Homeschool Chat

[SCHBR'smom]

Just wondering what everyone uses for a spelling program. We are using Sequential Spelling that comes with Sonlight and I am not sure how much I am going to like it.

We are using Learning Language Arts through Literature which has spelling included. It seems kinda weak, though, so I will probably need to supplement it.

 

[Disney Mommy 3]

I like Rod & Staff's spelling...

 

[stobaugh6]

I am new to the boards and wanted to introduce myself. My name is Heather and I have 6 kiddos that I homeschool. We are planning our 3rd WDW trip in September.

Anybody going to the Homeschool Days next month??

 

[bumbershoot]

We will be starting in a couple of weeks. For you experienced h/s moms could someone reassure me that even though I am homeschooling and my dd will miss out on having a "first day of kindergarten" that I won't be scarring her for life. I just remember loving school and I'm sad for her that she won't get to experience this!

I first got interested in homeschooling because I had such a LOUSY time in school. I hated the social interaction (went to school 11/12 years in the same area so knew most everyone from 1st on, and even in my Senior year I went home with big blotchy hives from the social interaction and nervousness EVERY DAY), the education was questionable with brief moments of "ooh that was brilliant", and my teachers, for the most part, were laughable and utterly burned out (5th grade teacher had a nervous breakdown in class towards the end of that year...then she was our class's teacher for 6th!). If I had a scanner I knew how to use, I would show you "Molly before school", happy joyous smiling girl, and then "Molly after she started Montessori" (did Montessori from 4 to 6 yo, then started 1st at public school) which shows a hunched shoulder, circles under eyes, scared sad shy girl.

So for me, I was worried (long before marrying and having DS) that I would scar a child for life BY sending him to school!

I'm a wee bit more militant than most, though.

I am 21 and I have my DS 3( I know I know young) We are currently living with my parents so that i can be full time care taker to my 90 year old grandfather and my sister 9 and brother 11, We will be moving out right after our September trip hopefully with my husbands new promotion and for our sanity.

My DS is currently 3 will be 4 in Nov. I have thought about homeschooling for awhile now. I had actually thought about doing it myself when I became pregnant with my son my junior year, but did not and finished school. My husband, my sons father and my mother who is a teacher, don't really agree with me wanting to do so. Its not so much that I love my son and don't want him to leave, but I look at it more of an adventure like being able to watch him grow and grow together. When I was put on bed rest the beginning of my senior year my math teacher came to my house and tutored me, i was doing amazing the best i had ever done. When i got back to school it was awful you couldn't focus everyone would constantly talk. My mother has been giving me a lot of stuff recently because I don't have him in day care well i cant afford (in our area)250 dollars a week for two days in daycare or preschool.She also keeps telling me that its going to be impossible for him to be in kindergarten. My fathers son thinks its just a big joke mind you he is 21, and is a "cool" kid. He thinks that my son will get no interaction or will become a social misfit. His father did homeschooling when he was in his junior year.Go figure. And my husband just worries about the social interaction and everything else. So I guess im just looking for some advice as to what all of you think, and where i should go from here. Sorry for writing a book but just thought I would ask. Thanks

It is very impressive that you're so young yet very determined. Especially when surrounded by naysayers!

My son is 6 and I've had people ask about his social skills, AFTER having a 20 minute long conversation WITH HIM. People are bananas, I tell you. Your whole family lives around him...how could he NOT develop social skills with all of those people?

I am a hermit (note the social interaction hives mention above) but DS is a social butterfly, and has forced me to get out and about. So he takes classes at the Y (swim, gymnastics, ballet, and aikido), and last year we did their Homeschool PE program so he got to learn all the little games kids "need" to learn, LOL. He made friends, interacted, worked things out...and that's without stuff like that until he was 5. DS LOVES people and after 5 minutes of being quiet to get used to things, and assuming the person doesn't totally creep him out (a reaction that I pay attention to), he'll pop into the conversation with his own thoughts and feelings.

Remembering that I'm a bit more militant than most...I find that most of the social interaction that kids get in school is "socializing". Meaning chatting about nothing, just hanging out. To me, school would have been so much better withOUT that. I had some pretty negative experiences with it! To me, kids with 39 other kids just becomes a sort of Lord of the Flies experience, and I don't feel that that helps much.

DS went to his second birthday party in June, and it was to a party where most of the kids invited were from one kindergarten class. There were 40 kids in their K class (and this is a private Catholic school), and while not everyone showed up (a virus swept the class just over a week before the party/end of school) it was a madhouse. A wonderful noisy madhouse b/c they had a HUGE backyard that the kids could just run and run in...DS knew exactly two kids there (the birthday twins, who were in his swim class), and he jumped right in, played his little legs off, had a grand time! And remember, I really only started taking him out to meet these other kids less than a year ago.

So I wouldn't worry about the social interaction stuff so much. Help him learn to communicate with all humans, and he'll work out communication with kids.



I am SO fortunate in where I live. I think I've posted about them before, but my neighbor is a nearly-100 year old man who teaches Western art classes at the local fairgrounds. His elderly son lives with him (and his daughter and son in law live in the same building with all of us)...we were at the condo's Social Hour last week, and the son said "you're homeschooling your son, right?" and when I said "yes", he said "GOOD. We get homeschooling groups there as well as school groups, and the homeschool kids are SO SMART." I could have kissed him for that! I mean, not that schooled kids cannot be smart...I got B+s and As in school, and I was the lower-grade person of my group...but my friends were definitely not the norm for the schools we went to.

And of course the father-neighbor was very likely schooled mainly at home himself, and has made a lovely life for himself. If he wasn't schooled at home, his parents almost certainly were, and he has great respect for it.

And I love the social hours for DS's sake (left to my own devices I'd avoid them) because he gets to chat with 20 senior citizens and have a GREAT time, and we woulldn't get that if we lived somewhere else!



I still haven't been able to order Calvert, but we've been reading a bunch of the Sonlight books from 3/4, 4/5, and K this summer. And DS has me do little addition quizzes (which thoroughly impressed the person we were talking to at the time) on the fly LOL.

 

[wondermomamy]

Just wondering what everyone uses for a spelling program. We are using Sequential Spelling that comes with Sonlight and I am not sure how much I am going to like it.

I've used Spelling Workout with my younger kids and nothing with the older ones, but they only started homeschooling the last few years. Spelling Workout seems a little boring, but they seem to be pretty good spellers. Of course, at their young ages I imagine their reading program had as much to do with spelling as an actual spelling program.

 

[sweetpee_1993]

I now use Homeschool Tracker Plus because I have high schoolers who need to have a their grades tracked. (I know some people don't track high schoolers grades but they way we're working it, we do.) At some point in the summer when I'm ready to wrap everything up, I assign a weighted value - 75% math exercises, 25% exams, for instance for math. Or 30% labs, 30% papers, 40% exercises for biology. Or whatever I think is reasonable given the course. Some things like gym and art are really difficult and I probably fall prey to "Mommy grades" there but seriously, who really counts a grade in gym? When you set up a course in HST, you can choose what types of work you want to have over the course. Then you use that to automatically calculate the grade.

As far as lesson plans go, I do try to make them because I am a person who is made happy by having a plan. It fits in nicely with my Disney trip planning dreams too. But, I've learned that the best laid plans of this homeschooling mom can be washed away, just like a Disney touring plan when you have torrential rain. Some things like math are easy - I looked at several other sources for math for a particular course, checked the math textbook and said "You have to go through Chapter 11" or whatever. Sometimes a plan comes with the material. Sometimes I go with a number of hours for something like gym. Other classes are harder to define and I think that that's where I see the need for the greatest amount of flexibility.

Have fun with your new adventure!

NHWX

Hey! Thanks! I was **just** looking at various software programs and Homeschool Tracker Plus was one that was in the 2 I'm narrowed down to. Does it have a setup wizard to help goobers like me wade in gently? The other I was looking at was Edu-Track. I don't know if you've ever looked at it but the one thing I liked was that it had a setup wizard. With a 9th grader I'm thinking going with software that generates transcripts will be a feature I'll be looking for. After looking at basic teacher planning books at the local supply store I'm feeling more and more like one of the homeschool specific programs will be better in the end. Besides, it'll keep me from having so many notebooks/workbooks/etc. laying around. Less clutter can't be a bad thing. Thanks for the input!

I am new to the boards and wanted to introduce myself. My name is Heather and I have 6 kiddos that I homeschool. We are planning our 3rd WDW trip in September.

Anybody going to the Homeschool Days next month??

I looked at the Homeschool Days but the timing wasn't quite where we needed it to be. Tentatively we'll be going down to WDW for our 8th family adventure 9/14-9/24. I am seriously giving thought to shifting the entire thing out west to Disneyland, tho. We've never been there. Either way, at this point a trip is the goal. Whether or not it works out remains to be seen.

I've also looked at the Y.E.S. programs. Those look awesome, too. I'm certain I saw on the family board something about a Diser who had organized a Y.E.S. program (or two or more) for Diser's to join in. I can easily see where the Disney forums would be a great tool to gathering a group to do these programs if what you'd like to do doesn't have open enrollment for your travel dates.

Nope, never once thought why didn't you buy a boxed curriculum. I never have in going on 9 years now. They never completely fit us either and I personally find them to be too "schooly" for us. We do the same thing with starting slowly.

I was thinking maybe my compulsion to go against the box curriculum was my narcissistic streak coming out. In all the box sets I looked at there would be one or two things that I knew there were other things I preferred. I went back & forth whether or not to just buck-up and do a box set for ease of use or throw the extra element of difficulty in for myself and do the pick-n-choose that I really wanted to do. In the end it was my uncanny compulsion to choose the bumpiest, most challenging road in life that won again. I'm okay with that.

I think maybe at first I'll leave the plans a little loose long enough to see what rhythm we take as we move thru each subject so I know what's realistic to lay out lesson plans for the future.

One of my dearest friends who homeschooled both of her kids all the way thru school gave me some great advice the other day. She told me:

You're a natural mom. Trust that. You've brought them so far already. Don't teach the curriculum. Teach your kids.

^^^^
I really like that! It's a good perspective to keep!

 

[mommyof2princesses]

Just wondering what everyone uses for a spelling program. We are using Sequential Spelling that comes with Sonlight and I am not sure how much I am going to like it.

I am using sequential spelling next year also. I think it will be different than what I have used in the past, but hopefully it will be good.

We are using Learning Language Arts through Literature which has spelling included. It seems kinda weak, though, so I will probably need to supplement it.

We are finishing up the red book in LLATL and the spelling was very weak. the words were way to easy. Instead we did Spelling Workout.

I've used Spelling Workout with my younger kids and nothing with the older ones, but they only started homeschooling the last few years. Spelling Workout seems a little boring, but they seem to be pretty good spellers. Of course, at their young ages I imagine their reading program had as much to do with spelling as an actual spelling program.

We used spelling workout this year and my dd liked it. It had an easy format and the words did get harder. I liked that it had a small writing component to it.

 

[NHWX]

Hey! Thanks! I was **just** looking at various software programs and Homeschool Tracker Plus was one that was in the 2 I'm narrowed down to. Does it have a setup wizard to help goobers like me wade in gently? The other I was looking at was Edu-Track. I don't know if you've ever looked at it but the one thing I liked was that it had a setup wizard. With a 9th grader I'm thinking going with software that generates transcripts will be a feature I'll be looking for.

I don't really remember, to tell you the truth. I started out with the free version and that worked well until I wanted to be more specific with my grading process. Then I upgraded to the paid version. I do remember watching the online help videos again and again because I am just not a person who learns all the details in a piece of software. I know they have a very active email list (yahoo? google?) and the people who make it are very responsive. I'm sure I asked a couple questions that people must ask every week but I still received kind and thoughtful answers.

I'm sure that I'll be re-watching the online videos again this month as I try to set up this coming year's work. It does work well, it's just not something that my brain holds onto.

NWHX

 

[sweetpee_1993]

I don't really remember, to tell you the truth. I started out with the free version and that worked well until I wanted to be more specific with my grading process. Then I upgraded to the paid version. I do remember watching the online help videos again and again because I am just not a person who learns all the details in a piece of software. I know they have a very active email list (yahoo? google?) and the people who make it are very responsive. I'm sure I asked a couple questions that people must ask every week but I still received kind and thoughtful answers.

I'm sure that I'll be re-watching the online videos again this month as I try to set up this coming year's work. It does work well, it's just not something that my brain holds onto.

NWHX

LOL! Right after I responded to you I started watching some of the how-to videos.

 

[Denine]

Thanks for the spelling recommendatations. This is day 3 of 3rd grade and the words are ridiculously easy.

 

[danetter]

I have been a member of the dis board for about a year now and this is our 9th year homeschooling our DD's ages 14 and 10. I just saw this homeschooling section on the board. My daughters have been using Abeka program but this year switching to something different with my 14yr old. I just ordered Lifepace English today. Anybody familiar with Lifepac that can give me any info.? We have our homeschool group signup in a few weeks and will have a book sell and I will buy more books then.

I noticed from an earlier post that in DW was having homeschool day in Sept. What day is that? We will be there Sept. 12-18. We are staying at Pop Century and would love to meet other homeschool families.

 

[polkadotsuitcase]

In the next week we're going to start both the boys with a handwriting for middle school course. I'm amazed at how horrendous their handwriting is. When we were their ages if our teachers couldn't read our writing we didn't get credit for our assignments. I have no clue how they got so far with such illegible writing.

Do you mind sharing which program you got? I've been thinking I ought to get my guys something, too. I keep thinking, "Eh, they'll just be using keyboards," but it's bugging me that their penmanship is sloppy.

Thanks!

 

[polkadotsuitcase]

I just ordered this year's materials. I'm running a bit later than usual, but things have been tight and I'm trying to stretch all the dollars! That said, I'm curious how much (average) everyone usually spends on homeschooling materials every year?

It seems to vary for us from year to year, but I've always trended more toward lower cost -- although that means more work, kind of assembling stuff piece-by-piece and getting creative. Just wondered how everyone else budgeted for school materials?

 

[DawnM]

I used to stick with $300 per year for everyone.

Now that I have THREE kids all school age AND my oldest is now 7th grade, I am going to have to up that.

This past year I spent about $700 though. Maybe even a bit more. I didn't buy all at once, so it is hard to know exactly how much I spent.

I just sold $200 of materials and am hoping to sell some more in the coming weeks. I plan to use that again for new materials.

Dawn

I just ordered this year's materials. I'm running a bit later than usual, but things have been tight and I'm trying to stretch all the dollars! That said, I'm curious how much (average) everyone usually spends on homeschooling materials every year?

It seems to vary for us from year to year, but I've always trended more toward lower cost -- although that means more work, kind of assembling stuff piece-by-piece and getting creative. Just wondered how everyone else budgeted for school materials?

 

[Disney Mommy 3]

Do you mind sharing which program you got? I've been thinking I ought to get my guys something, too. I keep thinking, "Eh, they'll just be using keyboards," but it's bugging me that their penmanship is sloppy.

Thanks!

I like A Reason For Handwriting...my kids have loved it too. As for budgeting..I mix and match..so I don't really have a budget...I do try to keep it as low as possible. And...lots of stuff(such at Teaching Textbooks) that my oldest has will be passed down to the other two....
I did find an awesome thing this week!!!! I am sure y'all are familiar with/know about Switched on Schoolhouse...well I was looking at the website for ds14. He is 9th grade and I needed a new History for him. We just finished up our book from last year...It was long, so I knew it would carry on for the first few weeks of this year. Anyway....SOS is what I was looking at for something a little different-I like the idea of him being more independant and me not having to do sooo many lesson plans. ( A thing to consider when you mix & match like I do!)...The company-Alpha Omega- has a fairly new program called Monarch. It's like SOS but better...no downloads, no books...I bought History, Bible, and Spanish1....we started it the next day and I love it!!! I just typed in the needed start and expected end day of our school year and it configured all his plans!!! I didn't have to do anything!!!! Of course, I need to go back and take off the days we will have for holidays, but WOW!! I am just excited and wanted to share with y'all... in case anyone is looking. Oh, and they don't begin until 3rd grade....so it won't work for the little bitties!

 

[sweetpee_1993]

Do you mind sharing which program you got? I've been thinking I ought to get my guys something, too. I keep thinking, "Eh, they'll just be using keyboards," but it's bugging me that their penmanship is sloppy.

Thanks!

I got each of them Zaner-Bloser's Handwriting for Middle School. It cost like $7.50 each.



------



Well, started trying to figure out how to break out lesson plans for the boys' Language/Literature curriculums. I'm soooo frustrated. Why can't they give you a guide for this stuff???? Or at least do things logically?! Trying desperately to figure out something else that will fill the ticket so I can send this stuff back. Talk about aggravating!

So for 7th & 9th grade Language/Literature I need to cover spelling, vocab, writing, grammar, and reading/literature guides. Right? Gosh! I'm worn out even thinking about it. I thought I'd find something that combined everything WITH lesson plans but no such luck.

Prepare for the noob-melt-down.....

 

[polkadotsuitcase]

I used to stick with $300 per year for everyone.

That's my ballpark, too. In an ideal world, I could spend more, but you do what you gotta do! I may add in a little bit of this and a little bit of that over the year, but I try to keep my initial output at that range.

I like A Reason For Handwriting...my kids have loved it too.

I got each of them Zaner-Bloser's Handwriting for Middle School. It cost like $7.50 each.

Thanks for the input on this -- I'll check these out!

So for 7th & 9th grade Language/Literature I need to cover spelling, vocab, writing, grammar, and reading/literature guides. Right? Gosh! I'm worn out even thinking about it. I thought I'd find something that combined everything WITH lesson plans but no such luck.

We're trying the Saxon language arts this year, combined with a couple other smaller/lighter writing books. There's a lot going on this year, and I really wanted something a little more comprehensive to take some of the pressure off me putting things together from scratch. I just ordered my materials, so I'm anxious to see them.

Thanks again for the input, all!

 

[polkadotsuitcase]

Hey, all --

I'm working on a project, and I could really use some input.

I often hear parents saying that World Showcase is their kids' least-favorite part of WDW. As a homeschooler, of course I see WS as being stuffed with potential for fun learning opps. So, I'm making an online "book" (mini-book, really) on WS. It'll be free for anyone who just wants to do some pre-trip fun stuff with their kids. Hopefully, the kids will get more out of their WS visit that way.

I'm wondering if you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see in it, as a parent (and as a homeschooler!). I'm thinking about things like recipes, international games, some info on history/architecture of each country, crafts, experiments...

What are things that, as a visiting kid, if you knew about ahead of time, would enrich your WS visit?

My target age range is around 6-12, but parents could tweak downward for the younger set.

Thoughts?

 

[Disney Mommy 3]

Hey, all --

I'm working on a project, and I could really use some input.

I often hear parents saying that World Showcase is their kids' least-favorite part of WDW. As a homeschooler, of course I see WS as being stuffed with potential for fun learning opps. So, I'm making an online "book" (mini-book, really) on WS. It'll be free for anyone who just wants to do some pre-trip fun stuff with their kids. Hopefully, the kids will get more out of their WS visit that way.

I'm wondering if you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see in it, as a parent (and as a homeschooler!). I'm thinking about things like recipes, international games, some info on history/architecture of each country, crafts, experiments...

What are things that, as a visiting kid, if you knew about ahead of time, would enrich your WS visit?

My target age range is around 6-12, but parents could tweak downward for the younger set.

Thoughts?

Sounds great already!! I will ask my kids and see if they come up with anything else...but, this sounds great!!!

 

[Denine]

Epcot has always been DD's favorite park. She loves WS. DD likes to talk to the CM's. She also liked making the masks in each country. We have switched over to the Passports. You can learn a lot about the countries just by interacting with the CM's. DD will be 8 in September. We like to stop and listen to the different music groups that pop up. There is also the show at the German restaurant. DD loves German food. You can learn a lot by going to the different restaurants too.