Homeschooling

Archive for August, 2007

Question: Advice for Homeschooling 5 year old...?

Hello,

I have decided I am going to homeschool my 5 year old son and I am wondering if anyone can recommend a good curriculum and how many hours per day, on average, does it take to homeschool a child.

My son is a fairly quick learner and is already doing basic reading, addition, subtraction, etc. He loves to learn, has a great vocabulary, etc

Anyway, my biggest question is about the timing. We talk a lot during the day, and we will walk around the house and do math, we read books, play outside and talk about plants and science, etc but I don't know how much "sit down" learning there should be at this age or if I should wait until he is a bit older to begin "formal" education.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! I feel a bit lost but I am really looking forward to learning as I go along!

Thank you....

Answer: I really love Sonlight. It is a literature based curriculum and is really hands on. I used it with my children almost exclusively in the younger years. Today we use Switched on Schoolhouse for our core subjects and still use Sonlight for literature and to supplement/enhance our history and science.
Sonlight uses books found in the library like the Cat in the Hat, Little Bear, etc. to teach reading, history and science. You can purchase whole packages of the Sonlight books or just purchase the instructional guides and borrow your books from the library, since most of the Sonlight books can be found in the library. With Sonlight, there isn't a lot of sit down and do workbooks time in the early years. You read a lot of great books with your children and learn about history through great literature and biographies. Science is very hands on.
For math, I especially like Math U See. It is another great hands on curriculum.
My children are now 7th, 8th, 11th and 12th so it's hard to remember how long we did "sit down" work in kindergarten. I'd say not more than 1 - 1 1/2 hours per day. Sit down work was handwriting, math and phonics. We would read throughout the day, and take walks, explore, do art projects, etc much longer than sitting down doing workbooks. Today my senior rarely spends more than 3 1/2 hours a day doing school. The beauty of Homeschooling is you can cover a lot more material in less time. And you can spend as much time as you want on a topic that really interests you.
Have fun and continue making learning fun for you both.

Homeschool Science Curriculum (Elementary) 2 of 2

Question: Homeschool Grades Transfer?

Okay, So i JUST started Homeschooling. I just have a few questions. I live in Missouri. Eight grade. Just wondering, how do you transfer your Homeschooling grades to a public highschool? I plan on going back to public school in highschool, but how would that work? Also, how do I know what to teach? I mean, how would I know what kind of curriculum eighth graders are supposed to learn? Please and thankyou.

Answer: You should get in touch with the education division of your school district or state. Make sure you are doing exactly what you need to be doing. I am hoping you have an adult that will supervise you? Have them check with other homeschoolers in your area, and see what they do. I know of a family that has homeschooled their child, but they didn't keep records or anything, so now their child has 4 "unofficial" years of school. Poor kid, its gonna be really hard to do anything in the future.

Hope that helps!!

Missouri Homeschool Rally on the Capital Steps