I do dread the exclamations of super-mumdom when people find out that we homeschool. It really isn't like that. Having three under four is much harder than homeschooling the eight year old, and oodles of people have or have had that experience of too many littlies.
There are many misconceptions or lack of knowledge of how you can homeschool. I had little idea as well but really it is made so easy by the plethora of homeschool curriculum choices.
I have curriculum for spelling, history, writing, grammar and maths. History, writing and grammar are all separate but I have chosen the curriculum of a famous mother-daughter team, Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise. They have written a wonderful book, The Well-Trained Mind which explains in detail the year by year curriculum for a classical educated child.
From this I purchased their distinct curriculum materials for grammar, writing and history. I love love love them all. And this is what differentiates homeschooling from normal schooling really. It is not the hours or the socialisation (know as the "s-word" by homeschoolers as we get asked the question so often) or the lack of uniform. It is that I get to choose the method of teaching - the pedagogy I think is the correct word.
Each curriculum normally gives a daily work plan - or worksheets etc. So each day I work out how much time we have, how much time I have and what Tom can do without me. Sometimes we manage to do a bit of everything. We have a lot to catch up on to bring him in line with where I feel he should be academically - but I am trying not to rush him or myself. We have lots of time. If we send him to "real" high school in year 7, then I have four years to get him where I want him to be - so heaps of time really. Sometimes the spelling is a big one so we have to skip grammar until tomorrow perhaps. Sometimes the grammar is very easy so we do three days in one. Maths I take very slowly - Tom could cover lots of topics each week but I really want to bed down these basics so that high school maths is easier. So we use a lot of other curriculum (Mathletics workbooks, the workbooks you buy at Aldi, downloaded sheets from internet - amazing resources - all free) and I do time him occasionally to make sure he is really doing his basic maths quickly - as the Kumon programme does.
The writing curriculum has a daily/weekly plan that involves copywork, out loud reading of classical narratives and comprehension questions moving to retells. Each week a different book is used. We have read from Tom Sawyer, Little House on the Prairie, Charlotte's Web, Aesop's Fables, A Christmas Carol, The Railway Children, How to Eat Fried Worms and many other books I was not aware of. What these books have in common is great literature. Well written. (I ask you to compare these with books such as Zac Power - don't get me started ....) Each day Tom copies out varied sentences with complex grammar and punctuation so that he gets used to writing and improves the speed at which he writes. Soon we move to dictation rather than copywork so that he can hold a sentence in his head and work out the correct grammar, punctuation, spelling etc. I read to him quite long passages from the book (provided in the curriculum materials) and ask him to answer comprehension questions in full sentences to me. At first, he really wasn't so good at this. Now he is better than Damien (or so Damien says!). I am so thrilled at how his ability to write long sentences quickly and easily has improved as well. Next we will move to summarising the narratives rather than answering specific questions. Tom is very verbose and creative when doing retells currently (that is, adds more interesting stuff in his eyes!) so this next step will be very useful. Tom takes ten sentences currently to retell a five sentence narrative!
The grammar curriculum involves a lot of rote learning - of definitions of a sentence, statement, verb, adjective, pronouns and lists of pronouns, linking verbs (am, are, is, etc) as well as learning poetry (lots of long poetry). You may be surprised to hear that Tom loves this rote learning. The Wise women (parden the pun!) explain how much the younger children love rote learning - and they are right! Chanting and singing is the best way for Tom to learn. He has a much better memory than me. Much better - aaah youth. We also do sentence analysis (breaking down parts of the sentence) and punctuation etc. Also there is copywork and dictation - lots of it. Teaching Tom how to hold a complex sentence in his head long enough to write it down with the correct punctuation and spelling.
You will note we don't do explicit creative writing at this stage. This comes in Year 4 of the curriculum. And yes this is VERY different to the current Education Queensland and Australia curriculum of lots of journal writing. Also the curriculum specifically states that all words that children cannot yet spell (that is, have not had the formal rules of spelling taught to yet) should have the words spelt correctly for them so that they can copy. No phonetic/guess spelling. Once again, very different to EQ current guidelines ("Just get them writing! Doesn't matter that you can't understand what they have written as there is no punctuation and all wrong spelling .....")
And you know what - there is no one right way. But we don't really get given a choice when we send our children to a school - State, Catholic or other Independent. So the only super-mumness about this whole homeschool malarkey is that I do give a damn about how and what and when my child is taught.
Moving along, the spelling curriculum is called All About Spelling and I have talked about it often on this blog. I love this curriculum so much that I cannot think of a better analogy than it is porn for homeschool mums. Sorry. It is completely and utterly rules based, with exception words isolated and taught as such ("jail breakers" actually).
For example, when to double the consonant when adding a vowel suffix? Think spin - how do we spell spinning - versus say the word melt becoming melting. Why do we double the n in spinning and not the t in melting? Well there is a neat, easy to remember rule that makes every single word spellable. No sight words required. Also the trick when the word ends in a vowel team such as the word snow, or thaw? Also the trick when the word ends in an x? Why do we not double the x in the work fixing? All logical, and work outable by the 8 year old. We covered this lesson in 30 minutes today and I tested him with thirty words and 12 long dictation sentences. Got it. First time. Move on, Mum! Thank you curriculum.
Maths - oh we love Maths in this neck of the woods. We use Singapore Maths (the Singaporean curriculum) and I love it because it is heavily based on visual and manipulative maths (think using things like counters etc) and so very similar to Pebble Maths - see my earlier (pre-homeschooling) rapture with this way of teaching maths. We have covered subtraction and addition from scratch since we started homeschooling as Tom was heavily reliant on finger counting. We have done copious amounts of mental strategies for addition and subtraction (adding to ten first, doubling, etc) as well as the columns (ones, tens, hundreds, etc) methods. We have done oodles of word problems as well as sometimes the hardest thing is knowing what the question actually needs - addition, subtraction etc. Word problems can be like, "Kumar (Singaporean names!) has five fish sticks (Singaporean manipulatives!) with three fish balls on each stick. How many fish balls does he have altogether?" So Tom has to work out that the question is asking for 5 X 3 as the first step. I explain that if he just gets that and writes it down he gets half marks in tests for maths. It is very important (especially in Naplan as well) that the child can explain his mathematical reasoning not just get the correct answer.
So each day I work out which worksheets we should do - more consolidation on a subject, an extension of a subject or a new subject. This week we started 2 and 3 times table. Once again - 30 minutes in Monday and then worksheets each day which Tom completes on his own.
Science is a subject I have not really tackled yet. Need to. I got Tom into a gifted and talented program with Brainways this last month for 2 days of Science experiments - he loved it. I will piggy back as much as I can this until I get myself sorted.
The theory of my homeschooling is that really the important subjects are English and Maths. If a child/young adult can express themselves fluently and correctly and also have the cognitive ability of reasoning (and conversely being able to explain and undo false reasoning) - all the other subjects fall off these two. So I focus on English and Maths and do the others when I get time or a particular interest comes up from Tom. For example - Egyptians - we just bought the first in the Horrible Histories series - Awful Egyptians - wonderful book which he devoured in a few days. He wants to do Incas next.
Today we also researched the history of Halloween. We called a friend who had asked the question at William's kindy earlier in the day to explain what we had learnt. Learning on the fly. Tom also wrapped a few teddy bears in toilet paper (Egyptian mummies!) and put on the front door step. He moved stones onto the verge and a made a grave with the headstone, "A Saint. 1924. RIP" (Hallow means saint and originally Halloween was a Pagan/Christian celebration of the dearly departed faithful such as saints and martyrs). I do love that I am learning to let learning happen naturally. As then it is really easy.
I hope that gives you a better perspective on a) what homeschooling at my place looks like (note all homeschoolers do it differently!) and b) why I am homeschooling.
What will I do with my other boys? William is off to prep up at Norman Park State School Next year. I think, am not 100% sure, will judge it in a year's time - we will bring him home for Grade 1. I just prefer my curriculum as the reasoning. I disagree seriously with sight words and the lack of phonetic spelling. Also I don't think the group teaching enables as good a differentiated learning as one-on-one allows. However William is a social being more so than Tom and he may protest at coming home - I will listen to him if this is the case. I want him to want to learn and if bringing home doesn't work, then I won't.
I am not wedded to homeschooling as the ONLY option.
Just the best one for our family at the moment!
An addendum - a reader (!) asked how I will do homeschooling going back to real work next year. Well I will only be doing part time work - and the work normally comes in week long contracts, and the sales work I can do one day per week spread across the week. I will use our nanny and our au pair (coming next year I hope) to look after all the kids. I will set work for Tom that he can do with just the nanny or au pair overseeing and do his other work when I am not working. Homeschooling actually making juggling work easier!
