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Distance Education and extras


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We just joined a distance education school this year. My children are in grades 9, 7 and 5. While I love and prefer homeschooling and being able to plan and prepare all the lessons, picking and choosing the curriculum, circumstances beyond my control mean that we have had to go ahead with DE instead. It's been 5 weeks now and we are finally finding our grove. As they only cover the basics of education, I'd love to incorporate some other subjects myself now but need some advice.

My 9th and 7th graders are taking about 4hrs to cover their work which includes: math, English, Science and Humanities and Social Studies. They have been given access to Rosetta Stone for French but I'd also like to include the curricula they were using for French previously.

My 5th grader is usually done within 2hrs.

Some things I'd like to incorporate include: Latin, French/German, lots of literature including Shakespeare, poetry, other living books (we own heaps of books). I had great plans for using living books and Sonlight for history and Science all through high school and am saddened that I can't use those now. 

I'm wondering how I can possibly use any of these without overloading my girls. I want to continue providing them with a rich reading learning and not just filling in worksheets in books, which is partly what some of their new work involves.

I would really like to continue working through AAS for my younger 2 and possibly use Easy Grammar (just once through for each of them).

Any suggestions or recommendations how I can realistically make this work? I understand I can't use everything I have, but would love to have balance between DE and literature/living books curricula.

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Sorry you're in a difficult season right now. 😞

Perhaps add a little more school time to your schedule each day? I totally understand if this is too overwhelming for your current circumstances, too, but if you feel you *could* add a little more to each day, then something like this would bring your hours up to typical amounts of time per grade level:

- 9th grader: add 1.5 - 2 hours/day = total 5.5 - 6 hours/day
- 7th grader: add 1 - 1.5 hours/day = total 5 - 5.5 hours/day
- 5th grader: add 2 - 2.5 hours/day = total 4 - 4.5 hours/day

Perhaps something along these lines (below)...  It gets in most of your desires, at a gentle 2x/week pace, without overloading the schedule -- and since these are supplements, if feeling overwhelmed for a time, set them aside until everyone feels able to pick them back up again:

MON/WED -- add 90 min for everyone + additional 30-60 min for 5th grader:
- 5th = 30-60 min = solo reading from your good books
- 9th, 7th, 5th
   30 min = A.M., together = lit. enrichment = Shakespeare, poetry
   30 min = P.M., together = History enrichment = your living books
   30 min = solo, when it fits = foreign language** = French supplements (OR -- Latin -- OR -- German)
** = realistically, I think you need to choose just ONE language at this time, and since they're doing French with Rosetta Stone and you have previous French materials, I'd go with that -- JMO

TUES/THURS -- add 90 min for everyone + additional 30-60 min for 5th grader:
- 9th, 7th, 5th
   30 min = A.M., together = lit. enrichment = your books -- together read aloud (or audio book) + discuss
   30 min = P.M., together = Science enrichment = your living books
- 9th
  
30 min = additional lit. study? more French? pursue a personal interest? work on an elective? fine arts time?
- 7th, 5th
   30 min = LA enrichment = AAS and Easy Grammar
- 5th = 30-60 min = solo reading from your good books

FRIDAYS -- add 1 - 2 hours for everyone
family field trip; or "project time" for art, science, history, geography, etc.; or extracurricular; or family baking; or ...


BEST of luck in finding what works, and hope your circumstances will soon improve! Warmest regards, Lori D.

Edited by Lori D.
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I think Lori offered you solid suggestions. I just wanted to share that if you ask this question elsewhere, you might want to use the terminology distance education instead of DE. The DE acronym is typically understood to stand for dual enrollment (high school students enrolled in college classes and earning dual credit, high school and college.). 

Are your students enrolled in an online public charter or with a homeschool provider?

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13 hours ago, 8FillTheHeart said:

I think Lori offered you solid suggestions. I just wanted to share that if you ask this question elsewhere, you might want to use the terminology distance education instead of DE. The DE acronym is typically understood to stand for dual enrollment (high school students enrolled in college classes and earning dual credit, high school and college.). 

Are your students enrolled in an online public charter or with a homeschool provider?

 

Oh thanks! Homeschool provider, so instead of me finding the curriculum and reporting to the state, the Distance education school cover all that. They choose and provide the curriculum and report to the government.

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  • Flowergirl159 changed the title to Distance Education and extras

I agree the terminology "Distance Education School" might cause some confusion (possibly considerable confusion) for the OP. We are "Distance Learners".   It sounds like an "Online" school that provides instruction and oversight. That's Distance Learning. Good luck to the OP and her DC.

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On 3/2/2019 at 12:52 PM, Flowergirl159 said:

Some things I'd like to incorporate include: Latin, French/German, lots of literature including Shakespeare, poetry, other living books (we own heaps of books). I had great plans for using living books and Sonlight for history and Science all through high school and am saddened that I can't use those now. 

 

When my kids were in public school and we after school, we did living books before bedtime for 1 to 2hrs.   It was a nice “calm down before sleeping” for us.  My kids did German for school and we did Chinese (heritage language) at home.

We also did a lot of “car schooling” on weekends with playing audiobooks, downloaded podcasts or listening to the classical music radio channel.

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