Staring At A New School Year-To Homeschool or Not?

Summer Is Coming To An End - DECIDING TO HOMESCHOOL or NOT

This is a big decision many people have at the end of the homeschooling whether they have been homeschooling their children or their kids have been in public, private or alternative schools. Up until recently, many people didn't even have Homeschooling or Working While Homeschooling on their radar as an option. Now, many know that they have more options in customizing education for their kids than ever before.

IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO HOMESCOOL

You can decide to homeschool your child at any time of the year. You have the option to 'try' on traditional education, and decide that it's not for you, then take your child out to homeschool them.

However, if you plan on homeschooling your child first, then putting them back in traditional school, you may consider some of the hurdles with this option.

-Elementary School: There is an easier transition to elementary school if the child homeschools. They may give the child a placement test, then enroll them in their grade based on their age.

-Middle School: This is the grade range where special programs for gifted students, and students with interest that can easily migrate into like high school programs happen. The risk is that your child may not be eligible for some of those programs if you enroll them after 7th grade. However, you can request that your child get tested for those programs.

-High School: No homeschool credit will be acceptable at the High School level. So homeschooling your child for several grades, they will still have to finish 4 years of English and 3 years of Math (4 in some states) which may require summer school or doubling up on classes.

IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO HOMESCOOL

When you decide to homeschool and it's a new idea, don't rush to buy curriculum, jump into school and plan long lessons, schedule and days. Take a step back and talk to your child, find out how they like to learn, what they want to accomplish this school year, and what is their most difficult and rewarding subjects. Then test their skill to see if they have educational gaps, have a love language that works well for positive reinforcements, and socialization preferences.

Unschool them, by doing nothing specific with school work, but get them to a point where you are interacting with them on a fun, loving and bonding manner.

Then start their schooling with focusing on the following in the order below:

1) First quarter of school, work on filling the educational gaps in Math, Reading, Writing.

2) Second quarter of school: start your curriculum for the school year with four subjects, adding the additional subjects after a week or two.

3) BE FLEXIBLE, realize kids like us need breaks, gets bored, don't want to show up to work and need vacations.

Homeschooling and Working While Raising Amazing Learners!

THESE KIDs RIGHT HERE! 

Molded and shaped us to be able to be the best parents would could be, they love us with our flaws, our mistakes in parenting, and still made us realize that even we had more growing to do.

The eBook is on sale for AMAZON PRIME DAY for $2.99

CLICK HERE

Classes and Debating

HIGH GEAR AND STEPPING OUT

of our comfort zone

Part of me wondered why I put my son in all these social justice and debating programs this year. It only makes his ability to 'debate' his point against what I want him to do much easier.

Hard to be the only kid homeschooling now, that's what my son complains about lately. He is looking forward to working this summer and hoping to keep doing so when the new school year starts. I am concerned about the distractions, but will let him try it this summer.

He misses the days he got to hang around with his sister who is now working. Now his schedule is to sleep all day, and work on stuff in the evening, then stay up all night playing video games.

Not Working, but fell asleep playing online Games

He was supposed to be doing Computer homework

KIDS PROGRESS

SPEED RACER has a mildly packed schedule
He literally hardly gets anything done while I am at work and his dad or sibling that works from home is there.

Basically, I get home, I tell him to get off the video games and lets get to work. We work for about 3 hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday and Wednesday only an hour or so. Most work is getting done on Sundays afternoons where it's our finish everything for the week. He will do the work, I check it, give it to him to revise, he fixes it, then turns it in.

Homeschool Classes 
Bible Study (online) with discussion with mom or dad
Pilot Training (online) mom reviews his test and quiz success and helps
Java Programming (online) sister reviews his projects and CompuScholar checks his test and quizzes


College Classes

C Programming
In week 1 of 8
-Finished Lab Project
-Finished 3 paragraph discussion
-Finished 1 page paper

Information Technology Ethics
In week 1 of 8
-Finished Ethical Analysis 5 page Paper
-Finished 3 paragraph discussion
-Finished Current Event Review paper

Foundations in Information Systems
In week 1 of 8
-Finished 3 paragraph discussion
-Finished 1 page paper

WORK and HOME BALANCE Working and Homeschooling 

MEAL PREP: This is on schedule. Thank goodness. My kids help with meal prep and planning for the week, then we do actual prep on Sunday for breakfast, lunch and dinner. This has been working well the last two weeks.

HOUSE CLEANING: Chore chart is being used for a reference and if they aren't done, they don't get to do their fun stuff...most times. I'm a softy so I have to work on this.

LESSON PLANNING: I now do it on google docs and share it with him. We get through it for the most part, now less then when both kids were homeschooling. 

MARRIAGE CHECKUP: We've been setting up a weekly game night with friends and family, not much alone time, but we are having some fun since the kids spend time playing with the other kids.

SELF CARE: My coworker bought her neck massager to work and gosh, I love it! Every morning I massage my neck for a good 10 minutes. Best way to start my day!

Planning The Next Semester

LESSON PLANNING IS NO FUN

But Someone's Got to Do it

We do lesson planning for the year, then a weekly plan, and a re-evaluation plan for the 2nd semester. It's usually when we clean out curriculum that isn't working, add curriculum we want to try or pause curriculum in place of adjustments to schedule or the child's progress.

Breaking down the school year into 4 quarters and 2 semesters has helped our family make adjustments as needed. Filling in educational gaps is something the shorter quarters or block times help us focus on. As working and homeschooling parents, it gives clear time frames for us to make adjustments and to deep dive into subjects.

TIME FOR CHANGE

It never fails, we always need to drop a curriculum item, condense something or elongate lessons. We've learned to expect it and not get too upset about it. Math and Writing are always an issue for our current student and we have had to prolong lessons in certain areas in order to strengthen and solidify understanding and skills in these cornerstone subjects.

THE QUICK AND DIRTY WAY

Creating a topic list with the subject, page/reading or videos to watch is a fast way to add a new subject or curriculum into the mix. Setting a weekly review of the student’s accomplishments of the list we do with the student’s weekly presentations to the family.

BREAKING IT DOWN

After taking note on how long it may take to finish a subject for the semester, we review areas that can be combined or removed in order to fit the shorter timeframe. We make sure to focus on the key points of the topic. Also, using visual aids and posters to show the information in a condensed manner. This is a great approach for Science, History, Language Arts, Grammar, Reading and Remediation of subjects.

PLAN IN BREAKS

Never forget to plan in for time off. Realistically planning for a four day week with one day of makeup work is doable for most working and homeschooling parents. However, we planned for a five day week with the kids having the weekend as their ‘homework’ period to finish any work they haven’t completed for the week or to review any work that they had problems with.

DON'T OVERBOOK ~ I MEAN IT ~ DON'T

This is one of the major mistakes we made early on in our homeschool and working adventures. Slowly, we learned what our challenge was and fixed the issue (mostly). Once we 'underbooked' it was easier to have time to focus on topics and skills that the students really needed the most help in.

Don't Judge-Homeschooling is Great-But Traditional School is Needed

Sometimes I overhear mom's on the homeschooling front really rip a new hole in Public or Traditional School systems.

I get it, there are a lot of problems with the system ... BUT...

STEP OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE

There are many, many kids in the US that would never be able to be educated at home. Due to parental issues, parents that have to work but still can't make a decent living, single parents or disabled parents or even parents that aren't present.


THE NEED FOR PUBLIC or TRADITIONAL EDUCATION

The need is providing education for everyone. Yes, we don't like to be 'made' to send our kids to school, but some parents are negligent. This mode of operation was made into law for a rather good reason. The problem though is the execution is based on a system of people that have to make it work for EVERYONE - and that's just not a realistic goal.

My Mother In Law is an educator and I've seen her become so angry at her staff when they give up on kids. But the truth is, they graduate from college ill prepared to deal with kids that come from various homes with different levels of parental support.

SOME KIDS SURVIVE, SOME THRIVE, OTHERS ARE FAILED

With having 4 kids I have to say I see traditional school as an 'Option' for my kids. Truth be told, it was a good fit for my oldest son and my oldest daughter did just fine there.

However, my younger two kids suffered in this system. I moved them from Public school to Private school and still saw the light of learning seep out of their eyes, replaced by the depression of being bullied by both teachers and other students.

Maybe school has changed? Maybe these 2 kids are just different. I think it's a bit of both.

Finally, while homeschooling them makes them extremely happy (neither kid wants to go back to Traditional school - they remind me every so often). I believe I love having the FREEDOM to decide how I want to educate my kid.

WE MOVED TO BE IN A BETTER SCHOOL DISTRICT

The thing is, if you want to go the Traditional school route, there's lots of ways to get in the better selection of schools. Let's admit it. Some schools have MAJOR resources that homeschooling just can't give that easily.

So there were many people that moved to, rented in, and fought their way into the better schools or school districts.

In my current school area our kids have to 'compete' to get into the limited programs available.

IN YOUR SPARE TIME 

Take a look at A MOVIE that shook me,

Waiting for 'Superman'

 

Standardized Testing...Oh My!

I didn't think I'd do it...but I did. I ordered this for my kids and I'm so happy I did.

This week has been a bit chaotic. My mother in law came to visit and not only did I have to clean my house like you wouldn't believe, but I handed my kids over to her for administering the Stanford 10 standardized test. I ordered it through Abeka Testing.

WHY DID I DECIDE TO TEST MY KIDS

I really wanted to document their academic growth. My kids have been taking standardized test for years through the public and then private school system.

Both did relatively well in certain areas but it was hard for me to tell where they really needed the help.

Not only that, but I want them used to taking tests since testing is in their future with PSATs, SATs, CLEPs, DSST and AP exams I plan on them taking. I wouldn't want them unfamiliar with the process which would cause test anxiety.

ABOUT THE TEST

* To administer they want you to have a College Degree
* It takes 3 days and about 2-3 hrs per day
* There is no time limit on the test
* You mail it back to the scoring provider (in my case we used Abeka Testing)
* Scores come in 2 ways, I decided to get results both ways
* Do a test at the beginning of your school year - THEN do one at the end to see how the child has grown

WHEN TO TEST

After talking with my MIL I realized I started their initial testing WAY too late for my purpose. I should've tested them for their perspective grades in the very beginning of our school year. But now we are 90 days in. All I can do now is hope the test show some growth but to me the scores will not be a true indication of how much I grew them from the time they started homeschooling this July.

So I will test at the beginning of the school year and at the end of the school year in order to see how my kids improved their learning, what areas they need more help in, and to give them practice on taking standardized test.

THIS WEEK of insanity

Well testing was interesting. My poor MIL realized that my 10 yr old Speed Racer was finishing the test way too fast. After she reviewed some of his answers she asked him if he even read the passages and if these were his best answers.

Speed Racer said they weren't but he knows that stuff, why does he have to do the test. (my mouth dropped when she told me this)

But MIL an experienced educator told him, if he couldn't prove to her he knew it, what was the point in knowing them? After he thought on that, he asked her if he could correct his answers.

Then we decided to do school after the testing. I won't do this next time. I believe it was way too much and the kids did get their work done but they were grouchy about it. They didn't give MIL too hard a way to go. Thankfully, my Hubba took over around 8pm when the kids were getting off track.

As far as the rest of the house, dinner was thrown together 2 days this week, and we didn't eat until 9pm which is way too late compared to our 8pm dinner time (lol! I know but our schedule is packed).

DISTRACTIONS

My MIL was quite entertained while schooling Speed Racer and Tiger Lilly. My Speed Racer is so full of energy that I allow him 20 to 30 jumping jacks or push ups after each subject completed. But for his grandma he did several hand stands. Yep - this is why the kid didn't fit in at traditional school, he's got way too much energy.

Some major things that took us off schedule was the Stanford 10 test that was given to the kids and my crazy work schedule that had me working later than usual. But other than that, the kids had a great week.

However, I plan to take this Sunday off and sleep in, going to the late 6pm church service which they have dinner provided.