Oh, the smoothly run homeschool

If I compared myself to other homeschoolers, this blog post on 10 ways to make your homeschool run smoothly would make me cry.  In the bloggers defense, she has 5 kids aged 5-15.  If she were not this organized, she's probably be in the fetal position in a corner somewhere.  I recommend you read it as there are some nuggets here that are very useful.   But since I have 2 kids 2 years apart, we've had a more ... organic existence.

As we are in our last year of homeschooling, our existence has few rules as they are pretty self managing.  This list is much more for me than for them.


1.  Wake up at a reasonable hour because none of us like to do schoolwork in the evening hours.

5 Homeschooling battles I stopped fighting

Lydia from Rants from Mommy Land wrote an article on 5 stupid battles she stopped fighting.  It is spot on.  Read it.

I loved it so much I am going to copy her a bit... This is sincere flattery.  So, here are the homeschooling battles that I have stopped fighting.
  1.  Curriculum comparison:  Unless I see that you have a curriculum that I have been thinking about, I probably won't talk to you about it.  Unless, you ask about my curriculum, I also won't talk to you about it.  ... And even then, I will keep the conversations to a bare minimum.  I have seen too many curriculum discussions come close to fisticuffs or at the least, leaving an insecure or newbie homeschooling mother in tears.  It's not that important.  Just pick something and use it.

2.  Defending homeschooling: I don't care what my neighbors think, what my friends think, what my parents think, what my siblings think, what my in-laws think, and most importantly what strangers think.  I am not going to have any more of THOSE conversations trying to convince someone that I am doing the right thing by homeschooling.  I will encourage homeschooling for people who are looking

Counting the hours

I looked back over my last post and thought

"Oh my gosh, this year is going to crush my daughter!"  That's too much work!

Then on  a yahoo group the question came up about how many hours the kids homeschool or are required to homeschool by law... so we did the math:

In GA we are required to have an equivalent of 4.5 hours a day and 180 days.  That is 810 hours. 

For academics, my daughter is doing about 600 working hours @ approx 20 hours a week.  She is working on 6 half credits and two whole credits, a total of 5 credits, so she is also meeting Carnigie requirements

A new school year and a roving play

We just got home from this years "school" meeting. We went over rules, regulations, dress codes, cell phone rules during class, and all that good stuff. We found out about all the new things that the homeschool program is rolling out. (Don't you hate it how things always get cooler and better just as you are done?... It reminds me of how mad I still get when I see the super-cool strollers that weren't available when my kids were babies.)  But they all grow up and things change.

The most exciting news was Drama Club.. of course!  The fall play is undecided (almost decided) but it won't be held at our usual venue.  Instead, the kids will bring the play to the community.  They may do a nursing home, a school, a community theater, a major theater, or all of the above... who knows.  The second play will be a full school play... I won't say what it is just yet, but it will have kids of every age from

Homeschool update video Feb 2012

Thought it as time I did a homeschool update video.
 Items discussed:

• My son will graduate this year. 
•  My daughter will graduate next year. 
•  Planning for my daughter's senior year.
•  Curriculum overview for next year.

 
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Ready for a New School Year

It is July, and it is time to get going with the new school year.  


Daughter is getting a jump on Geometry to have enough of it under her belt in time for the PSAT.  
Son is finishing his art portfolio to get his college applications out. 


I have posted and updated our book and program choices for the year.  
For daughter, I decided to assign her reading.  Normally, I choose every other book for her to make sure she gets a good dose of classics.  However, I looked at a 100 books list that you should read before college and realized that she's only read about half with 2 years to go.  Then I realized that I owned  Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces and it contained many of the books that I wanted her to read, so that's that.  She must read the full anthology, and since she can put away 100 pages a day normally, she will be finished with it by Christmas.  Then she can read whatever she ants.  


For son, I am waiting to hear from the college who is waiting for his last ACT test scores... they are held up for some reason.  If they don't accept him (GA state schools hold homeschoolers to a higher standard) then we he can take the dual enrollment classes online at a private college. 


I am hoping to have everything finalized soon.


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