Common Core vs Classical Literature

So Dwane at Visual Latin posted this on his Facebook the other day.  I have spent a good amount of time (in between driving to swim practice) these last couple of weeks reading about Common Core.  And yes, this is going to affect homeschoolers very soon so if you are thinking this has nothing to do with you think again.  As I have been reading, I am so saddened by the deletion of classic literature from the curriculum.  In high school, the reading is 70% non-fiction to 30% fiction.  Some of the recommended readings are EPA reports and White House Executive Orders.  Forget Dick and Jane killing an entire generation of readers.  This will kill all the rest!!  I know I am old fashioned, but some days I long for the time before technology when real entertainment was family reading after the chores were done, and when teachers took time everyday to read aloud to students of all ages a really good story!  Thank heavens for homeschooling where the teacher can still read aloud everyday those very good stories.


http://www.earlytorise.com/where-the-real-secrets-are-found/#

Why I homeschool year around!

It sounds dumb, but I am feeling very defensive this summer.  People keep asking why I homeschool year around and they keep telling me we should all take a break so I am writing out my reasons for schooling year around mostly for myself, but also for anyone else who feels they have to defend why learning should be a daily affair all year long.  My first reason for schooling year around is that I love to travel and so do my kids and we love to travel in spring and fall so while other kids are sitting in classroom wishing they could be out in the spring sunshine we are out in the sunshine.  This past year we were able to go to Denmark to pick up my oldest son as he was finishing his mission for our church.  This was a guilt free trip since I had schooled almost all summer.  My second reason is that we live in the south!!!  Summer is our winter and my red-headed lily white kids don't like to be out in the heat, and sun, and bugs.  So instead of having them sit in the house in the air conditioning doing absolutely nothing, I do school with them at least part-time.  Another reason is that I like to shift gears in the summer.  This summer I am doing a fine arts summer with the boys.  Matthew still needs one fine arts credit for high school so I bought Christine Perrin's Art of Poetry, and Carol Reynold's Discovering Music and we are spending a good chunk of our school time doing these two programs.  BTW, I love the Art of Poetry.  Poetry is hard for me, but Christine does a great job of breaking down the elements of poetry and giving poems with examples underlined so you can start to make the connections.  Joshua is finishing his Artist pin for Webelos and doing a lot of sculpting. I never seem to get around to fine arts during the year, but summer is a perfect time to slow down and do some different kinds of things.  I also like to continue math all summer even if I shift gears and do different kinds of math and lots of review.  By doing math year around good students can test out of the first third of a math course that is review for students who have lost months of math skills over the summer.  My oldest daughter got a whole extra year of math in doing this.  On the other hand, children who are struggling get some extra time to master concepts and facts that they need a little extra time to master.  So for everyone who loves to take a break in the summer - take a break and enjoy and for those of us who hate the heat and want learning to continue let's keep at it and look forward to fall travel, cooler weather, and a summer of learning.

PS - I saw this today (6/28/2013) by Christine Field and it is really good.

http://www.z2systems.com/np/clients/hla/viewOnlineEmail.jsp?emailId=3ef2fff669fb7c63e302a901e9b434913m65586623ef

Homeschooling High School

I have been working on finishing this post for two weeks now and today is the day!  We are in the middle of summer swim season here in beautiful NC and that means we are swimming or at swim meets or trying to keep our house clean between all the swimming for what feels like every minute of the day.  Every year I think I can get it all done and catch up on some chores in June, but mostly I end up hanging on for dear life and getting further behind!  So here is the post on high school.

I recently spoke at the LDSHE Conference on high school recording keeping and I was reminded how very scary it is to home school high school.  I remember well the day when my now 22yo son was finishing 8th grade and told me he didn't want to go back to school.  I was overwhelmed and scared and I had no idea if I could teach him at a high school level.  I was shaking in my boots and really that feeling didn't go away until he was accepted to college.  Fast forward eight years.  I have now been homeschooling high school for 8 of my 12 years of homeschooling and although I don't know if I am any better at it I do know I am much more relaxed.  I know homeschooled kids can get into college and I know how to keep records to show what we have been doing all this time and I know that different kids home school high school differently and that's ok.  I also know that our Heavenly Father helps us all along the way.  I have been blessed to interact with some wonderful people in my journey of homeschooling high school and Heavenly Father has given me help in the very hour that I needed it.  My children have had wonderful people who have been willing to tutor them, teach them and share their knowledge with them.  It has been a wonderful blessing to watch my children grow up and become amazing adults.  So for those wonderful ladies who were in my class and anyone else who is overwhelmed with the thought of high school here are some of my favorite resources in no particular order:

A Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer (also any of her CD's - Susan has some great talks on independent learning, high school and record keeping).  Now lest you freak out, I do not do everything in WTM, but she lays out how to do a high school education that is thorough and rigorous so you can get a good idea of what needs to happen in those four years from her book.  I especially love her literature and history reading lists.  She has a fabulous resource section in the back and she covers testing and gives you lots of websites for further research.  I also love A Well Educated Mind also by Susan that helps with the literature study.

Teaching the Classics by Adam Andrews (this is a teach the teacher program for literature - we are more math/science at our house, but Adam and Missy make it pretty straightforward and yes you really only need a library card and their program although we bought all the books our kids read so they could start their own classics library).

Tapestry of Grace by Marcia Somerville (this is a great classical program with lots of teacher helps covering history, lit, geography, government, fine arts and philosophy - I don't use everything here, but the program is great).

My math preference is Jacob's Algebra and Geometry.  I have ruined one child with Saxon math the next did just fine with it, but when my third was struggling with Saxon we gave it up in favor of Jacob's and things are going better, but we are still tweeking here.

I have only used Apologia for high school science so I have nothing to compare it to, but my daughter who took 5 Apologia science courses is a junior in college majoring in physics and she has no complaint about her high school science education.

For government studies we loved the 5000 Year Leap and the Making of America both by Cleon Skousen.  I also used A Patriot's History by Larry Schweikart.


Here are some elective things my kids have really enjoyed:

The Uncle Eric books by Richard Mayberry
Personal Finance by Dave Ramsey
Secrets of Great Communicators by Jeff Myers

I have farmed out foreign language for all three of my high schoolers.  I speak a small amount of German, but not enough to teach high school and I found the CD programs to be pretty worthless even though they were expensive.  Tutors are very expensive, but it is the best way to actually learn a language and have someone who is able to explain the intricacies of the grammar of another language and speak to the child and help them correct mistakes as they are learning.

I also have a wonderful art teacher here that I really love.  She is super cheap and amazing - did I mention that Heavenly Father gives us blessings! :)

One of my favorite finds was Lukeion.  They are a husband/wife team that teach ancient history, ancient lit,  Latin and Greek.  My oldest was a total history buff and he quickly out paced me so I had to supplement him somehow and that is when we found Lukeion.  The Barr's are amazing and William loved them.  They are both retired college professors who are homeschooling their own children.  They do online classes that are interactive.  They meet at the same time each week and you have to be "in" class at that time.  Their classes are very well done.  I highly recommend them.  Did I mention that Heavenly Father blesses us in the very hour of our need?  I have used their College Research Writing class for all my high schoolers even the ones who didn't like history.

I hope this helps all you wonderful moms out there who are struggling with the idea of home schooling high school.   I hope it also helps to know that a very ordinary mom with no particular training just a strong love of the Lord and of her children has been able to home school two children all the way to college and has one more only two years away.  May God bless you in your labors!

Family Work

So last time I wrote an article on the perfect house, but I skipped the process of how to keep up with the things that have to be done.  So today I am writing about family work which is the process that has worked for us for years.  Now I have to go back a little and tell you that I have tried every chore chart and system in the book, and none of it worked.  I made cute charts and Excel charts and had stickers and check marks and rewards, and none of it worked.  In fact, some of it made things worse.  Not only did I have to keep up with all the chores, but I also had to keep up with who was doing their chores and who was not and then I had to discipline the ones who weren't doing their chores.  Then I read an article on Family Work - here is the link http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=151.  This changed my life!  Now that sounds dramatic, but it really revolutionized how I did things in my home and made my life and my home run so much smoother.  This is how it works.  If I am working my children are working.  I call it family work, they call it "boss around" which I have taken in stride and embraced my inner oldest child who is bossy anyway :)  So we tackle each room as a family.  When dinner is over, everyone gets up and starts to work.  Someone clears the table and another puts food away.  I usually load the dishwasher because I have this freakish ability to pack things in very efficiently.  Someone else washes counters and someone else sweeps and in ten minutes the dishes are done.  We have continued the dinner conversation or talked about a book or sang songs through the whole thing and no one is fighting or complaining.  The work is done efficiently and I don't have to keep up with who did their chores and who didn't.  We do all the other common rooms basically the same way and the children are responsible for their own rooms.  Twice a year or so I go into their rooms for a "mommy clean" which they have to help with and which they hate, but it gets the drawers and closets cleaned and they are good for another six months.  Bigger chores get handled the same way whether it is the yard, cleaning the garage or spring cleaning the deck.  All the work gets done and I don't resent the fact that the kids are laying around while I am working.  The greatest benefit has been that the children realize that they are an integral part of our home and we couldn't homeschool without all their work.  They love home schooling so on the occasions when they get cranky I remind them that I am not super mom and if they want to home school they have to help.  Another benefit is that my big kids have gone off to college fully capable of taking care of themselves.  I don't like housework any more than anyone else, but I have learned to truly love the time I spend working beside my children for the good of the whole family.

The Perfect House

Housekeeping is always an issue when you homeschool.  I have seen this going around the internet and it made me smile so I thought I would put some thoughts down about the more mundane but essential part of life - keeping the house clean and functioning.  http://thestressedmom.com/2012/03/10-habits-for-a-well-run-home/  Now, lest anyone accuse me of being a messy homemaker I want to nip that in the bud.  I love a clean house and I mean love it, but one of the obvious negatives to having all your children home all day is that it is almost impossible to keep your house completely clean for longer than 10 minutes.  The thing I learned about myself a very long time ago was that I could be a good mom or have a clean house, but I couldn’t do both.  If the house was clean I was constantly yelling at my kids to not make a mess and I didn't want them to get stuff out (this was all before I started homeschooling).  One day I had an epiphany and I made a conscious choice that I would rather be a good mom than have a perfectly clean house.  And yes I have read the Fly Lady and many many more in my quest for a clean house.  After fighting this fight for 22 years now I have learned a few things about myself, about the process and about the value of a clean home and the relationships involved therein.  First, I learned I didn't like myself when I was yelling at my kids to keep things neat.  I also learned that I need quite a bit of sleep to be a sane person so staying up until 1am cleaning house was simply not an option.  So something had to give and the answer for me was the house.  It doesn't have feelings and really my family didn't care as much as I did.  So on the far side of 22 years of parenting and 12 years of homeschooling I am here to say that a perfect house doesn't matter.  Yes, we all need systems to keep food on the table, dishes clean, clothes on our children and the dog hair vacuumed off the floor.  However, I don't think that a perfect house is worth contention and hurt feelings nor keeping children from feeling that we actually like having them in our homes.  Now I am sure there are many people who can do both, but I don’t happen to be one of them.  Second, I learned how little children especially care about the house.  I also learned that family work is the key to keeping the house running.  I am going to write a separate post about this one.  I learned that good relationships are built when you work with children and not against them.  I love that my big kids love to come home and what they want is yummy food not a pristine house. They also want back rubs and to sit on my bed at night and talk about what we are reading or doing.  I am so glad that I let the clean house go and spent the time with my children talking, reading, eating, working and cuddling not worrying about a perfect house!

This is a marathon not a sprint

My sister, who is starting to homeschool her oldest son (4yo), texted me this morning saying, "Public school is looking pretty good day!"  So this post is for her!  This is an idea that has been rattling around in my brain for quite some time.  There are lots of reasons that people home school and often it is a stop gap measure until they settle down in a permanent situation.  Some of us, however, take up homeschooling as a lifestyle choice and for us it is a marathon not a sprint.  Now lest you think I am a runner, let me stop you right now.  My sister-in-law runs marathons and my sister half marathons and other crazy races like the Ragnar; I am the un-athletic one in my family.  I do, however, understand the principles of pace.  When you choose to homeschool full-time, it is all about pacing yourself.  Over the twelve years I have been homeschooling, I have watched a lot of super moms give up and put their children back in school because they were running a sprint.  They went total gang busters out of the gate and made all these super lessons and spent hours and hours planning lessons and making cute cut outs and planning huge things.  I learned really quickly that if I was going to homeschool long term that stuff wasn't going to work for me.  So after a few times of falling on my face I settled into a pattern that works for us.  We simply make learning a part of everyday life.  We turn off the television and the electronic junk and we learn.  Some days are these wonderful aberrations of the perfect day and the next day as we struggle through I wonder what on earth I did different today than yesterday.  The answer is absolutely nothing!!  We are flawed and imperfect human beings and so are our children so why should we think that education should be perfect every day.  So what I have learned with two children graduated out is that it simply doesn't matter.  Good days come and so do bad days and in the end these beautiful children that we sacrifice to love and nurture and teach turn out to be just great.  We are doing God's work and His hand is in it even when it doesn't look pretty and in the end He took my meager abilities and mixed it with lots of family love and helped my children be amazing.  So my message to my sweet sister and all of you who feel like public school is looking pretty good is simply to hang on.  The harvest is great even when the larborers are few and exhausted!

My thoughts on testing

It is April here in North Carolina and that means annual testing at my house.  In NC all home schooled children are required to test every year using nationally standardized tests.  I personally hate achievement tests.  I hated them growing up when we were all required to sit at our desks and listen to the teacher drone on for the umpteenth time - "Fill in the bubble make your mark heavy and dark and if you want to change an answer erase your mark completely."  Where did all this come from??  Achievement tests to me are about the stupidest thing we do to children.  This is no measure of the knowledge of any child I know and only frustrates and humiliates children who do not test well or cannot communicate what they know in little round bubbles that must be colored in heavy and dark.  My high schooler's test is full of political correctness and some time I want someone to tell me what in the world that has to do with intelligence, reasoning, or the ability to communicate.  We do these tests every year because we are required to by law and I am also trying to teach my children about being good citizens and obeying the law, but I ignore the results of these tests completely.  I know full well what my children can and can't do because I am with them every day.  I know that children develop at different rates and not on a linear scale.  I also know that my ten year old has math days and non-math days.  There are days he gets up in the morning and for whatever funky reason he can't do math.  When these non-math days happen we simply read math books, biographies of mathematicians or play games, and then return to the math book the next day and he is fine and goes gang busters.  But if he tests on a non-math day people would think he is innumerate which he is not.   I know testing is not going away anytime soon so my April's will continue to contain this silliness, but I am so grateful that we live in a free land where we can homeschool our children and minimize the damage these tests can cause.

PS- I found this article today (April 20, 2013) and thought I would add it here.  Great article!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/17/eighth-grader-designs-standardized-test-that-slams-standardized-tests/