A 12th Grade Homeschool Plan

 This is Bee's final year of homeschooling.  We are focusing on his strengths and unique gifts and emphasizing learning and personal development.  We are encouraging him to get more life experience next year and consider college at a later time.  

Math:  For the first time, we are trying out Teaching Textbooks.  Bee is in Precalculus, and his dad can help him with any questions.  

English:  Bee (and his brother) are taking a Shakespeare class through Outschool this semester, and we are watching a play as a family each week.  He is also taking a writing class and a general humanities class.  We are working through a Glencoe grammar workbook.  

Spanish:  Private lessons twice a week through Homeschool Spanish Academy, emphasizing listening and speaking skills, at our request.   

Science:  Bee will take a review course through Outschool on Chemistry, a subject he started in public school.  I'm looking into physics options for the spring.  

Social Studies:  Bee has a lot of history credits already.  We plan to do US History with an emphasis on the western US.  This will incorporate a family road trip that we plan to take.  He will also have a weekly art history course, which I'm not sure how to incorporate as a credit but it's a great thing to take.  

PE:  Taekwondo classes.  

The Arts:  Planning to sign him up for guitar lessons.  

Kiwi Crate Reviewed: Our First Month

 I decided to use Kiwi Crate as part of Dot's science program.   [Dot is a 6-year-old kindergartener.] The idea was that it would provide a good hands-on experience each month.  My goal with elementary science is to provide interesting books and experiences that support a love for learning about the world.  

The first month's kit went really well.  The materials were good quality, and Dot and I managed to follow the instructions and put together a claw toy grabber.  I often have very poor success with "science" kits, so this was great!  There was a lot of optional art and decorating included, which appealed to Dot.  I will say that it was fairly parent-intensive, at Dot's age and ability level.  But Dot was able to do most of it with my guidance (except for the optional box cutting).  

I am happy and looking forward to next month's kit.  

A Kindergarten Plan (by a Long-Time Homeschooler)

Dot is 6 with a late spring birthday and entering homeschool kindergarten.   She is probably going to be doing the level of work that my parents would have done in first grade.  She is my third child, and any reading, writing, or math we have done has been FUN, never pushed.  I feel very confident about our approach.  I have selected things that work and that we can actually get done and that are foundational for skills she will use all her life, such as a phonetic approach to reading and a conceptual approach to math.   Reading aloud is the best way to build vocabulary.  

Also, LESS IS MORE with little kids and academics.  A consistent approach of short, quality, developmentally appropriate lessons is ideal.  

• Reading:  
• We are finishing up All About Reading pre-reading and then plan to switch to Level 1.  As we went through the pre-reading program, I watched her develop the skills needed to read.  The program helped in this process, but a lot of it was just her brain developing readiness.  
• Lots of being read to--the foundation for every child under the age of 9-10 or so!  My husband or I read chapter books to her every night.  We will also have a reading time during the day with 10+ books picked out for month.  
• She is taking a weekly kindergarten class where they use Five in a Row and read a book every week.  
• She is taking a weekly storybook club class.  
• Writing:  She will be taking a weekly handwriting course at a local co-op!  Hurray!  Mommy doesn't like teaching handwriting.  
• Math:  Schiller Math modified by me to include activities learned in a Montessori classroom.  
• Science:  She will be getting some science 2 days a week at her co-ops (science in her kindergarten class plus a nature club at her other co-op).  We will also read science books (5 or so a month) and will try out a Kiwicrate subscription.  
• Social Studies:  Field trips to national parks coming up this fall!  She will be taking a geography club class once a week, and we will read books (5 or so each month) on social studies (geography or history).  
• Spanish:  weekly 25-minute classes through Homeschool Spanish Academy and at-home instruction.  It appears she will require Skittles as a reward for the class.
• PE:  outdoor play, homeschool soccer and running, and hopefully gymnastics
• Arts:  She is signed up for an art class at one co-op.  I would love to find something musical for her to do as well.   

I think this is a simple, do-able program that has all that is needed for kindergarten.  If the co-op classes were not available, I would simply add more read-alouds and attempt a handwriting program.  Notice that there is basically NO lesson planning prep for me other than picking out books to read to her each month.  No grading because it's kind of silly for kindergarten anyway.  

More Schiller (ish) Math

 So we have abandoned the Schiller book a little bit for now.  We continued building large quantities.  It took a while for Dot to remember which category were the thousands and which were the hundreds.  Today she knew that confidently, so we went on to addition with large quantities.  We added two numbers, ensuring that they would not involve carrying.  Dot already knows how to add with small quantities.  

The way I learned to do it as a Montessori teacher is to build 2 quantities, put them together (using a scarf) and then count them up.  We then tell the story something like this:  Mom brought 1101, and Dot brought 2310.  We put our quantities together, and we had 3401.  Putting together is addition.  

This whole procedure with the quantities up to the 1000's place seems very appealing to the age group (usually 5-6).  And because it's done in such a concrete way, the larger quantities are not intimidating.  In fact, that is kind of the point, that we work with the large quantities so that the children aren't intimidated by them later.  I used to give my sons a few (or just one) addition problems in the millions or billions or trillions when they were in early elementary.  They thought this was much more interesting than a whole bunch of smaller problems.  

If children are clear on how place value works (which is why we use these manipulatives), then they see how easy it is to work with the larger numbers.  It's nice to see children excited by the large quantities rather than intimidated.  

Next time, we will do an addition with exchanges/carrying.  

All About Reading Continued

 We are still working through All About Reading, pre-reading with Dot, who will be 6 in May.  We finished lesson 32 today, lower case F.  I still really like it, and so does she.  My goal is to get through all the lower case letters before she turns 6, hopefully sooner.  She's just very gently absorbing letters and sounds.  I have noticed that some of the pre-reading games have been challenging for her, which makes me glad that we are not pushing any kind of formal reading at this time.  And then one day things click.  Today, she seemed to understand a lot better about the sounds of words being broken up.  So, waiting for her brain to be ready on its own seems a better strategy than trying to push it.  I'm really thankful that she is not in a kindergarten class, and that her brain is free to learn in a non-stressful way.  

We may play a little more often with letters, as she thinks it is fun to form them.  I want to make some Montessori phonetic object cards to encourage this.  

Schiller Math Continued

 Dot and I have now completed lesson 55 of Schiller Math.  I am very glad that I bought this kit.  She loves doing math and probably would have liked to have moved at a faster pace.  We are going to try to do math a few times a week now so that I can get her moved through material she is ready for.  

What I like:

• Lessons are short and easy.  
• No prep.  
• Covers concepts I might miss if I were planning on my own.  
• This program is really solid, and the workbook is attractive.  

Ways that I adapt it:  

• The cardboard thousand cubes were annoying.  They kept getting crushed.  I actually switched to my Montessori Outlet golden bead material, which Dot finds far more appealing.   (The hundreds and thousands are wooden, except for the demonstration set, which are beads).  That is the one thing that really put me off from Schiller to begin with, and why I didn't use it--I don't love the blue cubes.  But it's really, really easy just to use the bead set that I have with it.  
• I've been skipping some of the left-right and even-odd lessons.  I feel like left-right is learned more developmentally.  I think even-odd is easier to understand once someone has mastered division and gotten a little older.  
• I think that the four operations are best learned with large quantities, not with small ones.  So I will be adapting the Schiller lessons and using the ones I learned in my Montessori training.  

So, yes, I'm still very happy with my Schiller purchase.  Next year, I plan to supplement it with math story books.  Around the third grade, as we work through the material, I will transition to Life of Fred.  I imagine there will be a little workbook work too, to prepare Dot to take a standardized test.  

Homeschool Spanish Academy

This morning at 9 AM, both of my sons logged into their Spanish lessons on Google Meet.  Each had a 50-minute private lesson with a native Spanish speaker and trained tutor, who teaches from Guatemala.  Neither son complained.  Both enjoy their lessons and are developing beautiful accents, a love for the language, and an interest in other cultures.  I highly recommend Homeschool Spanish Academy.  

https://www.spanish.academy/

Back to Cozi for planning

With the New Year, I realized that we needed to change our system for keeping the family calendar.  With me in graduate school, an active volunteering life, 2 kids homeschooling, and the other in a final year of free range preschool, the system I had been happily using (paper planner/bullet journal) was about to break down.  The main issue was that I needed to enter a lot of repeated events (karate practice, zoom classes, etc), and the time it would take to enter everyone's activity into a paper calendar was not feasible. Not to mention the fact that the data would not be portable or easily transferrable to anyone else.  

I first tried Homeschool Planet (yet again).  This is the third time I have tried it, and I do not like it.  I also do not understand why it looks the same as it did several years ago.  I find it complicated and clunky, and every time I access it, it is more dated.  

I then decided that everything I need to do (since I do not track grades), I could do in Cozi, which I had used years ago.  I put everyone's scheduled activities into it.  I also put in all chores and assignments as all day events.  All of us have the app on our phone.  Each boy's individual agenda is also printed, and I put them on the refrigerator with magnet clips.  

Here is what I like about this system:  

• My husband and I and each boy can be clear on our expectations, eliminating a lot of the fuzziness that was so bothersome to Bug. 
• I can punch holes in the agendas when the week is over, and I actually have a record of what they did!  I can also jot things down (documentaries they
  watched, etc) that were not assigned.  This is good protection for me in the extremely unlikely scenario that we would be accused of educational neglect.  Of course, in that scenario, I am also pretty sure that 5 minutes of a social worker chatting with my kids about any academic subject would do the trick as well.  
• We can all access the calendar from our phones.  
• I can use the reminder function.  
• It's easy to input events, to make them repeat, and to change them.  

What I don't like:  

• I feel like the to-do function could be improved.  I would like to input their chores and repeating assignments as to-do items rather than all-day events.  
• There is so much on the calendar that the monthly view isn't usable.  
• I liked my simple, low-tech paper system.  It was calming.  But 5 people with irregular schedules is too much for me to keep up with using a low tech system.