First Year Homeschooling High School

A lot of people are either curious or confused (or both) about homeschooling high school. It is rare for me to hear true negative comments about homeschooling but I have heard 'Why would you homeschool high school science, are you a scientist?'. People who might homeschool in the future wonder which curriculum choices we are using and how long things take.

Here is a list of what Tobias does for 9th grade work in a week:

1. Math - Algebra 1 from Khan Academy  (free)
2. Biology - from Guest Hollow (free) We are using some of the recommended books, plus a few others such as 'Microbe Hunters'. We do experiments and use a microscope
   
3. English - Grammar, Literature, Poetry and Shakespeare from Ambleside Online (free plans, we buy the books or get some from the library). WordUp! videos from Compass Classroom about Latin and Greek root words and vocabulary, we watch 1 video per week.
   
4. Spanish - Duolingo.com (free), 1 hour of Italki.com tutor per week, and watching various videos and podcasts
5. History, Current Events, Constitution, Geography, Biographies - American and French Revolution from Ambleside Online (free), World Watch News, a study of the Constitution, and many other books. Depending on how much he completes in these areas this year and next, it will probably be listed as more than one class on his transcript
   
6. PE  - archery, pickleball, skiing, trampoline, mowing, and some health/nutrition documentaries
7. Art - ceramics, calligraphy, misc. other projects and some documentaries about artists and architecture, studying works by Tintoretto, Monet, and Suerat
   
8. Bible - Old and New Testament readings, a biography of William Carey, 'Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus', 'Taking God at His Word', 'Mere Christianity'
9. Music/Orchestra - attending concerts, practicing violin, and attending orchestra class, studying composers
   
10. Computers and Information Systems -  Programming projects that he wants to do, and he studied for and passed the Information Systems CLEP test using the resources from Modern States (free)

 You may have noticed that many of these resources are free! I'm super thankful for the generous people that have put together so many free resources. Free resources are the most flexible because you don't have to feel obligated to use them completely or exactly as written. However there are also very worthwhile paid resources and I think it would be very hard to homeschool high school for free or a tiny budget, because the library often doesn't have a lot of these books. 

How long does it take? Probably 3-3.5 hours of focused morning academic work (may include an outdoor or snack break and some chores or violin practice), plus ~1-2 hours of less intense afternoon work which could mean working with more breaks, some easier subjects, or attending something outside the house like orchestra. Sometimes we work on a subject in the evening if he needs one on one help which is harder to come by during the day.

I hope that is helpful for those who just have a hard time imagining what high school looks like at home, or who are nervous about doing it themselves in the future.

 

'Day in the Life' of our Homeschool

 8:20- All the kids are at the breakfast table finishing up so I bring over my laptop and we watch https://worldwatch.news

8:30- Folk Song (Follow the Drinking Gourd) at the organ 

8:40- I read Our Island Story Chapter 3 with Avery, who is doing Y1, with a side of helping Malachi with a copywork/grammar worksheet. Avery narrates the chapter as we go, we stop every few paragraphs or so for him to narrate. Then I get Avery started doing a handwriting book, lowercase letters c and o. When he's done with that I log him into his free trial of Explode the Code for some reading and spelling practice. Not sure exactly what the other kids did during this time...math and reading practice maybe.

9:17 - I'm reading the Bible with Malachi and he narrates it to me (everything but poetry gets narrated so I'll stop listing the narration each time), and then a poem with Avery.

9:38 - 'This Country of Ours' (American history) with Malachi, Tobias is working on a grammar worksheet and needs a little help.

9:50- Tobias is practicing piano, Malachi is listening to Children of the New Forest (historical fiction about the English Civil War) on Librivox audiobook.

10:34 - I read 'Kim' to Tobias (it's part of last year's readings and we're finishing it up slowly); then he does Duolingo Spanish.

10:44 - Malachi is on the piano. Tobias has read a chapter from 'Story of the World', some of Luke in the New Testament, and part of The Chestry Oak (historical fiction that goes with his WW2 studies in history).

10:51 - Finish up the 'This Country of Ours' chapter with Malachi

11:04- Read 'Ninja Chicks' for fun with Malachi and Avery

11:10- Read a William Blake poem, Eternity, with Malachi.

11:15- Tobias reads me a poem (Rainsongs by Dunbar). This is technically not the right poet for this year but we're finishing up one from last year and I'm not sure I've downloaded this year's poet to the Kindle yet. There's a snack in there somewhere.

11:18 - Tobias reads Genesis 11

We all drive to pick up school lunches and do curbside document signing for a mortgage refinance. I forget my ID (Nate was driving). The kids watch Peep and the Big Wide World in Spanish (.75 speed for better understanding!) while I run back to the title company with my ID.

Did some things happen for a shorter time than they should have? Yes. We're easing in and building independence. Looks like we'll have to get to Nature Study later this week or afternoon.

Bedtime reading will be from Farmer Boy.

Our Homeschool Day Using Ambleside Online

In my last post I talked about the planning I do for our school year. How does that actually become a week or day of school?

Each weekend I take a look at the week ahead and place activities in our weekly schedule. Some weeks if we are traveling or busy, I just check things off our main pdf schedule in the binder, but most weeks I create a schedule. I copy my own spreadsheet from last week, delete the things that we did, and fill it in for the week. This allows me to work around other activities; for example if we have co-op classes Friday morning I don't schedule anything for that day except maybe a drawing lesson in the afternoon. This year we don't have any outside activities on the horizon so it doesn't matter so much which day is which, though I'll probably keep Fridays a little lighter.

In the schedule picture below, at the end of the week I'd go into that spreadsheet and delete all the 'AO Read' lines (unless there was something unfinished I'd leave that in) and replace it with the next week's stuff. All the stuff like Nature Study, Typing etc. remains the same.

There's no set or right way to do this, everyone's schedules that I've looked at look different. Since these schedules are for our family, they may contain all sorts of crazy abbreviations like 'CoNewF' is for the book Children of the New Forest.

While we almost always start our day singing at the organ (or now we've also started to incorporate a current events video and I'm not certain if that will end up being a lunch activity or a start the day activity), the order of the activities for the day is flexible from there and not specifically bound to how it is listed in the schedule.

On each day I set out a colored marker. In the pictured schedule I must have put blue out on Monday. Either the kids or I check things off as we do them. It looks like we sneaked in a handicrafts on Monday, but didn't get a Nature Study done. But at least those handrails are clean!

After we start the day together, I work with youngest kid one and one first and the other two are supposed to work on anything they can achieve by themselves. For example, in the schedule above Malachi could be working on his math, copywork, reading, piano practice, or chores while I was not available to help him. He could also possibly read or listen to Exodus 12, and then 'narrate' (tell it back, talk to me about it) as soon as I was available. When it's his turn for my help, I would read Bard of Avon with him. Similarly, Tobias (6th grade) works on math, free reading, Duolingo Spanish, typing practice, chores, copywork independently and reading some of his other books.

While the plan is to work with youngest, middle, then oldest, the reality is that I keep an eye on all of them and they can politely interrupt their brothers' time with me in order to quickly ask a question or do a narration. I love that they do their math on the computer because I can hear the little noises in the background when they get a question right or wrong so I know without stopping my other work that they're at least still doing something.

We are only a few weeks into this school year, and that included a road trip already, so I'm not sure yet how all the timing will go! So far we've been able to get everyone finished with their main items before lunch, though sometimes there is a chore or instrument practice or Nature Study or handicraft left for an afternoon activity.

How I Plan our Ambleside Online Homeschool Year

Ambleside Online is a free curriculum that has plans available online. The work is not done online unless you choose to use online resources like a computerized math curriculum or audiobooks.

We have been using it for 5+ years and really love it, however I know that the website was overwhelming to me at first, so I wanted to give a quick explanation of how our family uses it to plan our year.

1. The 'grade levels' of Ambleside are written as 'Year 1', 'Year 2' etc. Year 1 is great for 6-7 year olds. People jumping in at an older grade sometimes go down a 'year' or two, that's OK because you don't need to do all 12 years to be able to graduate or be college ready. My kids are in Year 1, 3, and 6. I go to each of those parts of the website (for example, https://www.amblesideonline.org/01bks.shtml) and print off the pdf schedule of the year (https://www.amblesideonline.org/charts/Y1_36wk_chart.pdf). There are 3 'terms' of 12 weeks each, which end up on 6 papers for each kid/grade. These charts contain the specific readings from each book to do in a week (they can be spread or scheduled over the week however it works), as well as a list of other subjects to do daily and weekly. I hole punch these and put them in a separate binder for each kid; I splurge on the nice binders with the flexible rings that can be laid open nicely.

2. Buy a new or used copy, borrow, library, Kindle (lots are free!) or find Librivox.org audiobooks of the listed books. Some books are used over multiple years so are definitely worth buying. I have found our total expenses for books are pretty reasonable. Abebooks.com is the first place I look for used books. Library sales or garage sales are another great place to find books from the earlier grades. Living Book Press is another great resource, they reprint older books, and their editions are very nice, often they're even customized for Ambleside Online by putting the stories in the order of the AO schedule.


3. Then I prepare things that I need for other subjects.

• Each kid gets a math curriculum. We're currently using Miquon Math workbooks and Khan Academy (online and free), though I've also used online Beast Academy in the past, which is online but not free.
  
• For copywork, we just use notebooks for the older kids, Avery is using Handwriting without Tears 'Letters and Numbers for Me' book. 
• Reading/Phonics for Y1 we've used 'Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons' as well as http://www.progressivephonics.com, which is a free online resource with printable booklets.
  
• For Picture/Artist Study I usually download 3 packets (1 per term of the school year) from A Humble Place blog and get them printed at Office Depot. You can also purchase packets already printed from Simply Charlotte Mason or Riverbend Press. Ambleside provides a list or rotation of who to study each term: https://www.amblesideonline.org/ArtSch.shtml but we have made substitutions based on what is available, aka borrowing ones from friends that they've used in the past. I just keep a list on my computer of who we have studied which year so I can look back on it later.
  
• We learn a folk song and a hymn for each month. Sometimes we follow the ones suggested by Ambleside (https://www.amblesideonline.org/Hymns.shtml) and sometimes we make substitutions.
  

4. I buy normal school supplies like pens, pencils, notebooks, erasers, highlighters. I also make sure everyone has a nice watercolor set for nature study and/or colored pencils or watercolor colored pencils, and a good notebook for nature study, we like the Canson Mix Media spiral bound books. Sticky Post-it flags are my other must-have school supply, sometimes I use them for bookmarks (carefully, do not use on fragile paper or very special books).

If you are thinking of doing Ambleside Online and this looks overwhelming, you do NOT have to start doing all those things at once. We usually don't. You could start with just half a week's readings spread over one week, daily math, and learning a folk song. Then the next week you could do the other half of the readings and you could add in your copywork every day. Then the next week you could add in a picture study (takes 10 minutes once you're prepped with either printed or computer art to look at). That gives you time to figure out the lingo and your kids time to adjust. But hopefully I'll cover more of the how-to-do-it in a later post!

Easy Hymn and Folk Tunes

It's been embarrassingly long since I've done a blog post but here it is...

My family and I keep busy with life, homeschooling, music and more, and here's something I've been working on.

Tobias plays the violin and piano (included in his recent exam video here) and his favorite thing to play is familiar tunes. I've written out some of our folk tunes and hymns that are studied for school so he can play them after we've sung them awhile.

In order to keep track of ones that I've done and share them with others I will link to the pdf files here:

Brightest and Best (Star in the East) for easy violin, in A minor
A Nice Field of Turnips for easy piano, in C major, some right hand movement
In the Bleak Midwinter for easy violin, in G major
My Jesus, I Love Thee for easy piano, in C major middle C hand position, some right hand movement
My Jesus, I Love Thee for cello (no current cello players here, made this for someone else)
Marching to Zion for piano, in C major middle C hand position, some right hand movement

Spring 2016

From "When Early March Seems Middle May" by James Whitcomb Riley

When through the twigs the farmer tramps, 

And troughs are chunked beneath the trees, 

And fragrant hints of s'gar-camps  Astray in every breeze, 

 And early March seems middle-May,

The Spring is coming round this way.

We didn't harvest any maple syrup this spring, but we did plant raspberries, kale, elderberries, blueberries, garlic, and peas. We have large baby bunnies and tiny baby bunnies, and a handful of weeks of school work left for the year.

Today we sang "Come, Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain" and "I've Been Working on the Railroad", reviewed some Spanish sentences and Sunday school Bible verses, Tobias and Malachi drew flowers (an indoor one that was on our table) in their nature journals, Tobias read "St. George and the Dragon" and practiced piano, we read a poem and the Bible, and now a serious train-building session is in the works. Later today (aka nap time) we hope to read about Pope Gregory and practice violin.

Park time last week

Tempests and Frogs and Ceasars, Oh My!

Our family is 11 weeks into our homeschool school year, and it's only October. I rightfully anticipated a crazy August and September due to moving and a long road trip, so we got an early start. Although we missed a few details here and there, we kept chugging through our main readings and activities through it all. It has provided a nice constant, and on top of that I think everyone is learning and enjoying themselves.

This year Tobias is in 1st grade and we are using Ambleside Online. It is a freely provided curriculum plan built by a volunteer committee based on the educational philosophy of Charlotte Mason. She was a British educator whose principles included a belief that children are not just receptacles for intellectual facts, but they have a God-given ability and desire to learn ideas and digest a high-quality feast of knowledge. People following her philosophy generally try to follow her ideals of cultivating good habits (especially the habit of attention), relatively short lessons, time in nature, "living books" (not watered down or summarized already for the child, written by people who care about the subject), and having students narrate back a summary or response to what was read rather than worksheets or quiz-type questioning about details.

A typical day for us includes:

• 9:00 Singing time: Hymn and folk song or Spanish song
• Math: We use Miquon math worksheets with some blocks/rods that go with them, or Khan Academy on the computer
• Independent reading. Tobias just finished the My Father's Dragon series and Because of Winn-Dixie.
• A Poem a day: Today we read October's Party
• Handwriting
• Spanish video
• Piano practice
• Bible memory work, or sometimes work on memorizing something else like a poem
• Once or twice a week: Nature study with journals, a craft or useful skill (currently origami), drawing
• Readings from the Ambleside "chart". Readings are assigned by the week, and can be divided into whatever days we want. They cover history, literature, geography, Bible, and more. This week we're on Week 10, so today we read "The Frogs who Wished for a King" from Aesop's fables, and "Prince Darling" from the Blue Fairy book.
• We are also supposed to focus on one composer and artist every 12-week term, and for right now we have just listened to a Brahms playlist and haven't done the artist study yet (oops)

Believe it or not, that takes 2-3 hours depending on the length of the readings and how many interruptions we have. Play, errands, chores, and meals fill up the rest of the day for him.

There are of course lows ("I don't remember anything." and "NO. 3 - 4 has to equal ZERO!" being among them), and those lovely braggable moments where your child declares that Shakespeare's Tempest was even better than A Midsummer Night's Dream (we read children's adaptations), and everything in between. Overall, very happy with how it is going so far!

“The question is not, -- how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education -- but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?”  -Charlotte Mason

26 Weeks of Kindergarten

Tobias confused a neighbor lady the other day when she asked what grade he was in and he said "done with Kindergarten but not in first grade yet". Finally she asked "well, will you go to school tomorrow morning" (it was Sunday) and she figured out he is home schooled.

I've declared summer here and we've shifted into a less formal daily routine of "just" reading, chores, piano, outdoor play, and one special thing each day like baking on Mondays, teatime on Tuesdays, etc.

We were blessed to cover a lot of material in 26 weeks of Kindergarten that I will list below, but more importantly, I see a lot of things "clicking" for Tobias, academically and in maturity. He follows along when solving math problems with Nate such as "how many hours until tomorrow starts?", enjoys curating many musical playlists, and is getting to be a help with chores around the house.

In addition to the books and songs already listed in the first 18 weeks, we focused on these things this year:

Hymns:

All Creatures of our God and King

O Worship the King

Folk/Children's Songs:

Oh, Susanna

Short'nin Bread

Wheels on the Bus

Bible:

Vos Story Bible:  Jacob buys the Birthright - Joseph's Dreams Come True

The Jesus Storybook Bible:
    The Singer - A dream of Heaven 
    (Sermon on the Mount through Revelation)

Math:

Counting by 2's, 5's and 10's up to 100 or more
Miquon Math continuing through E-12
Khan Academy: mastered 35% of the Early Math skills

History:

Pioneering on the Plains (Edith McCall)

Handwriting:

finished lowercase letters from Delightful Handwriting

Piano:

Music Tree: through page 41

Reading:

Daily reading (he made it to 100 books and we went out for ice cream!).

Literature:

The Old Man and his Dog (W.G. van de Hulst)
Roxaboxen
The Lost Photograph (W.G. van de Hulst)
The Borrowers
Pinocchio

Other highlights included a trip to the Planetarium, hike on Bateman Island, ECHO end of the year program, building electronics things, and many other projects.

18 weeks of Kindergarten

We've been chugging along with daily activities! I have weekly charts of what we do, but I wanted to see at a glance what things we have done so far so I compiled it as lists. Maybe more interesting to me than to blog readers…

Here's what has been explored in the last 18 weeks, some things more in-depth than others:

Hymns:

Children of the Heavenly Father

You are Worthy

Praise the Savior Now and Ever

Let All Things Now Living

Come, Ye Thankful People Come

For the Beauty of the Earth

Joy to the World

May the Mind of Christ My Savior

Folk/Children's Songs:

Roll On, Columbia Roll On

3 Little Muffins

Did you Feed My Cow

Rico's Pizza Restaurant

5 Fat Turkeys

Allison's Camel

All Night, All Day

Bible:

Vos Story Bible: 

  Paul's Conversion (Chapter 64) through the end

  The Beginning through finding a wife for Rebekah

Leading Little Ones to God: Chapters 1-23

Misc. other story Bibles and review of Sunday School material

Math:

Ellerby Math Games (with cards, dice, etc.) 1-18

Miquon Math: 1st third or so (pages are not numbered traditionally) of the Orange Book

lots of everyday math: doubling recipes, telling time, calendars

History:

Christopher Columbus (Ann McGovern)

If You Sailed on the Mayflower (Ann McGovern)

If You Grew Up with George Washington (Ruth Belov Gross)

A Book about Benjamin Franklin (Ruth Belov Gross)

The Yakima (Edward Ricciutti)

If you Lived with the Sioux Indians (Ann McGovern)

Pioneering on the Plains (Edith McCall)

Handwriting:

Delightful Handwriting capital letters and almost through the lower case

Piano:

Music Tree: through page 32

Reading:

Every day Toby chooses a book or chapter to read. Sometimes we forget to write down what they were. We have recorded 82 books though that he has read himself, and when he gets to 100 there is talk of ice cream. The most recent book he read was "The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs", and Malachi enjoyed listening to that after he convinced Toby to "read it LOUD" (out loud).

Literature:

The Horse and his Boy (C.S. Lewis)

The Window in the Roof (W.G. Vandehulst)

The Magician's Nephew (C.S. Lewis)

The Last Battle (C.S. Lewis)

The best part is seeing Tobias (and also Malachi!) connections about things. After explaining the tax portion of a receipt for eating out, Tobias said "Oh! You mean like the tax collectors in the Bible who took everyone's money?" Kind of.

K: 7 weeks in

We're partway through our 7th week of official Kindergarten for Tobias.

Currently we're singing "Let All Things Now Living" and Rico's Pizza Restaurant, as well as old favorites.

Last Easter we started reading to Tobias out of the Vos Story Bible near the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ. We continued through the stories that came after that, and recently finished the book with stories of Paul's missionary journeys and John's visions in the book of Revelation. I have to say, Paul's visits to cities, stints in jail, and trials may have been a bit on the harder to understand side for Tobias. I did my best to explain the differences between governors and emperors, what it meant to be a Roman citizen, and more. He enjoyed looking at maps of Paul's trips and that he went to Rome (somewhere we have been).

After some waffling and testing various free things and samples, I "splurged" to purchase handwriting materials from Simply Charlotte Mason. For $9 and the cost of printing I now don't have to think about what comes next for handwriting, which is worth it. I never really liked those extra curves on the D'Nealian handwriting as a kid, so I went for the "plain" letters (how's that for a mature way to make a decision).

Malachi participates in singing, demands his own "maff sheet", and usually wanders away to the Duplos while we read.

We've also completed two weeks of ECHO, our homeschool co-op, which all the kids have enjoyed. 

I feel like we have a good routine going, although I have small moments of "I'm doing this wrong" panic, usually during moments such as kids crumpling up papers in frustration, or parked in front of YouTube "educational" shows in excess of what I usually allow.

Next I'm contemplating if and how to add other subjects; perhaps some more formal piano lessons and practice or Spanish.

And we called it…Kindergarten

We're still doing stuff, learning, reading, singing and asking and answering questions at our house.

Most mornings we sing a hymn or two, and a traditional children's song or folk song. Pop Goes the Weasel is a perpetual favorite and you may hear little voices around the house singing "half a pound of two penny rice, half a pound of treacle, mix it up and make it nice…POP goes the weasel!"
Then we read a Bible story and have a short prayer for our day.
We also read and explore through the day, and have bedtime reading.

Starting next week we plan to take a turn towards slightly more formal lessons for Tobias. We will be adding some Math activities (Miquon Math and board/card games) and historical books and biographies. More subjects will be added when we get in a good routine.

Stay tuned, it's sure to be an adventure.