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Willa

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  1. We live in a rural area with very few locals who hs through highschool so we have essentially done it on our own (except for 4th ds who attended local public high school because that was the only way he could participate in varsity athletics). We couldn't afford online classes and during my oldest childrens' highschool years, we had medically fragile younger children so we couldn't really commit to set courses anyway. There are no co-ops within 50 miles, etc, and we have only one car. Local CC is 50 miles away and does not allow DE except for ps students. So we just used textbooks and whatever else and the kids mostly learned on their own. Two of the olders went to private liberal arts college through scholarships and loans and did very well in spite of their complete lack of previous classroom experience. Both are graduated -- one is married and presently a SAHW/M while one is working as a computer programmer and doing well. One ds is working his way slowly through CC 2-year transfer degree to 4-year univ. He's also doing well and has joined a CC honor society and gets high recs from his professors. The next one is a senior in high school and will probably live with his older brother in Oregon so he can attend CC there (instead of making the 100 mile round trip commute here in our area). Just to share our experience. I know it's not exactly typical even for hsers nowadays. We started homeschooling in 1995. Some years we enrolled in Kolbe Academy, some years we didn't, according to finances, but for the most part we designed our own curriculum.
  2. I read 2-4 chapters of LoF to my 10 year old in the morning (reading Liver right now), we do the TYYP together, and then he does Math Mammoth in the afternoon on his own. I started him behind grade level in MM so that part of it is basically review, and practice for him in doing math on his own. ThatQuiz is also a useful supplementary resource.
  3. I have 7 but 4 are now adults. You are in the most difficult years. Any schedule will have to be flexible because of the baby and the toddler. Some things that helped me: --Reading to the older kids all together while the baby nursed. We did a LOT of reading aloud. --Having a preschool box for the little ones for their "school" -- with manipulatives, puzzles, dot to dots, etc. That was their work, so if they were at loose ends, I would tell them to do something from the school box. --Working with the school-age children in turns, starting with the youngest, and working up to the oldest (who could do more on his own) -- if I didn't get to one of the children during the day, he was top priority the next day. That kept the basics going. -- Focusing on the basics --- reading and math particularly. If the kids learned how to read, they could read on their own. If we did math daily I felt like everything else they could catch up on later if necessary. In later years, writing became more important, but we did a lot of informal writing -- stories and blogs and such. -- Thinking of the baby and toddler as an ongoing life lesson for our whole family. The older children learned a LOT by having little siblings. I had to keep that in mind especially when the little ones disrupted the academic flow. --An enriched home with lots of books and educational supplies, as others have mentioned. The children learned constantly. -- Older kids helping with the chores. Once a week we had a half school day and we cleaned the house -- the other days they had maintenance and mealtime chores. -- Teaching preschoolers to be able to play on their own for a certain amount of time. Once in a while, I would just put the little one in a high chair with snacks or craft supplies so I could focus on teaching an older. I didn't rely heavily on this but there were times it was useful. I found this article: HOmeschooling a Wide Age Range -- a few years ago and read it again almost every year. Here's another one http://chfweb.com/articles/week29.htm. Both from a Christian perspective FYI.
  4. I am just switching over to a December-->November school schedule. It hasn't been hard at all, though it does help that we don't have any kids in the school system this year. It helped that we already had our school year divided in 6 2-month periods.... December/January, February/March, April/May, June/July, August/September, October/November. Each term has its own distinctive features, eg the June/July term is more field trips and outdoors, etc. We try to do 7 weeks per 2 month term -- the other 2 weeks usually get swallowed up by life events -- last month I was really sick, the term before that we took a family trip, etc. I have a high schooler and basically for his transcript I would just put the work he has done -- not specific dates. That's how I did it for my older 3 and it wasn't a problem -- no one asked. Some colleges are on trimester, anyway -- so for example, my son in college has a September-December term and then a January-March term and an April - June term. It's easy to plan my high schooler's work on a similar framework. Eg I am going to add Economics next month since it's a graduation requirement in CA.
  5. My favorite is Agile Results. (The link takes you to an overview of the system). It has a built in mechanism for trial and error, which I need. I've also found ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life to be helpful. It's not a system so much as a collection of strategies for different areas where ADD types typically have troubles -- like losing things, getting out the door on time, etc.
  6. This was my problem when I started homeschooling a couple of decades ago. I could write, but not because I had been taught. I learned to write from reading good books and basically imitating them in my free time. I went on to major in English literature and did fine on writing lit analysis papers but more from intuition than acquired skill. So, I floundered in teaching writing for several years. My two oldest boys were pencil-averse. My daughter loved to write and wrote all the time. I didn't want to mess them up. We did a lot of oral work, a bit of copywork, and a lot of writing-related projects following their own interests. If they had gone to school at any time during the first six years they would have been quite behind in writing, at least temporarily. One of my boys would have been behind until high school, I think, since he could not handwrite well until he was 12. In their middle school years I heard about the progymnasmata and started using that as an organizing device for formal writing, which worked well for me since I respected the progym (and didn't respect a lot of the other writing programs out there at that time -- you all have more good choices now). We also had a family story writing club with a daily writing period required just before lunch. My children all took off in different ways and wrote all kinds of things.... one wrote a novel, another started a blog and wrote stories for a Lord of the Rings message board, another went through most of the progym on his own. They are all in college and beyond and excel in writing, so our experiments turned out OK. Whew. I'm not advocating "better late than early" here. With my current 5th grader I am doing way more writing than I did with my older crew. I hated the stress and uncertainty of not knowing what I was doing and spinning my wheels, even though it turned out all right. I feel like they weren't able to acquire fluency and confidence with my help -- they had to do it on their own, and it was harder than it needed to be for them. Basically, they reproduced the way I learned myself. Rather, I'm saying that good writing skills take time to develop and not all that time has to be spent on formal writing assignments. A lot of them come from reading good books, discussion, writing-related projects, as others have said. I also think it's important for kids to have time to write on their own -- "learn to think of themselves as writers" as Julie Bogart of Bravewriter says. For this reason I start transcribing their orally narrated stories when they are too young to write on their own. Later if the children seem stuck in their personal writing we hold "free writes" where the time is devoted to working on their own projects. I'm also saying that it's important for the writing teacher, ie the mom in my case, to learn more about writing and develop some ideas of how to teach. Learning how to teach writing takes some time and trial and error just as learning how to write does. Mistakes will be made. I don't think many of the mistakes are fatal unless you just ignore the issue altogether. AND if the mother can't write well, it's going to be hard to teach well. In those cases I would probably encourage the mom to teach herself -- read good books, try out some of the exercises in the writing book her children are using, get constructive feedback on grammar and spelling, etc, practice, learn to love writing, etc. I've seen many homeschool moms improve immensely in their writing skills simply by blogging consistently. Or outsource, but even with outsourcing it's useful to know something about it. If there is a possibility of going to public school, check out the writing required in the school you would choose and do a little work with your student so that there is some familiarity with the requirements. That is what I did when my fourth child went to public high school, and he was able to do well in English class from the start, even though he is not really a natural writer. My .2 cents!
  7. One more jump into the pool. I loved the look of the CAP fable and narrative, bought the student editions, and am looking forward to using with my 10 year old when we get back from out of town trip. We were/are using WWE3 and Classical Composition, and they are both going well, but the advantage with the CAP series is the way it works directly with the student. I like the explanations of narration, etc. I don't plan to give up using CC but it's harder to teach. WWE3 is nice but it is easy for him and takes <10 min a day. I will probably keep using it too because of the literature choices and because he enjoys it. Anyway, thanks for the CAP rec -- I :hurray: even if my budget is groaning just a tiny bit.
  8. Glencoe has these booklets with sample student responses. :leaving: Not exactly what I would call excellent, but they probably do show what's expected typically out there in 5-paragraph-essay-land. Dr Vavra of KISS grammar has an online anthology of excellent essays. (I thought he had some samples of student essays, too, but I can't find them). I've looked for samples in the past, for my high schoolers to study, but haven't been able to find much of quality, which raises the question of whether 5-paragraph essays exist except in American high schools. I went to high school in Europe, never had to write one there, and never had to write one in university, either (skipped the entry-level composition course) Keeping an eye on this topic.
  9. We used K12 for 2 years about 4 years ago. For my 1st/2nd grader it went well but took a LOT of time (more than I usually spend on that age group especially since he was academically ahead). For my 7th/8th grader it was a bit of a disaster. I had hoped to get him working independently but he learned to just pass the tests and checkpoints without really getting a grasp on the material. My special needs child age 10 at the time did not qualify for K12.. In my area, at least, K12 does not take children more than 2 grades below grade level, and ds is moderately delayed. So it was a washout for him too because I didn't have the time to do things with him. I think they will make exceptions with the grade level rule but another local mom in my area had quite a few hassles getting services for her daughter (YMMV). I like K12's coursework and book choices for the most part and they have a lot of nice features but for us the paperwork and focus on test prep was a huge distraction to learning. We are using a lot of Memoria Press this year and I'm finding it easier to keep a handle on things because it is more mastery-based. Just my experience. I wish K12 would have worked out better for us because I did like the materials and having therapy paid for would have been a huge plus for us since our local school district won't supply for homeschoolers.
  10. I read TWTM back in 2000 when my oldest was in 8th grade. Since then I revisit it at least to browse once every year or two. I can almost always find something useful in it. I use the book (first edition, I'm pretty sure) more for strategies than for actual book recs. I never thought of following it exactly because by the time I read it we already had our own way of doing things. I joined the board in 2008 though for a long time I only visited once in a while when researching something. It's a bit overwhelming at first glance, but I am finally figuring out how to maneuver through it. I think. :huh:
  11. Eugene Moutoux Drawing Sentences (he has a great website) Mary Daly : Diagramming Worktext
  12. My son's OT recommended gum and it worked great for us. My SN son also chews on (and spins and twists) plastic straws.
  13. I too try to keep math down in time to less than 30 minutes during a typical day for children younger than 11,. If we don't make much progress during the 30 minutes during the school day I do supplementary stuff like ThatQuiz, games, flashcards, quick timed drills etc at different times in the day. In fact, my 10 year old generally does math twice a day -- one part for more conceptual work (first thing in the morning) and one part for drill (he does this just before he gets his free time in the afternoon so he is motivated to finish quickly) I have assigned short math things for "homework" too -- doing a bit in the evening seems to change the pace for them.
  14. My 5th grader and I read through the whole LoF series this summer and are now in Kidneys. As he got up closer to grade level I didn't think the practice was enough so I bought Math Mammoth Light Blue and we are using that. This seems to be working very well. I started a little behind grade level to make sure he was comfortable with the program and that there would not be gaps. The combination of the two programs is working well for us and I hope we can focus on Life of Fred alone when he gets up to the middle/high school levels.
  15. :iagree: ED Hirsch's Cultural LIteracy is essentially an American civic ideal that seems to me to trace back to the Enlightenment in its goals and methods. He has research to show that having "hooks" of knowledge to hang new knowledge upon gives a reader an advantage in tackling new reading on the same subject. I will have an easier time reading an advanced article about Lincoln if I already know something about his life, thought and death. Learning something about the important things ("cultural literacy") in the earlier years gives a base for later studies. (Cultural Literacy -- PDF article) If all students are taught the same "core knowledge" there will be less of the gross inequalities presently going on in society where the students with an enriched home life are at a huge and ever-increasing advantage compared to kids from less advantaged homes (advantaged here not talking about economic per se but a matter of books in the home, time spent talking to the child etc) I think his theories are plausible, rather substantial compared to most of the public school oriented solutions out there, and, well, fairly noble. And they remind me of SWB's thoughts in certain respects, though I am skating on thin ice since I haven't read her book for a few years.. Her method is obviously much more home-based -- I don't mean to minimize the differences. I am just talking about the argument that knowledge builds on knowledge, and worthwhile knowledge of cultural importance is for more valuable than knowledge of ephemeral or twaddly content. However, classical education involves something more --- aspirations to nobility in David Hicks' terms (Norms and Nobility). To be a good man (human) who is also eloquent and a good citizen (sort of paraphrasing Cicero and Quintilian). That's in secular terms, at least the Cicero/Quintilian bits, and post-Renaissance classical education took these ideals and cast them in specifically Christian terms, at least with Jesuit education, as 8Fill often points out (I have been browsing old threads recently). Reading back through Circe's blog recently I found this What is the Difference Between Classical and Conventional Education? which seems to have some good points. Christian perspective, of course. I would think it would be only partially helpful to the OP because it's equating conventional schooling with the public school system which is a different kettle of fish from what you do in your own homeschool. But you might get some ideas of how you want to use your curriculum? I've used conventional materials some years in my homeschool (hoping to simplify things :glare:) but my home did not look like a ps because my goals and how I worked with my kids were entirely different. The education might not have been "classical" those year but it fit into Mr Kern's terms of focusing on truth, etc. I think you can continue to do that no matter what schoolbooks you use but I have found that sometimes conventionally-oriented schoolbooks are more frustrating because their goals don't match mine, so I've gone back towards classical because there's less I have to discard and change. I don't do rigorous classical but even the relaxed bits we do have given us quite a bit of traction.
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