Gearing Up to Start Year-Round Schooling

Today, we are very excited to welcome a guest post by Stephanie from Where He Leads, We Follow!

During our very first year of schooling we started in early July.  I thought it would be great to start early and have time off as needed and an extended Christmas holiday.  It was nice!  We got all of our days required in by the end of April and we were able to relax.  I decided that next year would be different.  We would start school later in the year and go along with the public school calendar.  So, we started in early August and followed the national holidays and breaks that the public school system does.  It left the kiddos and myself feeling more burnt out than ever and needing a major break.  We didn't do much in the way of schooling through March and are back at the grind here in April.  That made me stop and evaluate what we should change - because honestly something had to change.

I prayed.  Boy have I been praying!  Asking God to reveal to my heart what it is that we should change in order to keep us all from feeling the burn out at the middle of our next school year.

I talked to my hubby. I love that man!  He keeps me grounded when my feet want to leave the floor.  He tells me when my ideas are crazy or when I need to push forward.

I talked with the kiddos.  Honestly those two were no help!  HA!  They could care less that mom is burnt out.  They are just ready to be done with the school day so they can go outside to play.

So that leads me to taking with you today.  Today I am planning.  I am planning our very first year-round school year.  Wanna know what my thoughts are?  Good!  I thought you did.  ;)

First of all we are going to be taking a 4 week break from mid May through mid June.  That way we can rest and recharge and mom can get things in order.

While we are on our break I am going to be gathering all of our necessary materials for our next school year.  I already know the curriculum we are using and have the bulk of it purchased.  I just have to buy the odds and ends.

Then I will work on our schedule.  We are required 180 days of school (who are we kidding we all know kids learn 365 days a year!) so I am going to figure out when we can/should take breaks and chunk up our curriculum to fit within those days.  I will also have to take our co-op classes into account since we are planning to join a new co-op next year.

After that is done we get to start back fresh and new!!  We will have some workbooks, mainly handwriting  that we will have to carry over to the new school year but that is fine by me.  

We are all looking forward to our new school year and are excited to see what greatness it holds for our family.

What does your school calendar look like?

Stephanie is homeschooling mama of 2 and wife to the man of her dreams.  She has been creating graphics for her web-based business for three years.  While homeschooling was never a dream she dreamed for herself she is thankful that God placed it upon her heart.  Find her homeschool blog, Where He Leads, We Follow, here: http://www.whereheleads-wefollow.com and her design website, Tatorbug Creations, here: http://www.tatorbugcreations.com

How to End a School Year

It's the end! Well, almost.

You and your children have completed, or are about to complete, an entire school year. Looking back, it has been a long trail to walk, but you have done it, together.

Whether you feel like you are sailing across the finish line or limping with a few faithful friends helping you walk, you will finish and this calls for a special celebration.

Ten Ideas to Celebrate or Mark the End of a School Year

1. Year End Presentations - Show family members and friends all your children have accomplished this year with a year end presentation.
2. Plan a Picnic in the park, backyard, or living room.
3. Serve a Special Dinner - Serve your child's favorite meal or go to their favorite restaurant to eat.
4. Make a Special Dessert - When our oldest finished Kindergarten, I made a cake to look like Green Eggs and Ham to celebrate.
5. Take A Trip - Go somewhere fun, like a baseball game or an amusement park.
6. Spend the Day Outside at the beach, lake, or pool.
7. Give a Special Memento or Gift to each child. Perhaps something that will remind them of the school year.
8. Have a Party complete with balloons, cupcakes, and friends.
9. Play A Round of Mini-Golf or Frisbee Golf.
10. Do Something Daring - Try out a zip line or climbing wall.

Whatever you choose to do, remember to take the time to celebrate!

Making Time for It All

The Bad News: Homeschooling takes time ~ lots of time.

The Good News: You have time ~ lots of time.
{If you homeschool from kindergarten through senior year, then you have 13 years worth of time.  During that time you will learn lots of lessons and complete many classes.}

So why are you trying to fit it all into one year?

In one week? 

In one day?

The Better News: Not every class or subject must be taught every day of every year.

How can you fit it all in?

First determine your essential classes.  What classes do your children need?  The bulk hours of homeschooling are filled with these essentials.  Only have time for a few classes one day?  Essential classes are the ones you will most likely complete.  Math and Language Arts are usually found on most need lists.

Next, brainstorm with your children about elective classes.  Which ones would they like to take?  What skills do you want to share with your children?  What opportunities are in your area?  Fill these classes into your schedule on a weekly or monthly time period.  Art, Music, and Poetry may be in this category.

Finally, the fun extras happen occasionally.  You can't always go on field trips every day.  However, you can go every once in awhile, and maybe even once a week, depending on your homeschool choices.  Decide what items, events, or extras your family wants to include over the course of your homeschool year, and make time for them.

 

The Best News: With a little planning, you can fit what your family needs and wants into your homeschooling days.

Five Tips For A Good Beginning

Many homeschool families school year-round, and many follow a calendar similar to their neighborhood schools.

Those who take a summer break probably have or are gearing up to start a brand-new year.  Here are some ideas for a positive  beginning:

1)  Be excited, and let your enthusiasm show.  Attitudes are contagious, so be sure your children are catching all of your good feelings.  Marketing is very important!

2)  Prepare several weeks of materials ahead of time.  My family uses a packaged curriculum, so a great deal of the organization is done for me.  I typically use Sunday afternoons as my preparation day, but when we first begin I like to have looked over and gathered the enrichment materials for the next month or so.  This allows me to focus on the children rather than the material.

3)  Do something fun or unusual during your first few weeks.  While everyone is readjusting to your routine, add some favorite activities (or some new ones!) to keep everyone feeling excited.  In our first few weeks, my oldest son started band classes at our local public school, I took the children on a 'book scavenger hunt' at our library, and we went with cousins on a field trip.

4)  Talk about what everyone is learning.  My children love to talk. Period.  I encourage them to tell others (like their father, other family members, friends and interested adults) about what they are studying.  It helps with their retention, make them feel proud of their work, and can be a great tool to show individuals without exposure how effective homeschooling is.  Discussing what they are learning with you helps them practice for whenever those opportunities arrive.

5)  Take it easy.  Don't try to get everything done.  Freeze some meals ahead of time or plan on grilled cheese and soup for supper.  Watch your children instead of your curriculum.  It is your prerogative to avoid the pressure and stress that children face in institutional schools so take advantage of it.


And don't forget to take a few pictures!  Best wishes on your new year from all of us here at Growing Your Homeschool.

Summer School

"What?  School over the summer?"  Perhaps this is your child's response.  Maybe it is even your response.  I understand.  It is exactly what my children and I said the first time we pondered schooling over the summer months. 

Our summer vacation is a time of rest from the hectic school year, and we envisioned summer school as enslavement to a hectic school schedule.  But, schooling over the summer doesn't have to be like that.  It can be fun, low-key, relaxing, and quite beneficial.

Though we do not do school year round, for the past five years we have done school over the summer.  Some summers we work through a unit study about a particular country or time in history.  Other summers, we do minimal work strictly to maintain the children's abilities in math and language arts.  One time, we tried a different approach to homeschooling.  And, during one summer break, we did some remedial work.  

Summer school may not be the choice for all families.  If you hold near and dear to your summer break, then schooling through the summer may not be an option for you.  However, there are some good reasons to consider using those warm vacation months for school. 

Reasons to consider schooling over the summer months:

• Your child needs tutoring in a specific subject.  The summer months can be a great time for concentrated tutoring in one subject while not teaching other subjects. 
• You want your child to retain a working knowledge of what they learned during the school year.  (i.e.  you don't want their brains to go to mush while they soak in the sun rays and play in the pool)  If this is your motivation for summer school, then about half hour or so of math and reading a few days a week are probably enough to maintain the learning over summer vacation. 
• You want to maintain some type of organized schedule or organization to your week days.  Schooling throughout the summer months will help you stay organized and in your school routine.
• You want to finish the curriculum, or books, you started during the school year.
• You want to do some special activities or projects, that you weren't able to squeeze into the past school year.
• You want to experiment with a new teaching or learning style.  The summer months can be a great time to explore different homeschooling methods and approaches.
• You want to teach one or two subjects over the summer instead of during the school year.  This can work well for subjects like typing, art, music, and creative writing.

 

  

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Dorie enjoys being outside, photography, art, writing, a strong cup of coffee, and good conversations seasoned with much laughter. She and her drummer husband, Jerry, share a life built on faith in Jesus, love, and grace. They have been blessed with four active children. Each day, whether easy or trying, is a wondrous part of this grace filled journey, and Dorie blogs about them all at These Grace Filled Days. Their homeschooling adventures can be found at Homeschooling Just Next Door.

Homeschool "Enrichment"

In most fifth grade classes here in Kansas, children begin their year determining if they will participate in beginning band, and if so, which instrument they will play.  Band was a great part of my childhood and I wanted my children to be offered the same opportunity if it was possible.

As it turned out, we were homeschooling when fifth grade rolled around.  I had met several other homeschooling families who utilized other public schools for many different resources, so we decided to check into our town's band program.  We aren't sorry we did!

The principal (and all of the staff) were courteous, helpful, and happy to have us.  We were the first homeschool family to be partially enrolled in the intermediate school, and we found their attitudes to be refreshing and interested.  At enrollment I paid a $20 fee and the principal himself gave my son a tour of the school.  We worked together with the secretary to create a safe system of drop-off and pick-up.

The band program itself was the big seller for us - there are three teachers who work with all the children in band from fifth grade clear through high school.  Should our son decide to continue with band, he will maintain a relationship with the same teachers as he continues to grow.  The high school band in our town has the largest amount of student participants compared to all other school activities.  The teaching is well structured and they managed to have four concerts for the fifth grade to showcase their talents.  Our son made several new friends and absolutely loves playing his horn.  He has written papers and journal entries about band and will be giving a presentation about being in band at our end-of-the-school-year party.

I am encouraging him to consider other extracurricular activities through the school.  He can join sports teams, academic clubs, and school organizations if he develops the interest or desire.

I also know that, one day, he is going to surpass my knowledge and abilities in mathematics.  There will be many choices for how he can continue his learning, like internet courses, tutoring, courses structured for homeschoolers, and homeschool group learning.  I will also consider partial enrollment if he is interested.  We have had a wonderful experience this year with band!

Simpler is fitting us better

When we began homeschooling (when my children were seven, five and three) I had grand visions for the complex and exciting ways in which our lives would change. I envisioned planning and executing numerous heavy field trips, I imagined parties for holidays planned by the children where friends and family of all ages participate, I expected to push my children to advance quickly in their work and include difficult, enriching, non-required subjects.

The reality has been that none of these things happen in the way I imagined. It has turned out that my priorities came into sharper focus once we began homeschooling, and high-pressure academics, too much travel, or intense preparations don't fit well with those things we find most important.

My focus has become so much more about how large a moment can be and the potential to seize it.

Our learning is better absorbed in bite-sized, minimized routines and I am satisfied so long as we are staying generally on track with state assessments in case the children ever decide to mainstream back into school.

Our field trips are immediate and centered around the needs or interests of a person in our family at the time they occur.

We plan one party a year, when we are finished with our curriculum. The children create displays and presentations, lay out some of their best work, make refreshments. I put together a slide show of our year and play it on the laptop. We set out every book we read during the school year. Then, we invite family and friends over for our year-end party. It's wonderful for the children to see all that they have accomplished, how much they have grown, the knowledge and learning they have amassed and savored.

The rest of the year I am so satisfied with the experience our children are having when they all stop working to watch a giant flock of geese pass by, when they come in from an afternoon outside with rosy cheeked and breathless exclamations about their game or discovery. I love it when they say "I wish we could see a..." or "Could we stop and look at..." and "I wonder if we could..." and we can.

Their learning centers around reading good literature together, play-acting what they have read or heard, applying their bite-sized lessons without realizing. When we are reading one of those excellent pieces of literature and it is so moving that I have to stop reading for the lump in my throat, we can take as much time as we want to discuss what is happening in the story.

And when they beg me "Pleeeeeeease can we read a little more?" I can answer by smiling and opening the book again.

Growing Into Homeschooling

When you start out with homeschooling, one of the best tips I wish I had listened to was to start slowly. I had four students my first year, with one I needed to teach how to read. Things would have gone much more smoothly if I had only allowed us to grow into homeschooling.

What do I mean by that?

Don’t jump into all of the subjects at once and stress everyone out!

If you are a few weeks into your school year, and are feeling overwhelmed already, you may need to take a deep breath, and get back to basics.

Maybe strip away Latin and stick with the 3 R’s, or perhaps you need to go even further and begin with only character training.

Some moms do only certain subjects on certain days, rotating the schedule so that there isn’t a heavy load on any one day.

Do you really need creative writing every day each week?

Take a look at your schedule and your curriculum. How many lessons are in each book? How many days will you have instruction? You may find that you can finish all of your lessons if you only do science for example, three days each week.

Most importantly-we are homeschooling to instill a love of learning in our children-that happens even when the school books are closed.

The Mission Statement

Do you know what your goal for homeschooling is? Is it for your child to have the best academics possible? Do you have spiritual goals that come before all else for home education?

When we first started homeschooling we knew we wanted a direction for our school. We also wanted a place to refer to our purpose, to remember why we decided to leave public education to start with.

We also wanted a name, a mascot, and school colors. This would provide a sense of belonging. We decided we needed a mission statement.

If you have no idea where to start with a mission statement, you can take a look here at ours, which my husband made back in 2009. Our goals have not changed, so the mission statement remains the same now.

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Kelley Christian Academy

Mission Statement

2011-2012

Isaiah 40:31

“…they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”

Family/Education Goals:

We plan to educate, inspire, motivate, provide spiritual emphasis, and instill the heart of a servant, in a Christ-centered environment.

Homeschooling:

Is A matter of our Christian spiritual conviction.

Statement of Purpose:

We believe that children are gifts from God (Psalm 127:3), and that parents are responsible for the training and education of the children God has entrusted to them (Ephesians 6:1-4). Each parent stands accountable to the Lord for the course that is charted, and the course that is followed.

Philosophy of Education:

Eclectic- “Choose the best, leave the rest.”

School Colors:

Black, Gold

Mascot:

American Bald Eagle

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Our purpose and goals are easy to see, and we have a constant reminder of where we want homeschooling to take us. I hope you will make one as well, and include the whole family in coming up with yours!

Starting A New Year

We took about five weeks off for our break, it was mostly for me to do planning. We officially started back to school on July 5th. From our previous experiences, I recommend not jumping in full-schedule at first!

It is really hard to go from this:

to this:

It can be a bit of a drag, quite honestly.

We are easing into our school year with these steps~

• School is downstairs, not in the classroom.
• We are doing one week with only History and Science {plus leisure reading & phonics for K}.
• We will add 1 or 2 subjects each week until we have a full school load.
• We will  adjust the our schedule as needed.
• I am not ringing any bells. School will start when all are awake and fed.

I used to just jump in and do it all from day one. Hopefully with this plan, we will be able to avoid homeschool burnout from setting in! 

How about you? What do you do to ease your family back into home education?