Eclectic Homeschooling

(Reposted from elsewhere)

I'm a homeschool graduate who is now homeschooling my own children. My dad was homeschooled for a few years in elementary school as well, so I guess that makes us third-generation homeschoolers.

My kids are now starting to reply to the question, "Are you in school yet?" with "We have school at home."

So far we've been doing mostly unschooling, just learning from games and conversations we have in daily life and letting the kids do workbooks and other materials when they want to.

This year we'll be moving into a slightly more structured eclectic approach (particularly with the 5yo), combining short periods of more formal text-type work with the kinds of things we already do--lots of projects, games, fingerpainting and play-dough, doing things around the house, and going on field trips and to the library.

We are technically doing K-5 with our 5-year-old and K-4/preschool with our 4-year-old. But they are both reading already (the 5-year-old was reading at a 4th grade level on her 5th birthday when we tested her, and is reading quite a bit better now a few months later), can write and can do fairly advanced math (4yo does simple addition and subtraction, 5yo is starting to play around with some concepts of multiplication and division). So we'll be using a hodgepodge of more advanced materials as needed.

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The 1yo, of course, won't be doing schoolwork per se. But I have a book of Montesorri activities and a wonderful book called "Slow and Steady Get Me Ready" with activities from birth to age 5. And Baby E will listen in on the older girls' studies and join us to do things like play with playdough, read books and color.

For the two older girls we're starting off with Singapore Math Early Bird Kindergarten 1A and 1B for the 4yo and 2A-2B for the 5yo, but I'm expecting that may only take them 2-3 months to get through the year's material. It's almost all stuff they are already proficient at.

So I need to decide whether to go ahead and start them on the next level of Singapore books, supplement with extra practice, or just play lots of math games and let them initiate questions and conversations (which is all we've really done so far) and see where that takes us.

My family used Saxon math when I was growing up, and DH used it in his traditional school as well. It's often considered sort of the gold standard for math. However, I've heard very good things about the Singapore math, and Singapore consistently is one of the highest scorers in the world in students' math proficiency. Although we may end up using something like Saxon later, I am really excited about the colorful, interesting and refreshingly different approach the Singapore match books take--at least in the early volumes we've looked at. The girls find the math books very appealing and can't wait to start them.

For the 4yo, I plan to use the A Beka Kindergarten science book, work on phonics (we have several phonics games, An Acorn in My Hand, lots of beginning reading books, and musical phonics tapes), and do lots of activities, reading and unit studies (we have Before 5 in a Row, which will be perfect), check out books from the library, and do lots of crafts, learning games and other preschool/kindergarten stuff.

For the 5yo we will use the Bob Jones Beginnings K5 program as a takeoff point, and probably add some things or pick and choose what to do from it. It seems perfect for giving her practice and filling in the gaps in things like understanding and reading comprehension, and I don't think she'll be bored with it.

It's such a varied and flexible approach that it's appropriate for both pre-reading and already-reading kids, and the stories and activities are age appropriate but not locked into one skill level. It covers all the subjects except math in one integrated curriculum, and it looks like it will be a lot of fun. It even comes with music tapes.

Having a curriculum designed for a 5-year-old is helpful for me, especially since sometimes it's easy to forget that just because AJ is gifted and doing work far above her age level, she is still 5 years old developmentally. The Home Teacher's manual really makes the point that in preschool and kindergarten, the goal is exposure more than mastery, not pushing them at all but just starting to whet their appetite for learning.

I'll supplement with some more advanced reading (Bob Jones first grade reading, library books, an old-fashioned primer, and other things), and the Christian Liberty science and history books. The CL Kindergarten science and history books are small and include a lot of Bible and tie in with what I want to do for Bible this year. For at least the first little while we'll be studying the creation story and learning about the different elements of the world--solar system, earth, sky, sea, plants, animals, etc. in general.

For Bible, we're going to use several different resources and do lots of reading and projects and some memory work. We'll also be doing Spanish with a beginning audiotape based program, and I'll make sure the kids spend some time being physically active every day too.

The structured or semi-structured schooling will probably take an hour and a half to two hours per day for AJ and less for M&M. As they get older that time will increase, but generally homeschooling takes far less time to accomplish more than classroom-based education, partly because the more one-on-one and individualized approach is so much more efficient.

As my mom did, I tend to lean toward a more eclectic approach, using a combination of methods from unit studies to textbooks to just learning as a part of daily life.

This past year we did mostly unschooling with a little workbook stuff when the kids wanted to, and they have learned a lot that way. We'll continue to do a lot of that no matter what approach we take, I'm sure.

For example, today we had a completely impromptu lesson on the water cycle and weather.

The girls were just finishing lunch when AJ thought up a riddle: "How can you hold water in your hand, like this?" She held up two fingers as though holding an object between them.

MM thought and made several guesses, and finally I guessed too: "You freeze it?"

"Yes! You can hold water in your hand if it's ice," AJ said. She was so delighted with herself for coming up with such a great riddle.

I said, "Do you know how to make water into ice?"

"You make it really cold?"

Both girls were so engaged and excited about the topic that it grew into a whole lesson, completely unplanned.

We poured water into an ice cube tray and put it into the freezer. Then we decided to try freezing juice, and made juice popsicles with paper cups and plastic spoons. Once the girls had put them into the freezer, we started talking about how ice can turn back into water when it gets warm again.

Next, we got some ice cubes in a glass and watched them melt, eventually helping them along a bit with a few seconds in the microwave. Once they had turned completely into water I heated a pot and we poured the water from the glass into it. The steam formed a cloud, and I held the empty cup over it to collect the condensation and turn it into rain.

Everything we did, the girls observed closely and we discussed in some detail. We talked about how snow, hail, sleet and freezing rain are formed, too. When DH got home that night, they recapped all they had learned about water and weather to him.

For their story before nap/quiet time, we read a book about "How Weather is Made." It went right along with the activities we'd just done, and helped reinforce what they had learned.

All this was after we'd already had a casual lesson in fractions by looking and and talking about the different ways our tangerine segments could be divided at lunch.

So much of our learning takes place like this; just taking advantage of the conversations, life experiences and opportunities that being together give us. If we're not playing rhyming and spelling games in the car, we're answering questions about vocabulary and science, or figuring how how many pieces of corn will be left on our plates if we eat a certain number of kernels.

It's so much fun to see the world fresh through the eyes of inquisitive youngsters. I know I'll learn a lot along with them.