Homeschooling - SUPPORT GROUP

[Loc20chick]

Hi all, First of all Merry Christmas.

I'm so glad I found this thread, I'm not planning on total homeschooling right now but I'm always teaching my 3 year old and the structure provided by the online homeschooling programs shared here is so helpful. I've already enrolled my 3 year old on the discoveryk12 a few days ago.

Thank you all.

 

[chicken pickin]

This is too funny!!!! Went to get DD set up for starting her year and realized she had done ALL of the middle school science on Time4Learning!
Had to convert her to high school and she wants to do biology. So she is taking 4 high school classes.
She is starting on Thursday. Figured give her a break after having her wisdom teeth removed today.

I also got DD on Kahn Academy for her algebra and she has really picked it up. Been busy doing hunters safety; missed that last year. Have the cattle to deal with tomorrow. She sure loves dealing with the cows. Wants to be a mid wife to just deliver babies for both people and cows.

I see you are homeschooling an 8th grader as well! My DD is now a homeschooler and we will start for the first time just after the winter break. I signed her up with Discovery k12 though I feel like it might be not enough math. Also on the LA assignments she needs detailed explanations of what is asked of her when it comes to LA and Discovery k12 seems to lack what she needs. I will work with her through the LA assignments but might look to find another program to use as well, and because she is in LOVE with math I will supplement the math with another program as well, I was thinking Khan. Anyone have thoughts on Khan?

What programs do you use for your 8th grader besides Time4learning? Also How do you like that program?

 

[herfrds]

Hi chicken pickin well my DD went from being pulled out as a 7th grader right through to 8th grade and is now a freshman. The only thing she is doing now in 8th grade is LA. She went through the 7th and 8th grade math on Time4 Learning so fast just had to keep advancing her.

We also do a lot of hands on schooling. The reason we went with Time4 Learning was we looked at it and did the trial class and when DD did the math part she was so excited she yelled, "Now I get it!"
I give her different things to do. Read a book; do a project on the computer; spelling and penmanship; and numerous other things.

Right now her 4-H demo is to be on proper CPR.

 

[Arielle]

Hi Chicn pickn. Welcome. As you live in a state with fewer regs perhaps try to find other families that home school thru your local library. They can help you with the reqirements for your state and r a good resource for activities.

My kids r in public school BUT education continues during breaks esp the summer. My kids outperform kids that take the summer off. Skills diminsh if not practic ed.like math.

Simply writi ng a daily diary during a family vaca serves many uses.

My kids are playing kahn academy using their cell phones. THEY figured out how to download the app so they can play anytime.They can pick what they want to work on. Their choice. I just remind them to do it.

You will do fine. Lots of material to work on until u decide on a program.

 

[room onthebroom]

Hey everybody. I'm trying to get back into mode after 6 crazy weeks off & find that I'm stalling by looking up homeschool threads instead of putting out an actual lesson plan. In my defense, I can tell there will be an enormous amount of resourceful info on here & I know we'll be back up to speed in no time, but for now I'm seriously considering throwing them all in the car & shouting "FIELDTRIP!"

 

[DMRippy]

Field trips are great and gives us a break.

 

[AmyLynn2374]

Hello fellow homeschoolers!

I'm homeschooling mom of an almost 8 year old boy. He is in second grade. He attended headstart from 4-5 years old and started kindergarten in our school system. I pulled him at the end of his 3rd quarter in kindergarten and homeschooled the last quarter. So this is our 2nd full year of homeschooling. We are RELAXED homeschoolers. Eclectic. I put together our curriculum using Rebbeca Rupp's Home Learning- Year by Year as our guideline. We rely heavily on our public library as well as the internet and some pretty good apps that we have found. There is also a couple different workbooks that we use for practice pages. We usually pick a monthly theme for each subject and work our way through it. We are upstate New York, so we are in one of the 5 strictest states for homeschooling. I would love to be able to move- to, say Texas- before we hit middle/highschool, but that depends on a miracle....lol

We generally start school in the afternoons. We are not morning people. Our motto over the last year and a half has become "We school around life not live around school." He is doing pretty good so far. Science is his favorite. We have struggled a bit with reading, but are seeing great improvement. Yesterday he even said, "I'm really starting to like to read now." So I am hoping this is a break through and will continue.

The hardest subject that I have right now trying to fill and feel like we are not doing enough in is music.

We are upstate-Northern New York- rural, so we don't have a whole lot in the way of decent homeschool groups. We did join a homeschool 4-H group this year, but I'm a little dissapointed in it's handling and non direction.

It was homeschooling that got us into chickens. Well, homeschool and my sister...lol My sister and her man had been raising chickens for a few years when I started homeschooling and I mentioned we were going to do an oviporous animal study for our first science unit. She offered me an incubator, some eggs and said that she'd take the chicks after if I didn't want them. (I had no interest in chickens. I used to block her out everytime she started talking about her chickens. lol) Then I had one hatch.... now I have 2 coops 35 chickens at the moment (all but three I hatched myself.) We ended up going on to hatch in the vicinity of 100 chicks, selling what we didn't keep. I will say, I can not process/eat my own birds, but we do enjoy the eggs and our flock. Oh, and I still have the incubator.

I think that about rounds it out.

 

[room onthebroom]

We start in the afternoon too, right after lunch. It gives the kids a chance to sleep in, play, do their chores & exercise before we buckle down for the rest of the day. We generally work until 4 or 5o'clock. Most of the year I try to have a lesson plan of 4-5 different subjects (per grade, 1hour each) written up on the white board. Some days it just gets too crazy, so instead of a set plan I'll have them "self propel" thru whatever sounds interesting to them that day. Its really interesting to look over their shoulders on those days & see what they've chosen to study.

 

[koko081012]

we use Christian light publications also. It is affordable and I love the character building in the lessons, and that they use chickens and goats in a lot of their stories! We also love their extra little books.. Like Gods miracle an egg. All about what's happening inside the egg and how a mother hen hatches it. We read it during our last incubation not too long before the chicks were ready to hatch and it got the kids excited to see em hatch out. My son uses the first grade reading and the stories are about blacksmiths and horse shoes. One story was on obedience and the story was about a little girl who disobeyed her aunt and messed with the broody chicken and the aunt talked about the importance of leaving that chicken alone and not being to eager to see the eggs. Fun lessons for chicken lovers like us!

 

[MommaRivas]

Hi!
Homeschooler here too.

I didn't make it all the way through the posts yet, but for the math inquiry~ we use Math-U-See with a love hate relationship, and Life of Fred helped my wordy-non-math girl get some prealgebra concepts that were previously elusive.
We've started using Khan Academy online~ it's free and fun! and not only math
Think I'm not allowed to link it yet but it's an easy url.
khanacademy(dot)org

Anyway,
Happy Homeschooling!
~Monica