A Day in the Life of TERD School

Today we got up but didn't bother getting dressed. It's cold outside and quite frankly none of us have any desire to go out in it! I had an 8:30 meeting and the kids woke around 9. We skipped breakfast, but only because everyone was feeling too lazy and content to meander downstairs to get anything. After my meeting I had a few tickets to do but not much going on today. While I worked on some of the more mindless aspects of my job the big 3 came in and sprawled out around me as we talked about the day.... James (who was up too late last night and still sick too) and the Bug (also still sick) were still in bed. We are at a point where we've been in Ancient Greece for awhile, but it's been scattered over 2 months time due to travels and the holidays. So I took a quick break and we went over our points of interest and discussed what we've covered and what we haven't. Found a few topics we hadn't discussed yet and the kids wrote lists and/or paragraphs about toys kids in Ancient Greece played with and what kind of pets they had. They then drew and labeled the 3 types of columns found in Greek architecture that's still prevalent today..... we've been discussing these and finding them all over the place over the last few weeks, but the drawing and labeling was something they all wanted to do. We followed that up with a quick discussion of famous Greek architecture and specific buildings... the Parthenon, the Acropolis, and so on. I was working during much of this while the kids were nearby with another laptop researching and discussing all of this and writing in their notebooks. When they finished that up I took my first real break of the day and read 2 short stories (each story is about 5-7min long) out of "Classical Myths to Read Aloud". We are really enjoying this book! That is their literature portion of this segment of Learning Adventures: A World of Adventure. After that I went back to work while they worked on math. They continued to work on math as I broke for lunch and headed downstairs to make lunch. James and K woke up sometime in the middle of Ancient Greece, before literature time. He checked and corrected their writings from this morning as well as their math. During lunch James rolled into science with a discussion of bones as our topic today was the Skeletal System. Before returning to work I started them on their skeletal project. Using Bethany as a model, and quite a bit of masking tape, Roman & Hope created a full size (or rather, a B sized) skeleton. They had great fun. James found the old "bones" song online and played while they worked..... you know, "the foot bones connected to the ankle bone, the ankle bone's connected to the leg bone, the leg bone....". I'm sure it's already stuck in your head if you have any clue as to what I'm talking about! LOL Here's a few pics of our lovely model.

While she doesn't look like the happiest of skeletons, I assure you she was. Perhaps this pic is more convincing:

And of course it wouldn't be complete without the "Skeletons are scary" pose!

I headed back to work after that and the kids are now all playing for some free time fun.... daddy too. During Katy's nap here shortly the big kids will calm down for some quiet time reading - one on one reading with daddy for B - and finish up math if needed, and they all owe me their daily practice lessons for today still which are normally done first thing or during breakfast. They still need to practice their music (drums for Roman and Hope, guitar for Bethany) for 15-20 minutes and they've taken to walking on the treadmill for 15-20 minutes each a day too (and that part can be done during nap time, but the drums will wait to the wee one is back up). Otherwise, for today, that's enough! Next we are officially starting Spelling Power now that I understand it better, or think I do at least!, and B will tighten down to a more formal schedule of Explode the Code and Hooked on Spelling workbooks. That should round out our day for now. I am looking at a new writing/grammer program to incorporate, but that will be several weeks off IF I decide to change it up and go that route. For now though, this is a full homeschool day in the life of the TERDS!

It really was a great day at the TERD school! I don't always have the luxury of participating so much with the homeschooling daily stuff. Feeling very thankful that for today I did, and it was FUN!

Why do we Homeschool?

This question always comes up and while I have a few minutes to spare I'd like to go ahead and address it here. First, we are not at all against public or private schools, nor do we homeschool for religious reasons. Although we are a Christian family, our religious beliefs held no barring for our decision to homeschool, and as such we opted not to file under the religious exemption with the state of VA. Secondly I would like it said that Reams Road Elementary probably has some of the best teachers there are and even though we no longer have children in the school we do still support them 100%!

So, why do we homeschool then?? How did we get to this point? Well, about a year ago it all began. The stress put on teachers and therefore kids to perform well on SOL's is ridiculous! I do not at all blame the teachers for this. The pressure is on them and sadly tied directly to their employment even. Their hands are tied and they must comply. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) bill was a great theory, and I'll admit that at the time I thought it sounded great too. But like a lot of things in life, what sounds great in theory is horrifying in practice! That is certainly the case with NCLB. The second half of the school year is almost entirely devoted to prepping for SOL testings. They begin these tests in 3rd grade and we had a bit of a nightmare with Roman in 3rd grade over these tests. He is a perfectionist that internals his "failures" as he sees them. I put quotes around "failures" because they are NOT failures, no one is perfect and it's okay not to accel 100% in every area of life, but he has a hard time grasping that. He also suffers from anxiety, particularly test anxiety. He had bouts of stomach issue after stomach issue in 3rd grade working himself up to the point that he was throwing up regularly just over worrying about these stupid tests. And here's the kicker, Roman's a naturally bright boy. He scored above 95% on all his test that year! But upon returning from Christmas break in 2010 we began seeing these signs again. A legitimate bout of the stomach flu had him out of school for 2 weeks and he fell behind a bit because of it and with the end of the 9 week period approaching he didn't have time to make up all the work and in February his report card came back with a C. You would have thought it was the end of the world. He was devastated! It was down hill pretty fast from there. My little perfectionist weighed himself so heavily and we began to have emotional breakdowns at home, and the stomach problems began to escalate quickly to the point of ulcers. No 10 year old should have to suffer from that!

Public schools, especially in today's market don't have the resources, time, or funding to deal with a child like him. An exceptionally bright, good child. He is gifted in math, excels in science and social studies, but only average in language arts, therefore not a potential candidate for any of the gifted programs available, as they are all or nothing. He suffered from boredom in some areas, especially math, which lead to sloppy work and signs of bad habits already forming. Roman needed to be able to exceed his grade level in math, and even in science and social studies, but remain on target for all areas of language arts and there is just no program in public schools to reach the full potential of a kid like him.

So with his self-induced stress and perfectionist issues, compounded by increasingly sloppy work attributed to boredom (legitimately attributed to boredom too as he would do these long detailed math problems correctly showing his work, but write down the wrong answer!), we faced yet a 3rd strike with the public school system..... economic cut backs! Now this too is not the fault of the school, but with teacher cutbacks they were already predicting significant class size increases for the following year, good programs were being cut out altogether and all the schools were losing funding. These 3 strikes are the foundation behind our reasons to homeschool.

After 2 incredibly rough weeks that were to the point that Roman didn't even want to go to school anymore, we decided it would be in his best interest to take a break from public school and work on some of his stress and anxiety issues in a healthier environment for him. And so I did my research, filed the necessary paperwork on Friday, February 26, 2010 he went to school for the last time to say goodbye to his teacher and classmates. And it was the BEST thing we have ever done for him!

In fact we quickly identified several of his bigger problems. Determining without a doubt that he is gifted in math. He left school working in an accelerated math program at roughly a 1st half 5th grade level and 4 months later tested at a 1st half 10th grade level! Giving him the tools to reach his potential for the first time in his life and we quickly saw him soar!

Through all this we made the decision to leave our 2 oldest girls in public school. Neither were having any serious issues at that point and both were doing well, or so we thought at least. But, it went so well with Roman being homeschooled that we quickly realized how great it would be to have all the kids home! And so the decision was made and the paperwork for the 2010-2011 school year was filed for all 3 kids.

At that time Bethany had already begun to struggle heavily in reading and after working side by side with her Kindergarten teacher we still had no answers as to why. We continue to struggle with it today and still have no answers as to why she seems to have a block on learning where reading is concerned when she had been doing so well previously, but we know that James and I are her biggest advocates and will get to the bottom of it and over this hurdle! We have since realized that Hope was the quiet, polite, good kid that never gave anyone any trouble and never really had any expectations for. No one has ever challenged her. Her math skills were appalling and yet she was making mostly E's in math these last few years. She was a kid that would have slipped through the holes of NCLB being good enough to get by and that is not at all what we want for her! She is beginning to finally soar in so many areas with homeschooling!

So in hindsight we did have some teaching issues with the school that we were not fully aware of until we began homeschooling, but the initial decision to homeschool the girls was purely for our family benefits. And we do not at all regret the decision. It has made us closer as a family and afford us so many new opportunities that we did not have while the kids were in public school!

Why not private school?? For us, as a family of 6 living on a single income the cost to our standards of living would have been significantly impacted with private school. So really it was never an option for us. James was already an experienced stay at home dad with Katy still at home, so homeschooling was a natural transition for us that minimally (upfront curriculum and resource costs only) altered our financial state.

Homeschooling is not for everyone, but for us it has been an amazing adventure and probably the best thing we've ever done for our family!

Spelling Power Evals

So yesterday I gave Roman and Hope their first assessment test with Spelling Power to see where they need to begin. Hope tested at a 4.8 grade level and Roman at a 5.8 grade level. So proud of both of them! They both struggle with spelling, so I was greatly surprised to see how well they are both doing. The test itself was relatively painless. A list of 50 words with 3 columns (word, sentence, word) that you just read across all 3 and wait for the signal they've completed it before moving to the next word. The words begin at a 1st grade level and end at a 12th grade, so of course somewhere in the middle they are expected to drop off. Then the instructions say to take the amount attempted and subtract the number of words missed, which really just equals how many words they spelled right! Then take that number and compare it to the chart which depicts the grade equivalency. I will blog further on Spelling Power as we delve deeper into it.

Happy New Year!

Wow, what happened to 2010? New year, time to evaluate where we stand. I plan to go back and journal some of the steps we took to get to this point, but as of now we are homeschooling all 3 kids. I now work from home 2 weeks at a time with 1 week in the office and can help out more than previously. We are still fumbling a bit with our flow, but after evaluating this first half of our year, we are actually doing very well!

MATH
Roman had already more than met the requirements for math grade 5 prior to starting this school year and so we have taken it slow with no formal math so far this year. He occasionally works out of the Life with Fred series, various worksheets, and mostly has been helping to teach the girls their math basics in theory also strengthening his own foundation. His math facts are doing so much better. Guess it's true, you learn more from teaching than being taught! He will start ALEKS online again this month.

Bethany is not using any formal math program. We are taking a mastery approach and working on the basics to build a strong foundation in math. She is doing remarkably well and at this point has completed all 1st grade topics and will be moving into 2nd grade math this month.

Hope was originally going to start ALEKS math this year with Roman, but upon evaluating her math skills we found them to be lacking. It is by far her weakest subject. Because of this we have gone back to the basics and are working her and Bethany largely together with mastering math skills. We are seeing improvements and are optimistic that she will be on track and ready to begin ALEKS next fall. She is also beginning Daily Math Practice (Evan -Moor Grade 3) for extra practice for the remainder of this school year.

LANGUAGE ARTS
Hope excels in this area. Her language arts skills overall are above grade level, with exception to spelling. She is a phonetic speller. We are beginning Spelling Power for both her and Roman this second half of the year.

Roman doesn't exactly struggle in language arts, but he doesn't excel in it either. We are re-evaluating this area for him moving forward. For now we are adding Spelling Power and Daily Language Lessons (Evan-Moor Grade 5) for some daily practice.

Bethany continues to struggle with reading. Phonics are fine, but she's still not reading. We have seen great improvement in the last 3 days and hope this trend continues as she finally get over whatever hurdle has been holding her back from reading. We are using an older version of Hooked on Phonics, Explode the Code, Bob reader books, and have now added Flash Kids Sight Words beginning back at book A. She has completed half of book A in the last 2 days! We are at a turning point for her right now and I can just feel how badly she wants to read. Hopefully with the addition of Sight Words we will continue to see great improvements in her reading.

SCIENCE & SOCIAL STUDIES
For these subjects we continue to take a one room school house approach working out of the unit study program Learning Adventures. This is going well, however we seem to take an exceptionally long time getting through each "30 day" lesson segment as we get sucked in to the topics. So far we have completed Egypt and the study of desserts and are finishing up Ancient Greece and the human body.

OTHER
Learning Adventures encompasses much more than science and social studies. We are also following the literature recommendations that work in conjunction with the program. We have been hit or miss on the bible portions and plan to tighten back down with our daily bible readings. We are following some of the language arts portions and taking what we can from it, but overall we are finding it isn't 100% for us and looking for alternatives in this area.

EXTRA
This first half of the year the kids participated in a homeschool fencing class along with their usual football/cheerleading season. The girls are now doing basketball and all 3 plan to continue with fencing. I am also in the process of working out an Art Co-op for them to participate in with some of their homeschool friends and we will be looking into other homeschool group things for them to participate in. Roman and Hope have taken the last few months off of drum lessons and will resume that this month. Bethany is beginning guitar lessons with James teaching her.

With my work schedule and homeschool it has afforded us more time to travel and do more stuff as a family. In September we attended Homeschool Days at Great Wolf Lodge. In November we visited Myrtle Beach, SC, Merritt Island, FL, and Orlando, FL spending time with family and a trip to Sea World Orlando. Roman also spent 2 weeks in Austin, TX visiting the Sammon's for his Birthday, then another week for us all in Baltimore, MD. We have always loved to travel but with work and school schedules it hasn't been as often as we'd like in the past. We are immensely enjoying this new found freedom!

We ended 2010 on a high note for school spending the day at the Science Museum studying the human body amongst other things, then a quick trip to the Museum of Fine Arts to see some Ancient Greek pieces. And look forward to many new adventures in homeschooling in 2011!