Homeschooling Help

She wrote, “I am very very new to homeschooling . . .” and asked for help.

So I wrote:

“Ah! The homeschooling journey! Think of it as another facet of your motherhood. Homeschooling is the best investment (time and money) our family has ever made. You can do it! As you get started on this journey, there are a number of things to consider, decisions to make, and resources to purchase.”

Based on my professional training and personal experiences, I’ve written this post detailing the suggestions that I shared with the homeschooling-mom-to-be.

What is my educational experience? I earned a Bachelor of Science (BS) in elementary education and a Master of Science in Education (MSEd). I’m a former classroom teacher (public and private) and administrator. I provide professional development to teachers and parents. I homeschooled my kids in high school in the late 1980s, before there was internet. And I’ve helped with the homeschooling of thirteen of my grandkids, 2005 to present.

We dedicated our family room as learning space the years we homeschooled seven, K-MS

STATE LAWS.

Learn and follow your state’s LAWS and regulations for homeschooling. You will find the information online; just search with “homeschool laws + your state’s name.” I suggest you make sure you are on an official government page since not all websites stay up-to-date and regulations do change. If you read a requirement for 180 days and 4.5 hours per day, don’t be panic. There are many things you already do every day that can be categorize as “school hours.” For example, family read alouds (literature), watching a documentary (science or history), home projects like building a fence, caring for a garden (math, science). Just keep a simple record of date, time spent on it, description of activity, and the subject it falls under.

LEGAL SERVICES
Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is the nation’s largest, most trusted homeschool advocacy organization. HSLD hslda.org is also an accurate place to learn about your state laws. They also have an exceptional blog. In addition, they offer a reasonably priced membership to have access to attorneys, additional resources, and you can get a homeschool ID card. They are well worth it!

COMMUNITY.

Join a homeschooling COMMUNITY. It can be local and/or online. HSLDA has a extensive, detailed listing; link to that page. However, having advised that, I will say that when I started there weren’t support groups and the internet didn’t exist. So we never became members of a co-op.

STYLE.

Become knowledgeable about homeschooling STYLES. This knowledge will help you make curricula choices, scheduling decisions, and student/teacher type of engagement. Common styles include traditional, classical, Charlotte Mason, Montessori, Waldorf, unschooling, and eclectic homeschooling. You can learn more by searching “homeschool styles.” That search should provide an AI summary and you can search further using those style names. Ours has been a combination of traditional and eclectic with strong classical beliefs.

However, I must say that when we started, we didn’t even think about style. We just thought subjects and knowledge and skills needed, and tried to find textbooks to support their learning. There was very little that a parent could buy in the late 1980s.

I’m a strong believer in systematic, explicit instruction and daily practice in language arts and math with a tradition schedule of a planned lesson each day. Our approach to both language arts and math has been classical. I’ve provided the language arts instruction, drawing upon many resources to support the foundation literacy skills and knowledge before delving into narrative, essay, or research writing. In math, we have stuck with Saxon math, K-HS, a classical curriculum. We follow a fairly strict day-by-day lesson schedule in both language arts and math. Then, for science and social studies, we’ve been more relaxed with an eclectic approach. Our choices are influenced by basic required knowledge according to educational standards and interests. Our main goals for science and social studies is to build a broad knowledge foundation and to develop thinking and communication skills. Extra courses have been based on individual interests and availability, i.e., drawing, painting, crafting, drama, martial arts, usually through a micro-school.

SCHEDULE.

Think about tradition school year vs. year-round. If you aren’t familiar with the year-round approach, search it online. We use year-round which gives us lots of flexibility with non-school days throughout the year. We fell into the rhythm of year-round because we need breaks throughout the year. We take time off for holiday activities, for a week at the coast twice a year, for pauses after some intense studies, for family emergencies, i.e., illness or the visits of family that lives overseas. Public schools in our state have a 165 day calendar. Our target is 150 days since we don’t have half-days, assemblies, pep-rallies, etc.

You need to consider your day to day routine, for example, how many days, which days of the week. And you need to decide the general time during the day–morning or afternoon, or both. You want to have a general sequence of subjects throughout the day based on the rhythm of your home and which ones require lots of 1:1 engagement or which ones can be mostly self-managed. Our schedule varies based on age, subjects, and family plans, i.e., appointments. However, it is for the most part predictable. We’ve learned that predictable schedules help us thrive.

Another factor to consider if you have high school kids is potential employment. In HS, my kids had part-time jobs. My son was a gardener’s helper on a large estate. My daughter was a part-time nanny for a nurse. So our schedule had to work around their employment commitments.

SPACE.

Determine what space you will dedicate to homeschooling. In other words, where will school work be done? It can vary by nature of studies and type of work (i.e., desk for online, kitchen table for writing, comfy chair for reading). Where will supplies and books will be kept?

In our case, because there were years when we had up to seven kids homeschooling spanning K-MS, as well as a toddler and a baby, we repurposed our family room into the learning space. We have desks that were discarded from public school so each one has a small square of personal space. We keep materials and supplies in that room. However, we’ve sprawled out in other places to do our work–whatever suits us and is comfortable at the time. Now with only three still schooling, we have plenty of space.

Our repurposed daylight basement family room. We found the desks in a used
furniture warehouse. They had been discarded by the public school.

SUBJECTS.

There are four core subjects: language arts, math, science, and social studies.

Do NOT begin them all at the same time (the first day of school). Start with language arts and math your first week or two or even three. Set up the routine / schedule you think you want and then modify as needed. When those two are running smoothly, add science and a week or so later add social studies. Courses that fall under social studies include history, civics, geography. We often put several kids in the same course and rotate the years the specific subject matter is taught without worrying about grade levels. Once you are into the rhythm of the year and have the four core subjects running smoothly, think about literature — adding a literature study, definitely middle school and above.

CURRICULA.
There will be lots of good recommendations from homeschooling friends and your communities. I’m going to share what we’ve used. Keep in mind that it is easy to do the same subject content with multiple grade levels and rotate from year to year. It involves looping the content of a subject each year. Also, not all textbooks have to be completed! Usually there’s more than you can do in a single year, no matter what the authors of the text indicate in the instructional outline. Homeschooling is not about finishing the books! It’s about building knowledge and developing skills; it’s about life learning.

An important thing to remember when making homeschool curricula choices, our schooling is NOT about grade levels. It is about developing skills and building knowledge. Don’t think about a student as being behind, or ahead, or having to catch up! That is the thinking of public schools, and liberation from that mindset is one of the wonderful freedoms about homeschooling.

You may be asking, Then how do I know for sure what to teach? You have several options. One, follow a specific curriculum like we did with Saxon math. Two, review the table of contents in various grade level textbooks. Three, look at state standards as a guide to a broad outline of content and skills. Four, reference a resource like Core Knowledge sequence guides. I’ve used all of these to construct a broad outline of our educational pathway each year.

Having shared the above, what follows in this post is a description of the curricula that we have used in our homeschool, K-12 since 2005.

Math
We have faithfully used Saxon math, K-HS, with all thirteen of my grandkids. Saxon is a classical curriculum. It is all about teaching math concepts and cycling application of concepts to problems with adequate practice. Material is scripted so you do NOT have to worry about “how to teach it.” My daughter says she struggled with algebra in high school and that she actually learned algebra by teaching in with Saxon. Our kids all have blown the top off standardized math tests each year. We didn’t need to use any supplemental material or internet resources. If you are uncomfortable teaching math or just need help because of your schedule, there are online Saxon lessons taught by math teachers. We’ve used DIVE Saxon with a couple kids; it begins at level 5/4. Oh yes, if you aren’t sure which level of Saxon to begin with, there are Saxon placement assessments online. Just search “Saxon placement tests.”

Language Arts
Foundation Literacy Skills and Knowledge.
Depending on grade and skills, language arts includes foundation literacy — phonics (sounds-letter connections), phonemic awareness, alphabet knowledge, letter formation (handwriting, including cursive), spelling, word study, how to sound out words (both to read and to write), word grammar, and sentence grammar. Usually this involves grades K-5. Since my expertise as an former classroom teacher, administrator, and provider of professional development is in the area of foundation literacy, I taught and guided my daughter in our elementary language arts lessons. And I can help you, too! Do NOT be overwhelmed at the thought of teaching phonics or cursive or grammar overwhelm you. The GOOD NEWS is I can virtually co-teach with you. That’s right! The success of literacy lessons will be the result of our partnership. I do the planning, systematic teaching, and explicit modeling. You, as co-teacher, manage the space, schedule, supplies and monitor engagement and provide encouragement.

Let’s consider what we have done in each of the language arts strands that make up foundation literacy:
Phonics
Handwriting
Spelling
Grammar
Sentence Writing
Reading
Writing Compositions
Literature

— Phonics and Handwriting (letter formation).
In my K course, “Letters Sounds Words,” I integrate phonics, phonemic awareness, alphabet awareness, spelling, how to sound out words, sentence writing, and handwriting in each lesson. I teach the 70 Orton phonograms (sound-symbol correspondents) using picture cards, phonogram flash cards, cornmeal writing, and play dough / clay letter formation. I also use music, recitation, and charts throughout the lessons. Using much of the same content with a more advanced focus on skills, I created the course “The Phonograms” for first grade and the course “The English Code” for second grade and above. I recommend “The English Code” for all students grades 2 and above as a review, for struggling readers or struggling writers at any grade level, and for English learners of any age (ESL, EFL, ESOL, ELL). Instruction is systematic and explicit. The English code is frontloaded, and mastery comes as it is used to sound out words to both read and write. Application to words is made in all three of these courses. These courses are followed by our Word Study Series.

— Word Study (spelling).
In “Word Study 1 – 5“, the phonograms, syllable patterns, and spelling rules are used to sound out words to write them (encode, spell) and to read them (decode) The word list is gathered from four highly researched word lists: Dolch Words, Fry’s List of high frequency words, Ayres’ Spelling Scale words, and Marzano Vocabulary Lists of core subject words. In our word list, words are ranked according to spelling difficulty. So Word Study 1 begins with typical grade 1 words and ends with words ranked at grade 2. Word difficulty continues to increase with each Word Study level. Much of the words in Word Study 4 are middle school level spelling difficulty, and in Word Study 5 many are ranked at high school level in spelling difficulty. We use the Morrison-McCall Spelling Scale to determine placement in the Word Studies and to monitor growth. It is linked at the Alice Nine Academy in the Word Study courses.

Snapshot of student interactive notebooks from Lesson 80, Word Study 3

In the lessons, we approach words with a phonics lens moving from oral language to written, using word chunks (sounds/letters, syllables, roots, affixes) to sound them out, write them, and then read them. The work also includes writing the word as a whole word (in cursive in the middle grades), alphabetizing the words, and applying other word knowledge, i.e., suffixes, multiple meanings, to the words. Each of these activities causes students to look at the words through a different lens, using different information to process the words. Words are always placed in the context of sentences, both oral and written, created by the students.

What about educational websites and apps? We haven’t used any apps. And I don’t usually recommend educational websites because we limited screen times to virtual courses we enrolled in. There is one website that we did use with PreK — Grade 2: Starfall.com . The content and approach to learning phonics and decoding words in Starfall activities is very compatible with my foundation literacy instruction.

— Grammar.
“Grammar Boot Camp Jr.” is designed for grade 2 or grade3. “Grammar Boot Camps 1 and 2” are designed for grade 4 and above; middle school and high school teachers report that students enjoy creating their interactive notebooks with anchor charts during the anchor lessons. Instruction is systematic and explicit. Content is accurate. I say that because I’ve reviewed lots of grammar instructional materials–printed, virtual, digital, and I am applauded at the inaccuracies I often see.

Page from Grammar Boot Camp Jr. Student Notebook, Lesson 20

Page from Grammar Boot Camp Student Interactive Notebook

— Sentence Writing.
My Sentence Writing Lessons Guide Books 1-3 are teaching manuals for working with sentences using eight different lenses (activities): writing by dictation, proofing, mapping, diagramming, revising, imitating, combining, and recasting. These are activities are fabulous for practicing applied grammar to improve writing skills. Knowing grammar also impacts comprehension. The lessons are designed for one sentence a week, 5-10 minutes a day per lens (activity). Links to sample pages are here under NEW ITEM. In the guides, instruction is scripted with answer keys, so even if you think you have weak grammar skills, you can do the teaching and do it well.

“Sentence Studies 101” is a course I wrote about identifying and correcting fragments and run-ons. It is also about sentence combining. The lessons can be used at any level, grade 4 and above. There are ten lessons; each lesson will probably take a couple days.

— Cursive.
And check out my Cursive Handwriting course. I also have copybooks for students to practice. Currently these are all scripture passages. Contact me if you are interested in either the cursive version or the manuscript version.

Snapshot from Cursive Handwriting lesson

Which grade levels are these foundation literacy courses? Remember, I said we don’t worry about grade levels. In developing my courses, I strictly followed a sequence that builds knowledge and skills. Any reference to grade levels is simply a suggestion to provide a common ground for reviewing material. You can use these courses at any grade level and across multiple grade levels, individually or as a whole group.

When you invite me to share the language load with you, it makes homeschooling so much easier. You do not have to wonder about things like:
-Am I doing it right?
-How much time should it take?
-What do I teach next?
-Have I covered everything?
I’ve already taken care of those teaching issues for you.

Language arts basic skill instruction also includes reading texts to build fluency and comprehension and composition (writing).

— Reading.
In elementary, we read and read and read — read alouds, shared reading, independent reading. We used McCall-Crabbs Test Lessons, A-F for quick reads every day to build stamina, check comprehension, and develop sustained, timed reading (a test taking skill). Read more here. We used Abeka readers as anthologies so we were assured of getting a variety of genre on their reading levels. We used Abeka library books because we wanted some reading material with Christian values. We read picture books, chapter books, and classical children’s novels such as Heidi, Where the Red Fern Grows, Charlotte’s Web, Rabbit Hill, The Chronicles of Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, The Tale of Despereaux, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, and more.

Usually comprehension skills develop naturally with lots of reading and lots of discussion about what you read. However, if you want to learn more about teaching comprehension skills, the very BEST teacher resource is Comprehension Connections by Tanny McGregor. In her book, McGregor addresses how to teach the six big comprehension strategies (thinking skills for comprehension): how to use schema, ask questions, infer, visualize, determine importance, and synthesize information. McGregor lays out anchor lessons that introduce the skill–what it is and how to do it. What I love about her lessons is the simplicity of explanations and her use of ordinary objects to illustrate the abstract concepts. Her book works for any grade level. When you teach these lessons, you can include multiple grades in the same lesson.

Here’s the LINK to an index of my virtual on-demand foundation literacy courses.
Click on the course to read more or watch sample lesson videos.
When on a page about a course, be sure to open the “Learn More” button.

— Writing.
For writing in the elementary grades, we worked on sentence writing. And we did some response writing in science and social studies, answering the end of chapter questions. However, much of the time, we had them answer those questions orally so we could worked on two things: (1) understanding the content and (2) developing their ability to respond to text which is the beginning of being able to write a response.

We also did “free writes” and “quick writes.” When a student “free writes,” he/she writes as if there were no rules and keeps the pen moving the entire time even if they change topics. It’s about getting words flowing without self-criticism or editing. During “quick writes,” like “free writes,” students are encouraged to write quickly without attention to language mechanics. The difference is that a “quick write” is a response to a prompt, i.e., about their learning, about a quote, about a photograph. Both free writing and quick writing are short–about five minutes. I don’t advise doing it more than ten minutes. These writings can be used later for a number of learning and writing activities, but we won’t go into those ideas at this time.

Then in middle school and high school, we used IEW Structure and Style for academic writing — essay and research writing. I highly recommend it.

— Literature.
We read, read, read in elementary to enjoy literature. Sometimes we discussed our reading. We did not do worksheets or book reports. In high school, we used literature textbooks from BJU (American and British). We also used a textbook for middle school from Abeka. These texts gave us a good anthology, and the teacher’s guides helped us dig into literary elements. Although we did not, you could also use Cliff Notes to assist you with literature studies, like you would use a teacher guide.

Science and Social Studies.
For science and social studies we use an eclectic approach. We’ve chosen curricula from Abeka, BJU, Compass Classroom, Apologia, and even Hillsdale College which has free courses that work well in high school. Sometimes we’ve used just the textbooks. Sometimes we’ve enrolled in virtual courses. Reading these textbooks is excellent practice in reading informational texts. So think of language skills in addition to content.

Extras.
Through the years, we’ve enrolled in micro-school classes for drawing, crafting, painting, music, drama, martial arts based on interests. Most courses have been live; a couple were virtual. And some of my grandkids have participated in community sports.

DIPLOMAS AND TRANSCRIPTS
A diploma can be issued by you the homeschool parent for your homeschool child. A transcript is usually helpful and sometimes requested for higher education or if you return to public or private schooling, especially at the high school level. Again, it can be issued by you the homeschool parent for your homeschool child. A transcript is a way to record high school studies your child has completed. State Departments of Education publish high school requirements, i.e., courses, credit hours, for their states. There are lots of online templates for both diplomas and transcripts. You can use a template as is or use it to help you design your own.

IN CLOSING.
Whatever you choose, remember that if a curriculum or schedule is not working or if family circumstances arise, you can change. We certainly have over the years.

For more information or clarification, contact me. I’ll support you in any way I can. Use “Reply” below, or use our private Contact Form.

I hope to see you in Alice Nine Academy. If you choose to enroll in one of my courses, I’m always available to answer questions.

May your homeschooling be filled with the joy and love of learning!

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where Alice Nine teaches language lessons that
Empower Students with Language Proficiency


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