Advice for new afterschoolers

[Greenmama2]

We've always home schooled but the DC 8 & 5 both started at a brick & mortar school this week. DS 5 will be fine with just a little bit of literacy extension at home but DD8 is at least two grades ahead of where she will be working at school in math and needs a small amount of constant challenge to stay sane. She's been using BA, SM and Khan Academy at home. I guess it will be easiest to keep up Khan Academy for now. I don't really have questions about materials - I suppose I'm really looking for advice/tips on changing from a home school to a school + after school lifestyle. Especially from BTDT folks.

Thanks.

[Hamburger Mom]

Hi! I haven't BTDT yet, but I'm in the same boat.  In fact, I also have a DS8 and DD5, and this will be their first year in a B&M school. We are working on writing names on papers--they rarely do this at home.  Also, I'm having them practice sharpening pencils. :) 

 

As far as our schedule goes, we are cutting back on outside activities--at least in the fall.  My DS8 had two weeks of day camp this summer, so he got used to bringing his lunch (and not forgetting to bring his lunch bag home). 

 

Oh, and we reviewed (for DD5) things like our address, phone numbers, etc.  

 

Good luck!

[Greenmama2]

Thanks for replies.

[displace]

We went from short term homeschooling to afterschool for K. It was challenging. Mostly because where we live the academic expectations were super high. Combined with many hours at school and not wanting to burn out, it was a tricky transition. We focused on usually only one or two subjects per day. We took days off with no schoolwork but still did read alouds. We increased down time educational opportunities (documentaries instead of cartoons, math computer games, etc).

 

Honestly, most of our time was in remediation and it was a struggle to get from the teacher what we needed to focus on or how because they teach sight words and other ways to read whereas I taught phonics. They taught math by repetition drill where I was teaching big concepts.

 

The best decision I made was just viewing afterschool as mini homeschool and picking a good curriculum for us and using it.

 

Since you're an experienced homeschooler, I think your transition to afterschool should be easy? For your children it may just be teaching subjects the school doesn't teach (foreign language, history, etc), or possibly enrichment for advanced studies (fun math, fun science). Or maybe you'll find you just want to do more read alouds or extracurriculars.