Tuesday, February 3, 2009

What homeschooling looks like these days

This is one of those posts that's just asking for trouble.

Unschoolers will say I shouldn't be doing structured lessons; other homeschoolers might say I'm not doing enough. And people who just think homeschooling is weird or bad will find fault with every detail.

Eh, I'll post it anyway.

Our "schoolwork" can be separated into two parts: Stuff that Rachael (7) does, and Stuff that Both Girls Do Together.

Rachael does about 2-3 daily in a phonics book called Explode the Code. I really like these workbooks because they're cheap, kinda silly, but straightforward. I very much dislike any other phonics book I've looked at, incuding the much-touted How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and all those books that have scripted lessons.

Right now Rachael is in book four of ETC, which is the compound words and two syllable words.

Rachael also does part of a lesson in Beyond the Code. Same makers of course, but ETC is phonics and BTC is reading and comprehension. I guess in school terms, it's like having a "reader." We usually spend about 3-4 days on a single lesson/story, then have a day or two that we skip it entirely.

We recently began using Math-U-See, and I love it. Earlier we had been doing a combination of various math games and other math activities like "color by number addition" and stuff like that. Rachael definitely prefers doing MUS, as do I. For those who are familiar with it, right now we're in the Alpha book, lesson nine (adding nine to a number). We watch the video together, then spend about 2-3 days on the lesson before we move on to the next one.

I'm kinda pissed that I never got to learn math this way.

About now you may be wondering what my younger two children are doing during all this. Rebecca almost always watches the MUS lesson with us (and seems to understand it, too.) Today Rebecca and I played Uno, Crazy Eights, and Go Fish while Rachael did her phonics and reading in the next room. Rebecca usually builds towers with the MUS blocks while Rachael does math.

Benjamin just hangs around, playing with his cars and things, maybe crawling in my lap or eating animal crackers or something. Months ago I used to set him up with a video for a while, but I don't do that anymore.

I do Five in a Row with both girls. The more I do this, the more I like it. Usually I do the same book M-F (as the title implies), but Rachael's surgery threw us off a little, so we finished last week's book today.

We read They Were Strong and Good. (If you're not familiar with FIAR, the idea is to read the same picture book every day for five days, then do an activity stemming from it.)

Today's topic was art. The title page has various items that represent different members of the family, so the girls drew their own pictures of our family: a piano and music notes to represent me, cars for Benjamin, a girl with a pink bow in her hair to represent Rebecca, etc.

Earlier activities with this same book last week included: coloring in a map and labeling the four states that the grandparents were from; discussing how towns have changed over the years; discussing what makes a good title and listing "strong" and "gentle" words; and drawing hexagons and octagons and making them on geoboards.

The other thing I do with both girls every day is reading aloud from a chapter book. We almost always do this when I put Benjamin down for his nap. I wouldn't even consider this "schoolwork" except that it seems like most homeschoolers consider it part of the "school day," so sure, why not. Right now we are reading Eddie and the Fire Engine by Carolyn Haywood, which was written in the 1940's.

And that's it. Today we also watched The Electric Company together -- mostly because I enjoy it, ha! Of course we do other things, but those are the only ones I would label as "schoolwork."

1 comment:

Rebecca said...

Sounds wonderful! Ah, I miss those days! I made my homeschooling a bit more complex, sadly, but I did love it. And I loved FIAR, but never used it consistently, which reminded me about how I'm so awful at reading books in a series (can't seem to do it) and so I always felt like I was behind or failing in some way. So FIAR wasn't all that good for me. But I loved it-- or the concept, anyway.