The Homeschooling Handbook_ From Preschool to High School - Mary Griffith [55]
Our hours are set, but they’re not in stone. We don’t try to do all of these things every day.
Our children are much more stable, polite, and confident since we brought them home. The house is not as straight, and Mom weighs ten pounds more.
Ava and Steve, and their ten-year-old daughter, Sher’ Rie, live in a suburban community in South Carolina. They found that Sher’ Rie had been confused by too many differing reading programs when she attended school and that she had little confidence in her own abilities.
We homeschool all year-round and are coming up on our third year this way. This has worked well for us. It allows us to take time off when we want or need to, and it’s easy to adjust a year-long schedule when you become sick and lose a week of school. For the first two years, we stuck with the school schedule, and I always felt it was too binding.
We have a family room over our garage that we use as our schoolroom. Many days our lessons carry us elsewhere within our home and yard. I use a wide variety of curriculums, but lately we have been using more Rod and Staff than the others. We’ve used A Beka in the past and still occasionally pull the history and science books out to use as resources.
I’ve liked most of the curriculum I bought after the first two years. It took time for me to find the right stuff at the right speed for Sher’ Rie.
Sher’ Rie has had many difficulties with reading; however, she is doing much better. For about three months this year we did nothing but field trips and reading, and she made a lot of progress with her reading skills. It’s great to see her finally enjoying what she reads.
We’ve never stuck to a rigid schedule. We’re now trying to get ourselves into an 8 A.M. to 12 P.M. schedule for our structured schoolwork, and set up all field trips for afternoon times.
I decide what is needed to help Sher’ Rie in areas where she’s having problems. I choose her curriculum and make the decisions about what is to be taught and when. However, I do allow room in many areas for the things Sher’ Rie wants to do.
We have a computer that I’m starting to use for information from other homeschoolers. Eventually Sher’ Rie will learn a lot about the use of the computer, and she, too, will be able to use it as a resource.
I use the public library for many, many books and programs they offer: music CDs, tapes and books for children, many educational videos, computers with programs for children, books on tape, art-work, phonics reading program, magazines, and newspapers.
Sher’ Rie is a kinesthetic learner. When we first started, I was just using textbooks, trying to teach her visually and aurally. My teaching style has slowly changed since then, allowing more hands-on activities and lots of field trips.
Eclectics: Balancing Exploration with “Basics”
Tammy and Jack are Texas suburbanites; their two boys (thirteen and ten) attended only preschool and kindergarten. Tammy is the at-home parent.
I have tried just about every approach to learning there is. Currently, we are in “unit study mode,” and it seems to be the most productive of all.
Essentially, we study when we want to. My youngest may only do math two days a week, but when he gets going, he tends to do a week’s worth of work in a day. We don’t do the same things every day, though I sometimes feel that we should. We prefer to continue with whatever we happen to be enjoying at the moment rather than cut ourselves off in what feels like midstream to go on to the next subject. At first this bothered me, but as I began to look at the way I study when I have something to learn, I saw that this is actually the more natural approach, at least for me and mine.
I do specific work (math, for example) with my two sons separately, and we do the general things together. For instance, we are using Greenleaf’s history together. This month’s unit study is