Great learning opportunities ahead!

Attention homeschooling parent….you have a great learning opportunity approaching!
Ok, now that I have your attention, let me explain what I mean. Between Thanksgiving and Chinese New Year there are a lot of different holidays. Many of these holidays are major holidays for the different major religions of the world. You may not celebrate any of them. But it would be a great opportunity to share the beliefs of others with your child. Even if you have a specific belief, you could use this opportunity to explain to your child why you believe the way you do and compare it to the other beliefs.
Some people shy away from explaining or teaching about the other religions besides their own. The problem with that is that the world is getting to be a smaller and smaller place. Two hundred years ago, I might never meet a Jew or a Muslim. Now I might live next door to one. Years ago, I might not have ever heard of Hanukkah, or Ramadan, or Winter Solstice, or Kwanzaa. Today, we are much more likely to encounter someone who celebrates the holiday. You do not need to believe the way someone else does to be willing to learn something about what they believe.
In fact, in an age where you might live next to families from all over the world, you probably even have people who believe differently than you do in your homeschooling group, especially if it is inclusive, or interest based. Wouldn’t this be a great time to have the children share different religious beliefs? I’m not saying have your child believe in something different than you do, I’m just suggesting having them learn something about other beliefs.

Reading and more reading

Did you know that some people believe that reading is the most fundamental skill you can teach your child? I am very fortunate in that my child has always been an excellent reader. One of my homeschooling friends has a child with dyslexia and reading is a struggle every day for them. And it probably will be a struggle for the rest of the child’s life.
Someone once said, “If you can read, you can do anything.” I think what they meant by that is that if you can read, you can read the instructions to learn how to multiply, or tie a knot. Beyond the educational value of reading, there are other benefits as well.
If you can read, you can escape the world you live in, take flight, and explore worlds you will never have the opportunity to explore in real life. Reading can be a stress relief, and it can spur your imagination. You will learn cultural and societal references.
This is a great gift to give to your child. Read to your child, even if they think they are too old (they are not!). Read with your child. In our house, one of us often reads the same book as my daughter, at the same time, and then we discuss the book. Let your child listen to audio books. Amazingly many of the benefits of reading also apply to listening to audio books, especially if your child is an auditory learner. Finally, let your child see you settle in with a good book. It shows your child that you think reading is important enough to take time to do, and it models a behavior that you want them to have.
Enjoy reading!

ADHD and homeschool stress

Homeschooling a child with ADHD can sometimes be trying. I know in my home, there is a certain amount of noise and chaos associated with my daughter.
For the parent who works outside of the home, coming back to this inherent chaos can sometimes be distressing. Homeschooling in general sometimes means that the house is not always perfectly clean and straight. This is also a source of stress for the parent who works away from home, only to return to a house that looks like nothing has been done.
For the parent who stays home to homeschool, there is another kind of stress. ADHD students can be demanding, difficult, and hard headed.
Add to that that they tend to be loud, flamboyant, and messy. It is hard to contain school to one area, because the ADHD student needs to move around, and needs to take frequent breaks.
I won’t say that I have the answers as to how to fix these sources of stress. At this point, just know that both parents may be having some stress associated with homeschooling and ADHD. This may translate into less patience with the student.
Consider taking frequent breaks from school. We have five minute clean ups, where we try to regain some peace and order among the chaos. Consider a “clean desk” policy. If it is clean and straight at the end of a school day, then at least you start out with a clean desk each new school day.

US Government--Social Studies

You know there is an important election coming up, right? That question is asked, tongue-in-cheek, because if you turn on the television you know that there is little else on television. I’m not here to push any candidate or political philosophy.
What I do want to remind you of is the idea that this could be a great learning situation for your children. If your children are young, then let them learn the basics of our form of government, for example, the three branches of government. If they are a bit older, maybe help them learn about the duties of the president, and the importance of our form of government. Take it a step further if your child is late middle school, or high school, and learn how the electoral college works.
It is also a great time to share what you believe with your children. Discuss which candidate you would consider to elect and why. Tell them why you made that choice. Discuss the pros and cons of each candidate, as well as the benefits and detriments of keeping the incumbent. It is possible that your child will choose a different candidate than you do, but this is a great opportunity to open dialogue about what your think is important as far as our country, our government, and our future are concerned.

Field Trips

In most areas of the country the weather is either getting nice, or is still nice. Fall is a great time of year, and there are a wealth of field trips that can be done at this time of year that cannot be done at other times of the year.
Let me give you a few examples. Farms and orchards in many parts of the country open up their pumpkin patches, and apple orchards for do-it-yourself picking. Visiting one of these places, or both, will allow your family to create traditions.
I know that creating traditions is something I have to work on. When I was growing up, my family was not very traditional or sentimental and we did not do things that created the types of memories that traditions create. My best friend’s family had all sorts of traditions, ranging from canning apples and baking apple pies, to baking cookies and making gingerbread houses. I see the richness in her family, and try to incorporate some of that in my own family. They even had one day during the school year where her dad let them skip school for a day to go on the annual skip-school-to-go-fishing-with-dad-on-a-weekday outing. She has great memories of this.
Other outings with your homeschool child might be trips to the zoo or local wildlife park. Animals like the cool weather, and you will see many of them active in their exhibits. Consider field trips that would be miserably hot during the summer during this time of year as well, the example I can think of is visiting the local battle ship. Wow, a battleship is an extremely miserable place to visit in the heat of the summer!

Art and home education

We talked about including music in your homeschool curriculum last time. This time I would like to encourage you to use art in your homeschool program. Some of the same things apply, cost of a private teacher would be a good example. But, just like there were ways to get around that in music, there are ways to get around that in art.
As part of my child’s core curriculum, the company offers an art program, Time4Art. It is basically an art appreciation program. It introduces my daughter to color, texture, different art techniques, art history, and the art of the great masters.
The reality is that my daughter has taken this course two times already, and is taking it a third time. It is the same course, yet as she gets older, and gains more knowledge in other areas, she finds new things within the program to learn. Just as her own art work grows and changes over time as she learns new techniques, taking the course again lets her put new things into practice, and recognize various artist by their techniques.
Last year, in addition to the online course, my daughter took group art lessons. These were very reasonably priced through our local art council. The price for a month was about equal to the cost of one private lesson session. There are other online courses to consider as well. Do a little search on the internet for online lessons, or pictures of great works of art. Maybe do a study of a sculptor or painter, let your child try to mimic their techniques and use of materials.

Music and home education

Music is a great thing to add to your homeschool curriculum. I know, music lessons are expensive, and might require an outside tutor. But music provides so many benefits to a child, and it doesn’t have to include an outside tutor, even if you are not musically inclined yourself.
First let me tell you about a few of the benefits of music. Students who have music instruction do better on standardized tests. They show better reason abilities, and they tend to do better in math. Additionally, students who have regular music instruction learn discipline, the value of practice, and commitment. Any or all of those benefits make considering including music as part of your homeschool program worth the investment.
Speaking of investment, music teachers are expensive! Yes, I know that. But the benefits of music do not have to be gained from individual, private lessons from doctoral candidates from the local university. Students who participated in music appreciation courses also showed benefits to some extent. Consider studying a composer, his life, his times, and his music. Go on the internet and listen to his compositions. Discuss the music, and what it made your child think of or feel.
Some communities have free concerts and even reduced rates on matinee orchestra performances. Any exposure to good music is a good thing!

Why are you homeschooling?

Do you know why you are homeschooling? Can you pin the reason down to one item? Don’t feel bad if you can’t list the single reason you homeschool. Most people homeschool for multiple reasons, even if they don’t know that they have multiple reasons.
Some people homeschool because they feel that it is a mandate from God. Those people are sometimes labeled as Christian homeschoolers. It is a noble and honorable reason to homeschool for religious purposes. It means that you know exactly what your child is being exposed to regarding world view and theology.
Some people homeschool for strictly academic reasons. These homeschoolers are often considered secular homeschoolers. These people believe that they can give their children a better, safer education than the public or private systems can provide.
Yet other families homeschool for a combination of reasons. Sometimes circumstances just make educating you child at home a better choice. Consider military families that move often. Homeschooling provides better continuity of education for those children. Sometime a child’s health, either physical or mental, dictates that he or she be schooled at home.
Maybe your child’s learning style is easily disrupted by outside distractions and in the home setting you can control those distractions. Perhaps your child is, like mine, ADHD. My daughter needs to move, to talk, to take frequent breaks, to hang off the sofa upside down, spin around in the desk chair, or take frequent comfort from her pets.
In the end, all most homeschoolers want to do is what is right and best for their children. I know that is what I want!

Get Legal!

It is getting ready to be time to think about the beginning of the new school year. I know, I know…summer is just getting into full swing. In some states the deadline for registering your homeschool with the board of education is the middle of July.
So that is why I am reminding you at this point. It is your job to get legal with your state. If you have homeschooled before, then you probably already know the rules, and what you need to do to ensure that you have no legal issues where you state is concerned. If you are new to homeschooling in the state you live in, then take some time to research the law.
You can check the board of education, or department of education website. You can check with the school your child would go to. Talk to other homeschooling families in the area and see if they have access to the forms needed, or know what the requirements are.
The other thing to do right around now is to find out when your state’s tax free school holiday is. Most states have one, and this can mean noticeable savings if you are not paying state taxes on supplies that are eligible for the exemption. Also look for your local stores to begin putting school supplies on sale. Admit it, you love brand new school supplies!!

Spelling

How is your child doing in spelling? My child is not a great speller. This is kind of odd actually, because she is an excellent reader, and usually being an excellent reader indicates being a good speller as well. Just one more exception to the rule…my child seems to live for this!
I think that I have figured out something regarding spelling. If you don’t think you can spell, you probably can’t. Confidence has a lot to do with not only ability but desire. My daughter is an example. She believes that she cannot spell. She would never make any effort to learn to spell better because she has already decided she is a failure at it.
One of the ways that I hope to improve my daughter’s spelling is to let spelling be fun. I have to set her up to succeed because she already believes she has failed. If I teach spelling in a manner in which she is doomed to fail, not taking her learning styles into consideration, then she most assuredly will fail.
We use games, both online and in person. Sometimes we toss a bean bag back and forth as we practice spelling. Sometimes we do exercises like word ladders, that help build words from word families. Sometimes we can incorporate keyboarding and spelling together, so that she is practicing both. The other thing that we do is utilize Vocabulary and Spelling City. We can use their lists, or import our own, and those words can be used for word search puzzles, hang man, and games like hig pig.

Homeschooling Year round

Are you homeschooling through the summer? Whether you do or not is an entirely personal decision. Let me give you two views, one reason to take the summer off, another for continuing to homeschool. I will tell you up front, that we homeschool through the summer.
If your child has many public school friends, then the summer is the time when they will be able to get together and do things. The public school students will have the summer off. And your children will want to be off as well. Sometimes the parent is more in need of the break than the child. Taking the summer off can give both you and your child the opportunity to reduce stress, and do some really fun things in the time that you would normally be doing school.
In the case of our family, we school through the summer. There are a couple of reasons for this. Our weather is extremely hot and humid in the summer, to the point of being dangerous at times. When you add ozone air quality alerts, it just makes sense to spend time in the air conditioning. If we school through the summer then we can take time off when the weather is more pleasant.
Schooling through the summer also means that we don’t get burned out during the rest of the year. This may sound odd to you, but schooling during the summer means that we can take more frequent, shorter breaks through out the year. Schooling through the summer also means that my child doesn’t get the long summer months to forget the progress we have made, or have to review a lot when returning to school in the fall.
In the end, it is personal preference whether you and your family homeschool through the summer or take it off. Consider the pros and cons of each and make the decision that best suits your family!

Learning Styles: Visual

One more learning style for you…visual. That is not to say that kinetic, auditory, and visual are the only learning styles, but they are good examples of three of the major styles.
So, visual learners. They learn by seeing. Often the more colorful and animated a lesson is, the better. Some researchers think that our children are having more visual pathways formed in their brains at an early age because of the amount of input our children receive.
Consider a child from the era when public schools were being created. There was no television, no internet, no video games, and no smart phones. Books and a black board were the height of visual stimulation in those classrooms. Today, children have all of that visual stimulation, much of it before they can even read.
We know that language pathways in the brain form early, usually before the age of three, and other pathways are not an exception to this rule. If you wire a child’s brain to rapid visual input, then it would follow that that might be how they learn best.
Visual learners think more in pictures than in words, they may dream in color, they are better at multi-tasking than some other styles of learners. Where they do not excel is in linear tasks, or multi-step tasks. Don’t be surprised if your visual learner doesn’t do well in long division, or even math in general.
After describing three of the main types of learning styles, you may not see a clear picture of your child. This is because many children are combination learners.You may even see that your child learns one subject visually, another kinesthetically, and a third by an auditory method. Being familiar with different learning styles means that you have tools in your tool box to help your child learn in a manner that works for them.

Learning Styles: Auditory

Another learning style that your child might have is auditory learner. Auditory learners process information by hearing it. They do well by listening to lectures, and will retain more information from a book if they hear an audio book, than if they read it themselves.
Auditory learners might read out loud to themselves. Auditory learners may learn by saying the information out loud. You might even notice that they close their eyes to block out visual input, or organize the material in a chant or song. An example of this is the ABC song, but the same methods can be used for anything from the ABC song, to multiplication tables, to the Krebs cycle.
Some auditory learners benefit from listening to music while studying.
I know parents of my generation (I’m probably older than a lot of parents with 6th grade children!) were always told to turn the music off, make it quiet so that we could study. But for some auditory learners, seeing a cluttered room is much more of a deterrent than hearing loud music while studying.
As more research is done into learning styles, we are discovering that there are many different learning styles, and that a one size fits all way of teaching and learning just won’t work for some children.

Learning Styles: Kinetic

Did you know that there were different learning styles? One of the ways to make your homeschool more successful is to teach to you child in a learning style that will be most effective for their learning styles.
If your child is a kinetic learner, he or she is very active physically. She enjoys learning through touch, and is very aware of textures. He probably learns better when he is allowed to do something physical while learning.
For children who are kinetic learners, math manipulatives are probably a good idea. Writing and drawing are also physical activities so letting your kinetic learner write spelling words on the white board with a marker is probably better than asking the child to spell the words out loud.
Consider letting your child bounce a ball while practicing multiplication tables. A friend of mine made small bean bags for her kinetic learner. Some were filled with rice, some with beans, some with small beads, some with sand, and the fabrics were silky, furry, rough, smooth. She let her child hold them, toss them, and play with them while they were doing school work. She reported that her son’s scores on almost everything improved. This is just anecdotal but might be worth a try if you have a kinetic learner.

More on Homeschool groups

I promised to speak more about homeschool groups. There are many types of homeschool groups. Some groups base membership solely on the fact that you homeschool, or are even considering homeschooling. Other groups add additional criteria, such as statements of faith, or religious affiliations. There are even groups that are specific for a certain thing, like a history co-op, or homeschool boy scout group.
If you are having trouble finding members of a homeschool group to link up with, check with your local library, or your local school supply store. Often they will have names and contact information for groups in the area.
I do have one warning about homeschool groups. People who homeschool generally feel very strongly about homeschooling. Strong emotions and convictions often lead to inflexibility.
If you hear gossip within the group, nip it in the bud. Know that if they are gossiping about other women in your presence, they are gossiping about you when you are not there. I was a member of a group that totally disintegrated a couple of years ago because of gossip. Members of that group reformed into another group, and the gossip was not halted because the same personalities were still in play. That group just had another melt down due to gossip. In the process, it was not only the parents who had hurt feelings, but also children lost friends because the parents could no longer stand each other.
A good homeschool group can be a wonderful thing. A bad homeschool can produce an unreasonable amount of stress in a situation that should be fun, helpful, and supportive.

Homeschool Groups

Do you have a local homeschool group? I can honestly say that if I had not found a homeschool group for support when I first started homeschooling, I probably would not have continued to homeschool. I believe that having veteran homeschoolers tell me that it could be done, in fact showing me that they had been successful, I would have gone nuts.
Beyond the support a good homeschool group can lend, and beyond the advice they can give you on getting legal in your state, they provide a great place for your child to find peers who share the homeschooling experience.
It is important to know that you are not alone, and that other people have had success in homeschooling. There are times, particularly when it gets difficult in your homeschool to be discouraged to the point of returning your child to the previous schooling situation. Those mom’s who have succeeded through the tough times are proof positive that you can continue, and succeed in homeschooling.
Another advantage of a good homeschool group is field trips. It is often more fun for your child to be in a small group. Sometimes places that you would go on a field trip to require a minimum number of students, or offer discounts for groups.
Next time I will tell you a little bit more about groups.

Keyboarding

Keyboarding. Do you know what it is, and are your children practicing it?
Well, you probably do know what keyboarding is, because you are reading this online. That indicates that you probably used keyboarding to get here. Not so long ago homeschooling was done around the kitchen table, with notebooks, workbooks, and textbooks.
Now days, more and more families are utilizing the internet to home educate their children. When I was in high school, we took typing lessons, now children are practicing keyboarding. This is more than just typing letters, but includes learning to utilize the functionality of today’s modern keyboards.
In our house, keyboarding is also an adaptive technology. My daughter hates to write. She says that writing for any length of time causes pain in her hand and arm. If you saw how tightly she grips the pen you would probably agree that writing is painful for her. However, I cannot allow her to not write just because it is painful.
Our way around this is that she practices keyboarding as a course. She practices her typing skills in her core curriculum, as well as using keyboarding games. The games make it fun, and challenging. She enjoys trying to beat her best time, or her accuracy in the keyboarding games. Learning should be fun, right??

Homeschool Science

Homeschool science is what I wanted to write about today. My daughter loves science. She would never do any other course if I didn’t make her move on and study such things as language arts or math. We went to a library book sale not long ago, and do you know what she purchased? Yes, science text books. She wanted a chemistry and a physics text book.
That is what she bough the year before also. So my sixth grader has a growing collection of science text books on the high school level or higher.
What does she do with these books? She reads them…for fun. Don’t get me wrong, I love science, I find it fascinating, I have even studied it at the college level. But my daughter is eleven. I hope that this interest and fascination at a young age will lead to a career in a scientific field in her future.
Our core curriculum has science included in it. However, my daughter would like more, more, more science. Fortunately, the internet is a great source of science videos, and science information. There are even games that she has found online that allow her to apply physics concepts. She even found a game where she balances size of planets with gravitational pulls to build her own solar systems.
If your child is interested in science, foster this and like the unschooling parent, be a facilitator. Make sure that your child knows how to search for and enjoy various science web sites.

Online Eclectic Homeschooling

We are eclectic homeschoolers. And while that means we pick and choose what works best for my daughter, we try very hard not to be scattered, or disorganized.
We do use a core curriculum, called Time4Learning, which is an online, interactive, student paced curriculum. It contains the core courses of Language Arts, Math, Science and social studies. There is an also an art appreciation course which can be included as part of the curriculum.
In addition to Time4Learning, we have several other subjects that we add to my daughter’s homeschool education. She is learning Spanish as her foreign language, she is taking piano lessons, and she is taking an additional art course, online.
We use Vocabulary and Spelling City when she needs more practice with spelling. We do actually use workbooks for word ladders, a spelling and vocabulary exercise, and logic, which we just started this year.
We also do something we call special studies. This is studies in things that interest my daughter, and I will mention how it works in our homeschool in a later post.

Unschooling

There is one other method of homeschooling that I wanted to mention, though it is not a method I use because I am, in my daughter’s words, a control freak! That is not very nice, is it?
So, what is unschooling? For most people, the picture the name conjures up is kids laying around on the sofa, playing video games. There is an idea that unschooling is not-schooling. I would suggest that unschooling is not nearly as undisciplined as that.
The basic idea of unschooling is to let the child’s natural curiosity guide what he studies. The job of the parent is not that of teacher, but that of facilitator. It is the parent’s job to make sure that the child has access to the materials and resources necessary for the child to learn about those things that interest him.
I have noticed, in my five years of homeschooling, that unschoolers may be as far from homeschoolers in philosophy as homeschoolers are from public and private schoolers. This is not a judgment on unschooling, just an observation.
I guess I am a control freak, as my daughter states, because I just can’t let go that much. It is important to me that my daughter take courses in traditional school subjects, because I need her to be able to take the SAT and get admitted to college at some point. In my own opinion, if I fail to act as teacher, to ensure that she studies courses that she is not good at, or holds no interest in (like math!) and she pays for that later in her education, it will be on my head. So yeah, I’m a control freak!J

Eclectic Style Homeschooling

I have mentioned both the Charlotte Mason and Classical methods of homeschooling. Neither is the method that I use. What I do use is sometimes called eclectic homeschooling.
I do not follow a prescribed method of educating my daughter because she learns different subjects differently. It would not make sense to teach my daughter through the use of workbooks and textbooks in every subject.
She zips ahead in her science lessons. She would finish science first, if I allowed her to do science to the exclusion of other subjects. Because she loves it, and is willing to work independently in science she could and would finish two school grades worth of science each school year.
On the other hand, she is not a great speller, and she is a reluctant writer. I have to push her on a constant basis to keep her on grade level. Because of this, teaching science, and spelling using the same curriculum, or the same method would not produce equally good results.
So, as an eclectic homeschooler, I pick and choose from many different methods as I see fit, to provide my daughter with the best education I can. This doesn’t mean that this method would work for all homeschoolers, but it definitely works for my daughter. Flexibility in homeschooling is a great thing!

Classical Style homeschooling

Last time I tried to cover the Charlotte Mason style of homeschooling. We do not use that method at our homeschool and so I hope that I covered the style well enough. If you want to know more, I would suggest internet research.
This time I would like to briefly cover another style of homeschooling. The classical style of homeschooling is a style of education that trained some of the greatest minds of centuries past.
Grammar, logic, and rhetoric are the three main thrusts of this style of education. These are called the Trivium. Traditional public and private school courses must be taught as well, because if children are not educated in these courses, such as math, science, and social studies, then they have a more difficult time meshing their classical education with the traditional education which high education is rooted in.
Classically educated homeschoolers are more likely to learn Latin and/or Greek as languages.
Many homeschoolers feel like the classical model, full of great books, and tried and true is a great way to teach their children to learn. That once children learn how to learn, then they can apply that to any type of course they wish to master in the future.
I have not actually met many families who use this method, but the families that I know that do educate according to this method tend to have very disciplined students. I cannot prove that would happen in your homeschool, but it might be a method you want to check out.