The Long, Hot Days of Homeschool Summer

It's that time of year again! The season of, "How do your kids get their socialization?" will now be replaced with, "Are your kids 'out' for the summer?" Yippee, I'm already getting this question and school in my district just let "out" today! I CAN'T WAIT to hear this question all summer long! By the way, when does school go back "in" so I know when to get back into socialization mode? Alrighty then . . . here is yet another mystery uncovered...

As we know, the lunar calendar gave way to the Roman calendar, which gave way to the Julian calendar, which gave way to the Gregorian calendar, which gave way to the Public School calendar, and all soccer games Shall Be on Saturdays and church on Sundays (regardless of the parents' work schedules, but that is another blog post...) I digress.

Our current American school calendar of about 180 days with the summer months off, started around the 1900's so that rural kids could be home to harvest crops, and urban kids could be spared from sweltering in un-air-conditioned school buildings. I find it interesting that we are asking our kids to learn a TON more than kids in the 1900's had to learn, and we are asking our poor over-worked and under-paid teachers to teach a TON more than teachers of the 1900's, but we are using the same goofy school calendar. I know many parents fight the thought of ever changing the school calendar because they like having beach vacations in the summer (I'm one of them), and sending their kids to all the great enrichment camps (also guilty of that), but what about the other kids that spend their unsupervised summers watching TV, getting into trouble, and forgetting the previous school year? Here's where I ask myself, do we send American kids to school to get an education or to occupy their time while parents work? I don't have an answer for that. I can only speak for myself, which is: I send my kids to "school," whether "school" is to the dining room table, the couch, a museum, or yes... to the TV, to get an education. Therefore, "school" is not "out" for the summer around here. It's not a grueling schedule, (learning really shouldn't be grueling) and we pretty much lost most of May to all their various projects, but I'm okay with that because there was value in what they were doing. The beauty of homeschooling is that you can stop and start and re-adjust plans as needed. I can tell you that Rebecca has announced that she wants to learn Latin this summer (despite the fact that the three of us started French lessons earlier this year), we will continue with Fred and his Algebra, we're hacking away at America: The Story of Us on the DVR, we're immersed in Ansel Adams and his photography and getting ready to visit his exhibit and do something with Patrick's photos, we have a new-found interest in oceanography and oil drilling (hmmm... wonder why?), and we will blog. I'm sure other things will come up. We have a couple of vacations planned, but who knows... maybe they will be part of their education!

So to answer the question: "Are your kids 'out' for the summer?" No, they are not -- unless you consider that they were never "in." Hope this clears it up :)

The Math Book

Our homeschooling math curriculum is no ordinary math book, it's a story. Yes, we have broken every law in the universe saying the only way to teach is sitting a student in front of a boring textbook until brain death occurs, but we have been learning out of a book series about a five year old college math professor for three years and so far no SWAT team has tried to blow down our door. This book is called, Life of Fred. In the first book, Life of Fred: Fractions by Stanley F. Schmidt, Fred (the five year old math professor) is walking to his first class of the day when he sees a student heading to class on a bike. Fred then notices how much faster he could get to the math classroom if he owned a bike (Fred is only three feet tall and walks slowly) plus he could wear a cool helmet. So Fred finds an ad in the college newspaper and goes to buy a bike were the owner changes the price to the exact amount Fred has in his account (overcharging him for the bike), and then has it shipped to his office. Once back at his office, he finds the package and remembers that his scissors have rounded tips. Instead, he tries to use an 18" knife he bought for his friend Alexander's birthday. He   drops the knife on his foot, his friend Betty takes him to the hospital, Alexander meets them, and the trio go out for pizza. There, Fred gets a job, lights fire to the place, sits on the roof of a car going through a car wash to clean all the soot off of him, finds there was a marshmallow in his pocket, wipes the gooey mess on a random cat, (this cat then ends up brushing up against a little girl and gets stuck to her leg) and finally remembers his bike. At home, he picks the tape off the box and finds that it was filled with junk. Not even parts of a bike. After a trip to the corner for some crying, he finds a forty-button remote, and decides to build a robot.

Every chapter has a "your turn to play" which is a set of math questions about the chapter. After every 4-6 chapters there is "The Bridge," which is ten questions about the past six chapters. After 32 chapters (One book) you come to "The Final Bridge," with questions about every thing you learned. Before we found this book, I    was using an ordinary school math book and would work from 10AM-6:30PM trying to do a single 40 problem page until my mom found a math book series that was just like a book. I found it a lot easier to stay on task when I realized that instead of 40 problems on decimals or 40 division problems, it was ten or so word problems that use all different types of math. Flipping through it, I noticed that instead of just showing you wordless "examples" of one way to do it, it actually told you how to do the problem, and "The Easy Way" to finish it. I tried it out and found that instead of eight hours a day it was taking me less than one. We are currently at the third book (beginning algebra) and have set deadlines for each book so we can finish them before I start going to high-school. Thanks Stan!

Checklist to Start Homeschooling: First I Shall......

Well, there are many things to do before you actually start doing the schooling part of homeschooling. For some people it's buying the supplies or becoming an official homeschooler, getting a place to do the homeschooling, or, like us, pulling the kids out of school. I don't quite remember which came first for us, being pulled out of school or becoming an official homeschooler. For us, I think, they happened at the same time. It's quite simple to become a homeschooler. All you have to do is print out a form, sign it, then turn it in to the county courthouse. So we did just that. Yay! We're now official homeschoolers! Now we need to get our supplies. I was thinking we would take a long trip to one of those cool teacher supply stores that are jam-packed with stickers, (yay!) but we don't only use teacher supply stores. Instead, my mom decided to buy off the internet. Sure, now we don't have to go to a jam-packed (with people) store but I didn't get my stickers. Did my mom get everything we needed off the internet? Of course not! You can't get everything off the internet! We get a good amount of the stuff we need from places like Wal-Mart at back to school time (including my stickers.) "But what did you need?" you're probably thinking. Here's a list to answer that question, if you asked it:                                                                                         

Math books - Life of Fred by Stanley F. Schmidt, PhD                                                 

Writing books- Writing Strands by Dave Marks

Science books- McWizKid Science by Larry D. McClellan

History books and movie- What Your 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grader needs to know and various movies and TV shows from the History Channel

Play tickets- for various plays at various theaters                                                       
                                                                                                                               

Homeschooling classes- at various places                                                                 

Notebooks- one of my personal favorites

Journals- another of my personal favorites

Folders- to hold our many reports and subjects

Pencils- another favorite

Glue sticks- to glue things together of course
                                                                                                                                
Tape- to tape things together                                                                                     

Paper- pretty essential

Colored paper- a colored version of paper

Colored pencils- our colored pencils are erasable and come from Crayola

Crayons- not erasable, but still from Crayola

Computers- I'm pretty sure mine's not from Crayola (I'm on Frankenstein, Patrick's on Lydonstein - we all have our own computers that my dad put together)
                                                                                                                                
Markers- not erasable, but washable..... from Crayola                                             

Printers- they have nothing to do with Crayola

Rulers- from various places, maybe even some from Crayola!!!

Good books- from the book store...... not Crayola

Printable learning materials- from our computer to, oh, I don't know, our printer (not Crayola, or at least I don't think)

Helpful computer games- now tell me, where would you find helpful computer games?
                                                                                                                                
Stickers :)- yet another personal favorite

and most importantly,
Pajamas (I'll explain in "My Life in the PJ Club")- um, the type I like.

Once you have all these things you are ready to become a homeschooler, sort of.