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! 

For those who don’t know it, 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy.  Since a lot of kids love outer space, this is a good time to take advantage of some special events.  For the most up to date info, you can visit the official International Year of Astronomy website at: http://www.astronomy2009.org/

One of the things I’m looking forward to, is getting a Galileoscope.  It is an inexpensive telescope designed to be used inurban areas that allows us to see what Galileo saw with his telescope 400 years ago.  We should be able to see the rings of Saturn and some of Jupiter’s moons.  It isn’t available yet, but I’ve signed up to be notified when it’s ready.  If you don’t want to wait for me to post about it again, you can sign up too at: http://galileoscope.org.s24296.gridserver.com/

 So if you’ve been interested in tracking down a local astronomy club to join a stargazing session, now is a great time.  I bet a lot of local groups are planning extra fun stuff this year.  I think in the spring, we’ll make a special camping trip to go out an see the stars.

In response to all the toy recalls for lead paint in 2007, Congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (aka, the CPSIA).  It requires all children’s products (defined as any product designed, marketed toward, or appealing to those 12 and under) be tested by a 3rd party lab for lead and phalates (that bad stuff that softens plastics.)  It all sounds well and good.  None of us want harmful substances in our kids toys.  But there are problems with this law.  Big problems that have gotten surprisingly little press so far.

There are some really good blogs about the problems from those in the children’s toys and apparel industry, but I’m going to share a couple links to a more impartial source, Forbes.com.  They do an excellent joy of explaining how a good idea went so wrong:
http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2009/01/22/cpsia-waxman-cpsc-oped-cx_wo_0122olson.html

http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2009/01/16/cpsia-safety-toys-oped-cx_wo_0116olson.html

So what, you may ask, does any of this have to do with homeschooling?  Well, this law affects all products made for kids, so it therefore affects parents since it directly affects or choices as consumers.  But that isn’t the only homeschool issue here.

While the CPSIA is a direct reaction to recalled imported toys That were breaking already existing lead paint laws I might add.), it does not only regulate imported toys.  It regulates ALL children’s products.  Clothes, books, science kits, toys, art supplies, etc., etc.  Many smaller manufactures cannot afford the testing costs of hundreds to thousands of dollars per item.  Even if the items are made from supplies that have already been tested and certified lead-free, this law requires that the finished product be retested again at additional expense.  Some homeschooling books are published in small batches since it’s a fairly niche market.  Can they afford the additional testing costs?  If they do, you can bet the price for all the stuff we use and love is going to go up.

The scope of the CPSIA even covers libraries and thrift shops.  Children’s books may be disappearing from the library.  We may soon not be able to donate or buy used kid clothes and toys to Goodwill.  If you think I’m overreacting, visit the American Library Association website.  The country’s librarians are not happy: http://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/?cat=4

I urge everyone to read the Forbes articles to better understand these issues.  Then please write to your representatives and ask for common sense changes that will allow our children to be safe without destroying American companies that have always been consciencence about their products.

There are tons of books out there for parents about homeschooling, but not so many for kids.  I was listening to a homeschool podcast a couple months ago, and there was an author being interviewed, Rain Perry Fordyce.  She’s written a very cute picture book for kids about homeschooling.  The book is called “I am Learning All the Time” and is illustrated by Audrey Anne Miles Churney.

Being different can be tough on kids, and homeschoolers are different just because most people still send their children away to school.  Having a book that tells their story, that says homeschooling os normal, that lots of families do it, and that it’s good, I thik is very validating and reassuring for a child.  One thing I like about this book is the positive tone.  I tells the story of a 5 year old homeschooled boy and what he does at home compared to what some of his regular school friends do in school.  It doesen’t make any judgments about which way is better.  It doesn’t trash public schools.  It just shows that ther are different, and equally acceptable ways to do things. 

And from the kid point of view, I think Hannah would also give it a good rating since she asked for “I am Learning all the Time” as her bedtime story for at least 5 days in a row when we first got it, and frequently ever since. 

Another aspect that impressed me as I listened to that interview was what lengths Ms. Fordyce had gone to in order to keep the publication of her book as eco-friendly as possible.  She tracked down special a special publisher that would be able to print in the most environmentally friendly manner.  This is a self published book, and probably not available all over the web.  She specifically mentioned that they chose not to offer it on Amazon.  I ordered my copy directly from her at her website:

http://homeschooladventurebooks.com/

There is even an option to get an autographed copy there, so I couldn’t resist doing so. 

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.

Well, life overwhelmed me in November so I didn’t work very hard on NaNoWriMo.  I’m okay with that.  Sometimes we need to prioritise and realise that despite all the motivational speakers, and cheerleaders out there, sometimes we just can’t do everything we want to.

 So I’ve been focusing on pulling myself together, taking care of my family, and enjoying this journey we’re on.  When we first started homeschooling, I thought I could just add it on to all the other things that already filled up my life.  Turns out, that wasn’t the best way to approach it.  I think we’re doing generally well, but it’s a learning curve for sure.  From what I read on homeschool discussion forums, it will continue to be so too.

 My biggest personal problem, I think, is trying to do too much.  I know how smart my kid is, and she’s also sweet, eager to please, curious, and enthusiastic.  She made it too easy for me to keep pushing at her more than I probably should have, because she just goes along with me. 

We didn’t do much over the week when schools were closed for Thanksgiving.  We did some reading, and other little projects.  Found little lessons in everyday life.  Made me think about what it may be like to unschool.  When we went back to our regular schedule, my agreeable child started complaining from time to time.  Not much, but it was clear, that she wanted more freedom, and more free play time.

I keep telling myself, “This is kindergarten.  We should be playing all the time.  If she isn’t having at least some fun with a lesson, then I’m probably doing it wrong.”  And yet it’s still hard to not try to make sure we cover each subject every day.  Today I think we did better.  We made applesauce (science, math), did a reading lesson, and worked on her scrapbook (writing and art).  She loved it all. 

The school that we work through give parents almost total freedom.  Our advisor gives us ideas if we ask for them, but doesn’t ever tell us what we should or should not do.  We see her this week, and I think I’m going to ask for a little guidance about the level we should be working at.  It would help me to have an outside opinion about how much we should be doing.

I really think we’re on the right track, but it seems like the more we move away from workbooks and toward everyday life skills and lessons the less tangible stuff we have to provide “work samples”.  Is that a problem?  I dunno.  I guess we’ll find out when we see our advisor.

There won’t be many, if any posts made to this blog in the month of November,as I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo, as it’s also known.) The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write novel (a novel by this definition is at least 50,000 words) in the month of November.

It doesn’t need to be a good novel. In fact, to keep up that word count, it probably won’t be. It only needs to be a 50,000 word first draft. Editing is for December, as they say. There is a wonderfully fun, supportive online community for this huge event at http://nanawrimo.org and there are even local events, and write-ins held all over during the corse of the month.

My kids are way too young to participate or enjoy this kind of event, but I love it, and there are many young writers who participate. If you have a middle or high school aged child (or a really ambitious, younger kid) who loves to write, send to the NaNoWriMo site to check it out. It’s a great experience for anyone who ever thought about someday wanting to try writing a novel.

Another serise of early reading books we like are the “Step Into Reading” books, and other similar titles. There are at least two different publishers that make these type of books, but their levels and reading difficulty are very similar. We loved the level one books that also included pictures inside the text. There is a simple story, and some of the main words that will repeat throughout the book have a picture with them. Characters are used this way a lot, there’s a picture of the character with their name written underneath each spot in the story instead of just the character’s name appearing. We used these when we first started introducing reading. It allowed my daughter to ‘read’ parts of the story (I would read the words, pointing to where I was reading, and when we got to a picture, she would ‘read’ it.)

Letting her do this helped reinforce how a book was read (left to right, top to bottom), and got her to follow along with the righting instead of looking only at the illustrations as I read to her. These stories are also very simple, so now that she’s a little more advances, she is going back to these books and reading the words as well, and it helps that the stories are already familiar.

We read a lot of level 2 books now. They have simple words, although I need to help her with some from time to time as we haven’t gotten through all the long vowel rules in our phonics lessons yet. Most of these books are very commercial, which I personally didn’t like at first, but now it seems like a good thing to have books about beloved characters to really get a kid excited about the story.

Levels 3 and 4 get gradually more complicated, longer stories, and eventually move into short chapters.

 Related posts: Early Reading Books part 1: Bob books

Our Favorite Phonics Website

I mentioned our favorite website for great, fun, phonics reading stories and activities, in my post Our Favorite Phonics Website , and I’ve mentioned a few other titles my kid loves from time to time, but I thought I’d list some other great early reading books in their own posts.

First are the “Bob” books. I guess these are actually very popular books, yet I only learned about them by overhearing two other moms talking at a homeschool park day. They are very short, and are grouped in increasing difficulty. Set A is simpler than set B, and so on, then there is book, 1, 2, 3, in each set. The books are small, and the illustrations are very simple line drawings. I remember reading someplace that the drawings are intentionally very simple so that the kids can reproduce them if they want to. The first time we used a “Bob” book, we got to volume 3 or 4 when I realized my daughter had been tricking me by figuring the story out from the pictures, and not really reading the words. I think she said ‘blanket’ when the book said ‘rag’. But now that we’ve moved on to the next set, she uses the pictures for clues, but does actually need to sound out many words.