S/O- "questionable" advice you have seen given by newbie homeschoolers

[Emily in Indiana]

I have to agree with TomK that as a newbie, I've seen some veteran homeschoolers giving not great advice. 

One thing I think should be considered when advising parents who are homeschooling due to Covid, is that this will likely only be for one year.  When you homeschool for the long haul, you can move at your own pace and have your own scope and sequence, but when you only do it for one year, it's best to follow the school's basic scope and sequence to avoid gaps and help your child transition back to school successfully.  Unfortunately, I've seen homeschoolers telling parents not to give any consideration to what's going on at school.

For example, I have a first grader.  Many homeschoolers tell parents that first graders don't need to do any original writing, that handwriting and a little copywork is sufficient, but when my first grader goes to second grade in public school, she'll be expected to be able to write complete sentences and even simple paragraphs on her own.  To not give her some writing instruction in first grade would be setting her up to struggle in second grade.

For another example, I see homeschoolers recommend that parents do whatever they want for social studies in elementary school.  I have a third grader.  In my state, third grade social studies is American government and econ.  She won't get this again until high school.  On the other hand, she'll have a year of state history, two years of American history, and two years of world history from fourth to eighth grade.  To me, it makes sense to stick with American government and econ for third grade, since she'll be getting plenty of history in the upcoming years.  BUT I only know this because I went to my DOE website and looked up the SS standards.  Now, I'm not saying every parent should choose this, but I think recommending that parents at least research their state's standards before making a decision is better advice than "just do whatever you want."

When giving advice, it's important to understand someone's goals.  If the goal is back to school next year vs. homeschool for life, that should be considered.

[Wheres Toto]

I keep trying to tell people that when someone asks for advice, at least find out some basics before throwing out their favorite curriculum ideas.  Are they homeschooling temporarily or maybe permanently?  Are they religious or want secular resources?   How many kids are they working with?  How OLD are these kids (people seriously start throwing out suggestions without knowing how old the kids are)?    I feel like that is very unhelpful.    

Or the say "I'll PM you" with their consulting offer, or their webinar, or their blog that will tell them exactly what they need to do, usually done by someone who has been "homeschooling" for 3 months. 

[Wheres Toto]

21 hours ago, square_25 said:

I dunno... if I had the space, it sounds nice! Sometimes having dedicated areas does help kids (and adults) get into the right mode.

(We live in a 1200 square foot apartment. We don’t have the space, we just wish we did!)

 

Wow, I knew our house was small but your NYC apartment is bigger than my house.   😆

[Emily in Indiana]

And to be fair, Indigo Blue, newbies need to take some responsibility to figure out what their goals are, and clearly communicate those goals to the people from whom they are seeking advice.

[Emily in Indiana]

2 minutes ago, square_25 said:

To be fair, and this is from the perspective of someone who was absolutely planning to do enrichment work after school as opposed to homeschooling until that plan didn't work out... it probably really doesn't matter a ton whether you do what the school does or not, because that's not really what's setting you up for success for later schooling. It's far more important to figure out where the current gaps are and to fill them in than it is to do what the school is doing. 

So, if they technically working on multiplication at school, but you discover your child has issues with place value, I'd work on place value even if it's not "what the school is doing." And that's because sometimes schools don't pay enough attention to foundational building blocks and just press on ahead. 

I can see how some of the advice is frustrating and unhelpful if you're planning to go back to school, but as someone who does plan to send her kid to school again at some point (probably for high school), I do think some of the divergent tracks can set you up for far greater success. I think that's true even if you only have a year to work on things. 

This is a good point.  But for me, this has already been done because it's how my husband and I parent.  We send our kids to school, but still consider their education our responsibility.  We fill our house with books and read to them all the time.  We go to museums and historical sights.  We severely limit screen time and encourage outdoor and creative play.  We carefully choose extracurriculars that will be enriching, and because we constantly evaluate their educational progress, we are well aware of gaps and continually work on them.  To me this is just basic good parenting, but I realize not everyone does this.

[itsheresomewhere]

The amount of people suggesting a curriculum that only goes to elementary for a middle/high schooler lately is amazing.  No it will not work for high school or middle school if it is written for a 9 year old. 
 

I did suggest to one person who is going to homeschool her 11th grader that an accredited program might be a wise decision for her based on her school district.  I know her district and know how they work.  She wants to do it for a year only and her district will make her repeat the 11th grade.  The amount of people who don’t have high schoolers/only young kids/never homeschooled a high schooler/not in her district telling me how all schools take the kid and will put her back in 12th next year no questions was amazing.  Thankfully, a couple of parents who are long timers did come and back me up.  

[Emily in Indiana]

Yes, flexibility is important.  I never said is wasn't, only that parents should educated themselves on scope and sequence, and expectations of the school before making decisions for a single year of homeschooling, and that veteran homeschoolers should consider the differences in situation before doling out advice based on their own circumstances.

Obviously, math concepts have to be solid before moving on, and if they are discovered after the fact, you should absolutely go back to them. What I'm saying is that homeschoolers shouldn't advise newbies not to do writing instruction with a first grader who is fully capable of writing sentences.  It's not fair to the kid when they go back to school.

[Emily in Indiana]

Square_25, that makes perfect sense and I'm glad it was successful for your kiddo.  Again, what I'm saying is if you will only be homeschooling for one year, you should UNDERSTAND and CONSIDER what the school is teaching before making a decision, NOT that you have to do what they do.

[Wheres Toto]

44 minutes ago, square_25 said:

I'm guesstimating a bit, lol. It might be closer to 1000... depends how you count! 

The lack of outdoor space is definitely a drawback at this particular time 😉 . 

We have 750 but we do have outdoor space, although we probably don't take advantage of it enough.

[Emily in Indiana]

5 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Sure, I agree with that 🙂 . But I also think you're being a little less flexible than I'd be about what you're doing this year. Like, I understand that your kiddo would be doing American government in econ in school, but elementary school social studies are basically a joke. They aren't setting you up for true understanding in high school or in anything else. So if your kiddo is interested in something else, I'd absolutely do that, because doing something your kiddo is interested in leads to deeper dives and better conceptual understanding and retainment. 

I would treat foundational things that they will be expected to know next year differently. So if econ is in some way a prerequisite to next year, that's a different story. But for things that just seem scattershot and a little random, I wouldn't worry as much. 

ETA: so I guess I'd consider what they are supposed to know next year, but not so much what they are doing this year, if that makes any sense? 

I'm all about interest-led learning; it's just that we already do that;)  For example, I learned about Story of the World on these boards last spring.  My oldest is interested in history, enjoys audiobooks, and likes Jim Weiss as a narrator, so I borrowed the the first volume from the library and casually suggested she listen to it.  She loved it and begged for more.  She listened to all 4 volumes this summer and learned lots.  Now, she'll get the government and econ AND the history, so it's a win-win.

I disagree about elementary SS being a joke.  I remember much of what I learned in elementary SS and generally enjoyed it.  But everyone is entitled to their own opinion😉

[PeachyDoodle]

1 hour ago, itsheresomewhere said:

The amount of people suggesting a curriculum that only goes to elementary for a middle/high schooler lately is amazing.  No it will not work for high school or middle school if it is written for a 9 year old.

Yes this is a major problem I'm seeing. No amount of supplementation can turn an elementary program into a high school-appropriate curriculum.

The biggest issue IMO with both veterans and newbies is jumping in on every single thread to push their favorite curriculum without even bothering to ask the most basic questions. I understand why someone who is new and overwhelmed would ask a question like "What's the best curriculum?" even though we all know that's almost never the right question to ask. But I am galled at the number of people who take that question at face value and use the opportunity to evangelize on behalf of Easy Peasy or TGATB or CC or whatever their pet program is. And it's very much evangelism, what I am seeing. MLM-type tactics. Veterans should know better and newbies should have some humility about what they don't know.

[Paige]

55 minutes ago, square_25 said:

For the record, my background is teaching college math. Most of the kids I attempted to teach college calculus were unable to learn it and not in any way ready for it. Most kids were also unable to explain their reasoning logically.

I’m assuming those students had passed a variety of math classes and standardized tests with math sections to get into your class. So assuming they had “pass the average high school or college class” skills, what do you think are the specific skills they need and lack? And how should teachers (and homeschool parents) do things differently? 

Do you think most curricula are leaving some important skills or ideas out that you want students to have, or that the curricula have it but teachers are passing kids who haven’t learned it?

As a parent whose kids are chugging along doing just fine, I don’t want a false sense of security if there’s something huge I’m not covering with our lessons. 
 

Maybe kids need formal logic or more long, written proofs for more than geometry?
 

[Paige]

4 minutes ago, square_25 said:

This is probably a longer conversation!! Want to start a spin-off thread?

Sure.

[Paige]

2 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Chat or educational boards?

Either. Do you want to do it?

[Amy in NH]

On 8/6/2020 at 4:30 PM, Forget-Me-Not said:

Telling people to join HSLDA. 
Edit:  I know they can be helpful in some circumstances, if you’re the right “flavor” of homeschooler (and Christian 🙄), but mostly I think they prey on fears about legal troubles that are mostly non-existent. 

 

In our state they have been trying for years to remove details from the homeschool law, that were written By homeschoolers and put in place to Protect homeschoolers from over-reach by school districts and the DOE, in order to make the law more ambiguous so that they are needed to step in when districts over-reach.

[Amy in NH]

On 8/6/2020 at 7:22 PM, Quill said:

”I’m not pointing my kids towards college, anyway; it’s much better to learn a trade.”

 

Kids who grow up to work in the trades will need a lot of math. 

If they eventually move into an estimating/project management/office position, they will also need good writing/communication skills.

If they are going to be working in a licensed trade they will need to pass a high school graduate equivalency exam (GED/HiSET) so that they are even eligible to take the licensing tests, which again include a lot of math.  And the tests are written/computerized, so they need to be able to read and comprehend well. 

[PeachyDoodle]

1 hour ago, PeachyDoodle said:

Yes this is a major problem I'm seeing. No amount of supplementation can turn an elementary program into a high school-appropriate curriculum.

The biggest issue IMO with both veterans and newbies is jumping in on every single thread to push their favorite curriculum without even bothering to ask the most basic questions. I understand why someone who is new and overwhelmed would ask a question like "What's the best curriculum?" even though we all know that's almost never the right question to ask. But I am galled at the number of people who take that question at face value and use the opportunity to evangelize on behalf of Easy Peasy or TGATB or CC or whatever their pet program is. And it's very much evangelism, what I am seeing. MLM-type tactics. Veterans should know better and newbies should have some humility about what they don't know.

Quoting myself to add this corollary:

If you don't know the answer to a factual question, DON'T ANSWER IT. Just had to correct no fewer than THREE comments on a post on a local group that was less than 15 minutes old because they were all flat wrong. They all started with, "I think..." or "Maybe..."

No, AP exams are not only available to public school students. No, dual enrollment is not the same thing. No, you can't take an AP exam at a community college. 

I miss the ::headdesk:: emoji...

[domestic_engineer]

2 hours ago, Bagels McGruffikin said:

You might be surprised just how little many veteran educators here on this board actually checked in to what was going on in the  local school. That is part of the frustrating disconnect with this new batch, I think. None of us really know how to provide advice for a situation that holds different goals than the one we are in, especially when we are asked for program or method recommendations - the homeschool curriculum providers don’t design those with a random year off from public school and part time working parent in mind. It’s just different.

 

4 hours ago, Emily in Indiana said:

Square_25, that makes perfect sense and I'm glad it was successful for your kiddo.  Again, what I'm saying is if you will only be homeschooling for one year, you should UNDERSTAND and CONSIDER what the school is teaching before making a decision, NOT that you have to do what they do.

I think both of you ladies are correct. Long-haul homeschoolers have a different “problem statement” than crisis-homeschoolers.  Therefore it makes sense that each of your solutions to educating your child for the 2020-2021 school year will be different.  
 

Long-haulers ought to admit their ignorance on how to educate a child to keep pace with the local schools, acknowledge the weaknesses of their curriculum, and stop promoting their solutions to crisis schoolers. And crisis schoolers need to understand that there is a difference between the two situations ... and it might be that there won’t be many mentors, they’ll have to do their own research, and they’ll have to forge their own path forward. 

Even before the pandemic, I sensed a lot of frustration from veterans at people relying on crowdsourced answers to educate their kids rather than defining their problem and researching their own solution to their unique situation.  And to add fuel to this irritation,  I think many members of this board are super-duper researchers and problem solvers.  So to see people not thinking for themselves is like nails on a chalkboard. 

[Emily in Indiana]

14 minutes ago, domestic_engineer said:

 

I think both of you ladies are correct. Long-haul homeschoolers have a different “problem statement” than crisis-homeschoolers.  Therefore it makes sense that each of your solutions to educating your child for the 2020-2021 school year will be different.  
 

Long-haulers ought to admit their ignorance on how to educate a child to keep pace with the local schools, acknowledge the weaknesses of their curriculum, and stop promoting their solutions to crisis schoolers. And crisis schoolers need to understand that there is a difference between the two situations ... and it might be that there won’t be many mentors, they’ll have to do their own research, and they’ll have to forge their own path forward. 

Even before the pandemic, I sensed a lot of frustration from veterans at people relying on crowdsourced answers to educate their kids rather than defining their problem and researching their own solution to their unique situation.  And to add fuel to this irritation,  I think many members of this board are super-duper researchers and problem solvers.  So to see people not thinking for themselves is like nails on a chalkboard. 

Thanks for this.  I think you are spot and expressed yourself better than me!

(And I'm a researcher too, so I get the frustration!)

[Skippy]

3 hours ago, Bagels McGruffikin said:

In that sense, this is why an invasion of crisis schoolers into established home education circles is kind of a disaster - the goals and philosophy and methods all differ, and most of us who have been here and are doing this for a longer haul ARE rather disconnected from what the local school is doing - because the long hauler’s goal is teaching and shaping the person in their home, not checking boxes from the district to reintegrate their child back into a system.

Yes, you have really hit the nail on the head here. I guess I'm solidly in the veteran stage with the oldest two of my homeschooled children having finished college. I've mostly kept my mouth shut to the local crisis schoolers, but I had one request for suggestions "just in case" schooling at home was necessary this fall. In some instances, the suggestions that I made were things that I had heard of but had never even used for my own children. I couldn't picture the way that I teach working in those circumstances. Just-in-case crisis schooling and traditional homeschooling likely have very little in common.

But I am sorry for the parents who are struggling and hope that everything works out for the best for them.

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

4 hours ago, PeachyDoodle said:

Yes this is a major problem I'm seeing. No amount of supplementation can turn an elementary program into a high school-appropriate curriculum.

The biggest issue IMO with both veterans and newbies is jumping in on every single thread to push their favorite curriculum without even bothering to ask the most basic questions. I understand why someone who is new and overwhelmed would ask a question like "What's the best curriculum?" even though we all know that's almost never the right question to ask. But I am galled at the number of people who take that question at face value and use the opportunity to evangelize on behalf of Easy Peasy or TGATB or CC or whatever their pet program is. And it's very much evangelism, what I am seeing. MLM-type tactics. Veterans should know better and newbies should have some humility about what they don't know.

Absolutely this! I see this every day on our local groups. “What’s the best curriculum?” And then a whole bunch of people jump in with T4L, MB, TGATB...No one asks how old the kids are, if there are any learning challenges, if they’re planning to put the kids back in school next year, secular or religious preferences, parents’ strengths/weaknesses/needs, or anything else that one would need to know before offering a helpful suggestion. If I can make it to one of those posts before they have 50 replies I try to jump in with some of those basic questions. If there’s already dozens of replies I just move on. I feel bad for the new parents who don’t know they have options just because the supposed “veterans” can’t manage useful advice. 

[Jaybee]

On 8/7/2020 at 11:30 AM, klmama said:

Oh, gosh, yes.  I watched one where people were turning their garage into a classroom and another where they set up a giant dome/tent thing in their back yard as a school room.  IMHO, that's a giant waste of yard space!   Just give the kids a crate for their books and a box for their pencils and use the kitchen table as a desk.  They can toss it all back in the crate at meal time.

Exactly! One year I bought them plastic boxes for smaller school supplies (pencils, scissors, markers, ruler, etc.), plus stickers to decorate them with. They worked great. They each had one of those plastic crates that are put out for college students in the fall, and it was easy to transport their school books from room to room or when we travelled. Either the kitchen table or a coffee table was used when a hard surface was needed, and the couch or floor otherwise. I'm not sure any of my kids actually used a desk until high school. We never decorated an area just for school, though we used maps and our globe a lot.

ETA: I understand some people really do work better in a designated area that is more formally set up for schoolwork. It just never was important to my crew.

Edited August 8, 2020 by Jaybee

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

If I see one more post saying that all you need to homeschool is a Brain Quest workbook and field trips I might just lose my mind. 

[PeachyDoodle]

13 minutes ago, 2ndGenHomeschooler said:

If I see one more post saying that all you need to homeschool is a Brain Quest workbook and field trips I might just lose my mind. 

Or better yet, those generic workbooks from Walmart or the dollar store...

[theelfqueen]

We have a dedicated space. We store books there... we have. Project table where kiddo works on building models and taking apart computers and drawing D&D maps ... and occasionally school projects. Kids each had a dek when they were both in there. Now just the one desk, the project table, bookshelves  and a couple of comfy chairs. 

We do schoolwork mostly on the dining table/couch/back porch ... sometimes he works at his desk but we could do without it. I would still need a bookshelf. 

[Jaybee]

35 minutes ago, theelfqueen said:

We have a dedicated space. We store books there... we have. Project table where kiddo works on building models and taking apart computers and drawing D&D maps ... and occasionally school projects. Kids each had a dek when they were both in there. Now just the one desk, the project table, bookshelves  and a couple of comfy chairs. 

We do schoolwork mostly on the dining table/couch/back porch ... sometimes he works at his desk but we could do without it. I would still need a bookshelf. 

We did dedicate a shelf or two of a bookcase for the books/resources we used together. It needed to be convenient to our work area.

[ktgrok]

9 hours ago, square_25 said:

I just helped my sister apply for colleges, and I wound up telling her to throw away everything she knew about essay writing from school, which seemed to be "use long sentences in passive voice and don't forget to look things up in a thesaurus!" I told her to just write her essay as if she were explaining her ideas to me via text, then to clean it up nicely by reorganizing and making things tighter. 

Her essays got about 3 times better. This, by the way, was what I came to after a year of trying to work within the context of what she "learned" in school... it took me quite a while to realize that starting from scratch would be an improvement. 

Yes!!!! When I brought my kid home from PS in 5th grade I was....flabergasted. He needed to unlearn everything they'd "taught" about writing. (write as many sentences as you can, and it doesn't need to be factual). 

We did pretty much NO writing for YEARS. Partly because he hated it, and partly because he needed to forget all he'd learned. 

6 hours ago, 2ndGenHomeschooler said:

Absolutely this! I see this every day on our local groups. “What’s the best curriculum?” And then a whole bunch of people jump in with T4L, MB, TGATB...No one asks how old the kids are, if there are any learning challenges, if they’re planning to put the kids back in school next year, secular or religious preferences, parents’ strengths/weaknesses/needs, or anything else that one would need to know before offering a helpful suggestion. If I can make it to one of those posts before they have 50 replies I try to jump in with some of those basic questions. If there’s already dozens of replies I just move on. I feel bad for the new parents who don’t know they have options just because the supposed “veterans” can’t manage useful advice. 

Yes!

Here, when people ask questions about curriculum it is specific! "What is a hands on history program that covers this time period and would work for a 4th grader who has this particular situation? I've looked at curriculum X and curriculum Z, what do you think of them, or is there a better options?"

Not "what is the best?"

I've taken to no longer answering most newbie questions, just asking my own. "Why do you want something online? Does it need to be self grading, or are you just wanting something with laid out lesson plans? What are your goals, and what are your student's strengths and weaknesses?" 

 

[ktgrok]

2 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Yeah, well, if he continued on his trajectory, he'd be just like my sister. Ugh. She'd have been better off having done no writing at all except texting until we started applying for college. 

He only wrote short answers, no actual essays, until he was applying to a magnet program at a local highschool in 8th grade. At that point I sat him down, we worked through it for about an hour, he wrote, we edited, he revised it, done. That was all the writing he did until he dual enrolled his sophomore year. He got A's on all his papers for the two years he dual enrolled. And that was with working through one essay. But actually sitting down and working through it, when writing actually served a purpose, and after reading lots of decent writing, and listening to a LOT of NPR and other good journalism. 

(he did do some writing the few months he went back to school in 9th...but it was a joke. They had them go to the computer lab to practice for the big standardized writing test they had to take at the end of the year. This consisted of writing an essay response to a prompt on the computer. Then at the end of the class period, they would delete it. No one graded it. No one marked it for revision. Nothing. Their total sum of writing instruction was "sit and write a lot". He was SO angry when h realized it was being deleted and no one would ever see it that he hacked the school computer system so he could email his work to himself before deleting it. 

[ktgrok]

3 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Yeah, that was certainly my experience with my sister -- it was actually not very hard to teach her to write a decent essay AFTER she gave up on all the nonsense she learned. Teens are just readier to organize things than little kids. 

I'm not planning to do zero writing with DD8, because I do feel like it's accessible to her, but the whole point of her writing is the feedback. Otherwise, it'd be wasted paper. 

Yeah, I mean, when you think about it, a teen can give a much better oral argument (say, why they should be able to stay out later or whatever) versus a young child. 

Same with narrating a story. When a 6 yr old tells you what happened today, it's a long, winding, crazy story that has blind turns, backtracks, etc. A teen can tell you what they did today from start to finish, for the most part. 

I think kids are better served by conversation, and logic, than by writing exercises, most of the time. Once they can have real discussions, and have real things to talk about, then have them write more. Writing without purpose is...well, not really writing. 

the purpose is communication. Not words on paper. 

[Jaybee]

S/O on writing: On Writing Well is such a great book (for nonfiction writing). I discovered it about ten years ago, and had my last homeschooler read it as a high schooler. Really, such a good book. And interesting. You know if a book about the act of writing is interesting, the author must have something to share! If I had found this earlier, I believe I would have incorporated the principles into my older kids' instruction as well. I use the principles quite often, myself.

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=on+writing+well&qid=1596981614&sr=8-2