The term ‘homeschooling’ basically refers to the process in which one or more children of not more than 2 families are instructed by parents or legal guardians, or a member of either household. The laws that define homeschooling vary from State to State. The legal requirements for establishing a homeschool also vary with the state in which you live.

For most children, the actual process of learning begins much before school. Many children already know their alphabets, the names of animals, colors and other more complicated stuff before they reach school. This is mostly due to the hard work of a member of the family who has taken the time to teach the child.

Homeschooling is just a natural progression from here. Instead of sending their children to a public school, parents make their own curriculum and teach their children in ways that best suit the child. This is homeschooling, in its most simplistic form.

Before you decide to homeschool, there are certain important matters to consider. First off, meet with parents of other homeschoolers. Find out the pros and cons of homeschooling. Then ask yourself why you would want to adopt this method. This is a very important aspect, as the success of the program depends on the clarity and sincerity of your purpose.

Next, it is time to consider the expenses of homeschooling. It may cost anywhere between a few hundred dollars to a few thousand every year. More importantly, you are also effectively shutting out any job opportunity for one of the parents. It is often the case that one parent will have to stay at home full time to manage the homeschool. (A home-based business however is a great alternative.)

Are you qualified to take on homeschooling for your children? Teaching is a continuation of your own learning process. With the advent of the internet, information is aplenty. There are various books and resources for those interested in homeschooling. Go through the various methods of homeschooling and choose one that is most suited to you. It helps if you know what kind of learning style your child has. Also, find out what your child feels about homeschooling before you start.

Every state has its own laws regarding homeschooling. For instance, in North Carolina, you must first file a ‘Notice of Intent’ to start a home school. In this you have to mention if the school is a ‘Private church’ school or a ‘qualified non-public school’. The persons providing the education are required to have at least a high school diploma. You have to maintain an annual record of the child’s attendance and disease immunization. Every year, the child is required to undergo a standardized test. Each student attending the eleventh grade has to take a nationally standardized test.

On the other hand there are states like Michigan in which there is no official oversight from the government. There are requirements to be met, but the responsibility is on the parents to meet them and be able to prove that if challenged. For a complete list of requirements in your state check the state government website. Alternatively you can get a great deal of information from the Home School Legal Defense site.

Homeschooling may seem like a lot of fun and freedom from the outside. However, things are seldom as simple as they seem. Homeschooling is a lot of added responsibility and hard work. But, if successful, it will forge a strong bond of love and respect between parent and child, while providing your child with the best form of education he or she needs.

photo credit: mikecogh

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We happen to live close enough to a major annual art competition and this year we had time to take the boys to see some of the entries. I’ve often considered the idea of taking the boys to the art museum, but I just can’t quite imagine them walking peacefully through the galleries and contemplating the paintings or sculptures. (Now if they could swing from them, that’d be a different story. But I digress…)

Going to the competition meant that we could go to the art museum for a reason. Hooray! Unfortunately my evil plan to get the kids some culture was foiled by extremely long lines.

Not to worry, there were plenty of other places to see art. This one for example…can you guess what it’s made of?

It’s paper! No kidding, it really is. This is a HUGE piece of paper with amazing cut-outs. And this is only half of it; there was a similar half with white on black. I can’t remember how long it took the artists to create, but it was a long time.

Another interesting one:

This one’s made of glass. Just amazing. And beautiful.

One the boys were quite fond of was this:

It doesn’t look like much at first, but it’s actually an electronic harp that is played by passersby. Seriously! The way you move in front of it affects the notes that are played. I would never have conceived of such a thing.

If you get a chance to take your kids to an art competition, go for it. We had some good conversations and the boys were definitely inspired by more than one of the entries.

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We did a really fun experiment in science that the younger boys just loved. Because we have a water softener and a water purifier, this was very easy to pull off. I got out three plastic cups and instructed the boys to measure a half-cup of water into each one. The first cup had hard water, the second cup had soft water, and the third cup had purified (and also softened) water.

Then we used an eye dropper to measure 3 drops of dish soap into each glass. Using a stir-stick the boys gently mixed the soap with the water, careful not to agitate anything.

Then? On to the fun part. All that’s needed is a straw in each cup and some gentle blowing. We quickly discovered that softened and purified water is much easier for bubble making. The reason is that hard water contains calcium in higher concentrations and this inhibits bubbles. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

After the official experimenting was done, the boys took their cups outside to see how high they could blow the bubbles.

Believe it or not, there’s a straw between the boy and the cup there.

What neat experiments have you done with your kiddos?

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For the past several years, we’ve faithfully used the spelling program Spelling Workout by Modern Curriculum Press.  It’s a good program, but I didn’t feel like the younger boys were really getting much out of it, partly because I wasn’t taking the time to do the weekly pre- and post-testing.  Even when the older boys were using that format (they’ve moved on to vocabulary this year  instead of spelling) they didn’t appear to be gaining lots of words regularly.

This summer I spent a good chunk of time exploring options, and finally settled on the AVKO Sequential Spelling program. AVKO stands for Audio Visual Kinesthetic Oral.  It was a huge change.  The Spelling Workout consisted of a workbook for each boy with a daily page and then a spelling test at the end of the week.  The pages were simple and usually included puzzles and reading as well as practice writing the words.  Thursdays were always difficult because the page required some sentence writing, and this is not their favorite.

Sequential spelling is completely different.  Each boy has a booklet, but the pages consist only of columns in which to write their words.  I sit at the marker board and say a word, while they write it in their response book.  As soon as they’re done, I write the word on the board using colors to highlight the word stem we’re focusing on.  They make corrections to their word, then we repeat the process with the next word.  They’re up to 25 words per day.

The idea is to go quickly and have fun.  This was not so easy for my little perfectionists…they each took turns getting upset if a word wasn’t perfect the first time.  We’re on day 15 now, and that is changing.  There was a little bit of frowning today later in the list, but for the most part we worked right down the line and there were smiles and cooperation and (dare I say it??) joy.

On top of that, I’m seeing definite progress in their spelling.  When we have other writing assignments, they’re taking the initiative and spelling words out independently, without asking me to spell everything out as they go.  And.  And!!!  Today one of them said something like, “and it has the stem ‘ood’ ,”when he was writing out the word mood.  Progress!

Another interesting thing about Sequential Spelling is that it’s written in levels and not for a particular age group.  I wouldn’t start it any earlier than second grade unless a child was particularly apt with spelling and words.  They’re already doing words and phrases like “stoutest” and “Jan’s a man” in the third week of the program.  The words are grouped by family (I’ve been saying ‘stem’).  So a list might look like: bat, cat, scat, flat, pat, spat, mat, rat, batter, flatter, matter, battle, and so on.

AVKO Sequential Spelling is a big change for us, but I’m very pleased so far at the results.  The boys are smiling through the lesson, it’s quick and they’re clearly learning.

FTC Disclosure: the link to Spelling Workout is an affiliate link.  Should you choose to purchase the program via that link, I will earn some money.  It’s a good program and I do recommend it.

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I mentioned in the last post how we switched to a new schedule earlier this year.  Both sets of boys start and end school at a pre-determined time.  Their break times are at different points so I have an opportunity to work with each pair privately, but everyone is supposed to be working on lessons for three and a half hours per day.

When we were doing a full day of school (we’ve finished some subjects for the year now) I could keep them busy for that much time.  Now, no one has more than two hours of work to do, and the younger boys finished in an hour and a half today.

I figured when we made the schedule that all problems were solved.  Alarm clocks would ring, the time for school would arrive, and boys would begin working.

HA.

Nope.  That’s not what happened.  Instead, they’d “forget” to set their alarms, then wander around doing Heaven knows what for an hour, then when I said it was time to start working there would be a general panic and cries of, “I didn’t eat breakfast!!”

Talk about putting me in a corner.  I didn’t want to try and teach starving children.  So I gave in, and let them eat.  THEN we’d start working.  Only they’d take 45 minutes on breakfast, work a little bit, and claim it was their breaktime per the schedule we’d written.

I felt like I was stuck.  And frustrated.  And back to where we’d started: boys avoiding work and me nagging/hounding/begging them to get going.

It finally hit me.  (I’m a slow learner, what can I say?)  According to the schedule, they were supposed to be working for 3 1/2 hours per day.  So I told them exactly that.  If they didn’t start on time, no problem.  I’d do my best to stick to the schedule, but they owe me the work time and they were going to do it daily, no matter what.

This really seemed to help the younger boys understand me, and we got some much better results with work accomplished in a timely fashion and less frustration.

The older boys?  They needed, um…..more direction.

More tomorrow.

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We changed the way we do school here a few months ago.  When I started out, I tried to match the public school calendar so the boys could have time off with their friends.  Unfortunately, this turned into a nightmare.  The schools measure their year in minutes; if a child attends the required number of minutes (and gets reasonable marks) then he or she is considered to have passed that grade.

I measure in content.  We’re done with a grade when the boys have learned everything in that particular book.

It’s really hard to stuff all our content into their minutes, and the stress levels were getting pretty high.

Things came to a head earlier this year and some rather loud arguments ensued.  When the dust settled, we’d agreed to work on a time schedule of sorts.  We defined starting and ending times for the day, and agreed that (for the most part) when we got to the ending time, we’d quit for the day even if all lessons weren’t done.

The trade-off is that we’ll be working on school throughout the summer.  Traditionally we’ve finished in early June, so this is a big change.  The shorter days have been wonderful and stress has gone down considerably.  There were a few kinks in the plan, but overall this is a much better solution.

If things keep up like this, we’ll be doing short lessons every morning and then doing fun summer things afterwards.  I call that a win for everyone.

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