Month: December 2014

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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The instruction in Mathematics was particularly strong in our homeschool. It was not because we, as the parents, were particularly knowledgeable or had special insights. I think the thing we did well is continually monitor the progress of the kids to assure they continued to learn the material they were in. When we started back in homeschool, we chose Saxon Math. I think that is a great program, but after a couple of months we saw the kids were losing interest because of the tedium and repetitiveness of that system. We needed something that held the kids interest at the same time it laid a strong math foundation for future work.

Singapore Math

We had heard about the quality of Math education in Singapore long before we started homeschool. We just assumed the system was tedious and repetitive, too. We assumed that to receive the kind of in depth coverage of all the foundational material, it would have to be that way. We were so wrong. I read some reviews of the program, downloaded some sample lessons from the Singapore Math web site, talked to some others (also on-line) and decided to give it a try. We thought we would be a little behind because of our false start with Saxon Math, but when the kids took the placement test (available for free on-line), they were a little ahead of their grade levels. When we ordered the books, we decided to just start them at their normal grade levels to let them ease into the program. We were a little surprised that the best pricing we could find on the books at the time was through Sonlight.

We went at the recommended pace for about a week, but the kids were enjoying it enough and doing it so rapidly, we decided to double the assignments. We did that for the duration of the kids elementary school. That put the kids pretty for out front of what might considered to be a normal trajectory. One of the things we really liked about the Singapore Math program was a pretty strong focus on “mental math.” Christian really got into that and could do some pretty amazing calculations in his head. Kelly was not so bad at it either, but got to it at enough of a later age that that particular math skill did not get as ingrained compared to Christian.

Math After Elementary School

After the Singapore Math sixth grade material we switched to Teaching Textbooks. We finished it all well before the kids got to sixth grade and started in on the Singapore Junior High School, but we did not find it to be even remotely as good as the elementary school programs. I will talk about why we decided to switch to a different Math program to study Pre-Algebra, Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry in the section on Junior/Senior High School. For a taste of this, I wrote a post that is one of the most frequently visited posts on this site. It is titled Why we switched from Singapore Math to Teaching Textbooks. Also in the Junior/Senior High School section, I will discuss why we moved away from Teaching Textbooks to Thinkwell Math for Pre-Calculus and Calculus.

A Final Note

We are very happy with the trajectory we took with respect to Math. On the basis of this Math foundation, Kelly earned a degree in Statistics (Magna Cum Laude) and Christian earned a degree in Applied Mathematics (Summa Cum Laude) at North Carolina State University. We as confident about the quality of Math education received by the kids than any other subject area with the possible exception of what we studied in the area of Philosophy, Religion and Worldview. We can heartily recommend this path.

Finally, I should note that for Math, we did not follow any of the Sonlight daily planning guides. I am not even sure whether they have a plan for Math. The kids did two lessons per day in Singapore Math and I corrected their work very carefully every night, going over any material with which they struggled. It required diligence on my part and diligence on their part. I think it would have been that way for any math program we would have chosen

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Betty Blonde #230 – 06/03/2009

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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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Science was one of those subjects with which we struggled, not so much in terms of finding material, but in how to organize the learning. What we did worked well enough, but we would probably do it differently if we had a chance to do it over again. I guess the issue for us with what we did had to do with timing and organization rather than content. That being said, in the end we felt like we got stellar results from much of what we did. So, I will describe here, first what we would do if we had a chance to do it again because I have given it quite a bit of thought. Then, I will describe our actually trajectory with its challenges and successes.

If we did it again, here is what we would do

The core of Sonlight’s Science programs is now Apologia Science. Their programs are perfect for homeschool and the Sonlight science study guides are indispensable. Our only regret is that we did not start earlier with the Apologia materials. Christian was absolutely ready for Apologia’s General Science by the fourth grade. We would have put Kelly one level up in Apologia Physical Science during her fifth grade year and she could handle that just fine, too. From Sonlight’s science page, the recommended time to start Apologia General Science is in grades 7, 8 or 9. Neither do we believe the material was too difficult for Kelly or Christian at the earlier ages nor do we believe it would have been too difficult for most kids if the parents are engaged in the learning. That way he could have made it through the entire high school series by the end of the eighth grade.

One thing we did right by accident was to buy a science program from the Access Research Network called Real Science 4 Kids, Chemistry I. We were pretty disappointed with the pre-Apologia science provided by Sonlight, so halfway through the year, I started looking for something different. We chose that Chemistry book. The program includes laboratory work that includes taking measurements and evaluating data in a series of experiments. We actually read this book aloud together at night, then the kids would do the experiments during the day. I do not have enough good things to say about the Chemistry I program. I hope Sonlight considers looking into this whole series as part of their curricula some day. We honestly believe it is better than what they currently offer. Due to timing, we never did more than that one book. If we had to do it over, we would have gone through all of those books, but certainly at an earlier age than was recommended. That would have given us an even better foundation for the Apologia material.

The different Apologia programs and the grades at which we would have started them:

• General Science – Grade 4 or 5
• Physical Science – Grade 5 or 6
• Biology – Grade 6 or 7
• Chemistry – Grade 7 or 8
• Physics – Grade 8 or 9

The way it actually happened

Sadly, we stuck with the pre-Apologia programs provided by Sonlight until the specified time to start General Science in seventh grade. That bit us some when we the kids could skip high school if they wanted. Christian spent the summer before his Junior year in college cramming for a test required to demonstrate knowledge of high school Chemistry. The funny deal is that it was his memory of the material he learned in Real Science 4 Kids, Chemistry I that jump-started him in his preparation. In the end, the kids did not suffer, too much. Kelly took Geology and two semesters of Biology and Environmental Science as her college level Science requirements. Christian took one semester of Biology, one semester of Chemistry and two semester of Calculus based Physics for his Science requirements. They both did just fine.

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Betty Blonde #229 – 06/02/2009

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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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Our plan was for the kids to write a lot during their homeschool years, but the three years in government school created a bit of a deficit in the basic tools of language they needed to do it well. So our first task with respect to language arts was to try to improve those basic tools. Of course the amount of time we spent reading together helped a lot, but we wanted to build up their spelling and grammar skills in a more formal way. The kids did write a lot from the very beginning, but the writing took a back seat to the mechanics of spelling and grammar for the first couple of months. We continued hammering at grammar and spelling with two programs which we found indispensable.

Spelling

For spelling we used Spelling Power. The spelling program took the kids two years each. The blurb they have on their web page says it all:

With Spelling Power, your children will master the 5,000 most frequently used words at their own pace — in just 15 minutes a day — using research-proven strategies.

That is exactly what we did. We spent fifteen minutes per day with each kid on spelling. The program is very systematic in its approach, only a little time was needed each day, fit in well with our Sonlight based daily plans and the kids skills increased rapidly in a measurable way. There might be other ways to do this, but we were glad we found Spelling Power because it was perfect for us.

Grammar

We had some fits and restarts in trying to find a way to teach grammar that would allow the kids to work through at least part of it on their own while I was at work. About two months after we stared, we found a system called Easy Grammar that was every bit as good at teaching grammar to our kids as Spelling Power was at teaching spelling. It was amazing how well this program fit into our Sonlight centered plan, too. The books feature an 180 day per year program of worksheets in series of workbooks. The kids completed the last book, Easy Grammar Plus right before they started study for the Freshman College Composition CLEP examination for college credit. The Freshman College Composition CLEP test has now been replaced with a new one called just College Composition. They took the test at age 13 and passed the exam with high scores. These books were a little dry, but a single day of work was really not much longer than the work on Spelling Power. I have to admit my grammar skills improved quite a bit just correcting their work.

Daily Writing and Research Papers

The kids probably wrote a page per day on their literature and history. In addition, they produced an essay of some sort every couple of weeks or so. We had them do one big writing project every year. That was their formal research paper. The first were a little rough, but then Kelly was a fifth grader and Christian was only a third grader. Here is a link to Kelly’s first research report on Newspapers (pdf) and Christian’s first report on Flight (pdf). They hand illustrated the papers and included formal bibliographies. They were supposed to be 8-10 page papers, double-spaced and formated properly. We would have liked to have found a more formal, systematic way to teach them writing. We tried several systems, but felt none of them were particularly stellar. In the end, we either followed the writing directions of the Sonlight program or assigned essays and analysis tasks we thought up ourselves. The kids did very well in their college level writing, but we did not have warm fuzzy feelings about having covered writing in a systematic way. I think the year each spent in Freshman College Composition CLEP preparation brought them where they needed to be when they went on to college.

Other (Spanish and Typing)

There are a couple of other things we should probably include in the “language arts” bucket. The kids first language is Spanish. We always spoke Spanish at home because we figured if we did not, the kids would not be able to speak with their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in Mexico. In that regard, we were right on one count and only halfway right on another. Many if not most of the kids we know who grow up with bilingual parents lose the language of the country they are from if that language is not spoken in the home in the country where they live. They WILL pick up the language of the country where they live as they have many opportunities not to mention a need to speak it. So we were right that we needed to use Spanish as the language of our home. On the other hand, with the exception of the grandparents on both sides, almost all our family in Mexico learned English and all my siblings and most of my nieces and nephews learned Spanish.

Beside speaking Spanish, we purchased Rosetta Stone Spanish. The kids went through two years of Rosetta Stone before they began to prepare for the CLEP Spanish exam. They were able to test out of two years of college Spanish. I am not sure whether we are in a place where we can advise people how to study for Spanish in a homeschool setting because we came at it as native speakers (all but me, anyway, but I can defend myself fairly well).

The other thing we think (if you squint) fits into the language arts bucket is the typing we did. It is funny that we started in on typing in a fairly formal way when the kids were in second (Christian) and fourth (Kelly) grades. We did not want the them to play computer games. They wanted to do something on the computer, so we compromised by “letting” them play Mavis Beacon Typing on the computer for fifteen minutes per day during the summer. They looked at it as a game. Over a period of years they got pretty good and now they are screaming fast typists. That actually helped them a lot in their writing as they did not have to go through the pain of learning to type and write formally at the same time.

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Betty Blonde #228 – 06/01/2009

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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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We put History and Literature together in this post because that is exactly what we did in homeschool. We knew from our previous homeschool experience what we wanted from a History and Literature program. Many homeschool programs feature literature that tracks with their history program. We did it that way when Kelly was in the first grade and we were following the methods described in The Well Trained Mind. It worked very well for us. There were additional features of these programs that were important to us and were thankful for our previous experience because it helped us understand what we wanted in the homeschool programs we investigated. I will describe each of those features and the reasoning behind our decisions. These features are not necessarily in order of the importance we ascribed to them.

1. Lesson plans that assured we covered what was needed to move to the next level

I was pretty sure I could make daily lesson plans that would cover all the material the kids needed in History and Literature to move on to the next level each year. I had done it before using The Well Trained Mind. I knew, though, that I could not do that, work a full time job, delivery the material to the kids and correct their work. There just were not enough hours in the day to do it all. That is why I looked for programs that were more “canned.” That is, programs with daily lesson plans and curricula that had continuity from year to year culminating in mastery of sufficient material to perform well at the next levels: high school and college. In addition, we knew that the History and Literature programs should be coordinated with our Writing program.

We liked the idea of spending a couple years on a pass through world history and a couple of years on a pass through US History, then doing it again a couple years each at a deeper level. In addition to wanting to coordinate History with Literature, we wanted to assure the kids would read a representative sample of classic children’s and young adult literature. Actually, The Well Trained Mind was great that way, but again, we just did not have the time to do all the planning ourselves.

2. Reading aloud together

I read to Kelly and Christian a lot. We did it before they went to government school, then through those three years, too. We read many different books including the entire Laura Ingalls Wilder series, all the Homer Price books, all the Henry Reed books and much, much more. We did not want to lose that when we returned to homeschool. The problem was that Kelly was entering the fifth grade, two years ahead of Christian starting third grade. We LOVED reading together, but the material they would be covering would be very different. We needed to find a way to be able to read together even though the materials were very different.

3. Literature that represented other worldviews, but that did not diminish our worldview

Everyone has a worldview, even the ones that deny it. One of the reasons we decided to return to homeschool is that the kid’s teachers, Kelly’s in particular, gave lip service to neutrality but aggressively pushed a hard secular and feminist worldview. That worldview had already started to seep into the textbooks from which the kids studied. We wanted them to have some balance. We did not want them to be sheltered from either a secular worldview nor from what we viewed as a rigid, “churchy” worldview, but we did not want either to be rammed down their throat. We will talk about that in more detail in a later post.

What we did

We looked at Sonlight, A Beka, Calvert, Harcourt and some others. The Sonlight programs easily met the criteria we had set for ourselves better than any of the others. We had to be pretty creative when it came to the second category (Reading aloud together), but even that turned out better than we had any right to expect. The first literature book we read aloud together was one of Christian’s, The Witch of Blackbird Pond. It was an awesome start. It had nothing to do with what Kelly was studying, but it did not matter because it was just great literature. The first History material we read together was also from Christian’s program, The Landmark History of the American People: From Plymouth to the West, Volume I. It was probably the best and most interesting History text we read in our entire homeschool experience and that is saying something because we ended up with an amazingly strong History coverage. After that we quit worrying so much about what books went with which program when it came to our read aloud books. Kelly would have missed that great material if we would have stuck strictly to the specified material.

Even though we evaluated the daily plans as best we could from afar, our selection of Sonlight was really a leap of hope (not even a leap of faith). There are ways we could have checked this out more carefully, but the reality is that we did not know we had selected just the right program for our family until we had the Planning Guides in our hands. We did not strictly follow the plans for most materials, but for History and Literature we did exactly what was on the Sonlight supplied plans. It did two things: 1) We covered what we were supposed to cover and 2) it was the anchor for all the other materials, even math and science, that kept us moving forward at a specific pace that culminated in a good result many years later. I will talk about the mechanics of our plans and the role played by the History and Literature sections of the Sonlight planning guides in the section on Elementary School.

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Betty Blonde #227 – 05/29/2009

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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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Once we decided to bail on the traditional schools, we needed to make some decisions about how to homeschool. The way we did it three years before when Kelly was in the first grade was too much work. I explain that here and here. We wanted to have assurance that whatever we did would cover the material needed to perform well in high school and college. The reality is that we had somewhat of an idea of what should be covered from our previous experience. We hoped we could find a program with similar content and focus, but that did a lot of the planning for us.

Part of the challenge is that Lorena would be at home with the kids during the day, but even though I worked all day, I would be the principal teacher. That was why it was so critical to find a system that included detailed daily plans. There are lots of great programs out there. We looked at Sonlight, A Beka, Bob Jones, Charlotte Mason, Beautiful Feet and a lot of other programs. We liked the idea that the books in the Literature curriculum were coordinated with the History curriculum. We wanted a program that included extensive day-by-day plans and all the required materials and books, but that also provided some flexibility.

After looking at a lot of programs we determined was that it was going to be difficult to find all the things we wanted in single program and that whatever we did, we were going to have to pay a good chunk of money to do it. It would be a lot less than private school, but because we started from scratch and needed two complete programs we figured it was going to cost us about $5000 for the first couple years. After that, Christian could use Kelly’s program from two years previous and the cost would drop a little. I believe it is possible to do this for a lot less money if more time is available for planning and materials searches, but we did not have that luxury.

In the end, we arrived at a method for buying materials and daily planning that served us well during the entire trajectory of our homeschool with only minor modifications. I will walk through our decision process for each of the different subject areas for which we bought separate materials. This is the thing that got us off on the right foot, provided the structure we need to make homeschool tractable given our circumstances and assured we covered enough of the right stuff so the kids would be prepared for high school and college when the got there.

This section will include posts on the curriculum and materials we selected for each major subject area, why we chose what we chose and how it worked for us over the course of the homeschool. The major subject areas include the following:

• History and Literature
• Writing and Spelling
• Science
• Math
• Philosophy, Religion and Worldviews
• Art, Music and PE

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Betty Blonde #226 – 05/28/2009

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