Homeschooling in California

I’d read a little about lapbooking when I was first learning about homeschooling, but I didn’t really know what it was.  Now that we’re starting on our first one, I feel like I have a better idea, but I’m sure I will have lots to share as we learn and experiment more.

Basically, lapbooks are folders that hold lots of mini-projects that all revolve around a certain topic.  Our first one will be about dolphins.  Then each project or worksheet or whatever, the child does while learning gets put inside the lapbook.  I know we’ll have a diagram with the parts of a dolphin labeled on it.  Probably some drawings.  What makes a dolphin a mammal.  That kind of thing.  It’s great because they can be adapted or made for any level.  We’re covering the basics because we’re doing kindergarten stuff, but a high schooler could get really in depth into dolphin behavior or communication or conservation if they were interested.

It’s also a way to have everything together if the child wants to look back over what they learned.  Or if you need a work sample to show a charter school or your relatives. 

I know there are a ton of resources out there, but I spent all night exploring all the neat stuff at this site: http://www.homeschoolshare.com/

Obviously you can always make up your own items to include, but the neat thing about this website is that they have all the little books and projects already ready to fit inside a lapbook perfectly.  Great for beginners like us, and it’s a totally free site. 

If your child has done any lapbooking, I’d love for you to leave a comment and tell me about it.  I think we’re going to have a lot of fun with ours.

I have really been trying to wait until we completely finished the Alpha-Phonics reading program before writing my review of it, but I just don’t want to wait anymore.  Even if we stopped the program right now, I’d be thrilled with it.  I may not be too sure of my choices when it comes to a lot of areas of homeschooling, but I’m very proud of the decision to buy the Alpha-Phonics book.

 When we started using the Alpha-Phonics reading program, my daughter knew all her letters, but still got a few letter sounds confused.  She hated practicing learning her letter sounds though, so I gave up working on that with her.  Glad I did too.  I’ve since learned that she has to have a sense of purpose in what she learns or she won’t get it.  Memorising a bunch of letter sounds felt pointless to her, but learning to read was worthwhile.

I spent a lot of time researching different programs before deciding on Alpha-Phonics.  The reasons I picked it over other books, or more elaborate programs was that it fit my budget (about $25 compared to about $160 or so for Hooked on Phonics), and that it was so simple.  As I mentioned in another post once, I tried reading the “Bob” books with my daughter to see if she was ready or interested in learning to read.  She tricked me for 3 books into thinking she could read because she knew her letters well enough to get an idea of how each word started, then faked the rest from the pictures.  Alpha-Phonics doesn’t have any pictures, so I know when she reads a word, she is really reading it.

It isn’t a super quick program.  We started last summer, and read about a lesson a day or so, taking off some days to do other reading, and we’ll be finishing at the end of this month.  Early on in the book there are some lessons that are several pages long.  We usually cut these into smaller chunks because they were too boring for Hannah all in one big chunk, but other than that, she was reading from the first lesson.

I think you can probably find copies of Alpha-Phonics for sale at several online bookshops, but if you go to the official site: http://www.alpha-phonics.com/ you can download the first 5 lessons for free to give them a try.  That’s what helped me decide to use this program.  I didn’t have to do any preparation besides getting the book out and turning to the next lesson.  Hannah just read it, usually without any instruction, but sometimes I have to explain a new phonics rule to her.  That’s it.

Now everywhere we go, she’s reading signs, and reading on her own at home, only coming to me if she runs into words she has trouble with.  I can tell she’s going to love reading.  It’s so wonderful to see.

I read the term’ unit studies’ in various places, education books, and homeschool chat boards, for quite awhile before I knew what it meant. A few weeks ago, we actually used a reptile and amphibian unity study pack that our advisor gave us when my daughter asked to learn about snakes.

Basically, a unit study takes a topic that’s interesting to the child, and teaches as many subjects as possible around that topic. So, Hannah wanted to learn about snakes. So we read books about snakes (science and reading), looked at pictures of snakes, and painted and drew pictures of snakes (art), counted, sorted, and graphed all our reptile toys (math), made up a story about a snake (writing), Looked up where some snakes live on a map (science and social studies), and so on.

It was really a lot of fun. As a mom, I liked the way this type of learning combines many subjects, and shows the interconnectedness of learning. That math, for example, is relevant to other subjects. That all subjects can relate to each other in some way. I think it helps show how subjects fit into real life better than having every subject stand all alone.

That said, we were pretty well tired of learning about reptiles and amphibians after two weeks. Although, since we’ve moved on to other topics, Hannah still brings up, and wants to talk about what she learned about reptiles, so I know that unit studies can really stick with a kid.

One of the first things that confused me when I began to research the idea of homeschooling, was how to make sure to do it legally. What paperwork did we need to fill out? What records did we need to keep? What did the state require of us? I had a lot of those kinds of questions.

I learned that there are actually different answers to these questions depending on how your family chooses to homeschool. And I don’t mean teaching methods, or educational philosophy – the powers that be don’t actually seem to care so much about that, or maybe they aren’t allowed to care. No, what I mean is, do you homeschool independently, or through a charter school, or maybe a public or private home study program? I had no idea before I started reading how many options there were availble to homeschool families in California.

Independent Homeschooling.

If you want to go it alone, without using a program guided by another type of school, you are allowed in the state of California to basically file paperwork to become your own private school. You then enroll your children in your very private school, and there you are.

As your own private school you choose your own curriculum, and make your own decisions about what you want to teach, etc. When you go this route, you have a lot of freedom, but you are also on your own as far as paying for your supplies and teaching materials goes.

Private Home Study Programs

There are some private schools that offer home study programs. You pay a tuition, like you would at any private school, and they provide a combination of services and supplies. Different programs provide different things, so it’s hard to generalize much. Some give families a lot of freedom, and other offer more structure to the teaching. Most offer an advisor that you keep in touch with, and use a selected curriculum.

Public Home Study Programs and Charter Schools

Some public school districts offer home study programs for some or all grade levels. These also can provide an advisor and at least a recommended curriculum, and also vary on how much freedom they provide to vary from their plan. Because they are still public schools, they participate in the standardized testing that other public schools do, but legally parents can opt out of this if they are strongly against it.

This is the type of program our family is using. Our advisor is wonderful, and offers me so many ideas that I wouldn’t come up with on my own about how to teach various topics. She finds us wonderful materials to use, and we have very little out of pocket expense. Actually, we could spend nothing if we wanted to, but I still find books, and games on my own that I’d like to have. Our schools also offers workshops and field trips for the kids.

Charter schools are also public schools, but they have a specific educational philosophy that may differ from traditional public schools. You would need to research the ones in your area to see if they have a system that you like. There are charter schools that are homechool charters, and ones that have regular classrooms. Like other public schools, there is no cost or other requirements to attend. However, popular charter schools may have a waiting list or lottery system to get in.

So far, my little kindergartner enjoys almost all the schoolwork we do together – except writing.  She also doesn’t care for art.  I didn’t know there were kids who didn’t like art, I thought that was one of universal things that kids just naturally like.  Not so.  Even as a toddler, she never wanted to scribble or color.  It just isn’t her thing.

I’ve been on the hunt for ways for her to practice writing her letters and numbers in a way that won’t make her hate writing even more.  Most of the projects I find online involve an art or craft project, so it’s been a challenge finding something else.

I’ve mostly tried to keep any writing time short.  Just a few minutes a day.  I’m trying to have faith that when she’s ready, she’ll write.  Doing it now isn’t vital.

Then our advisor recommended something.  She said to start big, and then get smaller later.  She suggested writing letters really big in sidewalk chalk, or with finger paints, etc. (There is no way my daughter would muss her hands in paint!)

Yesterday, we tried using our dry erase board.  I asked her to write her letters as big as she could.  She actually didn’t write them very big, but she loved writing on the big board.  What impressed me the most, aside from the fact that she really enjoyed writing, was that she only made one letter, the lower case ‘b’ backward.  She normally writes many of her letters backward.  When she’d gone through the whole alphabet, and I was planning to move on to another activity, she insisted in also writing all the numbers from 1 to 10.  That was the real proof to me that she was enjoying herself.

 I think we’ll be using the dry erase board a lot from now on!