Story of the World

We’re using Story of the World this year for history.  The World Book scope & sequence for first grade social studies includes the following:

• Holidays, traditions, and customs
• Our American Heritage
• Different cultures at different times
• Family, school, neighborhood, community
• Farm and zoo
• Neighborhood helpers
• Jobs and careers
• Social skills and responsibilities
• Basic geography terms
• Making and reading a simple neighborhood map

But, the Story of the World approach to learning history is completely different (and, I might think, more exciting; not to make fun, but…neighborhood helpers?).  The book series contains four volumes, one for each grade level 1-4.  They go through history in chronological order.  This seems helpful to me, because in public school (great ones, I might add), I learned about history in little bits and pieces, and the pieces were all jumbled up.  Government.  Ancient and Medieval History.  American History.  College was the same way, and none of it has ever fit together for me with any kind of sense, because I didn’t learn it in logical order. I like history, but I don’t have a good grasp of it.   Story of the World is the remedy for that.

Since we start at the beginning, we’re learning about ancient times this year, beginning with the nomadic people.  There is a Story of the World read-aloud book that I read to the kids twice a week.  (4-year old AJ listens and participates too, and she has learned as much as her 6-year old brother!)  After the reading, I ask some comprehension questions, either off of the top of my head, or using the questions included in the accompanying SotW activity book.  Then I ask DJ to tell me, in a few complete sentences, the coolest things he learned from that reading.  For those unfamiliar with various homeschooling methods, this nifty little activity is called narration, and it’s a great listening and language development tool.  I write his narration down on a piece of notebook paper.  Then, the activity book has a coloring page and a map for him to complete.  After he finishes those, I put them and his narration page into a 3-ring binder.  The binder will serve as a portfolio of his work, and is also a neat tangible reminder of what we learned about history in the first grade!  In fact, it’s kind of a personal, homemade history book, which I think is really cool.

After these activities, then we try to do some of the craft/hands-on activities also included in the SotW activity book. We don’t necessarily do them all in the same day; we might do them any time during the week when I need a little something for them to do. Like today.  For the past week, we’ve been learning about the ancient Egyptians, mummies, and pyramids.  One of the activities was to build pyramids out of Legos.  We’re all about Legos in this house, so you can imagine how much fun that was!

The SotW activity book also includes lists of corresponding literature for each topic, which is awesome.  So far this year, we’ve been able to check out several books from our library about nomads and ancient Egyptians, which has just added an extra dimension of interest and understanding to each subject we’ve learned about.  I think Story of the World is one of the reasons why homeschooling is so much more fun for us this year, because we all love it!

And I dare say we’ll learn about holidays, farms, zoos, and neighborhood helpers in some other way, somehow. ;-)

School at home

What I learned in my first year of homeschooling, in a nutshell:  be flexible.  And also, be flexible.  And last but not least, be flexible.  Maybe there’s a theme here?

When we first started homeschooling,  I thought I was going to use a 180-day lesson plan curriculum.  But when I saw how much those cost (Sonlight, for example), I instead headed over to a big homeschooling warehouse nearby.  They do a brisk internet business and actually even supply some of the big catalogs, like Rainbow Resources, but they also welcome walk-in retail customers.  Lucky for me, it’s 10 minutes from home!  So anyway, I went over there and talked with the employees, and they pointed me to Horizons Math and American Language Series reading/phonics, then told me I could fill in social studies and science and other subjects with purchased materials or library books.  It’s just kindergarten, after all.  So that’s what I planned to do, and all went well for the first couple of months.  I had a nice teacher’s plan book, and every weekend, I’d write in what we were going to do each day for the following week. Math, phonics, handwriting, then read-alouds or coloring pages for everything else.  But the teacher’s plan book was messy, because some days someone woke up sick, or we had a bad attitude, or something else came up, and I’d have to erase the plan for that day and re-write it in on another day.  And then to make matters worse, by January, I had lost steam on planning out anything except math and phonics, which were just worksheets and required little effort on my part.  And because I was sitting DJ down and saying “do these worksheets” and not making anything fun, he lost steam, too.  In fact, many school days turned into something like this within just a few minutes of starting:

(This picture is actually of AJ showing me her “working hard” face, but it looks an awful lot like DJ’s “I hate school” face.)

I knew this would not do.  We took a week off, then went back over to the homeschooling warehouse, and talked to another employee.  She suggested a preschool curriculum called Little Hearts for His Glory.  It lets you use your own math and phonics programs (which we had, of course, being mid-year by this time), but then it adds a bunch of fun, kindergarteny activities for each day like rhymes, fingerplays, crafts, dramatic play, and thinking skills activities.  And each week has a theme.  So, mid-year, we switched direction and started something brand new.  Be Flexible!

At that time, I also started a new way of record keeping.  Be flexible.  South Carolina requires you to homeschool 180 days a year.  Doesn’t matter which 180 days, nor is there an hour requirement if you homeschool under the third option like we do.  I went through the teacher’s plan book, which by now was a wreck of erased and re-written daily plans, and counted the days we had schooled so far.  Then I started a 3-ring binder.  I made a tab called Daily Journal, and on the first day I used it, I wrote the day # and the date on a piece of paper, then listed the things we did on that day for school.  Something like this:

Day #92, 1/21/09

• My Calendar
• Horizons K-2 lesson 1
• ALS K-2 lesson 1
• Little Hearts Unit 1, Day 1
• Practiced AWANA memory verse Joshua 1:9
• Wrote thank you note for Christmas gift from Miss Bunt

And so forth.  I did this each day, writing down what we did as we came to it, which eliminated a LOT of erasing if the plans for that day didn’t go down as expected!  Be flexible!

The new curriculum and the record keeping change made a huge difference in our homeschooling experience for the second half of kindergarten.  We actually enjoyed it!  And at the end of the year (which was in July, because we’re currently schooling year-round), I rubberbanded all of DJ’s work together in a big stack and put them into a big storage box.  AJ also had a folder and some workbooks that she completed (but she was in 3K so her paperwork was minimal; I was lucky if she even sat at the table with us on some days–be flexible!), and they went into the storage box as well.  I read about that method on someone else’s blog and it seems to be a good idea so far.  But if it turns out there’s a better way, I’ll re-evaluate it.  Be flexible!

So, in summary, in our first year of homeschooling, I learned to be flexible.  We started an entirely new method of schooling this year (because we’re flexible) and we’re loving it.  More on that next time!

H is for*…

…homeschooling.

I was one of those who used to say I would (or could) never homeschool. Last summer I was so ready for DJ to head off to 4K, so I could have a few hours a day to go grocery shopping, run other errands, or just enjoy the relative peace and quiet of having only AJ with me. But, as we got closer to the end of this school year, the reality of our school situation started to sink in. DJ’s current preschool (run by a local church) stops at 4 K. No kindergarten. Most of the kids in the 4K classes there will be heading to public kindergarten in the fall. We looked at the public school that we’re zoned for, asked around a little, and realized 1) it’s too far from us for comfort, and 2) there could be better schools. And looking ahead to the high school years, the high school is 22 miles from us. You have to get onto the interstate to get there. Can you imagine me letting my kids get into their own car one day and driving themselves down a busy highway to get to the eleventh grade? No, thanks. So, then I looked into out-of-district attendance. I was shocked to discover that the district we live closest to (and prefer) charges $419 a month for kindergarten if you want to attend from out of district. Yes, this is public school, charging tuition. Again, no thanks. I wrote letters to several public officials, but basically, they can’t help. So, we started to consider moving into that district. We have wanted to move for several years, so this was no stretch. But there’s no guarantee that we will move in time.

During all of this time, while we were considering our options, it suddenly occurred to me that I could homeschool. I was wary to even mention it to my husband, because he has been pro-homeschooling for a long time. He never pressured me, never made me feel like it was the only option he valued. But he did say he liked the idea. I didn’t want to commit to anything without further investigation, so I checked out a bunch of books from the library. As it so happened, those books (see list at the end of this post) totally cemented my decision.

So for the last few months, we’ve been in the planning stages. I have the state homeschooling law all figured out and know what I need to do to be legal (thankfully, South Carolina’s laws regarding homeschooling are pretty simple, and hands-off). I have talked to a bunch of homeschooling bloggers, and  some homeschoolers I know in person. I’m still considering curriculum choices, but I have it narrowed down. And, surprisingly, I’m really excited about it! I know I have the organizational skills to handle it. And I plan to use a curriculum that gives me 180 days of actual lessons, so I can start out not having to plan too much of the work myself. And it helps to begin in kindergarten, when the work is still mostly play. Oddly, I find that I’m also excited to spend more time with DJ, which is the opposite of looking forward to him being gone for a few hours every day. Which makes me wonder if we moms are conditioned by society to cut our ties with our children prematurely.

Also somewhat of a surprise is DJ’s opinion of our plans. He is so excited to learn at home, and to have mama as his teacher. And I’m not worried about him missing kids from the classroom, because he has several friends at church that we see at least three times a week. Plus, there are several large co-ops near us that we will look into eventually. They have play days, group classes, and field trips. Add that to church activities and sports activities, and we will have more than our share of social interaction. So, my last worry about homeschooling (and the one detractors–like me in the past–always like to bring up), socialization, is no longer a worry, either.

I thought I would share some of the resources that have really helped me as we started looking into homeschooling.

Books about getting started

So You’re Thinking About Homeschooling, by Lisa Whelchel

The First Year of Homeschooling Your Child, by Linda Dobson

Homeschooling, the Early Years, by Linda Dobson

Websites

HSLDA, for learning about state laws

The Heart of the Matter, a collaborative blog written by homeschoolers

There are many more websites in my bookmarks folder, but most of them are specific to South Carolina (like Carolina Homeschooler and South Carolina Home Educators Association). If you live in SC and would like more links, let me know!

* I know the ABC-along is supposed to feature a photo depicting the theme for each letter. I don’t have any homeschooling photos, however, I do have lots of photos of my kids learning at home. So, that’s what I have chosen to share in this post, even though it’s a repeat.