Category: ways to homeschool

School Photos, Prologue

So we’re officially entered in Dorian & Bearing’s homeschool photo contest, and it looks like the deadline is being extended, yay!   So if you have had photo drama as we did, do not despair.  Share your pics.

I submitted seven in the official flicker location — the ones that looked most homeschooly.  I thought, does anyone really want to see the purple hippos?  Even though they are an integral part of my homeschool?  You’ll be relieved to know that most of the photos we took never made it to the internet!  Yay!  But if you want the complete flicker Fitz homeschool collection, it’s here.

–> Note that there are some duplicates, because we had three photographers working on this project, and they all got to post their favorite photos, no matter what. And since two of us shared a camera, there was some arguing over who snapped which shot.  Not all the captions are my work either – check the tag to verify.

Kolbe – episode 2

So we decided to go ahead and register with Kolbe for next year, for the two big kids.  Here’s the beta, for those who are considering a similar plunge:

Glad we registered silly early. Kolbe lets you send in your registration (and tuition, of course) as early as you like, and then you school year still runs for the 12 months you indicate.  So we mailed forms in March, but that is to cover the year running August 2011-July 2012.  Why bother registering so early?

  • Avoid overwhelming the staff during crunch season.  We had a big box of course plans and parent information on our doorstep within a week.   One item was missing, and it was no problem to whip out an e-mail and the registration guy could just pop it in the mail.  You don’t want to be sweating waiting for materials a week before you need to start.
  • Time to look through the course plans, and get an idea of how the recommended books will be used.  So you know whether ________ supplemental text is something your student will really need, maybe want, or can do without.  Handy.
  • Time to bring the kids up to speed on their weak subjects.  Which is why . . .

The Assessment Tests are Gold.  Get them. These are the tests that measure how much of the current year’s work your student has mastered.   And here’s the secret that nervous, overwhelmed parents need to know: You don’t have to administer the test. If you’ve been teaching your student one-on-one, you can probably just look at them and get a good idea of how your student stacks up to plan.

For example, you might look at the end-of-third-grade grammar test, and say to yourself, “Egads! my 9-year-old has never even heard the word ‘Predicate’!  Somebody, quick, find me a grammar book!”  And so you google “free grammar practice worksheets”, and find this great site, and you spend the rest of the spring introducing your child to the wonders of formal grammar study.

No need to traumatize anyone by actually administering the test.  You can traumatize yourself just by looking at it.  (And, also, be reassured that the idea of a ‘predicate’ is pretty easily explained, once your child learns what nouns and verbs are, which is also pretty easy.  Which is why you weren’t sweating grammar up till now anyway.)

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So that’s what we’re doing this spring.  Intensive grammar, math, and penmanship; structured unschooling for the rest.

 

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PS: Funny conversation with the boy:

Mom: I think you’ll find the history next year pretty light.

Mr. Boy: Kolbe must not really care about history.

Mom:  No, actually they care quite a lot about history.  It’s that most kids your age don’t read adult history books for fun.

Mr. Boy: Oh.

(FYI rest assured, not all my children are like this.)

Under the microscope

(Um, just a homeschooling post.  No deeper meaning.)

I’ve been planning school a month at  a time lately.  February went a little haywire, between guests, the flu, and the 6-week mark on the library cycle (all books to be returned).  So yesterday morning with life resuming a semblance of normalcy, had to figure out what to do about science.  Kids had really enjoyed the lab science feel to our Drop of Water study, and they’d been complaining about the endless animal research reports last fall, so I thought maybe it wasn’t the auspicious week to return to Zoo Pass Science Class.

Instead I announced that as soon as the kitchen table was clean after lunch, I’d pull out the microscopes.  We have one very nice low-power microscope that the SuperHusband acquired from work.  He had spied one sitting unused and unwanted in the lab, and in lieu of a bonus, asked his boss if he could have that instead.  The other is a hand-me-down from Ann Miko at Phos Hilarion, a good sturdy cast metal unit retired from a school science lab.

So science this week is this: You can look at anything you want under the microscopes.  Having them out for free use is turning out to be much more peaceful than having everyone gathered for one short class and having to fight for turns.

Kitchen table can be devoted to this because the weather is so nice this week.  We’re having meals and most homework outside at the picnic table.  I’ll be frank here: This is one of the primary reasons we homeschool.  Seriously.  Living in the south, our glorious summer days all come during the school year.  (In what gets called “summer” it’s one giant three-month-long sauna.)

So I was sitting outside yesterday, feeling like the luckiest person in the world (fairly accurate), and there was that little voice saying “Your children should be sitting inside under flourescent lights all day, because that’s how they’ll become prepared for the adult world”.   Because I guess people who do math in broad daylight are rank hedonists.

But people say this.  There’s this notion floating around that Children Must Suffer.  It is not enough to master the material, It Must Be Boring.  It is not enough to devote hours a day to schoolwork, it Must Be Done Someplace Unpleasant.  It is not enough to have a varied social life, There Must Be Bullies.

Now if there were something natural about spending large quantities of time sitting indoors under artificial lighting, I could be persuaded that the resistant child must be conformed to the human condition.  But given that long stretches sitting still, and long hours of daylight spent inside, are actually linked to health disorders?  It becomes a bit like insisting that because the child will likely one day work in the mines, he must be sent underground from the age of five so that he might become accustomed to the dark and damp and coal dust.

So that’s us.  Rank hedonists.  Happy Spring, southerners.

Math War (card game)

Math War is a fighting game disguised as a math game.   Played like the card-game “War” (aptly named), each card contains a math fact question, but no answer.   At each turn, the player whose card has highest answer gets to take the pile.  The kids, of course, have to figure out the answer to each card’s math fact, in order to know who wins the battle.

You can purchase a deck, or make your own using index cards, which would allow your children to practice whichever facts you choose.  (With a mixed-ability group, you could mix decks and assign each kid to answer a certain type of fact.)

This game is a great way to keep your kids learning on a day when you are feeling tired of the same old math book routine.  Your homeschooled children think they are studying math facts, but in fact they are mastering important socialization skills they might otherwise miss, such as bullying, cheating, and hurling all the cards across the room and stomping away.  Guaranteed to motivate the teaching parent to quickly return to those delightfully boring workbooks.