Homeschooling an athlete - advice & curriculum

[LtStarbuck]

Dd is 10, halfway through 4th grade. She desires to home school to take better advantage of training times for her sport (figure skating). I hope for her to return to traditional public school in middle (6th) or high school (9th), and work a flexible schedule for her sport thereafter.

 

I like the idea of Laurel Springs, as it will allow her to work independently, while still providing consistent feedback and progress reports. The basic reviews I've seen here is that it is expensive.

 

Beyond the price, would you consider this an effective method for learning? To me it is not wholly unreasonable ($2300/ year), which for an all-in program I see as a price for the efficiency of not designing my own curriculum. I work full time so will not be able to provide all instruction. She will have supervision, but not tutoring, at her locations during the day.

 

This year, the class is using the Mifflin Math serious (Go Math). She is part the G&T program at school for math as well. Her teacher has also covered latin, in addition to language arts, history (early American history), writing etc. Her writing is slightly above grade level, math is grade 5, everything else is on par. She is a strong student and I don't want her to fall behind with 3-4 hours of home schooling per day.

[....]

It seems like you are looking for an online program, so feel free to ignore my post.  I don't like the looks and price tag of online programs or even the DVD programs out there, so if I were in your situation, I would approach it differently.

 

(And I also have a 4th grader). I would put together schoolwork for her to do independently during the day and then touch base with her for about an hour in the evening when everyone gets home and do certain things on the weekend together.  I would send her to daycare or wherever she's going during the day with her backpack, school books and a planner listing out all of her tasks for the day.  In the evening, I would spend about an hour and go over her work, correct her math/grammar/whatever, ask about her reading, etc.

 

I would save labs and hands-on activities for the weekend, when you could work on that with her.

 

We wouldn't even be able to come up with $2300 a year for an online program like that, so that would be my solution.  

 

And as far as working independently, some kids probably can't, but my 4th grade dd can.  So, I guess it depends on the kid.  There's lots of curricula where the student can work independently.  My 4th grader does Easy Grammar pretty much all on her own.  I just check her work when she finishes.  Reading for science, history and literature can all be done independently.  My kids have done geography workbooks over the years all on their own.  

 

Good luck with your search!   

[LtStarbuck]

Thank you! From the resources seen posted here, I am inclined to piece together my own curriculum, however daunting it may be. I gave her placement test for Beast Math yesterday and she enjoyed the challenging structure instead of rote problems. I'm still hesitant on writing/ history lessons but I do appreciate what's already available.

[OrganicJen]

I have a friend whose child is in a competetive ski training program and has limited school time and they use Build Your Library. They actually turned me onto the program. They are able to get it done in a few days a week by looking at the schedule for the week and reading all the assigned chapters for that week early etc. Then they do science another day and so on. Sometimes they take the whole week but overall they have said it's a very flexible program and works well with their training schedule. They love that the reading can be done in the car too so they aren't tied to a computer because there is a fair amount of driving for them with the training schedule.

[snowbeltmom]

Welcome to homeschooling! If you decide to design your own program, keep in mind that you do not have to use a formal curriculum for every subject. At your daughter's age, my kids focused on math, reading, and writing. History consisted of reading SWB Story of the World (minus the activity guides), and science was interest led until they reached high school level.

 

I never used an online program, but I know some families that did/are using it. The reviews are very mixed. Fwiw, when my college freshman was going through the recruiting process, he had one Ivy coach express relief that he wasn't using Laurel Springs as his admissions office did not hold it in high regard.

 

Good luck!

[kiwik]

I assume your daughter is fairly organised. My plan for this year as I am working 30 hours a week (mostly at home) with another kid at school is to bump most of science to the weekend and part of history to bed time reading. So we will do maths, writing, Latin, alternating grammar/reading and reasoning plus independent reading during the school day. He is 8 so will need me for most of that.

[....]

Thank you! From the resources seen posted here, I am inclined to piece together my own curriculum, however daunting it may be. I gave her placement test for Beast Math yesterday and she enjoyed the challenging structure instead of rote problems. I'm still hesitant on writing/ history lessons but I do appreciate what's already available.

 

It seems complicated at first, but once you get going it's pretty easy!  Beast Academy is great - my 4th grader is also using BA.  

 

History and writing...I would assign real books for history or you could have her read through the Story of the World series - or both SOTW + living books to go along with it.  If you are following The Well-trained Mind, she could do her history reading from a spine and then choose a literature selection to go with it.  She has booklists in the back of each chapter for history/lit.  

 

My 4th grader does copywork, dictation and narration for writing.  Copywork is really independent.  Dictation/narration takes like 5 minutes and you two could do that together in the evening or on the weekend.  I've had my kids do narrations with me while I'm cooking dinner, etc.  For writing, I also have a kid who really enjoys those creative writing workbooks like Rip the Page, Wordsmith Apprentice (3 of my kids really liked the Wordsmith series).  There are journaling workbooks on Amazon that I know my younger kids would like.  I have my 4th grader do a cursive workbook and she does that independently.

 

Science could be books about topics she's interested in that she can read on her level.

 

So if I were putting together something for us, this is what I would do (sorry, I'm probably getting carried away with myself  :tongue_smilie: ):

 

Literature - assign reading at her level - something she would enjoy

History - I would have her read a chapter of SOTW or read Kingfisher History Encyclopedia...or a history reader

Grammar - assign a page from Easy Grammar

Cursive - cursive workbook a couple of times a week

Writing - copywork with maybe a creative writing notebook or a journaling notebook

Science - assign reading at her level

Geography - I would switch between a geography workbook and living geography books

Math - ?

 

In the evenings and on the weekends, I would work on:

Spelling

Dictation/narrations from her reading that day

New math concepts

Maybe some science projects, experiments, etc

 

You just have to make sure and follow through every evening and on the weekends to make sure she's getting her stuff done.

 

If you read Cathy Duffy's book, my 4th grader is a "Perfect Paula", so as long as I put everything in a planner for her to do, she could do all that on her own and would enjoy it.  But, some kids would have a hard time doing that stuff independently.  My ds (who's currently 15) would've cried if I tried to get him to do all that on his own at that age.  So, it all depends on the kid.

[Clemsondana]

Simply Charlotte Mason's 'Visits to' series could be a good way to do geography. You buy 2 books as references for the whole series, and then a workbook for each continent. The workbook is designed to take 15 min/week for a whole school year. If you wanted to focus on geography instead of history for a semester, you could do it daily and do a couple of continents. You could easily do SOTW for history 4 days and then 'Visits' once/week for geography.

 

We use Handwriting without Tears for cursive practice- it's quick and the kids can do it on their own. For grammar and writing, we've tried different thing depending on our needs. For a quick 'get it done independently' we used 'growing with grammar' and 'winning with writing'. Now we need something different and have switched to something more parent-involved (the Michael Clay Thompson series). My older also uses the Kilgallon workbooks and can do that independently.

[GeoKitty]

My DD is a competitive gymnast who trains twenty hours a week. We do not use online programs. That gives us plenty of freedom to school during odd hours. Currently, in seventh grade, she does school for about three hours in the morning. Then has four hours of practice. Weekends are for biology labs, as well as a couple hours of academics. Carschooling happens as well. We school year round, but go,lighter in the summer. We have also done co-ops, as well as extra classes like book club.

 

When she was in elementary school, programs that worked for her were Beast Academy, AOPS (she had fewer gym hours), MCT, SOTW, Notgrass. We still make AOPS work, but she isn’t tearing through the book quickly anymore due to time constraints.

 

Many of her teammates also homeschool. Or hybrid school. Those who use online programs are much more bound by time constraints, exams, and teacher phone calls/ emails/ messaging.

[SevenDaisies]

Most of the skaters who ‘homeschool’ at my daughter’s rink use online public school. There are a few who actually homeschool. Many say its temporary, but the only ones who go back to school are those who quit the sport. You say she will have supervision. Will she be staying at the rink or will she be home? If she will be at the rink all day you may want to consider some sort of online instruction, unless she is very self-motivated. The girls who stay at my rink during the day do online public school.