Getting Started Homeschooling - Homeschooling 101

 Homeschooling is legal in all fifty states!  Oklahoma is THE best state to homeschool in, because homeschooling was built into the state constitution.  You are not required to report to the state nor to your school district.  There are no laws mandating or governing homeschooling in OK.  The legal opinion is that we provide “equivalency” to the education that public schools give children.  This is where the “you are required to teach 180 days” comes from.  Here is HSLDA’s legal opinion on homeschooling in OK: http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp?State=OK

The best place to start when considering homeschooling your children is the beginning:

• Know WHY you are homeschooling:  is it fad? Convenience? Do you find yourself all of a sudden too poor to afford private education?   Whatever your reason, homeschooling is attractive to more and more people.  However, these things may have brought you to homeschooling, but they are not likely to keep you there when times get hard.  Once you get started and have a few months under your belt, you may realize your purpose has changed, and now you are homeschooling for different reasons than you were in the beginning.  That is OK!  Just make sure you write them down, especially when they change.  When you feel like quitting, go back and read them.  They will renew your purpose. 

•  Know WHERE you are headed.  Do you have goals in mind?  You should! They will bring everything into clarity and focus and help you not to be swayed by every new thing that pops up along the way.

      Goals you should have:

1.                 Long Term

2.                 Short Term

3.                 Mid Term

•  Know WHAT you will use to get to your goal

Which materials are right for you depends on WHERE you want to go!

1.                 Do you want Thinkers? (preacher/politician)

a)                 Scholars? (Dr’s, Lawyers)

b)                Do-ers? (missionaries)

c)                 Citizens (dedicated to country)

2.                 Desire to want what God wants for them, and strive to lay aside your expectations and wants!

3.                 Be dedicated prayer warriors for your children! Tell them you are praying for them! 

Don’t be afraid to think outside of the box when it comes to choosing materials! 

1.                 Explore learning styles (both yours and your children’s!)

2.                 Research curricula-get familiar with what is out there! Know who wrote it and why! To whom are they writing it? TO you, the homeschool mom, or to a classroom teacher of 25 kids? Bottom line, what are they selling? !?!

     * Side Note on Bringing your children home from private or public school:  it takes roughly one month of decompression per year of institutionalized schooling to be totally “decompressed”. 

*  A note on K12, funding, and freedom:  Proverbs 22:7 The wealthy rule over the poor, and anyone who borrows is a slave to the lender.

If you are not the one who is paying for your child’s education, then you are not the one in control of it.

Plan! 

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”

“If you aim at nothing, you are bound to hit it every time”

     * Does that mean you are a failure if you don’t accomplish everything on your plan?  NO! You will undoubtedly achieve more with a plan then without one!

      * Luke 14:28  But don't begin until you count the cost. For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there is enough money to finish it?

  

      *Curriculum is your tool.  You use it, it doesn’t use you! It is a guide!  You are not behind!

IV.             Know what to leave out!

A.               Prune what is “good” to leave room for what is “best”

B.               Know what you are being sold. Because whatever it is, there is a price to pay.

C.               Do a Time Budget!  If you do music, football, youth group, volunteer at church…… quickly you become overly busy! Too busy to disciple your children.     Evaluate everything under this microscope: Does it help you meet your goals? (the ones you wrote down, remember those?)

Homeschooling is now this gargantuan smorgasbord of choices!  There are hundreds, maybe thousands of choices out there!  They are not all excellent. 

The same goes for coops, sports, extracurriculars, etc.

If you are keeping someone elses’pace, does it give you the time/flexibility that you need to achieve your goals? 

If not, set it aside!  Gift it, sell it, donate it!

Homeschooling is about much much more than math and spelling.  You must consider the whole person- mind, body, and spirit! 

Yes, it is a form of education that lends itself very well to attaining a superior education.  Why? Because we moms are all rockstar teachers?  NO! Because it takes the institutional constraints off of children and allows them to love learning!

When you focus on teaching your children to love to learn, and how to find out what they want to know, then the education part will fall into place. 

Teach them the ways of The Lord, so it will go well with them and they will live long on the earth. 

Teach them that you love them unconditionally, and practice what you preach, and they will cherish their relationship with you (eventually!) and be glad to have you in their lives. 

Homeschool Organization

There is lots to be said for January: it is a new year, fresh start; it is a time for new commitments; it is a time for organization!  There is no need to wait until next fall to revamp things in your home school! Pinterest, magazines and lots of others offer a virtual buffet of choices!  I have nabbed a few goodies from Pinterest this new term to make going back to home school feel like a new chapter.  I think that since we don't leave for school it can sometimes feel like we are in a rut.  Change can be good!

I have created a work station for our seven kiddos to use and streamlined the computer use and cut down on paper clutter at the same time.  We do three or so subjects on the computer, so usage is at a premium most of the time.  I don't like the laptops being drug all over the house; the cords get lost, the mouse gets lost, etc etc.  Here they are charged and ready to go.

I stole the idea for the file box organizer from Pinterest, with some tweaks from TOG.  It has the calendar on the front, and inside are the weeks of the units with that weeks work in it.  Also a file with each kiddos name on it for papers already graded going back to them, and a file marked "to be graded" for them to turn in assignments to me.  And extra planning pages are right in the front so I am not searching frantically for them at the start of planning each week.
Now we no longer have paper everywhere!

I also visit with moms who are new to homeschooling quite a bit, so I have extra planners in here (from the $1 bin at Target) to hand out as we discuss how to home-school. 

You can see that under the table ($30 ish from Sam's Club) I have a few boxes of teaching extras stored out of the way but within quick and easy reach.  These are things I use everyday with my littles.  Also a box of toddler toys to keep a little guy happy.  They are out of the way ready to be pulled out in a flash to keep chaos at bay.

Happy organizing! 

Homeschool organization: Workboxes and How we do Chores

You have heard before that if you fail to plan that you plan to fail.  This is especially true in home schooling. 

Organization is not always something we are born with, sometimes it is just survival.  When you home school, and have littles running around, organization is the difference between getting your goals accomplished and pulling out your hair!

I am sharing with you about two things I have implemented to get and stay organized, even though I use way more than these.  

One thing that has helped our home school day tremendously is Sue Patrick’s Work Box system.  I have pictures on my blog that show how we have made this work for all five children that are doing school.  Next year we will add another at school age, and that will leave just one baby to manage whilst doing school.  

In a nutshell, the workbox system is simply a $12 shoe rack from Target or Wal-Mart, with 12 clear plastic Sterlite shoe boxes without the lids at about $2 each. For about $40 including tax, this gives you twelve places to store their school things. You use one for each task or subject that you would like them to accomplish.  They are numbered, and you include any items needed to accomplish what you set them, so there would be a pencil in every box that contains worksheets.  

The idea is to get them to function as independently as possible.  If you have multiple kiddos to teach or occupy this becomes absolutely invaluable.  At least until evolution catches up with our need for eight arms.  

Your upper grammar aged children (around 8 to around age 12) should be able to do a great deal of work on their own, with you possibly giving instructions or a short lesson and then setting them on task.  This takes a great deal of training, especially if you have accomplished school in another manner up till now, but it is really worth the investment!  The author says she trained hers at 18 mos to use these; I have not started that young, but definitely by age two & ½ or three.  These tasks are more like coloring or a quiet activity they can do with little help.  Again, the training is time intensive at first, but you really reap great rewards! 

You can mix up the boxes with self directed tasks and tasks that require mom intervention.  Since I work with more than one student, I try to put a few independents in a row, and then a mom’s help is needed here box, then at least another independent box.

This system works well with any age and any curriculum.  But what if you have a student that is dyslexic or an older student that this is too juvenile for?  

For my older students, I bought Sterilite 6 drawer craft carts on wheels, and didn’t install the wheels.  These have attached lids, and are 12x12, so larger books and projects fit nicely.  For my highschooler, I stacked one on top of another to give her enough drawers.  For my two fifth graders they each have one set.  

These are pricey, at about $40 each, but well worth it.  When the baby comes by and pulls out a drawer, the lid is on it and clicked closed so it is very unlikely that anything falls out.  

The benefit of the workbox system is twofold; one, it keeps your student on track, and they can see how much they have accomplished that day and how much more they have to do, and two, it forces you to decide what you want them to do each day. 

Keeping your home tidy enough to do school in is just as important as planning out your school day.  This has derailed us many more days than I would like to admit.  It is hard to do school when you have jelly or syrup on the table and dishes stacked to the ceiling.  And who can snuggle up with all those great Sonlight readers when every couch and chair in the living room is covered in laundry? 

The best book on chores that I have found is Managers of Their Chores.  This has been an invaluable tool in our home, and despite my fears that the Maxwell’s would be way stricter than I could ever maintain, this system has worked well for us for the past three years.  When I got this book, I dove into it like a desperate woman pregnant with baby #6.

Essentially, every kiddo has a “chore pack” that they carry around with them while doing chores.  In the pack are the paper cards that tell them which chore to do.   They look at the card, do the chore, and then move the card to the back of the pack. When they are done, they move on to the next one, repeating till they are done with all their assigned chores.  

The beauty of the system is that there is no longer a need to nag them to do the next thing.  You spend a goodly amount of time instructing them on the way you expect the chore to be done, let them practice till they are confident they can do it alone, and then turn them loose! Of course there are consequences for not getting the chores done.

Also, Mrs. Maxwell tells you to only keep your house as clean as your husband expects!  This was so freeing to me!  Perfection goes out the window, and reality comes to shatter the all or nothing attitude that keeps most of us frozen and walking around in chaos.  She also lays out safety tips, and what you can reasonably expect out of children at certain ages.  

What this looks like at our house: every morning the kids get up and come downstairs to get their chore packs.  They do roughly 13 chores each before we start school at nine (hopefully)! They look like this for my nine year old:

#1 make your bed

#2 get dressed

#3 put away your pj’s

#4 brush your teeth

#5 brush your hair

#6 wash your face

#7 bring down your dirty clothes

#8 get breakfast and help your buddy get breakfast

#9 unload dishwasher

#10 mop kitchen

#11 tidy upstairs bathroom

#12 feed chickens

#13 be ready to start school by 9am!

Then they have afternoon chores to get done before dinner time.  This keeps our house livable.  Not spotless, not really company ready, just livable! And my husband doesn’t wonder what we did all day. 

A few extra things that I use to keep myself organized:

• I keep a mom notebook with general stuff that I use nearly every day, so that I don’t have to hunt it down all the time. 

• I keep a teacher’s notebook for our curriculum, things like answer keys to the maps and quizzes, teacher’s notes, etc. 

• I keep a clipboard with me at all times, with my to do lists, grocery lists, menu for the week and even what clothes I need to buy for each child.  You would think I could remember, but with seven, I can’t.  This clipboard is my external hard drive.  Yes, it is a scary time when I lose it.  I even take it to bed – it lives on my nightstand!

• I also keep a yearly planning binder, with the broad picture outlined for the year.  Mostly this is high school stuff, with credits, course descriptions, semester plans, a master calendar, etc. 

Lastly, always have a backup plan! When your day goes south for whatever reason, make sure you have things to help you make the most of whatever mess you find yourself in.  These would include: Bill Nye the science Guy DVD’s from the library, books on tape, geography puzzles, arts and craft supplies, and educational videos. 

Free planning sheets and lots of other printables at www.donnayoung.org

How I made it Out of the FOG (homeschool and otherwise)

Some of us are better than others at seeing what needs to be done, what amount of work is going to be best for each child, which books to purchase for each level, what projects to complete and how to schedule our days.

I am not one of those people.

I decided to try TOG out of desperation. (more on that in a later post- putting it all in one seemed like way too much!) And then I was overwhelmed.  That is not true exactly. It was more like dazed.   I would often tell my husband that it was like I was walking through molasses.  (or as I read later in loose threads- the fog!)  Seems like I read and read and read, watched webinars and looked at the posts on forums and the loose threads loop, and still was missing something. Somehow we were not getting all that I thought we should from our curriculum.  Nothing seemed to be working right.  I have three levels to contend with, LG, UG, and Dialectic, plus a kindergartner, preschooler and a baby.  For now I will just discuss the older three.  I will come back to the younger three.

My UG dd is dyslexic and in fourth grade.  Her younger sis is two years younger but they both do fourth grade work. My oldest is in 8th grade.  NONE of them were brilliant at self directed work in the majority of their subjects.  I was pulling out hair.  No one seemed to understand that we had gotten onto the history superhighway!  They all needed to listen faster!

Here are the things that I began to implement in our homeschool that have made all the difference in our days and weeks:

First-I read and implemented the book Managers of their Chores by Steve and Teri Maxwell.  This helped tremendously with getting the house under control.  And surprisingly, gave me freedom to do the least amount of housework (to my husbands standards of course) that we could get by with and still feel confident that DHS would not be knocking on our door.  It took some time and effort and prayer, but it was well worth it.

workboxes for older kiddos

Second- I read and implemented most of the book by Sue Patrick: Sue Patrick's Workbox System.  I modified this system to fit what we were already sort of doing and what organizational drawers that I already owned. What I own came from Target, and are basically for scrapbooking- 12x12 drawers with lids attached that are stacked seven high.  The oldest has two sets stacked, the grammar girls share two sets stacked (this gives them each fourteen drawers), and then the K and preschoolers have a set like Sue Patrick talks about.  It is just a shoe organizer rack with plastic shoe boxes that are numbered.  The idea is you fill all the boxes the night before with their work (even including a sharp pencil or whatever is needed in every bucket), and voila, planning is done!  This has been KEY to getting the most work done everyday.  This was THE MOST bang for the buck.  Although I need to say here that we do not do typing with any regularity and we definitely don't run (I can see where it would be beneficial!).  Here is a link to view the drawers in the picture above at target.com: Sterilite 7 drawer craft cart

Workbox system for kindergartner

Third- I pulled out all of the Preschool Activity Bags that I had made the summer before, and all of the other preschool bags of activities that I had come up with myself to rotate through the the K and PreK-ers boxes to keep them busy.  Paula's Archives has lots of links to lots of ideas- just be aware that she lists lots of links and I doubt she can keep up with each one everyday of the year.  Pirating of a site can happen to the best of us.

Fourth- I reimplemented a lot of the "tricks" I had read about when researching for my dyslexic dd.  She would likely be diagnosed ADD in a "real" school situation; she definitely has some difficulty filtering noise and distractions, and has trouble sitting still.  Some of these tricks Molly Evert's recommends in her site counterculturalschool.  Some I read about in some other books, and some my chiropractor had told me about.  They seem to be fairly common among ADHD/Dyslexic/sensory integration issue kiddos.  Here is a list of a few things that helped us:

• an exercise ball in a size appropriate for them to sit on and do their work.  The fact that core muscles are constantly engaged helps the need to wiggle and expends some energy.

• provide some kind of tactile stimulation- a small ball with spikes, some silly putty, some small cut of silky cloth, etc. Anything that can be manipulated and is small enough not to be a huge distraction for everyone else.
• cross-crawl exercises everyday- these include some exercises on the ball as well.

There is a ton of info on this out there, but it seems that it can be hard to find.  I will list some of the books and sites I have read on this issue that were helpful to us.  Look for it under my pages.

Implementing these strategies took a good portion of the fog away!  Then I was able to concentrate on the curriculum issues we were having. They did take time however, and it didn't happen overnight.   

UG.  And then reading level is not across the board- ie some LG reads are harder than UG.  But the content may not be quite as engaging.   I finally ditched a lot of the core UG, kept the core LG, ditched the LG readers and kept the UG in depth and really more of the alternates listed. So far it is working.  I found SOW on cd, and Molly's site myaudioschool.com  is a great resource for audio books that can be streamed right from the site.

Also one of the main things is that we are taking TOG at half pace, taking two and sometimes three weeks to do one weeks work.  This allows us the time for the hands on projects that we want to do, and to finish readings at our pace.  My dialectic dd also wanted to include lots of alternative titles as well as the main listings, this accommodates her desire as well.  

We are now in a groove if you will, and making forward progress everyday.  My house will never be in Better Homes and Gardens, but neither will DHS have a leg to stand on with regards to an unkempt house.  My children may not be Rhodes Scholars, but if they love to learn I am extremely pleased with that, and so (most importantly) is my husband.  He is very adamant that the most important thing is not their education, but their relationships with us and each other.