education

Saturday Afternoon Chat Link Up: VBS, pretty churches, and the end of homeschooling for one child

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 13 Comments

Good afternoon! Welcome to another Saturday Afternoon Chat.

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Tea? Coffee? Lemonade? Water?

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Yesterday we met with our homeschool evaluator and school is now officially over for this year.

We drive 45 minutes one way to meet with her each year.

This week it was a long drive after a week of driving to VBS 20 minutes one way and spending two hours there each night for a few nights. We missed Tuesday night because of a flat tire on our car and Thursday night The Husband drove her. This was VBS at a church we don’t belong to.

I appreciated that because I’ve been having pain in my neck and driving around the windy roads and curves and hills we live on flared it up quite a bit.

I enjoyed taking her on the days, though, because we were able to chat about different things and watch for animals together while we were driving to and from VBS.

Little Miss is fairly independent and usually attends most events without us but lately she’s been a little clingy. She wanted me to stay with her during VBS since she didn’t know anyone, but she got involved easily and most of the time didn’t mind if I was there or not. I didn’t follow her around. Instead, I simply sat in the back of the sanctuary on very pretty, but uncomfortable pews.

 She would run up to me off and on and get a hug, almost like a reassurance. The next day I told her I would probably sit in the car and read that night instead of sitting in the church, but she said she wanted me to be in the church.

“You don’t need me,” I told her. “You were having fun without me.”

“Yes, but it’s just nice knowing you’re there,” she told me.

That definitely got me in the heart and left me feeling emotional. I didn’t mind sitting in the church as much after that and enjoyed the hugs she gave me when she ran back to me. Plus, the church has beautiful stained glass windows and it was nice to look at them and watch the sun pour through them.

Two of the days of VBS were very hot but the rest of the week the weather was pretty much perfect. The hot temperatures are gone again for now, but it is not as cold as it was in May. I prefer the cooler temps, though. Not freezing, but cooler. The heat and humidity really takes a toll on me. Much worse than simply feeling too hot.

Yesterday our drive to the homeschool evaluator was uneventful. It was a little emotional for me because it is the last time The Boy will be evaluated now that he has graduated. This marks the end of our six-year homeschooling journey together, and he’s thrilled, but I’m going to miss it.

I loved picking out a curriculum for him and learning it with him. The last two years were pretty hard because he was pretty much over school, but we made it, and he’s ready for his next steps..

Little Miss and I will be continuing homeschooling for this next year and I’m planning to use a curriculum but also be open to more deviations from strict curriculum, as long as it is still educational.

I’m looking forward to our school year and to using art and literature even more than I did last year. I also have my eye on a really interesting music curriculum. Looking for different curriculum is a highlight of my summers, so I do feel a sense of loss not looking for curriculum or books for The Boy this year.

There is another VBS at another church this upcoming week, but we haven’t decided if we are attending it or not. There are two or three other VBS events this summer we hope to attend as well. And there are also 4-H events coming up. So we might have a busy summer, but maybe also a relaxed one at times.

So what have you been up to this past week? Any vacations yet? Family gatherings? Shopping. I’d love to know. Let me know in the comments.

P.S. I am offering a link-up here on Saturdays now, but I’m also part of a great link-up on Thursday — The Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot — so please come join us and link up your favorite, new, or older posts there as well. Just search “Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot” in the search bar to the right and you’ll find the latest link-up! We are also looking for additional hosts so don’t be afraid to throw your hat in the ring for that.

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Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.

You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find her on Instagram and YouTube.

Join us for our weekly link-up: The Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot on Fridays (it goes live Thursday night at 9:30 p.m.). Come join us and link up your favorite, new, or older posts.

Educationally Speaking: Looking back at our school year as we near the end of it

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 10 Comments

Sometimes I don’t want to share about my family’s homeschooling journey on my blog because it opens me up to criticism by those who don’t understand homeschooling but then I reminded myself these posts aren’t for them. They are for the other parents who also homeschool and might need ideas or encouragement or just another homeschooler to relate to.

I would say that this year for school is the closest year we’ve come to doing a more natural flow of learning instead of focusing solely on the use of a set curriculum. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we are doing what some  homeschoolers call “unschooling” but fairly close.

The Boy is a senior this year and attending a local technical school, so the majority of his education this year has been the building and construction class he is taking. We have also been doing some English, which is the only other credit he needs to complete his high school experience.

Our state-certified homeschool evaluator will sign a diploma for him at the end of the school year.

Little Miss is a fourth grader this year and we are tackling all of the subjects throughout the week, but not every day.

Math is one subject we do almost every day, if not every day, so I can make sure she remembers the concepts. We will be doing math during the summer this year as well.

We use the CTC Math site for our math lessons and really enjoy it. A short instructional video is provided and then the student is asked to complete some questions on the subject that was presented. If several of the questions are missed or if the parent or student  feels they need to do more questions, that option is available.

What I like about CTC Math is how we can access any lesson from any grade level from Kindergarten to twelfth.  So, if we need to go back to review something from an earlier grade, no matter how far back, we can do that.

No, I was not paid for this endorsement. Ha! But I wish it was!

For English we have a hodge podge curriculum this year. We are using a workbook from BJU and also reading quality middle grade historical fiction.

That historical fiction also works for our history lessons. Those books are a jumping off point for history lessons through videos, worksheets etc. Those books are also a jumping off point for science, language arts, art, writing, and many other topics that stem from them.

So many ideas can stem from subjects or topics raised within a fictional story.

For science we are utilizing curriculum from The Good and The Beautiful and branching off from there for other topics.

A lot of our schoolwork this year has involved various discussions which have turned us into looking up topics to explore them further.

For example, this week Little Miss and I were watching a video about giraffes from The Good and the Beautiful curriculum which focused on the two classes of ungulates.

The video quality was very professional but Little Miss felt that the color was off in some scenes. I argued it was the lighting but she said to me, “I just wonder how they got so much footage of so many rare giraffes. So many of them look axanthic.”

“I’m sorry? Excuse me?” I responded.

“They look axanthic,” she said, emphasis on the word axanthic.

“I – I don’t even know what that means.”

She sighed heavily, as if I should really know this already at my age.

She said, “It’s the removal of the yellow and red pigmentations in an animal’s coloring.”

I didn’t even know how to spell the word, but knew I needed to look this up. I kept finding xanthic, which is the yellow coloring in an animals coat or skin.

She, however, did her own search somehow and showed me this on her phone (which is for use only on WiFi and doesn’t have a line connected to it, in case you are curious):

Little Miss loves videos on animals, especially reptiles. She watches a show called Snake Discovery and retains tons of information about reptiles from it and this is where she learned the term.

One thing I am learning more and more through this homeschooling journey is that children will retain information related to subjects they are interested in.

This is why my son retains information about architecture and art, video game lore, model painting, and history related to the Byzantine and Roman Empires.

He has been studying the Byzantine and Roman Empires on his own this year.

In addition to the curriculum or “organized” lessons we do, Little Miss has also taken part in a two month art class sponsored by our library, a cooking class sponsored by our local 4-H, and various other activities sponsored by the local library.

She also learns a lot from her grandparents (my parents) through visits and helping them around the house. Earlier in the school year we interviewed my mom about life when she was growing up and we hope to do that a bit more before the school year ends and also add my dad into the mix. We also cooked apple pies for The Boy and The Husband for their birthdays and Mom helped with tips for the process.

Art is something we do anywhere from one to three times a week because Little Miss loves to paint — mainly with acrylics.

Last week I took advantage of a nice weather day and suggested we take some canvases we had picked up and practice “splatter painting” on the back porch. I had a technique I had watched an artist use on YouTube that I wanted to show Little Miss but she has her own technique that she wanted to show me. We traded techniques and just did our own thing for an hour or more and it was the most relaxed I’d been all week.

It felt great to simply let loose and create art without strict rules or my usual perfectionism in having to make a picture look just right.

I have also been dabbling in water colors so Little Miss and I tried some water color paintings the week before.

We discovered we are going to need some higher quality paper if we are going to continue our experiments in that medium.

Little Miss had found an online game that helps with her learning music. We focused on music more in the beginning of the school year and last year.

In our state the homeschool law states that we must teach art and music at some point in a child’s elementary school years, but does not stipulate we have to do it every year.

Last year Little Miss and I focused almost entirely on literature and art for our final month and we will most likely do that again this year, but I will continue math lessons to make sure we don’t have to review as much at the beginning of next school year.

I think that wraps up our homeschool update for now. I am working on another post about my thoughts on education in general and will most likely share a wrap up post at the beginning of summer when our school year is complete.

Educationally Thinking: Homeschool wrap up

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 7 Comments

We finished our school year last week and then tied up a few loose ends the beginning of this week. On Wednesday we met with our homeschool evaluator who wrote up a quick letter to the local school district to confirm we had completed all the requirements under our state’s homeschool law.

Honestly, it’s a little disconcerting and depressing to have your entire school year — all that hard work and volumes of text read and answers to math problems hammered out — boiled down to three vague paragraphs. I understand that it’s all that is required by the state and my evaluator doesn’t feel that she should provide more than is necessary, but it’s still a bit of a let down after an entire year of lesson planning for six subjects every weekday, gathering together a portfolio, selecting examples of your child’s work, organizing a list of all the textbooks you used and books your child read, and then not having most of that mentioned in those paragraphs.

The school district or state never even sees all the hard work we did when all is said and done and in some ways that might be a good thing. But in other ways it would be nice if they knew we actually take homeschooling seriously and really do educate our children, not simply let them play video games all day and call that school.

It should be noted that none of this  is a complaint against our evaluator in the least. She’s amazing. She homeschooled both her girls from grade school to graduation. She knows her stuff. She’s doing her job. It’s just a reminder not to look at that one sheet of paper and draw the worth of our entire school year from it’s contents.

Since I didn’t have to report what we did to the school district, I will use my blog to brag on my 14-year old. He read seven books this year, including four classics: To Kill A Mockingbird, Silas Marner, Lord of the Flies, and A Christmas Carol. He also read the three final Harry Potter books. We almost finished a course in economics as well and plan to continue that course next year. And of course he finished courses in Math, history, science, grammar and English.

We did have to  complete a standardized test this year since The Boy was in 8th grade. Standardized testing is required in fifth, eighth and eleventh if I remember right.

I did not have to provide a portfolio or any information for Little Miss because under state law she doesn’t even have to start attending school until she is six and she was not six when the school year started. I will file an intent to homeschool form for her with the school district for the upcoming school year and I will consider her in first grade since we worked on kindergarten curriculum this year.

Overall, our homeschool year went well. We learned about a lot of things but I do see a lot of room for improvement for The Boy especially. We will have to increase our focus on science this next year and also add some more music and art as well as a writing and spelling curriculum for him.

For Little Miss we will focus more on science and history this upcoming year. Little Miss is also going to be having a few days a week of lessons during the summer so she doesn’t forget what she has learned.

We may choose to have set curriculum from one curriculum company this year as well but I have not decided that yet.

I know most parents love when homeschool or school is over for the year and they have a break all summer but I actually miss it. I liked making lesson plans and reading the lessons with The Boy. I liked knowing that each day I had a purpose other than cooking dinner and letting the dog in and out of the house and writing my silly stories. Luckily I now have a summer to begin planning for next year. I also will be teaching Little Miss some starting next week, as I mentioned, and starting in July The Boy will begin reviewing math lessons so he doesn’t forget everything he learned this year.

If you are a homeschooler, I’d love to hear about your homeschool year. Is it over yet? What are your plans for next year? Let me know in the comments.

 

 

More links for parents suddenly homeschooling

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 14 Comments

American parents! How are you doing?! Are you surviving with all the kids home? I know, you love them, but it can be overwhelming when you’re not used to it.

Pennsylvania’s governor announced Monday that public schools will be out of session for another two weeks so parents may be further stretched and stressed about how to continue their children’s lessons. On Saturday I shared a post with some advice and ideas about how to tackle this hurdle.

I had already started writing another post to help parents in need of resources to help with educating their children during this time and planned to post it this week before I heard the news about the extended closure Of course, and luckily, many parents can either connect with their teachers online or were sent home with work for their children to do.

But, on the off chance some of you weren’t provided with these connections, I’m jumping off my previous post and adding a little more information and some additional links.

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If you have further links or know of bloggers, etc. who have lists of resources and ideas for parents who are homeschooling against their will (so to speak) let me know in the comments so I can include it in future posts.

When I mentioned Notgrass social studies/history curriculum this past weekend, one thing I didn’t explain is that it can be used to cover English and Bible as well because the curriculum (there are a variety of different sets for different ages to choose from) offers reading, creative writing, a “Biblically Thinking” assignment, and vocabulary.

The America the Beautiful curriculum includes various books on various subjects that can be read separately or at the same time as your daily reading to support what you are studying. These are usually classic books such as Homer Price and Little House on the Prarie and somehow tie into the history lessons the child is reading about. We have been reading other books , either for our local homeschool group’s book discussion (though we never made it to one of the discussions for various reasons) or on our own, so we have only read one of the suggested books so far (Homer Price, which we are currently reading).

Notgrass offers a variety of history curriculum for a range of ages (elementary to high school). It does cost, of course, but you could find the curriculum used on eBay or other sources (including a used homeschooling curriculum group on Facebook) and then sell it when you are done.

In addition to the resources I mentioned Saturday, we have also used Easy Peasy Homeschool in the past, which is a free homeschool site that can be used as a complete course or supplemental resources.

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For math, we are currently using CTC Math. This math site can be used for children of all ages, but we are currently using it for our 13-year old.  There are some things we like about it, but one we don’t like is that when the student completes their online assignment, the program does not show them what mistakes they made and how the teacher came to the answer. There is a subscription fee for this program, but you can choose the monthly option.

In the past, we have also used Teaching Textbooks for math. We are not using Teaching Textbooks at this time because we are waiting for them to upgrade so they no longer need to use Adobe Flash, which is being phased out of web sites in the next year and which browsers are now blocking, making accessing their lessons difficult for us at this time.

Someone has started a Google Docs link with a list of live streams and other online events and what time they are being held. Many of these are for younger students.

For my youngest, we use The Good and The Beautiful’s language arts curriculum (we haven’t used their math curriculum yet), which I mentioned Saturday, but I forgot to mention that we also use ABC Mouse, which I’ve heard is offering their service for $5 a month for the first two months because of all that is going on. We pay $10 a month to use it and it provides lessons to help toddlers, preschoolers and Kindergartners learn their alphabet, numbers and a variety of other subjects. It is all online learning and utilizes characters, games, videos and ebooks to educate.

My daughter loves it, but my one issue with it is that she likes to spend more time dressing and changing the appearance of her avatar than actually doing her school work, so I have to limit her fashionista time when we log on. We don’t use ABC Mouse every day. In fact, I don’t spend a super long time on set lessons with Little Miss. I find her attention isn’t great so short lessons broken up throughout the day are best for her. We also use everyday situations as an opportunity to educate.

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The past couple of weeks we have used a couple of the links I had provided Saturday and so far my daughter (who is a huge animal lover) has loved the live animal cams at the San Diego Zoo (she is in love with orangutans and the siamangs) and any of the lessons about animals on the Classroom Magazine that Scholastic is offering for free for the next 30 days.

My daughter has loved PBS’s Wild Kratts for a couple of years now and has learned so much about animals she simply regurgitates it now.  When we were watching the African Safari Exhibit live cam Monday I said I thought I saw some antelope and she informed me: “Normally they live on the Serengeti.”

I said, “Oh. Wow. Okay. Well, how many 5-year olds know that let alone can say Serengeti?”

She said, “Well, other 5-year olds don’t watch Wild Kratts like I do.”

So, there you go. Check out Wild Kratts streaming on Amazon with the PBS Kids app so your younger kids will know as much about wild creatures as my 5-year old does.

My daughter and I also spent a good amount of time watching the bald eagle on the live cam in Hanover, Pa., sponsored by the Pennsylvania Game Commission. Just watching that eagle sit there on his/her egg (not sure if mom or dad was there Monday) was so relaxing and we plan to watch every day until, and after, the eggs hatch.

We have a bald eagle nest near us and people go to look at it, but some people yell and say we need to leave the eagles alone. They are afraid all the people looking (it’s off a main highway) will chase the birds from the nest, but they keep coming back every year so I don’t think they will. Plus, most people who take the walk to the area to see the nest are quiet and respectful, take a photo if they can, and then tip toe away. We may try to go see the eagles when the weather is better.

Michelle at Blessings by Me also suggested Super Charged Science for free and paid science lessons.

Here is another article listing tons of online learning options.

The Great Courses Plus is offering 30 free days of its online courses with the promo code FREEMO.

One of the only things I am loving about all of this craziness (because there is not much to love at all!) is that the tradition of reading to children is coming back by authors who are offering live readings of their books each night around bedtime.

Those you can follow include:

Andrew Peterson and his The Wingfeather Saga.

Miss Frizz Mobile Learning

Josh Gad on Twitter

Author Christina Sootornvant reading from her book Diary of an Ice Princess.

This site has list of a bunch of other authors/illustrators and celebrities doing the same thing.

For adults, or older children, who enjoy William Shakespeare and Patrick Stewart, he is reading one Shakespeare sonnet a day on his various social media sites.

There are tons of bloggers writing about their “suddenly homeschooling” or “continuing homeschooling” situation, including:

All Things Momma (who shares some ideas for entertaining your young children at home and educating them at the same time.);

and Kat at The Lily Cafe.

and, of course, Heather Dawn at Every Small Voice, who I mentioned in Saturday’s post.

If you have any other bloggers who are chatting about all this, please feel free to share their links in the comments and also share any other resources you know about.

Our homeschooling journey so far this school year

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 28 Comments

Homeschooling: the ultimate experience in making sure a parent is humbled and made to feel completely bewildered and inadequate.

I’m not totally serious with the above definition but homeschooling my children has brought out some of my worst attributes – the biggest ones being insecurity and extreme self-doubt. This our second year of homeschooling and I have more of a grip on it all now than I did before but I still feel like I’m dooming my children to a life of sub-par education and a future of cleaning toilets. I feel this way until I speak with students who attend local public schools and then realize I’m doing okay and they’re going to make it. Take that last sentence however you want. I get myself in enough trouble these days when I try to explain myself.

This year we are using Notgrass’s America the Beautiful for history and so far we are enjoying it. I like the additional family activities at the end of each lesson, as well as the short lesson reviews that help reiterate for the students what they have already read. I think the curriculum may be a little young, in some ways, for my almost 13-year old, but I like the overall review of the lessons and will use it for at least the first part of our school year.

Last week we made Navajo flatbread (which I’ve only known as Navajo fry bread) as one of the family activities at the end of a lesson. The children helped me make the dough and spread it out and then I did the frying. They, of course, also helped with the eating. My almost 5-year old helped with making a huge mess but not so much with cleaning it up.

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For English, we are using Saxon’s grammar and writing curriculum for seventh grade and also reading various novels. I like the Saxon curriculum because it incorporates actual writing and dictation lessons into the grammar.

We are still plowing through The Hobbit, even though the local homeschooling group already held a book discussion centered on it. My son is alternating listening to it being read aloud on YouTube and reading the actual book. For my part, I am very behind on the reading and need to catch up. I may need to listen to it being read out loud as well.

Science and math have our heads spinning a little. We are using Apologia’s Exploring Creation through Physical Science but honestly, I think it’s geared toward higher grade levels. I’m going to try to keep plowing through it, though, because I know my son is bright enough to catch on. I both like and hate that it features two or three experiments a lesson. I like it because it breaks up the large chunks of text in the textbook and I hate it because I have to find the supplies for the experiments ahead of time and I’m not always the best-prepared person. Hopefully, this curriculum will teach my son science and teach me organizational skills.

For Math, we are using Teaching Textbooks for now but they have had a lot of crashes on their online program this school year so we may look for another program when our subscription runs out in November. What I like about their program is I don’t have to teach math. I have some sort of math dyslexia and I was in remedial math in high school so math is not my strong point. Luckily my husband knows a little about math so I pass that duty off to him when I need to.

We are also attending a genealogy class with the local homeschool group once a week and that has been very interesting. The man teaching the class is a fellow homeschooling parent and he’s focusing not only on the biological information we can learn from our ancestors, but also their values and the importance of passing those values down to the next generation.

I will be adding art and, hopefully, music into our homeschooling routine, as well, as the year progresses.

How about all of you? If you’re a homeschooling parent, how is your homeschooling year going? If your children attend public/private school, how is school going for them? Let me know in the comments. And if you are a homeschool parent who has curriculum recommendations, let me know because I love to find new curriculum we can consider for the future.

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