking Ballet and "Great Artists". Ballet is self explanatory. The art class discusses great art of the past and then lets them create their own pieces out of different mediums (pencils, crayons, paint and clay, mostly).

The only other thing I think I've forgotten to mention up to now is bedtime reading. After their three shows every night we read one or two chapters of something before sending them off to bed. Currently we're reading the Little House series. We've been working on it for about 6 months and are now on book 6 (Little Town on the Prairie).

Then, we send them off to bed. Our general rule about bedtime is this: You can stay up as late at night as you want as long as certain conditions are met. You can't leave your room except to go to the bathroom and you have to be quiet. We intentionally don't allow them to have a TV or video games in their rooms, although they do have CD players if they want to listen to music (this rule will apply until they go off to college someday). Gwen tends to fall asleep fast and is almost always unconscious within 20 minutes or so. Simon, however, stays awake until at least midnight every night. We've stocked his room with all sorts of books. His favorites are his collections of Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, although he's recently begun reading his own "chapter books". The first of these was Stuart Little and now he's reading Lilly's Crossing for his class. He still prefers comics, though. Someday, when his interest switches from Garfield to super heroes, I'll give him access to the thousands of comics I have in the basement from my own wayward youth. I'm looking forward to that, but it'll be a few years.

So, in a nutshell that's how homeschooling is working for us. We've found a nice sweet spot between organized and systematic learning combined with lots of free time for fun and play. As they get older we'll add more lessons. For example, I've been putting off adding history and a foreign language to our repertoire. I'll definitely add history next year. I'm still thinking about the foreign language. I would still like to have us learn Latin together, but it might be too much. I don't want to upset the balance we've found so I need to think about that some more and / or wait until their attention span increases enough to allow the extra study without too much frustration.