Summer School

We do school year round in our house.  But our summer schedule is much more relaxed then during the colder months of the year.  In the summer, we have a basic schedule that we are free to disregard if we decide to spend a day outside in the sun instead.  We sleep in a little longer, stay up a little later, etc.  The only thing set in stone during the summer is morning devotional.

The day starts when everyone is up.  At the latest, I let the girls sleep until 10AM, but we're usually up around 8AM.  We get breakfast and wake-up enough to do our summer devotional routine.

Summer devotional starts with prayer and a hymn.  Then I read from the scriptures to the girls for 10 minutes.  Next we do our memorization boxes.  Finally, we read from our movie book we're currently working on.  That is the only part set in stone.  From our movie book, depending on how we're feeling, we'll typically read anywhere from 10-45 minutes.

The rest of the schedule changes depending on the day, but follows this general format.

The older girls that can read do personal scripture study and from literature I have assigned them for about an hour, while the younger ones spend time reading scripture stories and picture books with me.  If we already have our math curriculum for the next year, the girls do three lessons a week so they don't lose what they've already learned and have to relearn it in the fall.

We also like to do unit studies during the summer that coincide with fieldtrips we're planning or subjects the girls want to study.  We've already done a Japan unit study this summer (I'll post about that later) and plan on an art one next.

When we decide we're done with school for the day, we work together to get chores done quickly and have lunch around noon.  Then we have the rest of the day to pursue whatever perks our interest that day.  Swimming, walks, water parks, arts & crafts, etc. 

After getting the idea from another homeschooling mom in the community, we plan to also try to let the girls have more say in our daily activities this summer.  At the beginning of devotional each day, after prayer, we want to let the girls each pick something they really want to do.  We will try our best to work it in that day or week.

2013-2014 Curriculum and Schedule Plan

It seems that a LOT of people are considering the jump into homeschool lately.  So I've been

getting a lot of questions about what we're planning for the next school year.  I figured, instead of typing from scratch the answer everytime, I should save it somewhere.  And why not here, where I can just refer people and others that may not know me can get ideas as well!  Our school year is much more structured then the summer, though we do school year round.  I'll post about summer school later.  In our family, we have put in order of importance - spiritual growth, worldly knowledge, and housework.

Each day we start with devotional, all of the children participate regardless of age. We start with prayer and the pledge of allegiance. Then I read aloud from the scriptures for 15 minutes. We rotate through the books (Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, Pearl of GreatPrice, Old Testament, and New Testament). Then we work on their memorizationboxes. To finish out our group part of devotional, I read for 10 minutes from whatever novel we're reading as a family.  Finally, the kids that can read do personal scripture study and record their thoughts in their scripture journal. 

 

Rachel is now five and so excited to officially start school.  The state considers her a Kindergartener. Currently, we're finishing up her alphabet - recognizing the letters and knowing their sounds. We just use flash cards and StarFall.com. Once she has that down, we're going to start using Learning to Read Using the Book ofMormon, Vol. 1 and The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. The BoM teaches by memorizing sight words and Ordinary teaches phonics. BoM will count as her personal scripture time each day at the end of devotional. She'll also be starting Saxon math (grade K).

Rose is ten and considered a 5th grader. This fall she'll be starting Saxon math (6/5) and Learning Language Arts Through Literature (PurpleBook). I like LLATL because it rolls all the L.A. lessons into one course. She's also supposed to take an online tech class called Mobile Apps forBeginners. But she'll only be able to take that if we stay in Utah through an online charter school called My Tech High. If we move to Kansas (waiting to hear back on Dad's application), she won't be able to take that.

Rebekah will be 13 and considered to be in the 7th grade. She will be taking Saxon math ( 8/7 w/ PreAlgebra), LLATL (Green Book), and BYU-Independent Study (US History Part 1 & 2). If we stay in Utah, she'll also be taking a Robotics LEGO course through My Tech High.

All of our school age kids do science and history together.  Science is done 3x a week and history is daily.  We're using Real Science-4-Kids(Astronomy) and Story of the World (Vol. 1, Ancient Times) next year. I really would like to try the Latter Day School's Family School program. But it's a bit spendy ($500 per year) and you still have to purchase Story of the World, math and language arts. But the idea of teaching all of my children together is very appealing. Not to mention it was put together by an LDS group that runs a private school based on gospel principles in the Provo area. And everyone that has used it raves about it.

They also study Mandarin through Rosetta Stone, are learning to play piano with the LDS church's keyboard course, and we have a family pass to the local pool that we frequent several times a week. We have an hour and 15 minutes of reading time each day. Forty-five minutes is spent reading literature that I assign (I use lists from Simply Charlotte Mason, The Well Trained Mind, and Thomas Jefferson Ed). Thirty minutes is free reading.  The girls can do their individual lessons in any order they like.  We typically do the group lessons right before or after lunch.  After lunch and group lessons, we work together to get the house in order.  We also do another quick pick-up right before bed so that everything is ready for the next day.

UPDATE:  Doesn't look like Dad got the job in Kansas, so we'll be sticking with MTH for the school year.  Yay!  We changed Rebekah's history, though.  Instead of using BYU Independent Study for American History, we're going to use a combination of two programs.  We're going to do history through literature with Beautiful Feet's Early American and World History Jr. High Pack in conjunction with lapbooks from Homeschool in the Woods' Time Travelers New World Explorers bundle.

K12 Disappointments and Pleasures

Well, it’s been a long time since I wrote anything here. Life has been hectic.

But, onto school news.

K12 is definitely not the answer for my oldest daughter’s language arts. Rebekah understands the majority of her assignments and works through them steadily. Yet each day, it takes her close to three hours to complete the work! I do not recall spending three hours steadily working on any one subject while in school (the only times we spent three hours on anything was if the teacher was dealing with the lowest denominator or unruly students). And she is expected to cover all the language arts subjects (composition, grammar, usage, mechanics, spelling, vocabulary and literature) every day. I think this is ridiculous for a homeschool course! By the time she finishes math and science, she is spending 5+ hours in straight school work; this is not counting breaks, meals, etc. She has no time for being a child or extracurricular activities like sports, art, music, etc.

Part of the reason the K12 language arts lessons take so long is that the individual parts do not relate to one another at all. A streamlined program would base the spelling, vocab and composition assignments/tests on what was being studied in literature. In the K12 program, each one is completely separate and has no relation to each other. The spelling lists and vocabulary lists do not even relate.

Then there is the fact that I was misled by the local Utah K12 school on Rebekah’s language arts program. She is slightly behind in her comprehension skills (according to testing results), so it was recommended that we start her in one grade lower’s program. It was explained to us that when she finished the fourth grade program, she could immediately begin the fifth grade program and work on it through the summer. Not true. She has to finish the fourth grade program before mid-February to be allowed to start the 5th grade program before the fall of the next school year. To do this, she’d have to do double language arts lessons each day. Obviously, by the fact that each lesson is taking such an exorbitant amount of time, that’s not a feasible option.

So, Rebekah will be finishing the language arts program with K12 this year but will starting a new program next year.

Thankfully, the K12 language arts program for Rose (second grade) is not nearly as intense. But I also plan to start her in a different program next year. I don’t know when the K12 program gets so intense and don’t especially want to find out.

On the other hand, I greatly enjoy the science programs that have been provided by K12 for both children. The lessons are straight-forward and full of interesting information. There is an experiment or hands on activity for each lesson to reinforce the lesson. My kids love hands on science, so really get a kick out of this. And K12 has provided all the materials I need to complete the experiments (minus some basic household items).

We have not really had time to delve into the history program provided by K12, simply because the language arts lessons are taking up so much time. I have decided not to push it for this year, but plan to implement a history program next summer and continue it in following school years.

Math is a breeze for both of my school age children. It seemed at the beginning of the year, their math lessons were way too easy. So we decided to start simply taking the tests with the plan that if they got 100%, they could skip that chapter. If they got 80-99%, we would review the lessons that the problems they missed correlated to and retake the test. If they got below 80%, they did all lessons for the chapter. So far, Rose has skipped 45 days worth of lesson and Rebekah has skipped 25. It has been quite the eye opener for our family on just how much time is wasted in review every year in the public school system.

To help the girls develop strong math skills in the basics, we also do math fact quizzes every day. These quizzes are designed to help them memorize addition, subtraction, multiplication and division tables, among other math skills. For every 20 problems they do, they get one minute to complete them. If they can finish them all correctly in the given time, they move onto the next quiz.