Tag: homeschooling

BJU Press

We have decided to go another direction in our home schooling. I have ordered the BJU online curriculum. She will watch videos online everyday that cover math and language arts, and through the subject of language arts science and social studies will be studied as well. There are corresponding worksheets to do and little projects. I am excited to get started on this with her. We showed her a sample video of the kindergarten math and she seemed to like it and get into it.

I actually looked into this curriculum months ago. Actually years ago even, as I was beginning to ponder exactly how I was going to homeschool Angelica. I was worried that videos might bore her, and I wondered if she would need me teaching and if the videos would be too much of an easy way out. But as I have found out from having her do the Time4Learning Subscription Service, she loves videos. Or at the very least she loves those. And doing pure workbook assignments with nothing else to go with it, like we did with Christian Light Education, is something she hates. She likes to have audio and visual and colors and possibly to do a little kinesthetic movement. These videos seem to encourage some of that. And it’s a more well-rounded education than what we were using because kindergarten covers science and social studies, even if they don’t have their own videos devoted to those subjects. I watched a sample language arts video and was impressed. I hope that the worksheets are well designed and that Angelica really get something out of them. And I like the fact that each day I have to lay out her work for her and we follow along with the videos and then we do the work that’s assigned in the parent guide each day. I can enter grades for her online through the parent portal. Starting in fifth grade I think students take their tests and quizzes online, but until then I will be grading them, which I think I like just as well.

I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but I really think that at the very least this will go much better than the last curriculum. I will have so much more help teaching because it won’t be just me and my methodology. She’ll be watching an actual professional teacher teach the first time she hears the lesson and then I will just be reinforcing the lesson. Between laying out her work for her each day, pulling up the videos and being ready to stop them at the appropriate time for her to do activities, and grading her assignments, I will still be heavily involved in her education. But she will have the audio visual stimulation that seems to keep her interested in school, and I will have the assistance of having a professional teacher give her her lessons. So please dear Lord let this work out.

Time4Learning

A few weeks ago I signed Angelica up for a monthly subscription service called Time4Learning. It covers language arts and math, with an optional science curriculum.

It is kind of cool because it covers things that we hadn’t even thought to do, but are expected of Kindergartners now, like solid shapes, what an author and illustrator are, table of contents and other parts of a book etc. It reinforces other things, like letter sounds and prepositions. Today we reached a lesson with listening comprehension, and practicing that might be especially good for her receptive language issues, even if those issues make it harder for her to do the activities. It has begun teaching her rhyming, which we hadn’t gone over yet. So it is keeping her education well rounded and giving us ideas on what to teach outside the workbook curriculum. There are quizzes after every few lessons, and it keeps a record of grades that I can see at the parent portal. She actually asks to do these videos sometimes, whereas it has been awhile since she has asked to do the workbooks. She likes the interactivity of it I think. They aren’t the most compelling videos, but she likes having something to watch and listen to.

I am realizing that maybe instead of Christian Light Education workbooks, or in addition to them since they are so inexpensive, I probably should have gone with my instincts and paid for the video series put out by BJU. Videos seem to be her thing. I think there are still workbooks that go with it, which is good since she needs to practice writing. But maybe she would rather watch a video than listen to me teach the whole time. I am going to look into a computer game curriculum. I don’t know if there are any, but something engaging like that with lots of teaching and clicking might be good for her. Every one has their own learning style, and on top of that she is not exactly a traditional learner. So anything I can find that she can at least mostly follow along with, will enjoy, and will hold her attention is worth investigating.

Homeschool Victory

This morning I was able to teach Angelica to count objects as high as five. I am waiting to see if she will retain it, but I did several exercises with counting to 2, 3, 4, and 5.   She did wonderfully well on them.

We haven’t been keeping up with our math side of the curriculum. We are supposed to be on 9, but that just isn’t possible at this point.  But the fact she got up to five was amazing. She has been struggling with 2. I am hoping that it has finally clicked for the lower numbers and she will retain what she learned. Sometimes she seems to have difficulty retaining what she has learned. I did not want to push her too hard though. Angelica made such good progress in the short time we have worked so far today that I wanted to quit before she got frustrated with anything, so that she could have her first positive memory/experience with school this week. She has gotten to where she is reluctant to do school anymore because it is difficult for her. But today she was beaming because she was getting almost everything right.  I am so happy for her!

We are reviewing old lessons in the workbook. I’ve decided to backtrack. I don’t think she has truly mastered the material we have covered, so we are going to do review and activities. I am just so proud of her, and so overjoyed for her as well. I recognize we are still behind the curve, but progress is progress. And this was some tremendous progress. Now to pray that it is retained…

Disorder

It is only a general diagnosis, but today we received Angelica’s evaluation from the speech therapist. Angelica has expressive and receptive language disorder. She is delayed. On the bell curve there are three categories of delay. Mild, moderate, and severe. She is moderately delayed. She is in about the 6th percentile for her age.

Angelica will begin speech therapy next Wednesday morning. I really hope it helps her. Last year speech therapy didn’t seem to make a lasting impact. At first it didn’t seem to help at all. Then it seems like it helped a little bit maybe. And then as soon as I had to pull her out of speech for our move, the progress was immediately lost. Overall I would say it just didn’t help her. But this speech therapist is hopefully going to do different things, and she’s going to be focusing on language rather than pronunciation, so hopefully we will see some results.

Angelica is very bright. She loves to talk to people and she loves it when I read her stories. She is actively engaged with everything around her and interested in so many things. Angelica is highly creative, compassionate, and communicative. But she just has a hard time with certain elements of communication. I have suspected that something was wrong for a while. Hence the fact I had her in speech therapy for a year back in Virginia. This confirms what I had feared. But hopefully she will get a lot of help from the speech therapist and maybe she can make great strides this year.

We also have appointments set up with a developmental pediatrician for an evaluation, and we are being referred to an OT.

Officially having it in writing that she is delayed and by how much has giving me mixed feelings. It confirms my fears, which gives me a sinking feeling. At the same time now maybe we can get people to help her and we will see some improvements. But her diagnosis is really a general diagnosis and not specific. The problem with that is that when we look up how to teach her to read or how to teach her to do math we don’t know what to put in the search engines to tell us how to teach her. If she has auditory processing disorder teaching is difficult but there are some things you can do to help. For a variety of other delays and disorders there are different things you can do to teach your child and improve their odds at a positive outcome. But without knowing what specifically it is it’s very hard to determine what to do. Hopefully the developmental pediatrician will be able to shed some light on that issue and give us a direction to go in. Homeschooling is not going well. It’s still early so I’m holding out hope, but she is definitely having a hard time and not catching on. Language arts is her strong suit, but even there she is not doing as well as I had hoped. And math is an absolute no-go.

For the next couple of months we’re going to keep pushing through as we are and reviewing the lessons in our curriculum. I’m going to do my best to teach her and encourage her to keep trying even though it is difficult. The receptive language issue is really holding her back. In a couple of months if we see no progress, we will likely hire a tutor when we get back from vacation. And hopefully by then too we will have the evaluation results from the developmental pediatrician and we’ll have more to go on in figuring out how to help Angelica. So we can maybe get a tutor who can help her and we may have some new tools in our toolbox to help her ourselves as well.

1st Week of Homeschooling

Our curriculum arrived in the mail at the end of last week, and we have worked diligently on one lesson a day since then. We are using the Christian Light Education curriculum. Specifically, the one with workbooks. It’s nice and easy because everything that you need to do in one day is laid out in one lesson in the workbook. So we get math and language-arts covered. I know where to start and I know when to stop. As a first-time homeschooling mom that is absolutely great. And the curriculum seems pretty good too. At least so far. As students go through the workbooks they frequently have to review and reuse information they have learned in previous lessons.

I decided to start Angelica with the kindergarten 2 curriculum. Kindergarten 1 seemed a little bit to basic for her age. The first grade curriculum is much more comprehensive with social studies and science, but I think the language arts and math would have been right over her head at this point. So I ordered the curriculum for the second half of kindergarten and so far we are just going along. There have been some difficulties though, and we are wondering if it has something to do with her language comprehension – or something else. Hopefully it is nothing. The first week of school can have some bumps for every kid, whether homeschooled or in public school. But between her speech issue, her problems with directions, and her difficulty playing with age-appropriate board games we are going to just check up on Angelica with a developmental pediatrician.

English is definitely Angelica’s strong suit so far. She has trouble with the math. A lot of trouble with the math. She’s having a hard time remembering how to count, although we have worked on this for a very long time – well before we started officially homeschooling. And sometimes she will get the counting right and then the next time she goes to count she will have it completely out of order. We are trying different methods to teach her, from singing to using manipulatives and toys. We will just have to see what works.

We are still using supplemental materials as well. We are using a Pre-K science book and soon we might start a geography book. I’ve been saving these books since she was two. And then of course we have flashcards of the letters and their sounds. We are using those and in a few months might start with sight word flashcards. And pretty much daily we use her dry erase letter and number tracing book. That’s really what’s teaching her how to write. She’s practicing her writing in her workbook, and she’s making some improvements each day, but it’s the dry erase book that lets her practice over and over again and gives her bigger letters to trace. Angelica makes some really beautiful letters in her dry erase book. She seems to have more fun with it too. It is so colorful.

I can’t wait until she knows how to read and I can start getting her science books to study, and books to really get into history. I suppose I could try to get some supplemental materials for those subjects now, but they’re kind of hard to find for her age group and honestly I think she’s got enough on her plate with the language arts and math. That’s a lot of learning to do each day.

I’m trying to be careful not to burn Angelica out. So far she seems to do school willingly, and even look forward to it. I want to keep it that way. Of course, school requires some level of discipline. You can’t just do school when you feel like it. Even if she gets up one morning and doesn’t want to do it we still need to work our way through the lesson, but I choose times to use the supplemental materials very carefully. So far though she has been eager.

 

Shopping, Books, Creativity

Today I went shopping for regular size clothes. I got to go shopping at Macy’s briefly with my mother and I found a dress that day that fit, so I hoped I could do a whole shopping trip and find clothes in the regular Department that fit me. I went to dressbarn, tried on about 15 dresses, and all of them except for one fit, and that one didn’t fit over my bust. I was wearing 14s and 16s. Then I went over to Marshalls next door and I found Calvin Klein dresses in size 14 and size large. They all fit me and they look great on me! I am so happy! I have a long way to go but it feels so good to finally be able to shop in the regular sections of the department stores. There’s so much more to pick from and it’s so much more flattering. I am trying not to spend too much money on clothing since I’m hoping to keep losing weight and I don’t want to run out and spend hundreds of dollars only to have the clothes not fit in 2 months. Plus, having too much clothing stresses me out. It’s just too much laundry and too much organizing, so anything that cannot fit in the three drawers that are mine in the chest of drawers does not get kept. So in order to keep these dresses I’m getting rid of some of the other ones that don’t fit. I’m going to keep one or two to paint in since I don’t want to ruin these nice dresses, but some other stuff has to go.

I have been reading everywhere lately. I’m still working my way through the wonderful new books that arrived while I was in Virginia. And on top of that I have been downloading books on Google Play books and on Kindle and reading those too. I am even getting into some contemporary fiction, which I almost never do. One of the books I’m currently reading is very surreal and it’s about being a woman and about the body. There’s one very creepy story in there about a woman with a green ribbon around her neck. And I’m finding books about painting and books about walking in faith and Christian women throughout history. So much good stuff. And of course, poetry as always. The white piano is really good. I keep going back to that one. And I am absolutely drowning in sci-fi and horror to read. It’s such a pleasure!

Many of the books that I like to read cannot be bought for an e-reader or phone. Most poetry only comes in book format. But for the books I’m finding online that do come in an e-reader format, I’m debating downloading more often than ordering a physical book. I will always prefer the wonderful weight of a book in my hands and the fresh smell of the paper, and I will never stop ordering flesh and Bone books. But at least sometimes it might be a good idea to get digital copies because our library is filling up so fast. Truthfully it’s already overflowing. Craig and I own so many books. The library spills into rooms and pretty soon, and fax now since we have so many books to resell to get digital copies because our library is filling up so fast. Truthfully it’s already overflowing. Craig and I own so many books. The library spills into rooms and pretty soon, and fax now since we have so many books to shelve that are new, we need more bookshelves. Plus there’s something nice about having at least some of your books be portable and come with you without having to pack anything. That way I can read at the mall or in a parking lot or waiting in line at Taco Bell or anywhere.

Today I tried to do a little bit of schooling with Angelica. The babysitter had already done some with her. Our wonderful babysitter does educational activities every time she comes. But I decided to help Angelica work on the letter b this afternoon. She made some progress but handwriting is slow going. She seems to pick up on the handwriting quicker than she remembers the sounds that the letters make though. For some reason she remembers what sound the letter Z makes and it always makes her happy, but the other letters she doesn’t really remember yet so we’re going to keep working with the flash cards. And I’m going to keep letting her play her little educational games on my phone. Maybe she is like me. I have always adored the letter z.

Her curriculum should be here in the next couple of weeks and then we will get started in earnest.

I am downloading as many textures and creative programs as I can to create little collages and digital pages. The one in this post is one I just made tonight. I borrow the photography from all over and use different frames and filters and borders and textures to create something that describes my mood or something else in my life. I think the one tonight is pretty fitting.

 

Prelude to Homeschooling

Today we had a preliminary run for homeschooling. Angelica’s curriculum for kindergarten will not arrive for another week or so. But she has this wonderful dry erase tracing book that teaches her how to write letters and numbers. She really got into it! She liked it! We worked on the letter P, the letter R, the letter q, and the letter M, as well as the letter s. That was the hardest one though and I don’t think she has mastered it. But Angelica made great progress overall, and I think she really learned a lot so we’re going to keep using that book until the curriculum comes and maybe even after that. I hope that she continues to take joy in learning. And it was nice to have Craig help starting out, but sometimes I will be schooling her when it’s just me alone. I hope I can do a good job.

Homemaking Part 1

I am reading a wonderful inspirational book about homemaking titled The Life Giving Home. It really gives some great suggestions for making a house a home and making sure that the home environment you have created for your husband and children is one of warmth and relaxation and unconditional love and acceptance. There is so much from this book that I want to write about. Mostly good stuff. But I’m going to start out with a post about some aspects of the book I cannot relate to.

The book emphasizes making your home warm and hospitable for everyone who comes to stay or comes to visit. Almost no one comes to stay with us and we almost never have visitors. I am an introvert, but beyond that my husband is downright antisocial. When I want to have visitors over and do something social and welcome people in, he does not want to. So if I’m creating a good home environment for my family it will realistically be one that does not have the doors open to people who are outsiders. Pleasing my husband must come first and he does not want our home to be the center of any entertaining, at least not any entertaining that he has to be a part of.

I would like to have friends over now and then and I can when my husband is not home. But when he is home or if it is a couples activity it simply doesn’t work. But my husband accepts me with all my quirks, and I need to accept him as well. The most important thing is that I create a home that is beneficial for my husband and my daughter. My husband benefits most from having a place to retreat from the world and social interaction, and so I want to create a home filled with things that he loves to do and things that he likes to look at in order to create an environment of peace for him.

Someday, if I have the pleasure of becoming part of a creative community, I would like to be able to welcome other creatives in the my home and discuss books and art. I would like to provide finger foods and nice little drinks, and make my rather extensive library available to anyone who is interested. But I don’t know if I will ever be part of such community. It is so hard to meet people. And if I ever am, for the most part it would probably be best if I attended gatherings at other peoples’ houses unless my husband gave me the okay to hold some get-togethers at our house. Making my husband feel at ease in his house, making it a place that he enjoys coming home to and relaxing in, is priority number one. Essentially, making it a home for him is vital. So that is one type of advice in this book that I personally would have to say has to be ignored for some of us. Whatever you are doing to try to make a home you have to base it upon the needs of your individual family, and my husband needs a retreat from the world. He likes to come home to his loving family, and generally speaking, to no one else.

The other thing that strikes me is all the fancy traditions that the writers of the book, a mother and daughter team, talk about as being important. Of course they suggest developing your own traditions but the amount of work and creativity and thought that goes into some of these things that they do is astounding. Some of them are easy things that I already do, like saying to read your children books. I already read my daughter books. But some of them are elaborate Valentine’s Day projects and elaborate meals and tons of decorating for the holidays. I like to decorate for the holidays a little bit. I do enjoy the holidays. But I have poor organizational skills and I don’t like to overload my house with supplies for any given holiday because then I have to cope with the anxiety of taking it all down and finding a place for it. As for fancy meals, we are people who order pizzas. I’m a horrible cook and my husband, who actually likes cooking, still prefers take out or eating out most of the time. I want my daughter to have fine memories of our meals together so I need to find a way to make them sweet and intimate without necessarily being Gourmet. I am thinking that we should make a habit of praying before meals when we eat out in public. I know about that verse that says not to pray in public like the Hypocrites but to keep your prayers private, but I don’t think that it applies to this as long as we’re praying quietly at our own table. And she and I cuddle a lot when we go out to lunch or dinner so we spend some good time together. When we eat at home I think it would be good to start eating at our lovely little dining room table more often. I want Angelica to have beautiful memories of family meals around that table.

I need to get more creative with the stuff that we do together, Angelica and I. But I am just not what you would call a Pinteresting person. Hand me a pile of popsicle sticks, construction paper, doilies, and watercolor paints and I’m just going to look at you with a confused expression in my eyes. So much of what these women suggest doing is very creative. And I consider myself a creative person. I am a poet. I write poetry all the time. And periodically I practice art. Soon I will be taking up abstract painting. But what I guess it comes down to is not that I’m not creative, but that I do not think like a child. I am not childlike at all. It’s just not in my nature. So I don’t look at kids craft supplies and think we could make this fun activity that would last all month long. I am horrible at coming up with stuff like that and to be honest I don’t really enjoy it. When Angelica gets old enough to tell me that she has developed particular interests of her own, I’m going to try to share in those interests with her so that we can bond. But as long as it’s all on me to come up with things I don’t think it’s going to happen. Plus I’m not sure how good the memories will be if we’re doing something that I actively dislike. I want to build fond memories for my daughter, but I also want to remember having a good time with her and if I have to spend hours preparing something I barely know how to prepare and making it awful at that, I feel like the memories will be marred. I feel like on some level she will know that I did not enjoy it and that I did not want to do it. Kids are perceptive that way. I’m hoping to involve her in things that I like to do, like painting and scrapbooking. I am thinking of starting a stamp collection and maybe she would want to do that. And of course like I said if there was something particular that she wants to I would be glad to do it with her. So if she decides that she wants to take up dance or tennis or softball, I will participate as much or as little as she wants. I will be at every recital and game. But I just don’t have it in me to come up with kids’ projects.

I do want to make sure though that Angelica is enjoying her childhood. I want to make sure this home is a place of joy for her as well. She has a lovely room with lots of toys and parents who adore her. Are there any memories I could make with her with my skill sets that might actually be special to her and that she would get something out of? That’s what I have to figure out and give some thought to as I go through this book. I will never be that crafty cutesy mom. I admire women who are that way but it just isn’t me. I have to design a home life where my family will grow and thrive, but I need to find a way to do it within the scope of who I am. I don’t know how to be anyone else. And it needs to be a restful haven for everyone in the family, including me.

Low Standards and Mediocrity Among Homeschoolers

I talk to homeschoolers every chance I get to learn about their process, their curricula, their activities, and structure. I join homeschool groups. I’m already researching different methodologies and philosophies in homeschooling. I am deciding between homeschool and private school, and I want to be prepared to homeschool.

But for every homeschooling family that rigorously teaches all subjects and have children at or above grade level, there’s two more with children below grade level…..AND THEY DON’T CARE AND THEY JUSTIFY IT!

So often I hear people say that their children technically read two grade levels behind or are 7 and can’t count yet, but why do public school standards matter and their kids are still getting an education.

Yeah, right.

Today a woman posted in a homeschooling group that she started her son in private school, pulled him out to homeschool, and after homeschooling for a year plus, he is now not only not making progress, he is behind. She says she thinks the problem is she has twin two year old boys and she gets so distracted and has to watch them so much that she can’t focus on her older son’s education. She wanted to know what she should do. I said to put him back in private school, wait til her twins are older and ready to do school themselves, then start over again with homeschooling and pull her older son back out of school. Many moms of many children were saying that you can easily homeschool with many children. I said that although some moms of many succeed in providing a good home school education, many do not. Their older kids spend more time helping mom wrangle the younger ones and helping her with laundry and lunch than they do studying. If she feels overwhelmed by her twins, she shouldn’t feel bad about delaying homeschooling til they are older. Even many moms of one and two find homeschooling difficult. With twin two year olds it would be extremely hard.

Then this woman starts in on me talking about how she has five kids and she does a great job homeschooling them. At first, as I start to read what she has written, I am impressed. To successfully homeschool five kids is an accomplishment that not everyone can pull off. It is easier for her if all her kids are school age now, as they seem to be, but it is difficult nonetheless.

Then I read the rest of what she says. She says how sure, her kids are not at grade level for public school, but that it doesn’t matter and they are getting a great education.

If your kid is not at or above grade level for public school, your homeschooling is not successful. Your child is not getting adequate instruction. Public school is not difficult. It does not set the bar high. Even though there are as many kids in public schools that aren’t academically inclined as there are kids who are gifted in that area, most kids who flunk in public school do so because they aren’t interested and didn’t try (or have some really off the wall, bad home situation) – not because it is difficult. The majority of even the least scholastically gifted kids pass. They are at grade level.

If your kid is not at public school grade level or above it, you are failing. What is the point in taking your kids out of public school supposedly for a better environment and education if you are going to let your fourth grade read like a first grader? If they spend more time watching their siblings than they do hitting the books? Public school grade level is not some unattainable goal. It is basic, the minimum knowledge and aptitude a child of a certain age should have. I’m not saying you have to follow the curriculum of the public schools. You can teach American history when they teach world history, and world history when they teach American. You can add subjects like botany and geography. But with reading, writing, and math there are standards that should be met. The basics should be the minimum of what is covered, sufficiently taught, and practiced.

It is disturbing that many homeschoolers do not seem to care much about…well…school. I am a firm believer that the state needs to stay out of a parent’s right to educate their children as they see fit. Parenting shouldn’t be in the realm of the state. I don’t want any regulations. Most of these homeschoolers feel the same way. But then they turn around and give their children a substandard education and low standards. It puts their children at a disadvantage, and hurts the cause of homeschooling. What better argument is there for state interference in homeschooling than homeschool parents leaving their kids 1,2,3, or even 4 years behind on skills and knowledge?

For people who have children of special needs, homeschooling might look very different. A child with special needs may not be able to stay up to grade level, and successfully homeschooling a child with learning disabilities might look very different and a lot slower paced than teaching a kid without them. But if your child isn’t learning disabled, they should be at or above grade level.

If this woman was the only one I came across who took this attitude I would just think she was a random flake. But I hear this all the time. Of  course it isn’t all homeschoolers. My babysitter is a homeschool student and she is starting nursing school at 15 years old. Some of them are hardworking, dedicated families who emphasize knowledge, success, and achievement. But many more talk about the importance of being “relaxed,” of not having any competition, of “letting kids be kids.” How it is okay if your third grader can’t subtract? Will these children’s bosses be relaxed? Will their babies just relax and decide not to need care and feeding around the clock because these kids have grown up thinking they can just relax? And how is keeping kids away from competition a good thing? Life is competition. It is filled with competing for jobs, honors, accolades, wealth, and a mate. Not everyone gets a trophy. These kids aren’t going to get to live in some utopia. And kids being kids? The time for that is after school, on the playground. As much as kids need to be kids, they also need to be taught to grow up. Education is necessary and there is no excuse for keeping your kids home and then allowing them not to be educated.

I really hate it when homeschoolers treat the school part like it borders on the unnecessary.