Homeschooling

Question: How do you homeschool?

My 6-year old is in kindergarten at a public school. He is working at nearly a 3rd grade level, and I am thinking about Homeschooling him next year instead of sending him to 1st grade. My husband is on board with the idea, however, his only concern is the cost.

I am a certified teacher by trade, and am very confident in being able to teach reading and writing without a formal curriculum. I am also comfortable with math, however, would like something with a basic guide for knowing what order to teach things in. I could do it, but figure it would be easier if there was already something out there.

My biggest concern is science and social studies. I don't want to have to buy an expensive curriculum. For those of you who homeschool, do you just choose a science or social studies topic you think your child would be interested in and find things online to help you teach, or do you follow a purchased curriculum? How do you know you're not leaving any topics out?

Answer: There are many different ways of Homeschooling; you can go with a boxed curriculum, or you can put one together yourself.

Many schools have a scope and sequence that you can access for free, online; you can then put together a curriculum for your son. At this age, you could do nearly everything for free with resources from the library and online lesson plans.

You can also get the Core Knowledge "What Your __ Grader Needs to Know" and use it as a spine, or you could get a copy of The Checklist (http://www.oklahomahomeschool.com/checklist.html ) and use it to plan out your child's studies.

Chances are, there will be things you'll miss; there always are. Schools don't cover everything either - they pick and choose, and try to cover the major things. Through Homeschooling, however, you'll find that you can study on a deeper level with your child and make sure that he has mastery of what he's studying. Because classroom logistics and lesson plans (already turned in to administration) are not at stake, you can take things at his speed.

I've found the following has worked best for my son. Everyone does it differently, but this is to give you a look at what we do:

Reading curriculum - the library. I tried several reading books, and he hated every one of them. He couldn't stand reading just excerpts and doing workbook pages - he wanted to read the whole book and discuss it. He's now in 5th grade, and I find activities online for comprehension, grammar, and extension projects to round it out.

Language Arts - We use Shurley Grammar for language arts, and IEW for writing. We started both of these in 3rd-4th grade, and my son (who previously balked at writing his own name on his paper) really enjoys them. LA may never be his favorite subject, but he's learning a lot and is fairly happy with what he's doing. We also use lapbooks as hands-on references for grammar, writing, and spelling. As far as spelling, we use http://spellingtime.com/. It's an online curriculum that is auditory, visual, and kinesthetic...and it's fun, too! My son is dyslexic, and this program helped him gain 3 grade levels of spelling ability in under a year.

Math - Math U See has been an absolute life saver as far as math. It's taught by DVD, comes with a very easy to use teachers guide, and is very concept-based. It uses manipulatives and is designed for mastery.

Science - we now use Apologia (because my son loves their curriculum), which runs about $25 per course. However, we also do unit studies with lapbooks (http://www.handsofachild.com/shop/ ) and notebooks using resources from online and at the library. These can be sparked by something he's learning in Scouts, a book we've read, or a movie he's seen. Over the past 4 years, he's studied botany, zoology, astronomy, anatomy, marine biology, meteorology, geology, paleontology, and other fields, many of them fairly in-depth. He'll study them more in-depth as he gets older, but he has a good foundation for those studies.

History: We've moved to a literature-based approach for this, and also use lapbooks and notebooks in history. We've taken a chronological approach to history, and over the past 3 years (2nd-4th grade) we've studied from the Ancient World to the American Revolution. This next semester, we'll be studying Presidents (from Washington to Nixon or Ford) and an overview of the states as they came into the Union, according to which President's term we're studying. This is something that neither my husband nor I ever got to do in school, and our son is really pretty excited about it. Starting in 6th grade, we'll move to TRISMS, which is a literature and research based program. This will take him through high school.

We also do other subjects, but this gives you an idea of what we do. Many of his text-based products are purchased at a discount or used; there are many ways to get good-quality resources for your children without having to spend a fortune.

Hope that helps!

Starfall Kindergarten Curriculum

Related posts

• Sorry, no related posts at this time.