Education and Curriculum

So it is all in one place, here are the links to the rest of the school related posts that followed this one:

Core, Language, Science - Sonlight Curriculum

Math, Handwriting, Health, Electives

Reading and Language

Science

Geography and History

This is going to be my one and only time of addressing the school issue at length. I will then have a link to this at the top of the page for future reference. (I of course will be regularly sharing what the kids are working on. I did consider but have decided against creating a separate blog for that.)

This is the worksheet curriculum we have been using for the last couple of years. This is mostly what we did for everything. Obviously we also have many educational books, activity/coloring books and some videos. But these covered every subject. Definitely could be a bit tedious and a bit boring even with the most creative ways of doing it. But we used crayons and markers and still managed to get it done and learn with it.

I am going to break the curriculum and set up down for you here and explain our decision. Then there will be several entries covering each subject individually. Showing the complete curriculum for each. There will of course be things added that we don’t have now, but I will list those things too. All of the “official” curriculum will be here though. It’ll just be some non official stuff that hasn’t arrived yet.

I am doing this for those with concerns, to hopefully ease their concern.

This is the complete school set up now. This is the curriculum for this year and much of it will also be used the next two years with adding some other things.

These top two drawers can be available if needed for something else in the future. These books do not have to be in there, it’s just easier if they are. Things have been rearranged a few times already, I’m sure they will be again.

We got supplies we would need:

Regular and colored pencils, (with erasers, wonderful!) with grips, erasers and sharpener:

Easier to hold colored pencils for a change to avoid frustration:

And of course, glue:

We have a dry erase board for each child, to put up what they need to work on specifically. If they didn’t finish something that day, or need to work on something further. That way I don’t forget to work on it the next day. We can also use it for whatever else we need it for.

This is also a dry erase schedule. We don’t fill out the times, but I thought having an order to do things in, or at least the list of what needs to be done that day... might come in handy.

I was right, it really does. It makes it easier to show that we are going to do this more fun thing after this one that isn’t as fun. They are more motivated that way.

Each morning we get out that days work, this day it was Handwriting, Math, Health and Reading in the morning:

We also have Ruth Beechick's books which are a great resource. This one is a general one, covering more than one subject.

We have an official curriculum this year because we decided we wanted more structure. Putting together my own curriculum was just too time consuming and too much pressure. I much prefer to have a curriculum to work with and then supplement the things I feel we need more of.I don't mind putting together 5 out of 40 weeks of curriculum myself and adding to all of them.

So, this curriculum comes with a Schedule and Lesson plans, everything is essentially ready as far as that goes. However, each subject is done separately. So we have a Schedule and Lesson plans for EACH individual subject. So we could do the whole year of Science if we wanted to, without doing anything else. This allows us to schedule the subjects depending on our schedule. Something that requires reading is better for days we are not at home, while the writing/coloring ones are better at home.

There are several things I love about this curriculum (as well as what we are supplementing with).

1. It is so centered on reading.

There are very few textbooks and so many regular books that you can simply read to learn what would be learned in the textbooks. I would have done 100% better if I had been given this option in school! I was constantly reading, I did badly in school because I spent too much time reading! I just wasn’t reading textbooks. I love that this uses books that we already had, books that I’ve already read, very inexpensive books, award winning books, classics, so many regular books.

2. The flexibility and the structure.

There is a schedule, yes. I love that structure, because we also needed that. But it is not set in stone. It gives you a daily and weekly schedule. (In EACH subject, you could go through all year of Science and then move onto Language if you wanted to. Or you can do each subject every day all year.) But you can skip a day or do two days in one if needed. You can work 7 days a week, or 5 days, or 4 days. You can do the whole week in one day if you'd like. (Which is what we have done so far.)

3. Did I mention I love that it is so centered around books? That you can learn so much from regular books, instead of boring textbooks??? This is a concept that would work so much better in education in general. Everything we supplement with is also regular books. Such as fun biographies or geographical books since this curriculum doesn’t really cover that yet. That is the majority of what we add to the curriculum. Other than the Health/Safety/Character/Self Esteem types of things.

4. The freedom to add other things in as I feel the urge. It is very nice to know that for K-2 where they don’t learn a lot of History/Geography, I can supplement that. I can also add in more books, fun activities, field trips and things like that.

There is more actual curriculum that I was given by an awesome teacher who didn’t need it anymore. I was amazed because this is actually the specific areas I was worried about Sonlight not covering enough of…. and this will allow us to focus on those a little bit more. These also give us more Math curriculum up to 2nd grade and even beyond.

The reading curriculum is very consistent with the reading curriculum we have too. So this will fit in nicely right between the other stuff as far as grade level of reading to fill in the gaps where we were missing some.

There is also a ton of other books that we have that are not official curriculum. Though, many of them are actually very similar. Many of the educational books we have also will work for the next few years as well.

Now, here are a few of the questions I have been getting….

When are they starting school?

They already are. After extensive research and thought, we actually made the decision to home school. For a very large list of reasons we felt that is what was best for our children. (We – As in both the parents, who discussed the situation and agreed upon this decision.) This is what we had been doing since they were born and we felt at this point it was still best for them.

We did have testing done for placement purposes (before deciding for sure to home school and to decide which grade level of curriculum we should be looking at). According to the school district they would be on a 1^st grade level if we were to put them in school. Yet, they haven’t even been to Kindergarten. I think that’s pretty good for being home schooled. So they are doing just as well as the kids who have been in school already. Even those around us who are against us home schooling them have to admit that.

How will they learn social skills though?

We do several playgroups a month, get together with friends, play with kids at the park and actually have Social Skills workbooks. The Principal always used to say “School is not for socializing you can do that on your own time.” The Majority of “social skills” they would learn at school are things I’d prefer they not learn at all.

We have a child who already has social issues, we are hoping that by teaching her the correct social skills through therapy and workbooks…that maybe she will do better later. Once she learns them, they will be difficult to change. The social issues is actually one of the reasons we decided to home school Sadi. With her social issues, we know firsthand what torture school would be for her.

Really though, you have met my children. Does it look like they have an issue with socializing??? Yes, Sadi is shy. Have you ever met her parents? lol

Is that even legal? To just teach your kids whatever you want to teach them? Isn’t there rules or something?

You can technically home school your children in Utah with no “official” curriculum. As long as you are teaching them in each subject. You can print things off the internet for free. Yes, you can just “teach your kids whatever you want” as long as you are teaching in each subject the state requires.

We have personally decided to use an official curriculum along with several other “unofficial curriculum” items. Our official curriculum is actually far superior to what is taught in the public schools. Though we are using a Kindergarten curriculum, when compared to a public school curriculum….it is more along the lines of a 1st- 3rd grade curriculum depending on the subject. The books in the K Curriculum I didn’t read (or have read to me) until 3rd grade.

Well you need to take it slow and make sure they are retaining all of that!

The goal of this is not to retain the information, or to master the concepts. It is to introduce them to these things. They do not need to memorize the planets and their order. We simply introduce this to them. Though, they are retaining far more than I expected! (Cactus grows in the desert, It's only light on one side of the earth at a time because it's spins round and round.)

Of course having one on one attention helps with how much they learn. We can stay on a subject until we are sure they get it if we want to, rather than simply moving on because it is time to move on.

Home schooling allows us to continually customize what they are learning to fit their abilities and interests. It allows us to back off if they are getting burnt out on a particular subject. It also allows us to go to educational things like museums at the time we are learning about a particular topic. We can go during the day when everyone else is in school, so there isn’t so many people and they can really learn more. Not to mention actually be able to socialize with those other homeschoolers that are there are the time.

This decision was made for our children.

It simply allows us a flexibility that we really need in our family.

We don’t have to miss out on family vacations or events, we can bring school with us. Or we can just skip reading for a few days before we go and get ahead in the writing/workbook parts. Then do the reading parts on the trip. This may seem like something trivial to other people, but it's not to my children who didn't have half their family for two years. If we have learned anything over the last few years, it is that family is our priority.

We did not come to this decision lightly. Putting our children in school would have made life significantly easier. Each time I am up at 2am doing the laundry and dishes because there wasn’t time during the day, I remember that. Of course having school during the day in addition to regular children things is very time consuming. However, that isn’t what is important. What is important is what is doing what is best for the kids. If I thought they would learn more in school that is where they would be. Knowing this is what is best for them motivates me to continue to find more creative ways to make it work even better.

Parenting is about sacrifices and this is one of ours.

So far, it is going better than I ever could have hoped. We are significantly further ahead than I expected to be. We are about where I thought we'd be in mid October rather than mid August.

If you do not agree with our decision, that is okay. But please remember that they are our children. We will raise them our way. We do not tell you how to raise your children, we do not want you to tell us how to raise ours.

Thank you.