Homeschooling in California

We homeschool through a public school home-study program.  They give us resources (or offer them anyway, we can use whatever materials we like) and hold workshops and field trips, and we meet with a teacher-advisor twice a month. 

Well, this week, we’re asked to turn in report cards for the first semester.  I knew going in to this program that report cards would be involved, but I hadn’t really thought much about it until the form was in front of me.  Thankfully, we don’t need to assign letter grades - I wouldn’t know how to go about doing that.  We just write a little about what we’ve been doing for the various subjects.  They also gave us a list of the California educational standards to look at so we can make sure to mention the standards we’ve accomplished.

While it was uncomfortable to sit down and fill out that form, I have to say that reading over the list of standards has made me feel a whole lot more comfortable with how we’re doing.  Here we are, half way through the year, and we’ve already accomplished everything on the Language Arts and Math standards for Kindergarten, except maybe a little bit of writing.  There was one about good form and spacing when writing letters, and the kiddo isn’t consistent about that stuff yet.  But I’m not too worried, because it looks like if we do nothing but work on writing the rest of the year, we’re still good.

Not that we’ll do that.  The kiddo has big plans for stuff she wants to learn about.  More animals - she’s made that very clear.  We’re going to plant a garden and learn about plants in a month or so.  It’s time to head out for another hike to see our area in the winter (we’ve already explored in summer and fall, and compared what changes we saw.)  And she’s very excited about Chinese New Year - she wants to make a dragon to wear and dance with.  I’m sure by the time we get through all that, she’ll have a new list of stuff she wants to know about.

So, my goal is to remember how far we’ve come, and try to relax and have fun with our projects now.  She’s learning just fine.  More than fine.  Yea! 

I just started reading “A Natural Sense of Wonder: Connecting Kids With Nature through the Seasons” by Rick Van Noy. I haven’t learned anything yet, but it has brought a lot of old memories up for me. We used to play in the woods a few blocks form our house all the time when I was a kid. We had names for the different parts of the wood, and favorite spots to play. There was a creek, and a fallen tree that made a bridge across. I have some really precious, wonderful memories of that place.

We have to drive for about 20 min to get to a regional park/open space here. If there’s someplace closer, I don’t know about it. Anyway, there’s no place within walking distance that’s wild or natural. Even if there was, would I feel safe letting my kids play there alone the way I played when I was little? Maybe when they’re a little older, I like to think I would, especially if they went with a group of friends. I remember that was always a rule for going to the woods for my sister and I – we couldn’t go alone, only with a group of other kids.

But the sad thing is, my kids can’t just go knock on the neighbor’s door, collect a few kids, and run off to their imaginary kingdom in the woods. I can take them to a natural area, but that’s hardly the same kind of experience. Maybe it’s just the world changing, maybe it’s the area we live now, I guess it doesn’t really matter. It just means that I’ll have to put more thought and effort and time into letting my kids have access to fun outdoor nature experiences than my parents had to.

I’m curious – do your kids have a natural place to play? Did you when you were a child? What do you do to explore nature with your children?

My daughter asked for games at her birthday party. I was a little nervous about this idea because so many child experts that I’ve read about are very anti-competition. I wasn’t worried about my own kid – she wanted to have games – she’d asked for them after all. No, I was more worried about how the other kids, and the other parents might feel about it. Was is okay to declare one child the winner of each game, or was that not allowed now a days?

I’m happy to report that the kids all had a wonderful time. They absolutely loved the games. I even got some nice comments from parents too. They’d noticed, just as I had, that kids don’t play games at parties anymore, and it was a shame, considering how much fun they were having with their three legged races, and hot potato games.

We did have one little girl dissolve briefly into tears, but it wasn’t because she lost a game. She was frustrated that she was having trouble keeping her ping pong ball on her spoon. She wanted to do well for herself, she didn’t care about winning. All the kids were like that. They were in it for the fun. None of them cared who won. It was inspiring to watch in a way.

Maybe I was seeing the future in my last post, or maybe the reason I was feeling out of sorts and like our schooling was idling was because I was starting to get sick. 

The kiddo and I both got a nasty stomach virus yesterday.  Well, she got sick, literally, about three in the morning, on the carpet next to my bed.  Poor girl.  My husband and the baby had been sick two days before, but were much better.  Thankfully, my husband decided to stay home one more day to kick the last bit of virus he was carrying.  I could barely sit up in bed for more thna a few minutes at a time.  It would have been even more miserable for me to have to chase that cute, yet trouble-making, toddler around all day.

 We made a few haf-hearted attempts to do school work.  We did our reading lesson, because we could do than while snuggled together in the bed.  We started a writing lesson, but didn’t finish.

If we were homeschooling independently, it wouldn’t be a big deal.  We’d just continue on when we felt up for it.  But because we have to report to our school about what we do each day, we’ll need to make up the work.  At least we got sick on a Friday.  We have all weekend to do the rest of what I’d planned for Friday.  We’ll probably need that long too, because while I’m much better today, I’m still only operating at about 50%.  The kiddo says she’s all better, and she’s certainly running around like a healthy child, but she’s still running a small fever, so I want her to rest some today too.

 Well, it’s back to bed for now for me.  I hope today finds you well.  Hug your kids.

My father is in the hospital this week getting a new knee. We planned on visiting him in the evening after his surgery, so our school day involved a lot of projects revolving around Grandpa.

We worked on measurements for math, and baked some cookies to bring to him. Our art project for the day was a cute, potato stamp painting inside a get well card we made for him. The get well card was also our writing practice for the day. Even though Grandpa was too groggly for us to visit him on that first night, we enjoyed learning while also being productive and making gifts for him. This is how I sometimes imagine unschoolers operate, finding ways to learn through everyday activities that need to be done anyway.

On the flip side of that, my mother is under a lot of stress trying to communicate with the doctors, planning what therapy Grandpa will need when he gets home, and also still watching the girls two days this week. They did very little school work today, and the next Grandma day will probably be even worse because that’s the day Grandpa comes home.

However, even though there wasn’t much for Grandma to write down in out teacher planner book today, I think the girls still learned a lot. Maybe nothing that fit neatly into the categories of ‘writing’ or ‘art’, but many things in life don’t fit into categories. For example, my daughter was fascinated with how the machine that kept Grandpa’s leg moving – bending and stretching, bending and stretching, over and over again – worked. She examined it from all angles, and studied all the cords and joints. They got a little lesson on hospital etiquette, which I was proud to see they took very seriously.

And I think it’s wonderful that they also got to learn that sometimes our regular schedule gets put on hold because family is more important.

My sister bought me an ipod nano for my birthday earlier in the year, and ever since I’ve become a podcast junkie. I can’t get enough of them. They make podcasts on any subject you could imagine. It’s wonderful. So wonderful.

First, I want to dispel some possible misconceptions about itunes. Things I didn’t understand before I got my ipod. First, itunes is free to download, and all of the podcasts I’ve seen so far are also free to download. More importantly, you don’t need an ipod to get or listen to podcasts from itunes. You can just listen right on your computer. It’s great. Now, I love my ipod, and it’s nice to be able to listen without being tied to a computer, but if I’d known how many cool radio programs and podcasts were available to me for free, I would have been listening far before I ever had my ipod.

Most of what I listen to is very educational stuff. Nothing that would be useful to my kindergartener, but much of it could be useful to older students; certainly high schoolers could really get into this stuff. I don’t know how to link to a podcast on itunes, so I’m just going to throw out a few names and if you’re interested, just use the search bar on itunes to find the podcast. I have to say, I’m not a fan of the navigation inside the podcast area of itunes, and so I’ve mostly stumbled on a lot of these as I was looking for something else.

One of my favorites is “Grammar Girl”. These are short little podcasts, usually about 5 min or less that are entertaining and clearly explain some confusing points about grammar.

For kids who are into space, NASA puts out news podcasts about what they’re up to, and video podcasts about the space shuttle, and there’s one called Hubblecast that is a video podcast about what the Hubble telescope is up to. Really, there is just so much there.

For that matter, any science interest your child may have, there is probably a podcast about it. I listen to pet health podcasts, natural history podcasts, and Scientific American has several very interesting podcasts they produce. My favorite of the S.A. Ones are the “60 second science” and “60 second psych.” These are quick and interesting podcasts about recent studies or discoveries in science or psychology.

For the younger set, I do have two podcasts I’ve subscribed to for my daughter. Both are video podcasts, and I really only keep them in order to have something for those emergency situation when we’re stuck someplace dull and I need a few moments of entertainment. One is Sesame Street’s “Word on the Street” that introduces some larger vocabulary words to kids. The other is “They Might Be Giants” because I was a fan of that band back before they started making music for kids.

Today was a work day for me, and my mother was not available to watch my girls. I’ve taken a lot of time off lately as we got our homeschool started, and didn’t think I could take off yet another day at short notice. So my husband took the day of to stay home with the kids.

My mom was thrilled that he was going to do this. She thought it would be ‘good for him’. Her attitude bothered me a little because it implied to me that she didn’t think he appreciated what we do by homeschooling. That he somehow takes us for granted, and thinks what we do is easy, or unimportant. At home, he is very supportive. Not one has he ever criticized what I do, or don’t do. He’s never expected dinner to be on time, or cooked at all when he comes home. If there on no clean socks, he doesn’t complain, he does a load of laundry. He’s proud an impressed with what our daughter is learning.

Nevertheless, I knew he hasn’t put in all the research and background preparation that I have. So I asked him if he wanted to do his own projects today, or if he wanted me to give him a plan. He asked for the plan. I spent some time explaining what we were doing, what we’d already done, and gave him several options for activities for each subject we like to cover. I told him to pick a few, or let our daughter pick.

Even thought I thought he understood what he was getting into, I came home to an exhausted husband who happily turned the kids over to me, and retreated into his computer as soon as I was in the door. I tried not to be, but I was a little disappointed in how little school they did today. I think I’ve let go of that now – it just came as a surprise since homeschooling was originally his idea.

I didn’t think daddy needed a lesson about the homeschooling, but he got one today anyway.