Our homeschooling plan...
Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 06:00AM ...as of right now. ;)
So. I homeschool. Over the years, I've had countless conversations with folks about this and numerous questions. By way of answering some of those, I'm going to talk you through our little homeschool approach here in the coming days.
(Tangent: Also, I love documenting things and this seems like as good a place as any. Actually, I'm thinking I want to make a mini album that I can add to over the years with stuff we've used in our homeschooling journey. I'm working on a plan/system for yearly homeschool albums for each boy, but a separate album just about the curriculums would be nice, too. The hope is to get my ducks all in a row by summer's end. We'll see...;) Any other homeschooling scrapbookers have input on this?)
To start, though, let me set the stage. We've always homeschooled. None of our three boys has ever been enrolled in a public school. We don't have anything in particular against public schools and actually both had fairly happy public school experiences ourselves. Many of our friends and family are teachers. This is just what works best for us, for various reasons that would require many additional posts. ;)
Yes, we plan to continue homeschooling for the foreseeable future. The boys have always known that they have the option of going to public school. They prefer homeschooling, and we'll accommodate that so long as it continues to work.
Right now, Noah is 9 and just "officially" finished third grade. Much of his math and science is higher than that. Asher is 7, will be 8 this summer. He's just "officially" finished first grade. (These grade things are rather confusing for me sometimes, lol. My "official" grades correlate to what grade they'd be in if we'd sent them to public school. It doesn't always reflect what they're working on.) Micah will be 5 this summer and will "officially" start kindergarten this fall. (Yes, that means that if we were sending him to public school I think we'd send him this fall even though he has a late July birthday. The kid is just too anxious to grow up, lol.)
That said, let me walk you through our "routine" as it stands now...
I've recently decided to switch to a roughly three weeks on, one week off type of schedule. I find that taking large chunks of time "off" doesn't work well for us...difficult for both the boys and myself to get back on track and we lose time in trying. My hope is that planning just three weeks at a time will be more successful (and less overwhelming than trying to plan an entire year) and that the one week off will be just the pick me up we need to maintain our enthusiasm for learning while also having some fun and being able to tackle "other" stuff like household projects and holiday obligations. (I anticipate that things like the week before Halloween and the week of Thanksgiving will be "off" weeks...which should help things run more smoothly.)
On a day to day basis...we use a four day week schedule.
During the school year, the boys attend Options on Mondays. Options is an enrichment program where they go to a "school" with only other homeschool kids (grades K-12) for the day. They switch classes every hour and take classes like Hands On Science, AmeriTowne, Music/Drama, PE, Art, and the like. The classes give them a bit of experience with classrooms and other teachers and being part of a class but they aren't truly designed or intended to be their academic program...they're enrichment classes with the realization that the true academics are going on at home. (In other words, they get to do fun stuff like build volcanoes and play with bubbles while I cover acids/bases and chemical reactions at home, lol.) Since this is our normal Monday routine most of the year, I'm sticking with it during the summer and using Mondays for things like errands and just free play.
The remaining four days of the week, we do our "basics" in the morning. These are the things where the boys all have their own workbooks/levels going on...mostly math and reading. I have it broken down so that Asher and Micah do 1/3 of their weekly work in math and in reading each morning. The other morning, we simply read together one-on-one. Noah prefers not to take quite the same "a little bit at a time" approach and likes to finish all of his math in two days instead. He also has an additional math program that he does with me and a number of critical thinking workbooks that he works on independently. I think I'm going to start working with him on cursive, too. In general, this all takes about an hour to an hour and a half each morning. Then they can play until lunch. :)
After lunch, we tackle our subject(s) of the day. These are the things that I do with all three boys together for right now. (I anticipate that this will change at some point, but right now it still works...I know I'll have to go back and cover things for Micah again and will likely also go into more detail for the others at that point.) So, afternoons are for things like science, grammar, geography, history, Latin (okay, I haven't started this yet, but plan to soon), and art. Some days are quick and some take longer, but the goal is to still be done with everything by the end of the "normal" school day so that later afternoons are free for extra-curricular activities like soccer practices and swim lessons and karate classes.
And that, in an admittedly large nutshell, is what we do right now. ;)
Stay tuned for subject-by-subject lists of stuff we use and love...
Reader Comments (2)
Thanks for the homeschool peek. : ) We've just started this process with our oldest and thoroughly enjoyed K this past year.
It's really great to hear what you do....I really enjoy learning along with my children...we used the www.k12.com curriculum this past year and I think it is a good fit for our family. I think that the 3 weeks on and one off is a FABULOUS idea...I recently had a conversation with a family who attends a "year round" school and basically does the same thing!