Homeschooling thoughts

[bgtrudeau]

Hello all,
I've seen multiple homeschooling threads here and I wanted to start another one. Why you may ask? I am a homeschooling father, I think my wife and I are pretty good at what we do, and I so rarely have a chance to share thoughts with non-homeschoolers.
One thing I would like to find here is folk who can help expose any gaps in our education plan so that we can improve it. Several posters on other threads here are P.S. teachers whom I hope will jump at the chance I'm offering!

Background:

Beth and I have one 8 yr old daughter named Anna who is in 2nd grade (birthday is late in the year) and no other children. I have a B.A. in Biblical Studies with a history minor and my my wife has only a high school diploma. She has a few college classes in nursing and I am half way through my masters degree in software systems. In case someone would ask, we are practicing Roman Catholics. We live in the Twin Cities, MN.

Who Teaches

Beth teaches the reading, phoenics, spelling, writing, and penmanship although I frequently assist. She also takes Anna to karate, music school, and co-op classes. I teach all the math, geography, most of the science, and tend to much of the history. I've also been teaching Anna French. Some year in the future, Beth will teach Anna German.

Curriculum

Math - Singapore Math
Phonenics - Explode the Code
Reading Comprehension - Beyond the Code

For most other subjects we tend to have a unschooling philosophy.

Anna's Status

I'll start with Math. Anna has completed book 2A (1st semester 2nd grade) of the Math and book 2B will start in January. We school year round (with periodic breaks) and I expect book 3A will begin in May.
Anna has mastered addition of 3 digit numbers with carrying and can often add 2 digit numbers in her head (with carrying). She can subtract 3 digit numbers with borrowing. However, if she goes too fast and doesn't think, she tends to subtract backwards instead of borrowing (example 382-283 - Anna might subtract 2 from 3 in the ones place instead of borrowing like she should). If she slows down she does fine.
Anna has also mastered the concepts of < and >, has had lessons on measuring both length and weight (using both metric and english units), and has had basic lessons in geometry and franctions. She has mastered the 2's, 3,s, 5's, and 10's times tables and can perform simple division by 2's and 3's.
Book 2B will just about close out the rest of the times table, will teach analog time down to 5 min. increments, touch upon more geometry and fractions, and most importantly will hit upon mental math techniques.

Now for phoenics and reading. Anna is currently in book 4 1/2 of Explode the Code and book 3 of Beyond the Code. I expect she'll be done these books by the end of December or early January and we'll then go on to the next volumes. She reads extremely well, and I think beyond grade level. I think this because we challenge her with a lot of complex reading material. However, because English is such a phoenetically incorrect language at times, her spelling is very weak (beyond simple rudimentary words). We have a curriculum (can't think of the name) to assist us in spelling and we're focusing more attention to this now.

Anna has a great love of geography and a fascination with maps. She has memorized the names and locations of the 7 continents and 4 oceans (some say there are 5 oceans but we're going with the traditional 4). She knows the names of the 5 Great Lakes and has memorized 20+ states and capitals. She can find 40 or so states on the map (with little to no hesitation) as well as 6 or so countries, the Gulf of Mexico, and a couple of major mountain chains.
Regarding other social studies, we have taught her some about the Pilgrims and the voyages of Columbus. She has learned quite a bit about Marco Polo's trip to China and read quite a bit on ancient Egypt, complete with a visit to King Tut's relics when they were in Chicago in July. We like to read to her stories that illustrate life in different times (Little House books, American Girl stories, A Bride For Anna's Papa, etc.).
Twice a month, Anna attends a co-op class where she studies a country and culture in detail. Last year (1st grade) she studied the Phillipines and Germany. This semester she has studied Italy and next semester China.

Science is something that we haven't focused on. Our wish has been to get her to read and read well so that she can then delve into science related books, websites, etc. Having said that, Anna has learned the 9 planets pretty well, has mastered understanding the oxygen cycle, and has made many trips to the Science Center. There she has seen the following OMNI exhibits: Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, Volcanoes and Earthquakes, Underwater Caving, the sealife off the coast of Baja California, and traveling the Nile River. She has also learned the names and functions of various organs of the body and has learned what a virus is and how it may infect (prompted by an annoying viral infection). She and I are also starting to study energy, focusing on electricity generation, oil and natural gas pumping, and the like.

Anna has attained the rank of Advanced Red Belt in karate, taking classes at USA Karate. For the curious, the ranks are white, gold, green, purple, blue, adv. blue, red, adv. red, brown, adv. brown, black belt candidate, and lastly black. Karate is her physical education class.

Anna attends a music school one night per week and sings in the school choir. As for visual art, drawing, painting, and clay are normal activities in our house. We do make periodic visits to the art museum and do have a few art books in our home.

Motivating Anna

We keep a large (2 poster boards in size) wall chart to which we affix star stickers under the various subject headings. Anna gets 1 star for every lesson completed in Singapore Math, Explode the Code, or Beyond the Code. She gets 3 stars for reading a 30 page book (# of pages depends on complexity) herself, 1 star for every five states/capitals memorized, etc. If she reaches 500 stars by the end of June, she gets a stupendous reward (haven't figured out what). Right now she's at 175 or so stars and should be close to 200 by the end of December.
The chart is full of things Anna can learn or do to earn stars.

Testing

We try to give Anna a test the last Saturday of every month, covering each and every subject. I usually give her a time limit to help her be prepared for the Iowa Tests which she'll take every spring, starting in 2007. Verbal pop quizzes are fairly routine and common.

School Year

We school year round with 4-5 wks off in the summer, 1 wk at Thanksgiving, 2 wks at Christmas, and 1 wk at Easter. Anna works about 1 hr a day with Beth and 1 hr or so with me 2-3 nights a week and an hour on Saturday morning. It is not unusual to miss a day of homeschooling for whatever reason and then we just ratch it up another day.

Cost

We spend $500-$700 each year for curriculum and books to fill our home library. We especially love the books from Usbourne.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

We purchase syllabi from Mother of Divine Grace School. They are $20 and a good investment for us. We sub out and supplement the course work--but the skeleton is pretty basic. Since their curriculum is based on the Classical Method, they do not introduce "science" per se until 3rd grade. Before then science is just learning about the word via field trips, planting a garden, whatever the childs interest may be. They have samples on their website if that interests you.

Other than that--what you have looks great to me, but I am not a certified teacher .

My daughter is 1st grade and her core work is simply: Math, Phonetics, Poetry/Art, and Religion. She is beyond the syllabus for Phonetics and is now doing Explode the code--almost to book 3. Math, we use Math U See. We have the Alpha book.

We include Story of the World (for history) and a curriculum that goes along with that. And we use a science work book that is all labs. The supplemental material we haven't gotten far b/c I was very very sick in the fall from this pregnancy. We started it up again. She loves maps--so she has taken a natural interest in the history we are learning as it includes map work.

For 12 weeks in the fall and 12 weeks in the Spring we have classroom time with a Christian co-op. If she gets her primary requests--she will be taking a food crafts class, karate, and drawing.

She also does dance, gymnastics, and piano.


For MODG--just to give you and idea, their 2nd grade curriculum is: http://www.motherofdivinegrace.org/Catalog/SyllabiPDF/2nd Grade Book List.pdf .

Looks like you are on target with what they plan for 2nd graders.

 

[sha_lyn]

As a home schooler my suggestions are

start her on a beginning grammar/comp program. I really like First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind

Spelling/Vocbulary... you can build on the lesson in Explode the Code. Using the phonetic lessons come up with a short list of spelling/vocabulary words.
www.spellingtime.com is a really fun on line program that gives 5 daily spelling lessons, either with their suggested word list, or your own. Discovery channel offers a worksheet generator where you can make word puzzles, word/definition matches etc

History. I like a literature based time line approach for history. Story of the World is great IMHO as long as you use the activity guide.

Science We do mostly hands on activities for science incorporating the www.mathsciencenulceus curriculum

Your methods sound a lot like ours. We are very eclectic using bits and pieces of Classical, unschooling, Montessori and Charlotte Mason.

 

[barkley]

first as a disclaimer, and to be perfectly honest-i have very mixed feelings about homeschooling. i have a k-12 multiple education teaching credential in additon to certification and a degree in both psychology and early childhood education-all competed during the infancy of what is currently the standard for legal homeschooling in most states-i've taught in public and private schools both elementary and preschool, i've also taught adult education. i also have family members (on both sides of my marital family) who chose homeschooling for very different reasons. in one case it was because the parents did not want their children 'exposed' to individuals who did not share their religious and familial beliefs (both parents had bachelors degrees-neither in education), in the other the parents did not feel the curriculum their school districts or the available private schools in the surrounding areas offered were at the level their child was capable (both parents had graduate degrees-one in education with a teaching credential, the other in computer systems analysis). the reason i have mixed feelings about homeschooling is while i've professionaly (and unrelated) seen some incredible successes, personally (and being privy to more information) i've seen issues that have concerned me long run (as in when the kids due to circumstances had to enter either private or public schools, or when they reached (which they've all done now) college).

that said- it seems like you have a full curriculum for your dd. i can't comment on her specific achievements and competancy but i can tell you what my son who attends a very non traditional private school was doing/expected to be competant in when he completed 2nd grade (he attends a k-8th 2 room classroom school that while it assigns students based on their age allows them to work beyond their assigned grade level once they've completed the texts for their grades-so when he was in 2nd because he finished the 2nd grade curriculum in some subjects by the end of the first semester he was allowed to move into the 3rd grade subject matters).

ds upon begining 3rd was expected to know his multiplication tables from 1-12 and be able to do the corresponding divisions. he is into month 3 of third grade and is doing decimal multiplications and division (from what i recall-dd was doing basic algebra equations by the end of 3rd). as far as english/spelling/grammer-he has regular compositions and reports due both on a nightly, weekly and monthly basis. all are expected to be at his verbal level, with correct grammer, punctuation and spelling (and if they are assigned on the computer they may include special printing with water prints, borders, imported pictures or be in the form of a computer media presentation).

as far as spelling is concerned-he is expected to complete his weekly assignments (written once daily, formed into correct sentance format, spelling test) as well as utilize correct spelling into all writen assignments.

handwriting-he has a handwriting book that has 4 weekly practice assignments (in cursive) as well as a biblical verse that he must copy and illustrate. it is expected that his handwriting for assignments match his mastery in his workbook.

in so far as geography, geology, social studies, bible...he is expected to memorize certain facts/tracts, but he must demonstrate understanding/comprehension/application of the subject matter by practicly applying the concepts both in oral and written presentations/discussions.

science-in second they had studied the u.s., several countries and the world/solar system. they had done basic overviews (people, polictics, religion, practices, flags...) as well as topograhy and how historical/regional factors impacted current practices/life styles. i believe that body systems (organs, physical processes...) were covered in 1st grade. in subsequent grades greater depth of subject matter is covered (not sure where our son is at now on this, but last year he was doing elementary dna discussions).

our school schedual is 10 1/2 months per year 8 am-3 pm (30 minute lunch) m-th, with fridays from 8-12. we get a total of 4 weeks off per year and perhaps 7 days of legal holidays. testing on spelling is once per week, with other subjects generaly 3 times per month. iowa tests are done at the begining of the school year begining in 2nd grade to determine what level the student is at in order to make adustments accordingly.

 

[bgtrudeau]

Thought this would interest some. Each fall, prior to October, we notify the school district that we intend to homeschool and we provide updated immunization records and a general school calendar. Because I have my B.A., we do not have to file quarterly report cards. Anna will take the Iowa Basic Skills Test each spring, starting in 2007.

Though state law does allow for yearly in-home visits and/or documentation demands, the school district doesn't do so unless they suspect problems in a given home. Homeschooling is big in this county and the school system hasn't the resources to inspect or call upon everyone.

Guy