Everyday home education

Today we got back  - or at least are trying to get back - into the swing of normal routine after yet another public holiday. (Believe me, I love days off as much as anyone, but when home educating a few children, every break in routine makes for more work later.)

Our current routine runs something like this.

Julian and Alex get up and leave for work before 6am.  The children have to be up for Family Worship/ Devotions by 7.30am at the latest. If they want breakfast, it has to be before 7.30am.  (Quite a few of the older dc don't bother with breakfast until 10am!)

Then we have a quick tidy up/run round various chores, and settle down for lessons by 8am.  

And after that, well, we're not back in routine yet; and every few months that routine changes. Because several of the older dc have had / are having exams, I've tried to let them work out their own routines and study as and when they feel it works best for them. This has led to a fair amount of nocturnality (is that a word? grin), since at least one child works best between the hours of 10pm and 3am; and sleeps quite a bit of the rest of the time.

I have the youngest five with me in the classroom all the time, and the others pop in and out as need be. (Or they email me with qs, or chat on MSN/Facebook - we use technology a lot.)

I like to get individual reading done (with two or three children, 20 mins each) early on in the day if at all possible.  I probably find teaching reading one of the hardest parts of home education. It wasn't so bad when I had  - say - eight children under nine, but now with three under nine and another eight older than that, who need various types of educational input, I find reading quite intensive, and  - grin - to be honest, a bit trying.

It doesn't help that my youngest has recently been patched (because of a squint) and his eyesight via his "lazy eye" is really quite dire. (The Opthalmologist did warn me that this would happen, short term.)

So reading is no one's favourite lesson right now.

We move on to various other lessons, and I find that after maybe 90 minutes of written work the children are ready for a break of sorts, so we often watch a video.  This term we're studying Ancient Egypt (I do tend to follow the UK National Curriculum quite closely) (though I vary when we study the different History topics, we do go through them all eventually), and I have a good DVD (from the BBC) on that.

Although I am in the classroom with the five youngest, I am continually "interrupted" by other dc needing help with Maths, French verbs or Shakespeare. The older children are very good at looking up problems online, and often if I can't help (e.g. I have never studied Chemistry in my life) them myself, I can show them how to find the answer. Google is an amazing tool.

(There are so many educational resources available freely online now, it is a huge help)

 . . . . out of time, but wanted to post a little insight into our lives right now. More later as time permits. And if anyone actually *enjoys* teaching reading, do let me know how you do it!

Memorization Project: Christ in the Old Testament

An old pastor of mine came up with an interesting memorization project for the Bible class that he teaches (for older homeschooled students).  His students memorize one verse from each book of the Old Testament that "either explicitly or typically reflects the revelation of Christ in the Law and the Prophets."  I think this is a neat idea.  You can read more--and see a chart of the verses to memorize--in this blog post:

Seeing Christ in the Old Testament

EPGY Math, a Review

I'm planning on starting more structured homeschooling with my boys this fall.  For the time being, the only subjects we are doing in a routine way are Bible and math.

Elijah uses an online math program called EPGY math.  EPGY stands for "Educational Program for Gifted Youth" and it is run by Stanford University.  As the name suggests, it is mostly geared towards gifted students, particularly high school students who are ready to move beyond the limited math and science offerings at their local high school.  However, EPGY also offers a comprehensive K-7 math curriculum (which is relatively affordable, compared to their other courses, which are quite expensive).

When we started EPGY, I wasn't really sure where Elijah stood in math, since we hadn't done any formal lessons together; so I started him at the very beginning, i.e. kindergarten level.  At first I heard the dreaded words "This is boring!" accompanied by lots of dramatic flopping around in his chair, but as he moved into more challenging material, he got more enthusiastic about it.

All in all, I would highly recommend it, especially for a child who is looking for more challenge in math.  What I like: the course is completely self-contained, no parental instruction needed (usually), and Elijah can move at his own pace through the material--faster when he already knows the material, and slower when he is having trouble grasping something.  They introduce some more advanced concepts (like variables and basic linear equations) at a very early level.  And they provide lots of nifty reports and charts so that you can watch your child's progress.

Elijah has really learned by leaps and bounds with EPGY math, and we plan to continue using it for a while, though we may take a break over the summer to do a little speed drilling.

The catch (you knew there would be a catch, right?) is two-fold:

First of all, it isn't free.  I'm homeschooling on a tight budget, so I'm trying to make use of as many free resources as possible (thankfully, I have access to my parents' bookshelves, which are well stocked with homeschooling materials from years past).  But I wasn't sure of my ability to teach math--as with grammar, I can do it, but I can't explain it--so I decided that for now, I would be willing to pay to have someone else do the teaching. 

Secondly, EPGY math is not available outside of the US.  Sorry. :(

Time Management cross posted

I posted this on my own blog, but thought it might be relevant here too.

Listened to an interesting "sermon" (Family Living Talk) on sermon audio yesterday, about training your children to be ready to leave home (none of ours are at that stage yet!). One of the points Dr Beeke made was that it is sometimes worth taking time out of your (busy) life just to work out what you need to do and when, and make some sort of schedule/timetable for the next week, month or whatever.

It takes time to work out a schedule (well, it does take *me* time), and sometimes I'm loath to spend that time, since it is "good thinking time" (ie when my mind is fresh and the house is quiet - there's not a lot of that round here) rather than "get a bit done here and there time" - like just now when I can write a sentence or two, go and do something else; talk to a teen for ten mins; write a bit more etc.

I guess you either get what a I mean or don't! Some (very little) of my time is high quality thinking time; and I've been unwilling to use it to write new schedules. But Dr Beeke made the valid point that it is an investment; using an hour today might save me several hours over the next few weeks.

So I'm going to try to work on a short term schedule. It will be short, because seven of the children plus Julian go off to the US in seven weeks. And it will be a bit of a chaotic schedule since many children are sitting many exams between now and then.

But I think Dr Beeke is correct - using time to organise time saves time. (I hope!)

Imperfect mom

I could do a long post on this (honestly I could), but since I am a very imperfect mom I don't have time. But today, I can't believe it, it is so embarrassing; I managed to miss an optician's appointment for Henry.

I find it hard when writing here to differentiate between the "difficulties" of home ed from those associated with a larger family.

Either way, it's a tough life sometimes.  . . . and the times when I come across as incompetent and disorganised really get to me.  I know if I had two children who went to school I'd probably laugh off missing an appointment; but since I have 12 and they don't, I can't.

Pride I guess :-(

All's well that ends well, the opticians (who know us well, seven of us have glasses, and another needs but refuses them) agreed to see us just before closing time.

Henry with his old glasses in front of the bookcase in his bedroom

Perfect children

I guess we all know that home education produces perfect children. . . . .

NOT!!!!!

This hasn't much to do with home education, but is just a snippet of our day. The children have about an hour in the garden/yard every lunchtime to run around,  burn off energy, play football (and on occasions break windows etc).

Today we reached a new low. Using water guns/pistols (which I don't mind, we have rules for their use - e.g. do not aim at the Cat, or any other animal (like birds or a squirrel); don't aim at anyone who doesn't have a gun (i.e. who is not playing the game) and do NOT aim at windows.

Well, today a child decided to aim a full water gun at a window. Trouble was, it wasn't our window, it was the neighbour's . . .and since the window was not far away, the water splashed loudly all over it.

(Cringe cringe cringe - I bet they are wishing our children were in school "like normal kids")

After some thought I decided to take him across to personally apologise; hoping that this will sober him enough to never do it again. The neighbour was very kind. I hope he's got the message.

So, for the avoidance of doubt, home edded children are every bit as naturally depraved, naughty and unpredictable as any others :-)

Learning to read

It has been ages since I've tried to write a post here - doing home ed is easier than writing about it, I guess. Or else it takes more time.

We've had a fairly unusual couple of weeeks, which threw our carefully planned timetables out the window, but are now settling back down to routine. Or trying to, it is difficult when there are so many bank holidays so close together.

(We don't do lessons when J is home - not formal lessons that is, though there are always things like gardening, board games, and football matches)

I know that as a home ed mom I am unusual in that I hate *hate* reading aloud to my children. It is something I never did when they were tiny (pre-school) and it is not something I've ever really taken to since.

That makes me feel like a "bad mom" or at the least an inadequate home educator (in fact to be honest, there is so much that other moms do differently or better than me, that if I was to compare myself to most of them I'd crawl under a rock!)  I guess my point is that we are all different, as well as similar, and that there is no one "perfect" way to home educate.

I do teach the children to read very methodically (unlike some other moms who wait until their child asks to be taught, or who read to their children so often that they learn by osmosis), using Peter and Jane. But that is the children reading to me, not me reading to the children.

We have a rule that no-one must talk or interrupt while I am listening to a child read; they need silence to concentrate.  And no, taking them into another room would not work, since the other dc left in the classroom would promptly down tools (pencils) and riot. Or at the least they'd start chatting mindlessly; or arguing about who was in whose seat/space/chair.

(Yes, they argue almost every morning about which part of the table they get to sit at, and what chair they get to sit on. Somewhere along the journey I've become too lax in my parenting. . .!)

When we began to home educate I used to spend two 15-minute sessions a day with A, who was three at the time, moving to one 20-minute session as he got older. But as we had more children and more children who were learning to read, that time has become a bit squeezed, and although I aim to listen to each child under ten read for 20 minutes a day, it doesn't always work out that way.

I recently came across the concept of audio books, which is working well for us just now, since it bridges the gap between a child being a completely independent reader, and still needing help with unfamiliar words. Initially I borrowed audio books from the library, but that was complicated because (a) many of the audio books were not really that suitable for us (a lot of fantasy/supernatural fiction) and (b) it was hard to find the paper copy of the book as well.

So in the end I bit the bullet and bought a KS2 set of audio books from TTS Education. So far, it is proving very popular and it does increase the children's confidence.

I just had a quick glance at more of the TTS website, but better close it down quickly "a home ed mom and her money are soon parted".