Homeschool 101 - Homeschool Pep Rally #5daysofhomeschool101

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I've got to admit that I wonder how much difference the cheerleaders actually make in the outcome of the game. I mean, obviously it must be valuable somehow or professional teams wouldn't continue to spend money on it, right? Nor would schools. And of course cheerleading is a competitive sport in its own right.

When it comes down to it, we all need and want somebody in our corner cheering us on, giving us a little boost of confidence when we're struggling, and celebrating with us when we succeed. Not just in sports, but in a lot of areas of our lives, including homeschooling. I may not know you personally or where you are in your homeschool adventure, but if you're a homeschool mom, I'd like to cheer you on a bit. 

You can do it!

Take heart, and keep your confidence, because you CAN do this! Oh yes, it's hard work, and it's a big commitment, but it's also immensely rewarding and even fun! At some point, we're all tempted to doubt ourselves and question our decision to homeschool or our ability to do it well. I think it's normal to ask yourself those questions and to worry at least a little about how to teach subjects you don't understand yourself, or if your kids will miss out on certain things because they're homeschooled. Just know that you can find a solution to whatever difficulty you'll face, and realize that saying "yes" to homeschooling will likely mean saying "no" to some other things. My bet is that you'll also see that the benefits continue to outweigh any difficulties or disappointments along the way. Don't doubt yourself! And don't let outsiders cause you to doubt yourself or your decision to homeschool or your authority to make that decision. Remember, you're the parent, and YOU have the right and responsibility to choose how your child will be educated.

Stick to the game plan!

When a team is behind on the scoreboard at halftime and a player or coach is interviewed, they almost always say something along this line: "We just need to stick to our game plan and play our style, and do our best." They know that even when things aren't going their way, they'd be smarter to stick to the plays and the style that they already know works for them than to panic and abandon a carefully thought out strategy. There's something to be learned for homeschoolers there as well. It's tempting to worry that you're not doing enough or doing the right thing when you start comparing your homeschool with someone else's. So try not to compare and cause yourself that anxiety. Of course you can learn from others and see ways to make adjustments, but don't throw out the study style that works for you just because your friend's kids are excelling with a completely different educational approach. 

This is where your planning pays off. You've taken the time to figure out the best curriculum, style, pacing, and routine for your family; so trust yourself and don't rush into a big change when you hit bumps along the way. Because there will be days that are just not good. Just like the public schools expect that they'll need to take a certain number of snow days, homeschoolers should recognize that there will be days when it's just better to close the books for awhile and take a break. That's okay. Take it one step at a time. Your realistic and flexible game plan will see you through distractions as long as you keep the goal in mind. 

You're the best!

You really are! Oh, I don't mean you're perfect or that you will never make a mistake, but you are the best person to take charge of your kids' education. You know them best, you care the most, and you're fully invested in helping them learn and succeed. You know their interests, their strengths and weaknesses, and the passions and challenges that make them tick. Plus, you're already a teacher - did you know that? You guided your child and helped them learn how to walk, to talk, to eat with a spoon, and so much more. And goodness, if you can potty train a child, you can certainly teach them to read!

You may not feel qualified to teach high school math or science, but there are lots of resources and options to help you in specific areas like that, and you are more than qualified to hunt up the resources that will work best for your homeschool.

You're the best because you're MOM. So make the family relationships the priority over an academic checklist or a spotless house. Remember to have fun with your kids and to make great memories. Take care of yourself and your own needs so that you've got the energy and the positive mindset that you need to look after your family.

Dear Homeschool Mom, I hope you've been encouraged, not just here in my daily coffee breaks during this blog hop week, but by all the other Crew members and their Homeschool 101 advice and encouragement. And not just this week, but every week! I'd love to hear your comments; then continue hopping through the rest of the Schoolhouse Review Crew encouragement posts in Day 5 of 5 Days of Homeschool 101.



5 Days of Homeschool 101 - Encouragement:

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Homeschool 101 - Celebrating Back to Homeschool #5daysofhomeschool101

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The first day of school is a big deal for a lot of people, and I think it's worth celebrating. It is a milestone each year as kids officially move up a grade. When my kids were younger I did my best to take a First Day of School picture of each of them. There were varying levels of cooperation in this project, because my boys definitely didn't always enjoy having their picture taken. And as they got older, they often thought this little tradition was rather silly. 

When I remembered, and when they cooperated, I took a picture of each student holding a small poster with their name, grade, and year on it. Here's a sampling:

First Day 2007

First Day 2008

He's clearly patronizing me. 

First Day 2009

He's still mocking me with that cheesy grin, isn't he?

First Day 2011 - Only Kennady would pose that year.

 So that was one year that I made do with candid shots of the boys. I grabbed a picture of them sitting in the bed of the truck waiting for us and then cropped out close-ups to use as First Day pictures. They look like bookends. 

For the first day of school last year - 2015 - neither of my two students wanted an official first day picture, so once again, I made do with a couple of candids. Landon couldn't very well duck out of the viewfinder when he was driving! And Kennady had just got a new short hairdo, so that made a good first day picture for her.

This year, I'll only have one student, and if I catch her in the right mood, I think she'll cooperate; so I'm hoping to get one of those more official looking pictures, maybe even with a little poster. Wish me luck!

As for other back to school or first day of school traditions, I wish we had something that we'd faithfully done every year, but my good intentions or ideas didn't always work out. And honestly, some years it would have been hard to say what day was "officially" the first day of school. We have done field trips, special breakfasts or lunch out during the first week of school. Some years we took our family vacation right around back to school time.

This year we will come back from a vacation just before our official back to school date, and since it will be just me and Kennady in the homeschool, I'm trying to think of some special things we can do during our first week back. I mean, why not stretch out the celebration over several days or several firsts?! Definitely we'll get donuts for breakfast on the first day of school. That's a special treat. There will be a first day back to guitar lessons, a first day back to chorus, and a first day back to gym class, so I think we'll do something special for each of those too. 

We had First Day Donuts in 2014 - from Tim Hortons! Even more special!

Do you have any Back to Homeschool traditions or celebrations? Do you take First Day pictures? Leave a comment and let me know; then continue hopping through the rest of the Schoolhouse Review Crew thoughts on curriculum in Day 4 of 5 Days of Homeschool 101.

Visit the Homeschool Review Crew blog for the Not Back to School First Day Activities Round-up, and see what other Crew members do on their First Day of Homeschool. (July 28, 2018)

5 Days of Homeschool 101 - Traditions:

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Homeschool 101 - Barely Managing My Home! #5daysofhomeschool101

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I'm sure I am not the only homeschool mom that has been frustrated by what seems like a paradox. We're home most days of the week, and supposedly have plenty of time, and yet we can't seem to stay on top of housework. And then there's those people that assume that homeschool moms grow all their own food, sew their own clothes, and are super organized all the time. Some homeschool moms really are like that, and I have tried to learn from them over the years. One thing I've learned is that the natural tendency to keep things orderly, or the ability to grow an amazing garden, comes more from personality and interest than it does from simply choosing to home educate.

I've figured out a few things about managing the home while managing the homeschool though, and maybe I'll actually be truly good at these things on a regular basis by the time I'm finished homeschooling. I've only got a couple years to go, so I'd better get cracking!

On some level, you need to treat homeschooling as your job.

Homeschooling is a big commitment and responsibility, and most of it will fall squarely on mom's shoulders. If you are homeschooling, you are much more than "just" a stay-at-home mom who also happens to be teaching a few letters and numbers along the way. Especially if your kids range widely in age! The comparative value of the jobs an at-home mother does is huge, and if that mom is also writing and procuring curriculum, directing and maintaining educational portfolios for several students, and providing daily instruction in a wide range of academic and elective studies for several grade levels, the value goes up even more! That's why I believe that homeschool moms do need to figure out how to prioritize their tasks and decide what's important. Multi-tasking may be a thing, but it's often a thing that results in few of the tasks receiving undivided attention. 

Depending on the ages and independence level of my kids, the actual time required from me in a teaching role has varied, but I do think that educating has had to be my most important job. That sometimes meant that I didn't do housecleaning chores as often or as diligently as we all would have liked, but I'd rather do a rush job of cleaning the bathroom than neglect working with a kid on their math or reading when they really needed my help. And to be perfectly honest, it made a great excuse for the times when I just plain didn't feel like cleaning! But seriously. As the old saying goes, the dishes and laundry and cobwebs will all still be there tomorrow. That doesn't mean it's okay to leave it undone, but to keep it in perspective.

You've got students - teach them to help around the house!

Because I'm not naturally much of a Suzy Homemaker type, I don't set a great example of keeping our household running like clockwork with a place for everything and everything in its place. I'm lucky to keep the laundry sort of caught up and remember to put a meal of some kind on the table at least once a day. But I'm doing my best to make sure my kids learn the necessary skills to run a household, and maybe they'll be way better at it than I am when they have their own homes and families. And in the meantime, they can do their own laundry so I don't have to!

My tools for staying on track:
So I might not be a natural when it comes to home management, but somehow we manage to get it done. I have two strategies that have helped me - as a procrastinator who tends to lose track of time - to at least remember what needs to be done and get to a few of my to-do items each day. I like making lists of things to do, and checking things off as I complete them. Writing down my to-do list relieves me of the pressure of having to remember what needs done, especially if it's something I need to do a week from now. I use the website Remember The Milk to keep my to-do lists. It's free and allows me to categorize tasks (work, school, home, or any custom category), set due dates, set tasks to repeat at regular intervals (like paying a bill that comes due quarterly, or a household chore that I need to do every week or two), and prioritize the tasks as well. I still don't get everything on my list done every day, but I can see what's most important and make sure I accomplish those things. The other tool I use is my alarm clock. When I sit down to write or to check Facebook, for example, I can easily lose track of time and be there for half the day, so I set my alarm for 10 or 20 minutes and then I have to get up and do something else when it goes off (plus I have to walk over to it - I use my bedside alarm or a timer in the kitchen so it's not within reach of wherever I am). On the other hand, if I'm doing a task that isn't at all fun, or is more than can be finished in one session (deep cleaning bathrooms, or clearing out a closet, for example), I set a timer for a reasonable amount of time to work at it, and then let myself take a short break or maybe switch to another task when it goes off. That keeps me from getting discouraged as I work at a job that might seem overwhelming, and usually helps me to work hard at something I don't like doing.

Do you excel or struggle with home management? Do you have any tips or tricks for running your household smoothly while homeschooling? Leave a comment letting me know; then continue hopping through the rest of the Schoolhouse Review Crew thoughts on curriculum in Day 3 of 5 Days of Homeschool 101.

5 Days of Homeschool 101 - Home Management:

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Homeschool 101 - Planning the School Year #5daysofhomeschool101

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Okay, we've chosen our curriculum for the upcoming homeschool year, so now it's time to get down to the nitty-gritty of lesson planning! I enjoy this job, even though I'm not usually one for detailed plans and schedules. I do like to have a list of things to do, so I don't forget, and so that I have a box to check off as I complete things. Here's my simple how-to for lesson planning.

Gather the schoolbooks, the calendar, paper and pencil, and the computer.

How many lessons or chapters per week/day?

Many times the curriculum will already have suggested scheduling provided. For example, Notgrass Exploring World History has thirty units with five lessons each, so it's perfectly suited for a lesson each weekday for thirty weeks. Other texts are not quite so straightforward, but at least I can look at how many lessons or chapters there are to cover and then decide how to spread that out over a semester or school year. I go the old-fashioned route to start with and work with paper and pencil to sketch out a general plan of how to spread out the schoolwork over the year, so that we know in general how many pages/lessons/chapters of each subject to cover in an average week.

Which days are school days? How many will we have?
I block out things like vacation and Christmas break on the calendar, at least as much as I know now, and then mark out thirty-six school weeks. Some years we've started our school year near the beginning of August, and other years we start in September, which we'll do this year. We aim to be mostly finished by the end of May, but usually I spread out some things like math even more. And in reality, most summers are a little like this one has been - finishing up a subject or two that should have been finished much earlier, but for whatever reason that didn't happen. I also note our outside classes and co-ops so I can plan the school calendar around those. We have gym class on Tuesday afternoons and choir on Tuesday evening, so there's only time for a little bit of other schoolwork in the morning. Guitar lessons have been on Monday afternoons, so I need to leave some space for those as well. I use the Google calendar for all our family's activities and appointments anyway, so the vacation days are already there, and it's a simple matter to add the gym class and those types of repeating things.


Put the lesson plan info into the Homeschool Tracker. Start assigning lessons.

Once I have a general outline, I turn my attention to my favorite homeschool planning tool, Homeschool Tracker Online. I use this fantastic program to keep track of lesson plans, assignments, due dates, time spent, resource lists, and more. It's also my record of grades and credits, so I could produce my own report cards and transcripts if needed. Since it's capable of saving entire lesson plans, I already have some of that done, having done the hard work of entering the lesson plans for the Notgrass courses several years ago. For this year, I still have Science and Math lesson plans to finish adding to the lesson planning program. After the lesson plans are entered, they can be assigned to my student as needed. I generally assign about a month's worth of lessons at a time, and print the assignment lists for Kennady to check off as she completes them. It's easy to reschedule anything we need to if we are moving faster or slower than anticipated, or decide not to do a particular lesson for some reason.
(Read my full review of Homeschool Tracker Online here: Homeschool Tracker Online: A Homeschool Coffee Break Review)

Other lesson planners and school calendar tools you may find useful are those on SchoolhouseTeachers.com. In addition to the huge library of curriculum resources, the Resources for Members section contains the downloadable Hey Mama! Planner.

For those that like to do all their planning on paper, I highly recommend The Ultimate Homeschool Planner from Apologia. This 52-week homeschool planner was designed by best-selling homeschool author Debra Bell, and has calendars, planning and record-keeping pages, and guidance on how to plan and pray and use the planner.  

(Read my full review of this planner here: The Ultimate Homeschool Planner - A Schoolhouse Crew Review)

What's your method for planning out your school year? Leave a comment letting me know; then continue hopping through the rest of the Schoolhouse Review Crew thoughts on curriculum in Day 2 of 5 Days of Homeschool 101.

5 Days of Homeschool 101 - Planning: 

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Homeschool 101 - Curriculum Line-up #5dayshomeschool101

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We're coming up on one of my favorite times of year - the beginning of a new homeschool year! Even though my students have never been quite as enthusiastic as I'd like, there is a sense of anticipation to get started on some new things and make this the best year ever. One aspect of the new school year that I particularly like is lining up our curriculum and lesson plans. This year I'll have only one student and our curriculum decisions have been fairly set for awhile. Here's an overview of what Kennady will be studying in her sophomore year.

Grammar and Composition

The Power in Your Hands from Writing with Sharon Watson - this and the fiction course by Sharon Watson have been on my homeschool radar for awhile because I think both would be good for Kennady. We were lucky enough to be able to review The Power in Your Hands this summer and enjoyed it, so we have a little bit of a head start and we're all ready to go in September.

(Read our review here: The Power in Your Hands (A Schoolhouse Crew Review))

Fix-it! Grammar and Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization (both from Institute for Excellence in Writing) - we found both of these courses thanks to Schoolhouse Crew reviews, and they have earned a place in our line-up for this year as well. Fix-It! has been a painless and fun way to go over punctuation, parts of speech, and more; and Kennady and I both enjoyed memorizing poetry so we're hoping to continue to do that as we get back to school.

(Read our review of Poetry Memorization here: Poetry Memorization with Institute for Excellence in Writing)

  

Math

Life of Fred Algebra - Kennady has been taking her time with Algebra since math is a challenge for her. We're going to stick with Life of Fred, but we've got some other tricks up our sleeve to help out.

CTCMath was a recent review product, and its algebra tutorials are recommended for use as a supplement for high school math rather than as a full course, so that's exactly what we plan to do. (Read our review here: CTCMath - A Schoolhouse Crew Review)

History, Bible, and Literature

Exploring World History from Notgrass will provide credits in all three subjects this year. My boys did just a selection of the novels in the Notgrass high school courses and earned half credits in Literature, but Kennady may do the full credit. We'll see how that goes. It's the one wild card in this year's curriculum line-up!

Science

Biology 101 from Answers in Genesis will be the base for Kennady's required Biology credit. We will probably add some written work from SchoolhouseTeachers.com to round it out, as it doesn't have a lot of written work included.

  

Electives - Co-ops and Classes

Health (BJU Press) - Kennady originally was going to do this required half credit course last year, and made a decent start on it, but when she got bogged down with a bit too much on her plate, this was one thing I said could wait until her Grade 10 year. So we'll take another run at it and hopefully can finish it off without too much effort.

Phys.Ed. - I've just enrolled Kennady in another semester of the co-op gym class my kids have loved for many years. Somebody else teaches Phys.Ed. so I don't have to; she gets to play sports and hang out regularly with her friends (socialization - check); and I get a chance to either hang out with some of my friends or get some errands done in town. Everybody's happy.

Children's Chorus - Kennady will be in the upper level chorus again this year, in an excellent program that provides outstanding music education in choral singing, and some unique travel opportunities as well. We've already got a sneak peek at where the chorus will be traveling next summer so we can start planning! Oh yeah, and Chorus is at least one full credit in Fine Arts.



Guitar Lessons - another full music credit will be earned with her guitar lessons for the coming year. She also gets plenty of opportunity to play and sing in worship teams at church.

That looks like about 8 credits at least! Wow!

What's in your curriculum line-up for this school year? If you've got a blog post about your high school curriculum (or anything else about homeschooling high school), stop by my high school link-up, From the High School Lesson Book and share with us. Then continue hopping through the rest of the Schoolhouse Review Crew thoughts on curriculum in Day 1 of 5 Days of Homeschool 101.



This post will be linked to From the High School Lesson Book here on Homeschool Coffee Break.

5 Days of Homeschool 101 - Curriculum:

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 ©2006-2016 Homeschool Coffee Break. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. http://kympossibleblog.blogspot.com/