This post is part of a narrative history of our homeschool. It is about why we chose to homeschool, what we did and how we did it. It is about our failures and frustrations as well as our successes. The plan is to make an honest accounting of it all for the benefit of ourselves and others. This is a work in progress which was started in late October 2014 after the kids had already skipped most or all of high school, Christian had earned a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics (Summa Cum Laude), Kelly had earned a Bachelors degree in Statistics (Magna Cum Laude) and they were ensconced in funded PhD programs on the West Coast. I add to the narrative as I have time.

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This story will be divided into nine sections, each consisting of several chapters. Kelly is sixteen months older than Christian so some of the experimentation was done with her followed by refinement and adjustment for learning styles with Christian. Again, I am making this up as I go along so this could morph some as I remember more stuff or revisit previous sections to backfill material needed for future stuff to make sense. The sections are as follows:

  1. Introduction – This section.
  2. Before Kindergarten – Both of the kids learned to read fluently by age four. They learned to read in completely different ways. This section describes how each of them learned to read, the materials we used in teaching them, and our struggle to find appropriate materials for each one. The small series of events that lead to our understanding of the difference in the way each child learned started with the different way each of them learned to ride a bicycle. This also describes how they started memorizing poetry and scripture, something which we had no initial intention of teaching them.
  3. Kelly’s Kindergarten and First Grade Years – Kelly attended a traditional Christian Kindergarten in our neighborhood. The experience was really quite good. Good but not great, so for her first grade year we decided to try homeschooling. I describe why we decided to homeschool, the books we read to try to get a handle on how to do it, what we did and how it went.
  4. The Government School Years – Kelly and Christian went to the local government school when Kelly was in second grade and Christian was in Kindergarten. The first school they attended in Sherwood, Oregon was quite good. We might never have returned to homeschooling had we stayed in that school district, but we moved to Albany, Oregon the summer before Kelly entered first grade and Christian entered second grade. That year convinced us we needed to do something else. This section describes the good and the bad of their experience in traditional government schools and why we decided to switch to homeschooling.
  5. What Kind of Homeschool Did We Want to Be – We knew that we had to do something differently in our second pass at homeschooling than from when we did it in Kelly’s first grade year. That went great, but it was a lot of work and I had a day job. If we used that method, there was time to plan for homeschool or deliver the homeschool, but not for both. We investigated different homeschool systems and chose the ones that we thought might work best for us. In addition to systems, we had to decide what style of homeschool we wanted. There are many good styles of homeschooling including classical, unschooling, what might be characterized as traditional, unit based and what we have come to call “tiger mom” style homeschooling. It is possible for the kids to aim at vocational careers, the arts, sports or some specific college goal. This section describes how we decided between the plethora of tools, styles, systems and philosphies available to us.
  6. The Elementary School Years – This section describes a lot of the mechanics of our homeschool. We describe how we organized the work required to homeschool. This includes Lorena’s role as the stay at home mom, my role as the educator even though I had a full time job that required travel, our daily expectations for the kids and other operational considerations. I talk about the curricula we chose for this period, why we chose it, changes we made along the way, supplemental materials and, above all, planning.
  7. The Junior High School Years – Since Kelly skipped three years of high school and Christian skipped all of high school, we spent a lot of their junior high school years on things that would help prepare them for college. We chose curricula not only to help them prepare for the elevated academic rigor, but for a more challenging social environment. We discuss how we addressed worldview issues. It was very important, at this point, to explain in detail why we believed what we believe. We did not like the US History curricula from the system we had used during the elementary school years so we made one fairly large change that, serendipitously helped us understand how to better prepare the kids for college. I describe why and how we made those changes in the US History program and how it helped us with other materials and college preparation.
  8. CLEP Testing, the ACT and the Community College Years – Kelly and Christian both took the ACT college admissions examination every year from Christian’s seventh grade year until they entered North Carolina State University in the Fall of 2010. The did it as part of the State of North Carolina’s requirement for all homeschoolers to take a nationally-normed, standardized test every year they homeschool. The ACT as well as CLEP testing the kids took as part of their junior high school homeschool programming played a big part in their success in preparing for college. I describe the role of this testing and their transition, socially and academically, to community college.
  9. Hard Undergraduate Degrees and Graduate School – The kids were still young when they got to Big State U (North Carolina State University). This section describes the admission process, their degree selection (something hard), social adjustments between community college and Big State U, the amazing influence of NCSU’s math lounge on their social lives, and application to and selection of graduate schools and graduate degrees.

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Betty Blonde #197 – 04/17/2009
Betty Blonde #197
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