How We Homeschool

I covered the majority of the reasons "Why We Homeschool" in this blog post from last December. As promised, I'll now detail as best as I can how we homeschool. This post includes a lot of links you may use as resources if you're considering which homeschooling path to take. I don't know about you all, but I love learning about new teaching and learning methods and resources, some of which have been life-changing for us. I'm sure you all know by now that brevity is not one of my strong points. This post has been added to and edited for about three months now, so while I originally never intended on including so many links, take from it what you wish and discard the rest. It would probably take all of three months to investigate every link.

Catholic Homeschool Options
In 2009, when Aidan was just 2 years old, I started researching schools that offered homeschooling programs. My parents had used Our Lady of the Rosary School's homeschool program through 9th grade for my brothers and me before becoming overwhelmed by the amount of work they required. They decided to put together their own curriculum with the help of Laura Berquist's "Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum". Being intimately familiar with their program, I knew that OLRS wasn't the right fit for us, but finding a school that integrated our Faith into everyday learning was essential. Among the homeschool options I considered were Mother of Divine Grace School (classical curriculum, designed by Laura Berquist herself), Mater Amabilis (a Catholic Charlotte Mason inspired program, though CM was Anglican),  Catholic Heritage Curricula (CHC), assembling a classical curriculum with the help of Memoria Press (where our Latin curriculum currently comes from), and I even considered the possibility of building our own Montessori inspired curriculum, which there are thousands of resources for. My decision finally rested between Our Lady of Victory School  and Seton Homeschool . Both were accredited, but in the end I decided on Our Lady of Victory because of their solidly Traditional Catholic stance, because their curriculum fit our budget, and they offered detailed 36 week lesson plans.

This survey, "What Kind of Homeschooler are You?"  will tell you which type of homeschool program you favor, and may help you decide on a specific curriculum. My top three scores:
Score for Charlotte Mason Education: 20 
Score for Montessori Education: 18 
Score for Unit Studies Education: 18  

Also helpful for homeschool parents is this homeschool guide according to the Myers-Briggs personality test. I'm an INFJ.

OLVS' Schooling Options
As it happened, Eli and I were not on the same page as previously thought with our children's education. Let it be a lesson that all couples need to constantly work on communication skills! Once it was decided mid-kindergarten year that we would try homeschooling Aidan for first grade, I ordered the entire first grade curriculum from Our Lady of Victory. They offer text books, workbooks, worksheets, quarterly and semester tests, answer keys, teachers manuals, and grade appropriate syllabi. OLVS offers two schooling options:

• 1) Full enrollment, which includes lesson plans, teacher support (including sending some work to them to be graded while they instruct you how to grade the rest, and tutoring); they will record grades, send quarterly progress reports, and report cards. Registration is an extra $25, plus a tuition fee of $250 for grades K-6 ($300 for 7th-12th), on top of the price of books.

• 2) Independent Study, which allows you to buy any/all of the books you wish to use in your homeschool. Lesson plans are available for $85, or you can write your own. The school will not keep track of grades, and you send nothing back to the school.

We decided on the Independent Study option for K-8, but once the boys start high school we will fully enroll them from there on out with OLVS. They will then have grade transcripts and a diploma (given they do well!) from an accredited school.

State Laws
It's a good idea to be up-to-date on your state's current homeschooling laws. This map from HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense) gives a summary of USA state laws. We currently live in one of the most homeschool-friendly states in the country, with very few, if any, regulations. This just goes to show how homeschooling has grown in the last 25 years. When my parents first began homeschooling in the early 1990's it was still not legal in our state. For many years they employed the services of HSLDA in case they received backlash for their decision. For all of elementary/middle school they had to report to the public school that we were homeschooling, and a certified teacher would come out to our home to check that our schoolwork was being done.

In the Beginning
Even though I was homeschooled myself, and was girded with a wealth of self-confidence in the very beginning, starting to homeschool is incredibly intimidating. I knew what I wanted our schooling to be like, but how would I implement my ideas? Who was I to undertake such a feat? So many doubts clouded my mind in the months leading up to the launch of our homeschooling adventure, I'm ashamed to admit, I almost backed out. As with so many things in this life, you sometimes have to just keep on keeping on to discover the path that works best for you. For that "first" year of school I ordered lesson plans from OLVS. It reassured me that we'd have a guiding hand through the first bumpy year. It turned out that by week six I was already rewriting their lesson plans to fit how lessons worked best for us.

Lesson Planning
I now write up our own lesson plans every year, saving us that $85 expense. The past couple years I've had to do two grades' worth of planning since Aidan began in first grade and we didn't have preschool or kindergarten lessons. I'm beyond excited that next year I only have fourth grade to plan, besides the minor changes that have been made to the curriculum this past year!

I use the large spiral-bound lesson planner from Michele Quigley's shop. (Michele Quigley, by the way, is one of the founders of Mater Amabilis homeschool.) Her lesson planner fits our needs perfectly, being completely blank other than a section at the beginning for notes, inspirational quotes at the bottom of each page, and each page-spread is set up in a grid for a week's worth of lessons according to a 36 week school year. I plan our lessons by the week so that we can be flexible in our daily workload. As I reuse these lesson plans from year to year, what we can do daily changes depending on the child and depending on the year, which must be taken into consideration. (For example, some days we have appointments to make or field trips, and school on those day is at a minimum, reduced to the things we can do in the vehicle, or skipped altogether. Also, Aidan can do his reading requirements for the week in one day, plus add whatever extra reading he pleases on all the other days, while Gavin struggles with this. So Gavin's required weekly reading is spread out all week long to avoid burn-out.) It usually takes about two weeks for me to get lesson planning done for a whole school year.



OLVS Curriculum and Substitutions
I'm happy for the most part with the curriculum from Our Lady of Victory, but we still have made some adjustments. Poor Aidan has been the guinea pig in this regard, as it's really difficult to know whether certain programs or subject matter will work until you are actually using them.

• OLV has a lot of coloring books as part of their curriculum in the lower grades, which my boys are not thrilled about. For Aidan they're not creative enough, and for Gavin, whose artistic talent lies mostly in more architectural and engineering-themed building sets, it's just plain tedious. So we only purchase one coloring book a year now, and Liam generally claims it. It's easy (and fun) for me to cover art with the boys by doing all manner of craft projects with them, experimenting how to use watercolors, chalk pastels, colored pencils, etc. One of their favorite is working with modelling clay. We've tried drawing by adding shapes together, and cutting out shapes to make images.

• OLV's religion proceeds slower than we need it to, so while we still cover the religion books they have for first and second grades, we supplement and work ahead with the Baltimore Catechism (we use the St. Joseph First Communion Catechism specifically for First Communion.) We also use My Jesus and I for preschool and kinder. Our boys turn 7 in first grade, which is ideally the age they should receive their First Holy Communion. As the curriculum is currently set up OLV would have them receiving sometime in second grade. We'll begin using The Mass Explained to Children by Maria Montessori when it arrives, along with the DVD, The Traditional Mass for Children. This year we finally started to use this amazing gift we received a few years ago, The Jesse Box, which is an interactive tool for recreating Bible stories. The box opens like a stage, complete with different back drops to put in place, wooden dolls and animals to use in the stories, and wraps for them. This is a video demonstrating how the Jesse Box can be used.

• The reading program does not include a lot of my favorite classic stories, many of which inspired my own love to read. So we add a lot of extra reading to this subject. It takes the form of our read-aloud sessions in the evenings. 

• Vocabulary is built by incorporating new words from the weekly spelling lists into our every day speak. For example, "I like that you're so mirthful today!", "There was a throng of people in the store today!" and "You'll have to scrounge around the cupboard yourself for a snack this morning." 

• Handwriting, or cursive, starts in kindergarten according to OLV curriculum, but the teacher's manuals caution holding off if your child isn't ready for it so soon. Usually in KG children are still working on forming "unfancy" letters correctly and lack the motor skills needed for cursive. None of our boys have been ready for handwriting in KG, but we do implement it in first grade on. Maybe Liam will be the exception? We'll give it a try, but if it's too much, no worries. 

• I chose to substitute OLV's first grade history with Seton's first grade history instead, and am very happy with the change. At some point I also plan to incorporate books from the RC History program, which is a classical, chronological literature-based history. This would normally be supplemental, and I haven't jumped on this idea quite yet because of the number of books they have available. I can't decide where to start! I may also be able to find some of these books more reasonably priced second-hand through a Catholic Curriculum Swap page I belong to on Facebook. Update: After spending some time researching curriculum, I decided to go ahead with RC History for Aidan in fourth grade. OLV isn't offering history for that particular grade. 

• I initially ordered Saxon Math for first grade (available from OLV), which was very difficult for Aidan to absorb. The way explanations were presented was not complimentary to his learning style. I switched to Lepanto Math, which has been a much better fit for him the last couple years. Regardless, Aidan requires daily math work to stay on top of lessons, and this week we suspended the addition of any new concepts to review the entire book and cover areas that he had problems with in the past. He's currently dealing with long division with remainders, fractions, three-digit multiplication, and units of measurement. I have to mention as well that the Lepanto Math Answer Keys (authored by teachers of OLVS) have a number of errors in them, so that if Aidan gets a problem wrong I have to check the math myself before marking it wrong. I believe these are typos, as they can be so simple as 4+3=8 or 8x2=18. While frustrating, the benefits to using Lepanto in our case outweigh the inconveniences. 

• While on the subject of math, I've wanted to try the Life of Fred math books for Aidan because they teach math concepts through stories, which is totally Aidan's thing. OLV does not offer Lepanto Math for fourth grade on up, with Saxon being their only option. So I'll be ordering Life of Fred for Aidan to try over the summer, and see if it helps him. The plan is to get him confident enough in his math skills he'll be able to take on Saxon in high school. I was that frustrated kid staring at a Saxon page of math gibberish I could not comprehend, no matter how many times I read it or had it demonstrated to me, so I understand where Aidan is coming from. Note: I do think Saxon Math is a great learning series, just not for every student. Update: Math-U-See is another highly-lauded option, which I'll be exploring for fourth grade.

• I felt that geography was missing for first grade, so added "Maps, Charts, and Graphs Level A", also available from Seton. It never hurts to build direction-following skills. This changing map of the USA is a neat visual on how the states were formed. 

• Music is also not very structured in elementary. We practice memorizing and singing songs, and the history of music, but not being very musically inclined myself, that's about the extent of my ability. We plan on having the boys start music lessons eventually, if they show interest. Seton also has a more comprehensive music program for elementary that even covers how to read music. This is a link to podcasts by Mary Prather and resources she suggests for music appreciation. She is the author of The Squilt Music Curriculum.

• OLV doesn't have a preschool curriculum, but it's pretty easy to cover with the resources that are available. Pinterest is full of ideas and learning activities for preschoolers. Liam learns alongside his brothers now by listening to their read-alouds and watching them write. He received a LeapReader and accompanying beginner reading set for Christmas and uses it daily. He also loves those "Jumbo Preschool Workbooks" from Wal-Mart. We do letters by the week, helping Liam learn the alphabet all year long. For example, one week was "A" week. That week I made apple crisp, we read stories about astronauts and alligators and Arthur. Liam found things that began with "A" and we "collected" them. Counting activities include blocks, dominoes, Legos, food...really anything that's available. Even something as simple as setting the cook-timer on the microwave by himself is a lesson in learning numbers (though we're careful now to make sure all metal eating utensils are removed first). Recently I learned about the ABC's of Virtues from Ponder in My Heart blog, and have started using it as well. Some of my friends have been happy using Catholic Icing's Preschool Curriculum. And as usual, read aloud books are big part of our preschooling. 

Supplements

We add unit studies to our weeks when we feel we need or would like to know more about something. We're currently doing one on our state. We've had fun with this Science Experiments for Kids book, and Aidan received this Science Whiz Chemistry Set  for Christmas that Dad said he can finally bust out when he masters his times tables. There are monthly subscription boxes that are designed to get children interested in learning. The Genius Box includes monthly STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) projects, Little Passports is geared for geography, and Kiwi Crate that's crafting-inventing-art based and customized into four different age and interest options. These make great gifts that give all year long. The boys have also had a lot of fun learning about electricity and how it's conducted with Snap Circuits Jr. Next Christmas we'll probably upgrade to a more advanced set. Building sets are a huge thing right now for the boys, a few favorites being Gears! Gears! Gears! sets, anything LEGO, Fisher Price Trio building sets, Marble Runs, and Magformers and Bristle Blocks for little guys. They all enjoy making pictures with MindWare Imaginets and Melissa and Doug's Magnetic Block Patterns. The boys love the Watch Mr. Wizard DVD's, which always spark the desire to try more scientific experiments. For a treat once in a while we let the boys play free PBS Kids games online, most of which are educational. We tried ABC Mouse online learning games for their free 30 day trial, but didn't feel it was worth continuing after that. Kauffman's Field Guide to Nature of the Midwest, which I've mentioned before, is also a favorite guide around here in identifying plants and wildlife. It's now in "well-loved" condition. We have a set of 12 Southwestern "Ask Me" educational books that the boys love to read, chock-full of fun facts about nature and history. The information is short and explained in such a way that makes learning fun. They cover a range of things from why blood is red or blue, to carnivorous plants, to the Trojan horse. We pick up books at thrift stores as we find them on things we think would be fun to learn about, and they all become supplements to our regular subjects. A recent find was this Usborne Book of Castles which goes great with the boys' Imaginext Eagle Talon Castle and Mike the Knight Glengradon Castle. This Ultimate Paper Plane book has sparked discussions about aerodynamics. We also snap up any Childcraft volumes that we come across.

Ian playing with Melissa and Doug magnets

Ordering Curriculum
On the topic of ordering books, at this point I'm only having to order one new grade's worth of books, the grade that Aidan's moving into, plus supplements and consumables for the grades that Gavin and Liam are going into. So for next school year I'll order all of the fourth grade curriculum, plus the workbooks (that Aidan or Gavin wrote in) for second grade and kindergarten. This process is made easier by a Reorder List I print up for each grade and year, which looks like this. I'll keep the lists to reprint each year. The books I have to order or reorder will be highlighted, their price added to the column on the right, and total price added at the bottom. The list can be filled in as books, tests, or worksheets are used up, saving a lot of searching through piles of books in a couple years to remember what needs replacing. I usually order our books in February so I have time to line up each grade's work, add where I feel there are gaps, and have the chance to get used to the curriculum before next school year. It's best for me to do this during the current school year because it's really hard for me to pick up work or text books in the summer. To save money, in doing the workbooks that are in basic question/answer format I have the boys write their answers into a notebook instead so the workbook can be used year after year. Workbooks that have more hands-on activities in them, like geography, which asks for directions be drawn on maps and such, will have to be replaced. The cost of this year's curriculum for all three boys is projected to be around $650. Our first year with one student in first grade was around $389 before tax, shipping, etc., year two with two student's was around $480 (second grade was most of that; kindergarten materials were only about $85).

Organizing and Learning Locations
All our school books are on one bookshelf close to where the majority of the work is done, in the dining room. (We are quickly running out of room as we add more grades to our "library", and I'm working on reorganizing this area on a larger scale.) Sometimes the boys work at the big table, sometimes they work at the little tables, other times they're sprawled out on the couch or on their bed. Whatever position is most conducive to learning at that moment works. A lot of our learning happens simply by living everyday life. The boys are expected to help with chores daily. They are learning the basics of cooking, managing money, and how to fix things (which are broken around here on a daily basis.)

The hub of our homeschooling adventures

Field Trips

We've been making a lot more time this year for field trips, which we usually enjoy with friends who are fellow homeschoolers. A few of our favorite field trip locations are: Homeschool Workshops offered by the Grout Museum, The Bluedorn Science Imaginarium also part of the Grout Museum, Hansen Dairy Farm tours, The Phelps Youth Pavilion which is two floors of educational and art-based activities for children, Fort Atkinson Rendezvous Days held every September, and events hosted by The Twin Ponds Nature Center. The Hawkeye Buffalo Ranch is another place on our list. When we begin the Little House on the Prairie read-alouds, we plan on visiting The Old Bradford Pioneer Museum, which has always been a favorite of mine. Our state also lays claim to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Park and Museum  in Burr Oak, which is the "missing link" in the Little House books. This period was intentionally left out of her books because it was such a dark, depression-filled time for the Ingalls family that Laura didn't feel it was appropriate for children's books. Clermont is home to Montauk, the mansion formerly belonging to Iowa's 12th governor. The Bily (pronounced "beely") Clocks Museum and Antonin Dvorak Exhibit in Spillville are also on our revisit-list. The "Smallest Church in the World", St. Anthony of Padua Chapel in Festina is a neat stop on the way to Spillville (the link is to a video covering both). While in Spillville, a visit to St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church is in order, which is the oldest Czech Catholic Church in the US and home to the original pipe organ played by Dvorak himself. The Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend is an amazing shrine built by a priest in thanksgiving to Our Lady for healing him of pneumonia. Decorah's Fish Hatchery and Ice Cave are easy to miss, but fun for kids to learn from. There are also The Waterloo Children's Playhouse and The Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Arts Center, both of which I'm watching for plays we may enjoy. I saw an Eric Carle play at the GBPAC with Aidan when he was in preschool and it was an experience, for sure! WCP is hosting "The Boxcar Children" play at the end of the month, but I'm on the fence about attending because of the cost and the number of other things we have planned in the next couple weeks.

Inside the Imaginarium

Grading

Grading homework is not one of my favorite chores, but so necessary to gauge how the boys are absorbing the material we cover. My system for this is still being improved upon. Once workbooks and worksheets have been completed they're ideally put in a basket beside the computer desk that was reserved for library books during the summer to be graded. They can also find scrap paper in this basket for math problem, stickers, a stray movie or two, and a host of other odds and ends that accumulate. I'm working to eliminate this basket's role as a catch-all for clutter. My goal is for all workbooks to be graded and put back in their proper shelf-positions by the new week, worksheets and loose-leaf lessons are put into a lesson-book.

Each subject is separated by a cardstock page and titled, and the appropriate grade's report card is located at the back of the binder.

When there is a multitude of problems wrong it's obvious that more work is needed on that particular subject. Entire pages and chapters have been erased and redone until the concept is mastered. This is our version of "no child left behind." I grade based on percentage of answers correct. Any pages with less than 76% correct absolutely have to be redone. In reality, I often make the boys redo problems until 89% or higher are correct. The scale I use is this:

Four Different Learning Styles

Every person has a primary learning style. Finding out what that is for your child can make a world of difference in how they succeed. The difficulty is learning how to teach the way your child learns best when you have a completely different learning style. Mine is a blend of Read-Write and Kinesthetic. This is a PDF file that explains different learning styles, what to look for, and how to implement complimentary teaching styles.  I'll be the first to admit that at times I feel like I'm teaching a brick wall. I can illustrate, dramatize, and explain till the proverbial cows come home and we get nowhere. Whether this is because I haven't hit the right learning style yet or because they're just burned out, I can't always say. Children, especially boys, need a generous amount of action integrated into their learning or they tend to go full-on ADHD. Until we find success, we continue to experiment with different learning techniques.

Our Days

Most of the smaller grades' work is done by lunch time Monday through Wednesday. They are the ones who need the most guidance and prompting, so my mornings in the first half of the week are consumed with lessons, listening to beginning readers, and setting out the work they need to complete next. Aidan has become more independent with each grade, finally this year learning how to read his own lesson plans. He works from about 9:00 am until 3:00 pm Monday through Friday (depending on how distracted he gets, sometimes he can be done by noon Thursdays and Fridays), with 15 minute breaks at about 10:30 and 1:30, and an hour-long lunch-break at noon. I still help him with Latin (his first year), history, math, and catechism questions, but the rest of the subjects he can handle independently. Homeschooling builds great studying bones. Afternoons are reserved for quiet time. Ian takes his nap, we read to ourselves, or watch a cartoon. Late afternoon around 4:30 is tidy-up time. Vacuuming, sweeping, and finishing the laundry that's been started intermittently throughout the day happens at this time. Books, papers, pencils, and erasers are all put back in their places. Enforcing tidy-up time has been life-changing for my sanity. With an orderly house I can start supper without trying to multi-task too much (resulting in a lot less overcooked food). Our read-aloud time is any time from the end of supper until bed time, positioned around the saying of the rosary.

Priorities

Being a homeschooling mom for me means that I'm also a full-time stay-at-home mom. Because of this, part of my job involves making ends meet with the paychecks my husband brings home, and saving money in every area that I can. While I can't go out and find a job right now, I can help lighten the load for our family by searching for deals on the things we need and selling the things we don't need. Among the 20+ posts I have started in draft form, I'm working on one about some of the ways I do this.

With the amount of time it takes just to keep the house in livable condition, with all the help littles need with lessons, and the attention a toddler alone needs, finding what the priority is for each moment is essential. There are times someone needs one-on-one time with mom, and all else is put on hold. There are times we just need to stop studying and fix the house or fix a meal. There are times that school work is a priority and the house gets trashed. There are times that we need to finish projects in time for holidays or celebrations and the house and the school work both get trashed. On more than one occasion we've had company stop by while trying to finish a lesson or project, and it looks like Hiroshima Part II in here. These moments are great life lessons for me and have worked wonders in stifling my pride. I hope these people don't think I'm a slob. But in reality, I can clean this house every afternoon/evening and by lunch the next day you wouldn't be able to tell. Our house is at the height of lived-in right now. We don't have the option to tidy up at night and leave for the day the next morning with most things in place.

Aidan helping with chores

As you can see, our homeschool is a work in progress. I don't think there's any one way that's perfect to homeschool. We're still adding things, still trying to improve. The decision to homeschool wasn't made lightly. We understood part of the responsibility, some of the challenges. But as with life before marriage and children, you'll have your own preconceived notions and ideas of how homeschooling will go. Until you're actually in the trenches, you won't really know what it'll be like--the struggles as well as incredible joys and triumphs. It takes a lot of researching and questioning what each child needs--as well as what you need as a parent and a teacher.