homeschool parents

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.

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.

DSC_2884_1

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.

___

Follow me on instagram at http://www.instagram.com/lisahoweler or Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/lisahoweler and find my first novel on Amazon.com A Story to Tell