Home schooling questions answer post # 1

Some great questions and hopefully I will share something that will help. I asked my married daughter, Mary Kate what was one of her benefits to being homeschooled... her response," It helped me greatly in college because college learning is self paced, disciplined schooling like our home schooling was. "

She really summed it up well... I do some teaching and I love doing science projects or special areas like music and art.... but the majority of my kids now are self paced and self taught now.... I interact by grading . When I look at their work then I do teach the areas that I can see they need help with... whether it be multiplication of multiple numbers.. 1243 x 234. If they do not get a high c or better than we go over the skills being taught. I have many of them grouped by skill level- not necessarily grade level. So that I teach the same skills to many at once. Usually at least 2 times a week I do an all group review ... where I am teaching the whole group math or language or geopgrapy... It may be what the younger ones are learning but still a good review for all.

Question about how to teach younger ones to do independent work... really they are not ready at the ages to do all of their work by themselves because they need to be able to read... I have teamed them with an older one and they do the reading for them and explaining... this has helped the older one to review and to gain confidence. We use this for learning Bible verses for Awanas and learning rote skills like multiplication tables.... this way again the older child gets a review and the younger one gets the one on one... This technique has worked wonderfully for our kids. Now if you have no older ones or your older kids are not great students ( may need lots of time just to do their own work and struggle doing work by themselves) the ability to do this is harder and you would need to supervise more... I suggest quick learning that the younger ones can do... I have lots of easy manipulative type activities for the kids to do until I can be there... I have some coloring pages... like really unique and detailed designs pages that I require only pencils or crayons on.. and each part has to be colored seperately ( so they don't just color all the details one color), puzzles, or easy games... like memory, flash cards they can match,or have the 5 yr old play hide an object so the younger one can find it.. while you teach your 9 yr old...

Also I have lots of charts up all over the house. Charts that show shapes, numbers and other skills. These can be bought at educational stores and learning from them is often just caught... I will see even my little grandaughter, Ava standing in front of one and showing Gracie the shapes correctly or the colors. Move them around from time to time also... I have been amazed at how much the kids notice "old" things after I move them. I do this with toys even.

I do what I call "catching" teaching moments with the kids.... Mya right now came up to me and asked if she could get Gracie up.. usually at 4 pm.. I asked Mya what time it was and she could not tell me correctly... so I had her count by 5s and she got a review of counting by 5s and what nickles are... she actually just got home with Ben ( She went to Walmart with him on an errand) and she spent 11 dimes... I did not plan this but she again reviewed counting by 10s and dimes... these are moments that we catch... not planned and to be honest some of our best learning has occurred during these times....

Also the skill of multi tasking comes in handy when teaching multiple children and ages and skill levels... I will teach up and down the skill all in the moment of teaching and hopefully it is review for some and a look at what they will need to know for that skill later...

The amount of time spent on "real " school does not have to be much... we cover the basics- math, reading, spelling, writing Bible and language arts skills every day. I have been goal oriented for them and for the last 2 yrs we have had the goal to improve reading and writing skills... since all of my kids are now ESL kids where english was their second language- these skills come slower and so our emphasis has been to write and read better. We write a letter, thank you note , encouragement, get well or persuasive - write to a politician to convince or a newspaper about an issue. We are learning what is to us basic communication skills to help them in life.... For younger ages... you can have them dictate to you what they want to write and then they can color a picture to go with it....

I have done unit studies before and love to teach that way the best... but have not done this as much this year... We would pick a subject to learn more about like creatures of the ocean... and the whole weeks lessons would evolve around that with some very neat field trips to the Baltimore Aquarium or NC one... or going to the beach for some "real" teaching moments. The kids are interested in birds and so we feed birds, write about birds, do art projects and listen to and be able to identify birds by sight , nests , their young and their songs. It requires lots of preperations but so worth it. I keep folders on the units and they have in them lots of ideas, pages we have colored, links to online stuff that has been fantastic, art projects and phone numbers to call to set up field trips -once we studied community helpers and visited police, fire and hospitals in our area. We have studied the C and O canal which is by us and for our field trip we went to the C and O Canal in Georgetown and got to ride on a real canal boat... for one of the art projects we made canal boats and floated them ... lots of online stuff for kids to. We studied farming once and visited a farm and our vet has had us over... Fun way to teach your kids.

Curriculum ?

I have used many curriculums... ABEKA, Bob Jones, Calvert, and now I am using a variety of them... from books bought at an educational supply store ( not whole curriculums like Alpha Omega life paks - too expensive for us) , School Zone, Francis Schaffer, Trend, School Speciality and even Saxon ( we are not fans of Saxon like some home schoolers are ).. I buy some material at Sams Club and Walmart even.... Because I am aware of the skills the kids need for each grade level I pick material that goes to that... some are easier that others and you have to know your child to get one that will be more successful for them...

I am a member of NATHANN NEWS and they have lots of great information for teaching special needs children. I also network with other parents some and our therapists for the kids ( speech and physical therapy) have given me some wonderful resources or leads to some and I have bought them . ( I do the physical therapy for all our kids after being taught how to) and we do speech once a week but follow up with speech for those who need it the other 4 days.

I do have a college degree in education and child developement and so it is an area that I also enjoy living out daily in my life.

Now for the question about what works best for older kids with little previous education... all of our 19 adopted children have needed this system that we have done... even the ones who had gone to school... they start out in preschool material and move usually very quick up to the grade level they can do that challenges them... I teach basic skills at first like colors, shapes , names of letters, sounds and just move up.... all my kids were not english speakers and needed this... some just needed basic social skills and learning about our family - a family - how to be appropriate, hygiene issues, and lots of other interpersonal skills to function positively in a family and our culture... the first year we work lots in these areas... what is a family, how we forgive and not retatiliate, what is a mom and dad or siblings. This is the only goal we set for the first year.. it is not the only goal that they achieve... some do wonderful and others we are still working on :) My point is we do not only teach academics in our school but we teach about our faith, life and other equally important values... and we unteach lots of negative behaviors. Some even have to learn to "pay attention" to extend their attention spans ( listening to music and asking about it or finding out some things they get excited about and have them do these things to draw their ability to pay attention for more than a few minutes). Then adding the not so exciting things to learn in...

We have "aged " out a child before who was not going to college- Joseph did not have the ability to achieve in college and we feel that really was not in God's plans either- but boy has he achieved at his career at Sams Club. Abraham is not working regulary for money but does play the piano and sings at functions for ministry and sometimes he is paid like for weddings... ( he suffered some brain damage due to a severe beating in his orphanage) but his ability to play the piano is awesome and a blessing. Our daughter, Molly also did not want to go to college- she is now 26, is an EMT-medic and has her own business -since she was 18. It was not hard for them at all to find thier niche and they have all done it exceedingly well.

I knew this post would be long... but hopefully helpful...

Jodi- You have a personal email :) I can't write all that I want to share here on my blog about your situation... but you are a blessing to all of your children.