Alternative LearningAre you a homeschooling mama? or maybe you unschool... or maybe you are interested in another alternative learning style? or maybe you don't have any idea what i am referring to?? this forum might just be for you! share your thoughts and ideas
I am interested in possibly homeschooling the girls and would like info. I have only heard of Abecca but was wondering if there are any others out there that you all just love.
Thanks in advance.
Katie
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I have been blessed with the job of being a mom to Kaylene (7 yrs), Kassidy (4 yrs), Cody (3 yrs), and Clay (born Jan '07). They are my greatest achievement and am honored to have them! I love, love, love my hubby, Cody, and I am so thankful that he is as supportive and helpful as he is.
I use with my family:
For math: Saxon and Singapore
Language Arts: Hooked On Phonics, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, Evan-Moor phonics workbooks, Spelling words, for the younger children we are doing a letter of the week
using resources from online
Science: Right now, we check out different science books from the library
Social Studies: We are studying ancient egypt
We also check out books on different cultures, countries, from library
Foreign Language: Learnables, audio and videos, computer games, sign language book
Arts: How to teach art to children from Evan-Moor
and various crafts
Hope
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Mom to Ettie, Drake, Isabella, and Jasmine
We are homeschooling our oldest, who just started kindergarten, through a public charter system. They pay for our curriculum, and activities and supplies (we live in CA).
We are currently using Oak Meadow very loosely. We are Waldorf flunkies and so for various reasons do not adhere to any Waldorfian practices or philosophies. But we do like some of it, very much. And I find that the kindergarden curriculum is very arts and crafts, nursery rhyme, and imagination based and is very fun to implement as an aside to other things that we are doing.
That said, we are not really "doing" anything else, aside from living life and recording what we do in such in a way that our charter school can see that we are learning. Because learning happens all the time, in so many natural, spontaneous ways.
This is what I love about homeschooling-the opportunity to appreciate that quality and let your child grow into himself that way; naturally and gracefully. That said, I don't know if we are committed homeschoolers or not...but however long it works, we will enjoy it!
Oh, some of the things that I plan on purchasing (through the charter) or by myself for first grade are: Saxon Math (a very respected and recommended-to us, at least-math curriculum), a book/program titled "How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons", more cheap workbooks from Walmart (my son loves workbooks), and we already have Oak Meadow's First Grade curriculum.
Best of luck to you, enjoy whatever your decision leads you to!
Paige
mom to Hunter 1/23/98; Skyler 4/27/01; and Jasper due 3/04/04
We are using K12 - through a cyber charter. I have a K and a 2nd grader. But we combine all the secondary subjects (art, history, music and science). They work at their own level/pace on math and reading. Austin is right on grade level (mid 2nd grade) and Nate is at K LA/Phonics, but doing 2nd grade math with Austin.
I plan on waiting til Adam is 2nd grade to enroll him, though. (Lauren would be in K then, and we could combine a lot of their subjects) We are looking at using Sonlight preK next year. And then possibly for K and 1st, too. Still undecided....
For younger children I highly recommend KONOS (particularly KONOS In A Box) or Five In A Row .. along with Saxon Math.
I use FIAR with Jack and we *LOVE* it! I am teaching him to read using a book titled Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We use Saxon math. Jack also does a few worksheets for "fun" and he spends about 15-20 minutes maybe 4 days a week playing educational computer games geared to his skill level. Nature walks, field trips, outdoor science projects, and lots of reading whole, living books are a part of our school year as well.
My oldest son, age 15, uses TRISMS .. It is geared for highschoolers. A wonderful program.
We follow a very relaxed unit study approach.... inspired by my research into the Charlotte Mason phylosophy of educating children. FIAR is such a wonderful program. Simple and very effective. I plan to use it with all of my younger boys until maybe the 2nd grade and then will, more than likely, switch to KONOS.
I used Abeka with my older 2 sons for 2 years. Abeka was created for a classroom setting and therefore is very structured and time consuming. My boys disliked it. It made for a very boring day for all of us. Abeka, however, is an academically excellerated program and may work well for your family. I do know several families that enjoy it.
There are so many choices. Many *very good* programs to use. You just have to decide which one will work for your family and lifestyle. No need to stress out the first year though (like I did lol) .. If the program you go with isn't working out.. just do something different. No harm done. Best wishes!
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~ Sherrie ~
Loving my 5 sons
Me, 2nd from left, at my 20 year high school reunion.
Some people are like slinkies. Not really good for anything but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
Last edited by freespiritmom : 02-15-2004 at 08:28 PM.
We follow a book called "The Well-Trained Mind". An updated vrsion of the book is coming out in April, but you should be able to get a copy of the old version from your local library.
I hope this helps! : D
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Elizabeth
Mama to Annabelle who is making me feel ancient now that she's EIGHT!
We do Well-Trained Mind here, too (it's actually just a practical description of the classical or trivium approach to education and it gives a variety of choices for curriculum so you can pick and choose what works for you and your kids). The specifics of our curriculum choices for Max (2nd grade) are on the sidebar of my blog (see link below) and if you scroll down, on the left sidebar are our choices for next year (3rd grade).
I especially recommend our math curriculum -- Right Start math through http://www.alabacus.com
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Alaska So proud of my 7th grader and 1st graders My feedback
I made the sweater, too.
We are currently unschooling our preschooler, but in the future I imagine I'll just make my own curriculum, depending on what he wants to learn, nad what I think he needs to learn.
I have heard good stuff about Five in a Row...and it seems like the "theory" behind it is consistent with how I think kids (or my kid anyway_) learns, so maybe I'll check that out.
Michelle
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~Michelle
Christian homeschooling mama
to a Jumpin Bean (1/01)
and a Pumpkin Head (4/03)
Originally posted by tara We're following an unschooling, child-led approach so we don't have a single curriculum. I would say that our biggest resource is the library.
Tara
nak
This is basically us too. I wouldn't recommend any curriculum for a child the age of your girls except maybe 5 in a row or before 5 in a row. It is a neat approach. we had it and never used it because it just didn't quite fit for our family. ds is a non-fiction boy and fiar and bfiar are based on fiction.
ds is 6 and has to be *encouraged* a bit more than he did at age 3 or 4. We basically unschool, but I do present a lot of information to him. By that, I mean I pick out books that I think he would like (ancient egypt, mythology, fossils, rocks, etc..) and we go with what he shows an interest in. Lately it is ancient Egypt. We read Ms Frizzle's adventure. I love that crazy woman.
He loves math so I just make up stuff based on the state standards. We play a lot of games.
He didn't learn to read by any one method. He just was ready and took a leap. We had done some phonics stuff though.
I try to keep him moving and playing games for learning. He is still just a baby at age 6. He needs to move first, be taught second.
If I had it to start over, I would have encouraged *thinking* more and book work less. When he was ages 3-5, he was a whiz at book work. He couldn't get enough of it. He has incredible memorization skills. Now that he has sort of leveled off on his learning, I'm discovering that he doesn't like to *think*, he likes to memorize. He would probably do very poorly on a standardized test right now--not that I care! He has to be tested next year in 2nd grade. He is exceptionally bright, but doesn't always use thought process to solve problems or questions.
We're working on it.
Gee, I wrote a book!
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Yes, I agree we are not quite ready for a curriculum yet, but I want to get ideas from what is working for others. My biggest fear is that I will not like it or be able to do it (homeschool) and then I will have wasted valuable years when Kaylene should have or could have been learning.
I don't know what unschooling is so if you would like to enlighten me on that I would appreciate it too.
I have been jotting down notes from you all so thanks for all the input. I really am not wanting the girls to go to a public school (particularly Kaylene, I don't really think about it for Kass yet) and the school at our church is not really what we are interested in either.
I was thinking about doing some sort of preK program with Kaylene next year but I have been back and forth about that also. I don't want her to be rushed into all of it. If she isn't ready yet then I want her to be able to enjoy her time at home with her family. Does that all make sense? Hope so. Anyways, I really really really appreciate all the input from you all!
Katie
Oh yes I wanted to add that I have heard that there is a homeschool group in this small town we live in but I haven't been able to get ahold of anyone who has a phone number so that I can get ahold of them yet. In our subdivision there is one family that homeschools and on Wed. we go to Story Time at our library and there is a mom that homeschools also. So I have talked to them, but they haven't gone to the group yet so I will check again with them this week. I would enjoy talking to others around here that homeschool.
Ah! my favorite subject! (i'm a curriculum addict, LOL) this year, my 2nd grader is using SL 1 adding in story of the world and we are loosely using SL Prek for my 5 yo.. next year i'm using My father's world K for my 5yo and My father's world ECC for my then to be 3rd grader. http://www.mfwbooks.com i LOVE LOVE LOVE sonlight, except i don't especially like the science, the language is ok, but i like to delay it a bit, my father's world is not as literature based so we will use some of sonlights read alouds and readers to go with it. but its more hands on.. which i like, and my 8yo needs.
OH!!! you have to go checkout http://www.alldirect.com cheep cheep cheep books!! aka heaven LOL.
for math we are using making math meaningful, which we like.. what else?? definately try to get to a curriculum fair, though you can probably sell whatever you buy adn don't like for close to what you paid. rebecca
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Rebecca
mom to 4 so far
Alex, 10, Nikolas, 6, Chloe, 4, Annabeth, almost 2 kvenvolden@msn.com
I suppose I should list the books we're using. My daughter is about two months younger than your eldest daughter. We're pretty relaxed. I just streamlined everything because I had too much going on in our home schooling and I was just plain not doing it.
Reading - we read books all the time. I follow the suggestions in two books
1) The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. We've just about read all of the books suggested for Preschoolers and younger from this book. Some have been *great* and some have been really bad IMO. It's worth waiting a year to buy it since a new version will be out then.
2)Book That Build Character is another book list, but it's all dealing with morality. I have this list intermingled with the books from "The Read-Aloud Handbook" and it all just comes across as reading books to my DD.
Writing - I try and make sure that Annabelle does something crafty every day like color or paint. Right now she's on a Valentines Day card kick, so our place is covered with paper hearts.
Math - I mostly just do daily math with her. If she's in the mood we play board games.
General Preschool learning - "Slow and Steady Get Me Ready" - It's like Preschool in one book. The book has suggestions based on the age of your child. For example, my daughter is three years old and twenty-eight weeks so we will be doing a number game that is described in this book. It has an activity a week from birth to the age of five years and fifty-one weeks.
Beyond that I just started with Head Start home visits and they have a socialization group that we will start going to soon. Once a week we go to the library. I have books already on hold (I do it through the library website) so that we can concentrate on having quiet fun at the library.
Military wife of a deployed soldier. 
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