Homeschooling

Starting A New School Year

August 10, 2020 By Annette1 13 Comments

My son and I were talking the other day about when we’d start his new year. He’s still working on finishing off grade nine due to some poor decision making, so he’s pushing hard to get things done. But this is what we do, we talk together about how we’ll start off the new school year. Every year is different, but every year we have the same conversation. I suppose it’s one of our traditions, this starting a new school year talk.

What have we done? We’ve gone camping, organized materials, set up schedules, and attended not going back to school picnics. What kind of things do you do when your school year starts?

Camping

Last year my fellows (Dad and son) were talking about how to start the new school year and they decided that camping would be just the ticket. They headed up and three days later I joined them. They had time away, I had time to plan things out a bit, totally a win-win.

NGBTS

NGBTS picnics… we did about three of these. The Not Going Back to School picnics were hosted in nearby London and drew in homeschoolers from all over the place. We’d always have a good crowd with a variety of activities to engage the youth. Scavenger hunts, soccer games, chasing geese and looking for water critters. Laughter and conversation filled the afternoon, people staying for just as long as they wanted to. Free books and curriculum were often at hand…the lad and I got SO many books to read, and then in turn passed them along. It was great!

group of girls taking groufie — Photo by Aline Viana Prado on Pexels.com

Organized Schoolwork

My son recently spent a week cleaning his room and making way for organizing his school work for next year. I’m “NOT ALLOWED” to take pics and show you the results of his hard work.

Suffice it to say… he has a spot for everything and even more besides. I still have my stash of materials that I really have to go through yet… hopefully, this coming week. He doesn’t want books in his room that he isn’t immediately using so I need to make sure they are all easily accessible for when he needs them. Grade 10 will be a busy year for him.

Set Up Schedules

Even though I have this section entitled Set up Schedules, I’ve learned over the years that schedules don’t tend to work well for us. Setting up routines work much better for us. We’ve tried making summer schedules, some of which worked and didn’t. But mostly we’ve learned follow a routine and simply do the next thing… it’s what works best in our household.

This coming week we’ll be working together to make a routine that will help him get his school work done in good time this year…no more working all summer to catch up! 🙂 Since we don’t know exactly what the school year will look like we’ll have to work with generalities.

Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses shares Homeschool Traditions.

Yvie @ Homeschool on the Range shares 20 Best Educational Subscription Boxes (we let the kids choose a new one at the beginning of each school year)

Dawn @ Schoolin’ Swag shares Back to School Traditions.

Vickie B @ Tumbleweed News shares Homeschool Traditions {NOT Back-to-School Blog Hop}

Adrienne B @ Practicalmindedness shares on Traditions that seal the heart.

Teresa B @ Teresa Brouillette shaes Homeschool Traditions.

Annette V @ A Net in Time shares Starting a New School Year.

Kristen @ A Mom’s Quest to Teach shares Homeschooling Taditions for the New Year.

I hope you’ll stick around and follow along with the 2020 blog hop. Visit others in the blog hop won’t you? See how others are starting a new school year.

Where to shop for curricula

August 3, 2020 By Annette1 12 Comments

The question of the day is just where does one do their homeschool shopping? There are so many options for getting your course material, I thought I would run through a few places for where to shop for curricula.

Free Shopping Online Multi-grade/subject

Seriously… shop for free if you can. It’s SO easy in the early years there are TONS of things available for free for preschool through grade three. Just look for literally whatever it is you want to do and print it off, or follow the instructions and simply go to.

Otherwise there are free curriculum sites that are multi-subject such as the ones below. These are just a few of the sites I’ve listed in an earlier post on how to homeschool without the boxed curriculum.

Easy Peasy Homeschool is a completely free curriculum for all subjects grades K-12. They have a facebook group to help you out, lots of good resources, and it’s not hard to figure out. Just take your time and work through what you need.

PlainandNotSoPlain has free curriculum for most elementary grades and a bit of highschool.

AmblesideOnline offers full Charlotte Mason Style curriculum completely free for every grade and subject. You’ll find schedules, lessons plans and even a library. Explore it and learn with it.

CK-12 has excellent science and math curriculum for free for a variety of grades.

Old Fashioned Homeschool offers quite a few online books and worksheets along with a schedule.

Khan Academy has excellent videos on math, science, computing, and history. Video with questions to determine understanding.

School Express gives unit studies for a variety of topics. Multi-age unit studies.

CoreKowledge offers free curriculum for almost all grades through grade five, I haven’t found a lot beyond that.

HomeSchool Share offers unit studies and lapbooks. Perhaps not a complete curriculum but covers a large amount of information.

Freedom Homeschool has a ton of free resources for every subject and grade.

photo of woman lying on bed while using laptop — Photo by Elijah O’Donnell on Pexels.com

Free Specific Subjects Online

adult blur books close up — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Lower Cost Curricula

Though not as prevalent this year as others, used book fairs are a great place to get curricula. Homeschool parents will gather up their used materials and bring them to a central location for sale to others.

You’ll also find curricula listed online via facebook, kijiji, amazon, and more. Looking on Facebook for local buy/sell homeschool groups in your local area will be your best bet.

Use the library instead of buying! Seriously, you can get some excellent books there. Also consider, if you have an audible account using it for getting some of your needed reading materials. You can also use Librivox (did you know they have an app now?). On Apple and google.

books in black wooden book shelf — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Curricula and Resource Companies

If you can’t find what you are looking for used or free, you’ll need to look into purchasing new. There are so many places where to shop for curricula I’ll be just be listing a few.

You can order directly from companies such as Home School in the Woods, UnitStudy.com, TechieHomeschoolMom, The Canadian Homeschooler, and TeachersPayTeachers, etc

A physical resource place such as The Learning House, Scholar’s Choice, and so forth.

Or online resource distributors such as Christian Book Distributors, Rainbow Resouces, etc

You might even consider renting curricula from a place like Yellow House Book Rental.

man sitting in floor of room full of books — Photo by Guilherme Rossi on Pexels.com

What about you?

Have I missed anyplace about where to shop for curricula?

I know I didn’t list that many companies, but there are SO many out there it would be impossible to list them all. Basically google what you are looking for and something new will pop up, or ask in your local homeschooling group for ideas and you’ll get a multitude of suggestions.

Goals for August

July 20, 2020 By Annette1 2 Comments

The Schoolhouse Review Crew offered up the challenge of Goals for August as the challenge for the week. I’ve been a bit stumped until I remembered that one of my goals for August is to find a way to help support homeschoolers in my community.

To that end I made a post in my local buy and sell group on facebook. I mentioned that if people had questions about homeschooling they could contact me.

How to Start Homeschooling in Ontario

Two ways depending on if your child has been part of the public school system or has not.

If they have in the public system been you need to send a letter of intent to your school board. Just tell them that you’ll be educating your child at home. They can’t demand additional information, you just need to tell them your intentions.

If you have never had a child in the public system, you simply start schooling.

What to Teach?

Homeschooling in Ontario is unregulated. This means you don’t need to follow the public school curriculum. You can design your schooling around the needs of your children.

If you do want to follow the Ontario school curriculum the Canadian Homeschooler has pulled together checklists up through grade 8.

A general suggestion if your children HAVE been in the public system, take some time off school (the summer is great for that). Observe your children, see what their interests are, observe their strengths and weaknesses, then consider what they have to learn. You use that knowledge to help teach your child.

For kindergarten, grade 1…you’ll find TONS of things online for them for free. You can buy a curriculum but you really don’t have to. You read, play a lot, and use life to teach.

English, Math, and Social studies form the basis of study for the younger years, adding in history, geography, science, as they climb through the elementary grades.

In middle school you start gearing toward highschool, perhaps adding in some foreign language, science experiments, and more.

Specific Examples

If you have a child who is fascinated by dinosaurs, kittens or dolls…use that interest to help them learn. You can do this through any of the grades. It doesn’t matter if you study the lifecycle of insects, or you study how bears or sharks. You can use the interest in one thing to segway into another topic. You sometimes never know where your studies will end up!

My son’s love of toads got us into carpentry, pond building, science of insects and reptiles, art, history, biology, soil composition, geography and engineering (toads have this amazing ability to climb and dig!). His love of weaponry had him researching history, ww1 and ww2, building armour, shields and various pieces of weaponry. Learning airspeed, sighting and sightlines, tension and accuracy. It’s fascinating how one interest can spread into increased learning.

Is it expensive?

To be honest, homeschooling is as expensive as you let it be. You can homeschool for free, or you can pay big bucks for curriculum and there is EVERYTHING inbetween.

One of the best sources of schooling that I have found is SchoolhouseTeachers.com. They provide a complete curriculum for your entire family. K-12. A lot of their 450 courses are interactive. They are American-based but honestly.. science, geography, social studies… pretty much the same right? Right now they have a huge deal on where you can get two years for the price of one. HUGE savings! 🙂 Use the coupon code SHARK20. You’ll only pay 179$ (US) for two years and thereafter only pay $179 for your annual membership.

One thing you need to weigh out is, free means more parental involvement in finding supplies, books, and piecing items together. This can be part of the joy of homeschooling though, finding all the pieces that make it work for each child.

A paid all-in-one curriculum means the work is done for you. All you need to do is purchase and set your children up. The younger your students are the more hands-on you’ll need to be regardless of what method you use. Also the newer to homeschooling your children are the more assistance they will need.

Homeschooling is not just school at home, it’s learning to be independent, to make choices about your learning, it’s learning to find how to work your way through difficult subjects, and promotes more internal accountability. The sooner you realize the difference between homeschooling and “school at home” the easier it will be for you and your children.

Where to do your schooling

My son does most of his schooling sitting on his bed with his cat beside him. 🙂 But occasionally joins me on the main floor with laptop in hand.

We have schooled at the kitchen table pondering the mysteries of math, meandered through a forest doing art and science together, partaken in field trips enjoying hands-on, immersive experiences, and learned geography and minerology hiking trails together. Learning can be done anywhere as long as you are willing to take the opportunity.

What are your goals for August? Are you working to support homeschoolers or new to homeschoolers in your area? If you live in South Huron I invite you to join my facebook group South Huron Homeschoolers. Together we can help our children learn.

The Best Memories of Homeschooling

July 13, 2020 By Annette1 12 Comments

This week’s challenge from the Homeschool Review Crew is “Favourite Memories”. I have lots of good memories from my life, but since this is primarily a homeschooling blog, it’s appropriate to share my best memories of homeschooling.

The “I got it moments”

Math has long been a struggle in our household, not because we don’t like math, but because the lad and I think differently about math. So when he struggles with a concept it can be a challenge to figure out what method will work for him.

I can distinctly remember the problem we had with division. He understand that it’s basically the opposite of multiplication which made TONS of sense to him, but the reverse? Oh my. We were reviewing a product called Stinky Kid Math and their variations on how to teach division made sense to him. He was able to review these different methods and then let them sit overnight in his brain and the next day doing division was no problem for him. The relief on his face when it finally all made sense to him. MARVELLOUS!

That pivotal moment taught him far more than I thought it would. Now if he struggles with learning a concept he’ll review from a number of different perspectives and teaching methods until it makes sense to him. Review it, walk away from it, let your brain work it all through, and then GOT IT. I love that as a teenager he is still free to share with me those “I was struggling with this, and I learned to do it from this person” moments.

$stinky kid math logo$

Field Trips

Face it, if you homeschool and don’t take field trips what is WRONG with you? 🙂 (other than family logistics are sometimes hard to figure out)

Field trips give so much organic learning from learning about the Christmas 1914, soldiers in training for WW1, black history, or even browsing museums and watching what catches your child’s eye. You may end up walking on stilts as you discover old games children played, or have fun racing cars you built at the science museum. So much hands-on, interactive ways to learn, and chances to practice your reading and listening skills. You can cover history, science, geography, nature, social studies and so much more in just one trip out of the house.

Spiders Alive RBG — Spiders Alive, RBG special exhibit, so fascinating

Learning Alongside

When the lad was young we would do our history by reading coffee table books and history encyclopedias together. So much fascinating information in tidbit form. Just enough to stimulate a lad’s curiousity and give us things to talk about. It was so much fun comparing author’s points of view and how it affected what they wrote. As he got older we did our geography the same way. Loved this way of learning together.

I think next year I’ll work through The Master and His Apprentices with my lad. Make for an art and history program at the same time.

Watching Growth

My boy has changed from being a Mom has to be right beside me in order for him to learn and work to… if mom’s in the room WHY is she there?

I remember fondly playing in the rain, learning about how currents of water flow. Of digging in the garden and seeing the different types of dirt, learning we have mostly clay soil and watching my lad grab hold of that and starting working with clay. Observing toads and earthworms, of large collections of insects, and books upon books to read together. A lad playing on the floor as we explore the world of Forest Cats, and travelled into the past, or learned more of the people of God. Such good times.

Now that he’s older our homeschooling as changed. He is so independent now. Just requires me to check in on him from time to time, mark tests and talk. Talk about what he’s learning, what he is thinking, and the joy of new discoveries.

We now discuss curricula together, deciding what would be best to use given his style of learning. Sometimes we choose courses from SchoolhouseTeachers.com and other times we buy it. What subjects are most important and how to organize his learning.. as in how many chapters need to be covered in a week or month so he can stay on track. He is such an independent learner, it’s wonderful!

Friendships

We are a quiet living family and making friends is hard, so homeschooling has helped us expand our circles. My lad has friends! It’s a very good thing. I have friends too which is so surprising. It’s great!

Do you have some favourite memories…. of homeschooling or just life in general? Stop in with a post, or link to instagram, or facebook or whatever. It’s good to share in the joys of others. I hope that you have enjoyed my best memories of homeschooling.

10 Ways to Engage in Summer Nature Study

June 22, 2020 By Annette1 1 Comment

Did you know that summer is upon us? I KNOW! How did that happen so fast, seems I was just getting my garden in and now it’s almost July. Means that soon I’ll have a 15 year old living in my house! Thinking of my boy brings me back to his childhood and all the walks we did in our local bush. I thought it might be fun to recall some of our explorations (if I can find the pictures) and talk about 10 ways to engage in summer nature study.

The Fun of having a pond

What exactly is nature study? It’s viewing the world around you and taking time to make note of it. It’s seeing ants and watching them work, watching a bumblebee bumble in the backyard, or finding clover in your front lawn. Nature study is simply the art of paying attention to the living things that surround you. It can happen indoors or out, at home or in the community and often when you go on vacation. It might even be something that you make!

We have a pond in our backyard that has gone through a couple of changes. The first year we had it, we were inundated with tadpoles. It was so cool listening to the calls of the toads, and one night the lad and I went out late and discovered mating toads. This of course, resulted in lots of tadpoles. For a fun quip from my lad see my original post.

As my son’s love affair with insects continued, we learned to build an insect trapping kit. This lovely device is called a Pooter. We used it for a long time and it was actually quite easy to make. You can make different sized one depending on the size of the insects you want to catch.

How Nature Study Happens

Nature Study mostly looked like taking advantage of where we were. If we went camping up north we took our time examining the wildlife around the numerous small ponds. If we went for a walk in the bush we’d examine the mosses, fungi, ferns, birds, spiders and insects that we came across. Our weekly trips to the local park let us watch the baby Canada geese mature. Regardless of where you live, nature study is possible.

It might look different to you. Where you live you might have pigeons and ospreys surrounding you, or you might have lizards and roadrunner in your backyard. For all I know, you might have manatees swimming in the local waterways. Take advantage of the world around you and take your time to learn about what you see. You never know what might inspire you… You might design your own toad area!

Bend down and touch the moss and fungi. Imagine if you will, the wonder in your child’s eyes when he discovers that some fungi puff up and release their spores if they are lightly brushed. Take your phone and grab a picture so you can remember and look up more information when you get home.

10 Ways To Engage in Summer Nature Study

Go into your backyard/park/local green space. Put a hula hoop around yourself and now take the time to examine everything inside that hoola hoop, count the spiders, types of plants, ants and other insects, see if you can find any arthropods, tiny invertebrates, feathers etc.
Weekly take walks in a bush, park, any green space, go to the beach, and just look… wildlife is everywhere. At the beach check the dunes for insects and spiders, watch the water birds, scour the shore for interesting rocks or shells. In the park, you’ll find birds, tracks of nocturnal critters, small rodents and maybe some reptiles too!
Make an art project from collected items. For inspiration, you might find Crafty Ideas from Nature handy.
Drawings while out in nature. One of the most enjoyable art pieces we’ve ever done has been going out into nature and drawing what we see. Moss on a log, a tiny spider in a web, a pine cone hanging from a tree, just sitting there and drawing while listening to the birds around us. Hugely successful and generated so much conversation.
Scavenger hunts. Looking for words about nature such as Wild Words, or objects to find, or specific plants. Have fun with it, it is great for all ages!

Five More ways

Follow Inspiration from nature books, cards, or any study you are doing. Such as if studying owls, going on an owl prowl held by your local park/nature authority.
Go out at night, to an area you are familiar with, and just sit quietly. Do you see anything different than you would during the day?
Set up a bird feeder and note the birds that come through. Are there any that are just passing by and are thankful for a quick meal, or do you have any permanent residents?
Get a pocket microscope so you can do close up examinations right on the spot, allowing you to release small critters right where you find them, or lets you examine a leaf or flower without damaging the plant. So quick and easy!
Keep a nature journal. Just a way to document what you see and watch changes occur throughout the seasons. Write in it, draw in it, and attach a bag to keep items in.

Establishing Trust

June 18, 2020 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

You know what really makes independent learning work? Trust. A trust from the student that their teaching parent will do their part to make them a success. Then trust from the teaching parent that their student will do their work to the best of their ability. Without that two-fold trust, independent learning simply won’t work. So how do you go about establishing trust?

What is Trust?

Trust: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone.

Trusting someone means that you think they are reliable and that you have confidence in them. When you trust someone you feel safe with them.

How do you establish trust?

Trust is something that comes with time and experience. Sometimes your intuition will have you trusting someone immediately, but overall, trust takes time to develop.

Since we live in a fallen world, where people do things they aught not to, trust isn’t the easiest topic to converse on. People who are in positions of authority who should be able to be trusted, sometimes they can’t be. Families aren’t always what they should be, parents do things they aught not, kids do bonehead things, and I cannot address every situation in this post. I will work based on my experience only! 🙂

Teaching Parent

It starts when you first meet. Kids in my classroom, children of friends, and son of my own. Trust starts to build from your first meeting.

Do you do what you say you will? Can your words be trusted?
Do you act like you say you will? Do your actions show truth?

Once you have that baseline established, trust is furthered by your

Competence
Reliability
Integrity
Communication

Questions to ask yourself

In your home, do your children trust that you will do all you can to help them? Whether that is pointing them in the right direction to get the answers and help they need, or by providing them with the answer yourself. Have you established yourself as reliable source of aid?

Do you take the time to learn how to communicate with each other? This is something that is continuing to change in my household as my son matures. He LOVES precision in words..they matter a lot to him. Having to deal with a mom who is not so precise in her language sometimes creates barriers (both from his end and my own).

Integrity comes by saying and doing what you say you will. It shows in how you do your work. I made a promise to my lad that I will never deliberately lie to him. What I say is so. This doesn’t take into account the occasional misunderstanding, but since he knows I don’t ever intend to lie to him, it’s good. He knows me well enough there and it becomes a matter of clarification not wrong-doing. Can your children say the same of you?

Competency comes through in the accuracy of your help. Can you render the assistance needed? Can you organize their stuff, order their supplies, keep them on task, and do the myriad of supportive tasks to get them through their schooling? My son has learned that when it comes to estimating the time it takes to do something… I am horrible! 🙂 So he always doubles the time of what I think something will take (I learned this two weeks ago). 🙂 But he’s also learned that I do have my areas where I shine and takes full advantage of it.

Independent Learner

Your student has the same expectations placed upon him/her. They need to show competency in doing their work, reliability in completing it, integrity in holding to what he/she says/does, and have the ability to communicate with you clearly when there is a problem.

Some of these skills needed to be encouraged and/or strengthened, or perhaps outright taught. Youth don’t just pick up these skills, they learn them through being taught what’s a correct response.

Teaching them when they are little to have a system of organization (even if it doesn’t match yours), allowing them to make decisions about when to do what in their school day, and finding a way to finish what you started. Accept them for who they are, but encourage them to do it well.

Trust Takes Time

So for my son who has a thing for insects, he raises ants and has learned to create habitats for them, with the end goal being to sell them (the ants as a colony) at some point. I have used my love of mice (and his love for his snake) to teach him how to sell mice as a precursor to him selling his ants when they are ready.

Over this past year, we’ve discussed changing the price we charge and have worked out things like commission if I sell his mice for him, and which mice we keep back. This year he’ll be responsible for taking pictures of the mice and posting decent ads for them. Now.. mice don’t move as fast as ants do, but it takes patience to get a good picture of a mouse. All these incremental steps give him the confidence he needs for when he assumes control of this business. Running your own business means balancing a lot of skills.

Just as I’m slowly allocating more responsibility to my lad for his mice, is how you increase their abilities to be trustworthy with their school work.

Establishing trust takes time. Give them time to cement the skills you’ve taught them, add new expectations, and before you know it, they’ll be running the show. 🙂

Summer is almost here and let’s just celebrate now with the homeschool year wrapping up.

I’ve gotten together with 7 other bloggers to bring you this wonderful giveaway so that you can enjoy planning for your next homeschool year.

We are giving away 3 $100 giftcards from the place of your choice. You can choose from:

Amazon
Rainbow Resource
Hobby Lobby
Christian Books

Entry -Form

The winner will be notified by email and will have 48 hours to respond to claim their prize or else another winner will be chosen. By entering this giveaway you will be added to the email lists of the participating bloggers. Read the terms and conditions for more details.

Learning when to take a step back

June 16, 2020 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

One of the hardest things I had to learn as a homeschooling parent was learning when to take a step back. I needed to learn when I actually could not teach my son something. It was a pivotal moment in our homeschool journey. For it didn’t matter the curricula, it didn’t matter my heart or desire, or his willingness to learn. Learning to take a step back and let him figure it out… this was what was important. Every independent learner will have some subject that makes this matter pivotal in their journey. Being prepared will make it easier! 🙂

Learning when to take a step back, text on stairs

Our Story

I loved teaching my son. Learning together, making discoveries and talking about them. It’s such a great thing to watch a child learn something and make it their own. A total highlight of my day. But you know what? Children learn and grow, they develop their own way of thinking. It’s a good thing no? And it’s occasionally eye-opening as well.

I still remember saying to my hubby. “I can’t do this, I can’t teach this boy math, I am so DONE with it.” In the ensuing conversation, I brought up how the lad thinks about math differently than I do. My approach is to come at it from point a to point b. Math is a subject I like, and it’s generally very straightforward to me. The lad looks at math more like a solution.. and then how do I get there? It seems so very backwards to me but it works for him.

Since we think very differently it was a matter of here is some really different math curricula… do it. Think about math differently. See how it goes. Over the course of six months, the lad explored math-art. That six months gave the lad a break from “mom math” and the time he needed to decide what he really wanted in a math program.

Something he could do on his own, that would challenge him, and would teach him real math. I came up with three solutions for him. One proved a total bomb (total waste of dollars), one worked extremely well(mostly free), and the other was a back up for when the extremely well one didn’t explain things properly (completely free, old textbook). He also utilized youtube and khan academy. I was a sounding board and nothing more. No more frustration! The lad learned to teach himself math, in a way that totally works for him. He loves math and does well at it.

Be Prepared

Just as you need to set your student up for success with electives, giving them choices that will help them with their future endeavours, you need to be prepared for your student to take some initiative. They will at some point, balk at something you want to teach them, or a method you use, or the style of the material.

And that’s okay.

It is.

It’s a sign of growing maturity, of burgeoning independence in someone who is discovering their own way. Light their path for them. Give them the tools they need to get there. Tools for the future, and options in the here and now. They will (hopefully) thank you for it later.

Just as you organize their day and the stuff they need to do their schooling, you can organize your stepping back, exiting from where you are not needed as their independence blooms. And enjoy the process (and yes, it can be hard), but independence is our goal after all is it not?