We didn't do half of this stuff in public shcool

I have heard homeschooling described as a lazy mom's education. She can sleep late. She doesn't have to deal with carpool. She just tosses a stack of books in the kids general direction. HA!

I have 3 calendars (for 2 kids) taped to the side of a bookshelf. One calendar each is for work done at home.  The third calendar is for their electives day. As I sit here gazing at it, and think back... wayyyy to the 1980's when I finished high school, I know we didn't do half this stuff.

I think we had 6 classes a day from what I remember. I also remember that I didn't have time for many electives. I took art for 4 years and a couple of law classes. Back when foreign language was a choice, I did not take any, as I wasn't willing to sacrifice art to learn Spanish.

Now my daughter is working on two foreign languages this year, PLUS is in a play, has drama club, art, and chorus. This is on top of her usual academics. This is because her time is well utilized in homeschooling. We save hours every day on driving to and from school, getting dressed up, waiting on lines, navigating from class to class, and waiting for classmates to settle down. In these hours saved, my kids are able to put back many wonderfully enriching classes, clubs, and activities that we missed out on.

Makes me wish I were homeschooled.


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Thinking like a homeschooler part 2

Follow up from previous conversation on thinking like a homeschoolers.

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New School Year, New Habits

If there are any problems in our homeschool, they are caused by me.

I have to face the fact that I am a bit scattered and inconsistent in my own habits, so how can I expect better from the kids.

Seeing as this is my last two years with my near-grown kiddies, I have to do better if I expect them to go into adulthood with good living habits.

So, I have set myself an hourly schedule, starting with me getting up an hour before the kids to exercise and for quiet time.  This is followed by making breakfast, no matter how simple, and getting in some daily exercise.

Starting this morning, I already lost an hour so I didn't exercise or get quiet time.  Even so I feel very refreshed from having a nice breakfast and getting showered and prettied up early.  Now I have a full hour to dedicate to blogging before I have to start writing articles (to earn the Benjamins).

My other scheduled items for the day are two 3-hour blocks for working and time to make dinner and do some housekeeping.

Remember, kids will only do what they see us doing.  We can talk until we are blue in the face, but actions speak louder than words.


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Check out my uber cheap back to homeschool items

Who couldn't use a reason to bargain shop.  I plan to go back out one more time this week, because I have a coupon for ink.  That will be my most expensive item for the school year.  Check out all of my very cheap items for back to school... err... homeschool


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My role of homeschooling mom of Jr. and Sr.

When homeschoolers are older like mine, the role of the homeschooling mom drastically changes. Some of my roles are:

Debate partner: Because EVERYTHING I say turns into a long drawn out conversation.

Guidance Counselor: As we prepare for college entry.

Academic coach: As I help them navigate the requirements of different teachers to make it to the finish line of a good grade.

Taxi Driver: As they have to be everywhere, and at the same time

Nervous passenger: As they begin to drive me places.

Maid: As they are far too busy to clean up after themselves.

Life coach: As I try to impart to them years of knowledge and experience.

There is so much more, but these are the things on my mind this evening.


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Bargain shopping for college

I spent the summer watching my niece and almost-son prepare to go to college.  The last of the two, my niece leaves in the morning.  As I have a child starting college in the fall, and another the next year, I am very interested in the process of gearing up to go to college.  It just looks plain expensive.  


Being the consummate planner, I have purchased two trunks and have began to put things aside for my son.  This way, I can purchase items he will need on clearance, and pay less than what I am watching others pay.  I am excited about the prospect of having an excuse to budget shop for the next two year.  


The subject of textbooks is a bit scary to me though.  First, the amount of time you have to shop for college books is severely limited. You don't get your textbook list until a week or two before school at most.  Second, there are no clearance sales to help you stockpile textbooks.


My friend did have some success at getting textbooks for less than half price from Amazon.com.  There were ebook options and used book options.  The only problem was shipping time for the books in print.  If you have a source for a great textbook option, please drop a note.

My five favorite homeschool books

It's show and tell time.  Here are my favorite books for homeschooling.  You could actually have these books and need little else (through grade 6).




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How long to study for each class?

We may have a problem with the online classes.  Already. 

As homeschoolers my kids have spent 1 hour a day 4 or 5 days per week on most classes.  They have spent 90 minutes a day without fail on math and foreign language.  So that is no more than 4 to 7.5 hours per class weekly.  This is true whether they are studying someone at home, or in a local class.

The online classes they are taking through the county is recommending 12-20 hours a week per online class.  (I am pretty sure that's what they said during the orientation chat) That's just crazy.  Weekly, this would be almost 2 1/2 hours a day to 4 hours a day per class.  Multiply that by 5 classes (which my kids are not taking) and that could take 12 1/2 to 20 hours a day.  So much for having a life or sleeping.

I think they are seriously over stating the time it takes to study the material and pass the tests. I am hoping that this is a loose recommendation, and not a requirement.  I will find out.

  Fortunately with my son taking only 2 classes per semester and my daughter taking 1 class per semester, they will still have time for other endeavors.  I am recommending they are signed in to their accounts for the minimum amount of recommended hours per week.  As they are only available to do online school 4 days during the week, I will probably get them to so a weekend session.  My kids have already resisted homeschooling on the weekend.... but college is coming up fast.  They are going to have to get used to studying daily.

update:  Did some quick research.  On the college level "Generally, the rule of thumb is that you should study approximately 2 hours for every one hour of classroom time. For example, if you spend 4 hours a week in a particular class, then you should spend 8 hours studying and doing homework."  http://news.everest.edu/post/2008/03/study-hours  The low-end recommendation for these high school courses are pretty close to what is recommended to pass a college course.  So if a public school would spend 5 hours a week in class and then do 10 hours a week in homework for that class, they can expect to do very well.  Since my kids are in highschool, I am going to recommend to them that they spend the minimum 12 hours per class (especially since they are hard classes I cannot teach at home) and re-evaluate it as we go along.  


Bottom line, I wouldn't recommend any homeschooler take a full load of 4 - 5 classes.  There would truly be not time for sleep. 




So my question is, how much time do you spend studying each day... at the high school level? I'd like to hear from public school families too.


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Getting used to online classes

My son can finally access his online classes.  It looks like his teachers are a TON more organized than my daughters teacher.  My sons Physics and Financial Math teachers dropped his assignments into a calendar, so it is clear what has to be done what day.  If he needs to get ahead, due to another obligation, he can still do that, but it is clear how they should pace themselves.

My daughter's Spanish teacher just inserted weekly dates into her syllabus.  Pacing will need to be done ourselves.  Also it is not very easy to determine what she should do.  We had to compare her syllabus to what was online and interpret what needed to be done.  I think we will get the hang of it though.

I feel like being organized and meeting deadlines will be the key to doing well in these classes.  I gave the kids a one subject composition notebook for each class.  We glued the syllabuses in the first few pages, so they can refer back to them and check off what they have done.  As they deduct 10% for each day an assignment is late, it is important to check and re-check deadlines as they progress through the courses.

This in not my ideal way to homeschool, but for older kids about to go out in the world, I feel like they need to get used to dealing with different kind of students while I can still assist them.


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Public school parents, remember you are your child's guidance counselor

I am finding that in my area, several families are being hit up for money because their students needed to take extra classes to be able to graduate. I thought it was an isolated incident until I started asking the question "is your senior ready to graduate?". I keep hearing no.




The good news, is that there are ways to make sure your child graduates on time. There are local online and private schools from which the public school MUST accept credit.

If you find yourself in this position, check out

http://highschool.unl.edu/ and

http://ce.byu.edu/is/site/courses/highschool.cfm

If you can't get anywhere with the school's guidance counselors, then go to the board of education.


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First day frustrations with online classes

As I have mentioned a gazillion times recently, my son is taking classes for his Senior year with Georgia Virtual School.

He has done orientation several times and there was some kind of glitch with the software. According to the online support team, his orientation shows he finished it this morning. (Though it was his fourth or fifth time doing it.) He can access his classes tomorrow, a day late.

My problem is that it seemed that they didn't want to acknowledge that there was a software problem. It had to be due to him making a mistake. Meanwhile this kid really knows his way around a computer.

Here's hoping he can get into his classes tomorrow as assignments are due every Friday night at midnight.

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There will be a lot more videos

I am now allowed monitization with YouTube so there will be a lot more videos.
I just realized that I used to preach about using public school resources for homeschooling, but we are now using them.

Never say never huh?

I do feel comfortable with using individual classes with Georgia Virtual School because it is not an online school, but online classes, so that parent still controls the students schedule and is responsible as their "principal".

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Racist Homeschoolers Unite? Not what I want to see in my inbox

Let's just say I was none too happy when I saw the following email in my inbox... here's an excert:


"Racist Homeschoolers Unite"?

Don't answer a fool according to his folly… that's our position and we'll continue to ignore the asinine assertions of racism being at the root of those who are displeased with the policies of the current administration. In the meantime, we're ready to start examining some of the GOP presidential candidates who may be able to turn the tide of the current political mess. The next president will be in a position to mold and shape the future America our children will inherit. ...

I am cringing at the thought of the next election. The last one was traumatic enough for me. You see, I have always been a person whose race did not seem to matter. Even the most racist of people seemed to like me and would tell me so. You know the old back-handed compliment "You're not like those other black people." Yes, that's been said to my face many times. I have always gotten along with all races, blended in, most people have always accepted me no matter what.

Then a black man ran for president.

During that election I found my "friends" saying things like "are you going to vote for Obama because you're black?" and other such dumb stuff. It lead to a lot of hard conversations I do not and did not want to have. MY RACE and the presidential election should have nothing to do with one another.



And so this morning, seeing the email entitled "Racist Homeschoolers Unite?" really cut me deep. I subscribe to homeschooling newsletters because I want to hear what others in homeschooling have to say about education... not about politics.

Was the sender of that email (with a photo of a black family on the magazine cover) so naive to think that all homeschoolers were GOP? Did they think that by putting a black family on the magazine cover that the subject matter was going to disarm black homeschooling families? You know what, I don't even want to know what they are thinking.

All I know is that I am a homeschooling mom, and that I am black, and that I am proud of our current president, for MY personal reasons, not the color of my skin and the last think I want to see in my email is a lot of propaganda that exploits the fact that I homeschool or my skin color for political reasons.

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First time dealing with public school teachers in years

As I have mentioned before the children erm, young adults are taking online classes with the public school teacher.  The Senior is taking 2 classes and the Junior is taking 1.

We received emails from all teachers today introducing themselves and letting us know when the weekly "chat" session would be.  Well, the session for my daughters Spanish  class is the same time as her drama club meetings. I emailed to the teacher to speak to him about the conflict.  However, as the teacher left his phone number I decided to try and call him.  He answered and was very nice.  He said just listen to the recordings of the weekly chats and and call him if she has any problems.

So far I am very happy with the level of communication.  That is usually my biggest pet peeve, so... so far-so good.


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