That's a wrap!

The 13-14 school year is in the bag and all wrapped up now. It's been a bittersweet year, full of changes and learning curves but also full of exciting adventures and discoveries. I went back to work last August as the Academy Coordinator (aka- principal) of our homeschooling charter program. With more than 220 students, two buildings and 15 staff members, it's been a challenge to figure out how to work part-time, homeschool 6th grade and still do all the bits that we love while getting all the work done that has to fit in a day.

Looking at our plans for this 13-14 year, some of our best laid plans were completed but some... they fell apart mid-stream. Our curriculum plans were basically destroyed due to me being less able to provide direct one on one instruction and work. We ended up dropping Bravewriter in late October, in favor of NaNoWriMo and then a writing class from Athena's Academy.  Art of Problem Solving was put on hold while the kid attempted a high school site based Algebra class. He ended up finishing one semester in the classroom and returned home for the last semester via UC Scout.  We did complete Intellego Ancient Civilizations, as well as Horrible Histories related to our spring break travels. The kid happily worked his way through Intellego's Plate Techtonics and Evolution units. These were some of our most fun lessons all year!

We also found huge success in simply free reading. The kid has blown through 60 books this year, raised his lexile score by 200 points and shown that you don't actually need a boring literature anthology to learn. He did two novel studies based around Ender's Game and A Tale of Two Cities. He just finished a fantastic analysis paper on the use of foreshadowing in the movie "Frozen", along with several papers for his academic writing class.

Now that we both have a better handle on middle school homeschooling along with me working, we can start looking forward and figuring out what 7th grade will hold! We're opting for a few changes and a few consistent hits that we've had over the years.  I'm feeling less ambitious and planning to stick to more options that we know were successful in a model where has to work alone most of the day.

Language Arts
Don't Forget to Write for the Secondary Grades: 50 Enthralling and Effective Writing Lessons (Ages 11 and Up)
Dystopian Literature from Online G3 (hopefully!)

Science/History
We're opting for a double-Science approach this year! Neither of us were really excited about studying medieval history (the standards based part) so we opted for history through science. We'll be tackling all of these:
The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way
The Story of Science: Newton at the Center
Intellego: Chemical Reactions and hopefully Oceanography

Math
We are hoping for a site-based high school Geometry class. Plus Math Olympiad and our regular math competition team.

The Extras
Fencing twice a week will continue. He's also hoping to take a Video Game Design class, along with guitar again and at least one dance class. Our school is also adding a student leadership program which he'll be a part of this year. He has at least three mods he's also planning on programming in Minecraft.

We're discovering that he's at the age where everyone keeps asking when he's going back to "real school".  The truth is, the further we get from "real school" the harder that seems to imagine. We have finally found a school that works for us and lets him be himself. He doesn't have to hide or pretend, doesn't have to shove his book in his backpack and pretend that he isn't reading that one. Perhaps we'll stumble across the perfect fit, but in the meantime, we are happy just being happy!

Wrapping up 2013

They say time flies when you're having fun. Somehow, it's suddenly the end of December and while I'm not sure I'd categorize the fall of 2013 as "fun" it has definitely been busy! Adjusting to a new routine, new work schedule and a new middle schooler attitude has kept both of us on our toes and encouraged me to revisit and revise all of my plans on a weekly basis.

This is also the time of the year that I look over what my son has accomplished, the hits and misses of curriculum and what needs to happen over the spring to be a successful year.

Hits

1) Dumping literature curriculum for The Book Whisperer style homeschooling.
My son has complained about being told what to read, when to read it and doing all sorts of assignments along with it. But as a teacher, how would I know he was reading? How would I prove he understood it? This year, I listened to him and Donalyn Miller and decided to set him free with one small exception. If you want to see the movie, you have to read the book first. Since July, he's finished 26 fiction books, countless non-fiction articles and small books and read more than 4,000 pages. He polished off Ender's Game and Catching Fire in time for the movies. He takes a book with him everywhere, all the time. I probably should have listened to him last year. Donalyn Miller was right. Be brave, let the kids read!

2) Finding ways to make Minecraft into our homeschool lessons.
Minecraft is the pervasive conversation topic, the mode of communication and the entire social foundation of my son's life right now. It's all Minecraft all the time. So I found myself walking the fine line between allowing him to be obsessed and ruining all his fun. It got easier as we balanced when and how Minecraft is learning vs. social. If your kids aren't playing Minecraft, you're really missing out on an amazing learning tool. But that's not to say that it isn't also the most annoying, frustrating and time-sucking hobby! Using Minecraft for lessons in literature, science and history helped me justify the volume of hours he spends playing. The biggest, most successful find however, is the Minecraft Homeschool classes. Now he has his history lessons, quizzes and Minecraft builds all wrapped into one!

3) NaNoWriMo
We LOVE November. Love it. I can't say enough about how every student, of any age, should be able to participate wholeheartedly in NaNoWriMo. Take a crazy idea and write a novel, in a month, with no editing or self-critiquing allowed. It's a perfect experiment for perfectionists. It encourages each author to really push into the hard parts of writer's block and work through it. More than 10,000 words written in November and the kid has completed his fourth NaNo novel. Completion means December and January are all about editing and turning that long ramble of creativity into a well-written, creatively woven plot.

4) Other Curriculum Success
A few other successes this year so far:


And the Intellego Unit Study Ancient Civilizations  was also a big hit. I've used Intellego products before and while sometimes the links are broken or redirected, it's definitely worth the inexpensive price to not have to make up your own curriculum. The kid loves the online components and they find fantastic resources to use!

Misses

1) A regular Algebra 1 class

Since the kid is far accelerated beyond his grade level in math, we had high hopes that integrating into a standard high school Algebra class would be a success. I wasn't concerned about the math, but was hoping he'd bond with a teacher and we'd have a path to higher level math without any advocacy on my part. Unfortunately, the class turned out to be moving at a tortuously slow pace, with tons of work and no learning. He finished the semester, having lost one entire point the whole semester and not yet hitting any work he hadn't seen before. Back to the drawing board!

2) Bravewriter's Writer's Jungle

Poetry Tea was awesome! I learned a lot about writing styles and coaching writing while reading Writer's Jungle. But what I didn't learn was how to get a reluctant, dysgraphic, extremely creative writer to somehow take on the challenge of any sort of academic writing. He'd happily write stories (see NaNoWriMo above) but the minute you ask him to analyze, report or discuss, it all goes out the window. I've decided to outsource our writing with a class from Athena's Advanced Academy for spring semester instead.   

3) Too much or not enough scheduling

This is always the balance isn't it? Academic homeschooling is a very narrow line between too much and too little. There were too many days where it was 11am and I couldn't imagine how we had possibly finished our work for the day. In turn, there were too many days where it was 4pm and he still hadn't come close to finishing. In my perfect homeschooling world, we'd have great ideas together and they would magically balance out with the perfect amount of too much and too little. They'd appear on the lesson plan already designed and sketched out in a way that made both of us happy. I'm still researching how to make this magical world actually happen! 

So what's the plan?

Nothing is ever boring in the land of academic homeschooling and this year is no different. Just when it seemed that we had hit our stride, entering our third year and the dreaded middle school age with a sense of calm, I threw a giant wrinkle into the plan. As the new principal of our K-8 charter homeschooling program and still planning on homeschooling the kid, the 13-14 school year will be a roller coaster ride for sure. We think we've figured out a plan, but like all well laid plans, who knows if they'll actually come together!

In homeschooling, I get a lot of questions about what curriculum we're using or how he does his work. I wrote about what curriculum we were going to use, back in May and much of that is staying the same. I am pretty impressed that our May curriculum plan is actually holding up! I've laid out lesson plans loosely through the end of September, with some flexibility to adjust to our new routine factored into the weeks. 

The kid has chosen his electives with some serious coaxing from me. Since I'll be working, he needed to pick classes that fit not only his interests, but my work schedule. He's settled on beginning guitar, Spanish lit and film, musical theater dance an online class from the lovely Headmistress Athena at Athena's Academy, drama and Minecraft Club. He'll continue fencing lessons twice weekly and also Math Olympiad twice a month.

You'll notice none of that actually includes our regular core academics. In our three hours of morning quiet time before I need to be at work, we'll be covering our usual math, science, history, language arts, grammar and writing. I'm enthusiastically diving in to the Bravewriter lifestyle and have blocked special time for poetry tea that will be uninterrupted each week.  We'll put aside everything in November for NaNoWriMo and again in February for the school Science Fair. If I thought it would work long-term, we'd simply do one subject a month and go as fast or deep as we wanted. That doesn't work so well for math, unfortunately!

The good news is that the kid has become more self-sufficient over the past year and likely will be able to finish his work on his own. 

At least, that is the plan... and you know what they say about plans...

Choosing Curriculum for the New Year

Researching curriculum, reviewing curriculum, and reading curriculum are three of my most favorite parts of homeschooling. Then comes the worst part, the most difficult challenge of all- actually choosing the curriculum. It feels like torture to let go of something I've spent so much time exploring! But late spring means that it's time to put in the curriculum order for the new year and time to begin breaking up with curriculum I've come to love.

We homeschool through a public charter school in California. There are many different deviations of this model, some of which give parents a fixed dollar amount to spend in selected vendors. Our model is a physical charter that holds classes and purchases curriculum for the families to check out each year. We have access to more than 70 classes, a typical school administration, a library and traditional school activities like Science Fair. There are definite pros and cons to this model. In our case, my son's expensive fencing lessons would be paid for by the school in a different model, because they count as PE. In our model, we pay out of pocket.

Our charter offers a huge variety of curriculum for the classical homeschooler but can be somewhat limited for Academic Homeschoolers. Because it is a K-8 charter school, the curriculum library does not contain anything beyond 8th grade. For most kids, this wouldn't be a problem. However, for us, we often find we have to purchase our own materials to cover the kid's academic needs. 

The kid is a sixth grader on paper this year, though his academic needs are pretty varied. So far, this is our plan for the 2013-2014 school year. It may change, depending on progress in the next few months! For those interested in purchasing curriculum, I have included links where available.

Literature/English

Wordly Wise Book 7

The Writer's Jungle

Free reading- with the school's 40 Book Challenge

Mathematics

Art of Problem Solving- Algebra 1 (We recommend buying from Horrible Ray)

Descartes Cove and Khan Academy as supplemental

Science

Intellego Units in Evolution and also Plate Techtonics/Geology

Our monthly hands-on science club will continue

Social Studies/History

Intellego Units in Ancient Civilizations (covering China and India)

Story of Science- Aristotle Leads the Way

Student Quest Guide (the accompanying workbook)

Electives-

We're still tossing this around. Perhaps blacksmithing with a local co-op, or some improv acting classes. We'll be adding in a musical instrument this year but which instrument is still a family debate!  The kid will also continue dabbling in coding with Code Academy and working on digital art using Anime Design Studio. 

Signing up for another year

The interesting situation of Academic Homeschooling means that we have natural breaks in our school life where we contemplate "Should the kid go back to school?" In our area, most schools are K-5, 6-8 and 9-12, though we do have a few 6-12 schools.  Since on paper, my son is finishing up 5th grade, it was logical to have the discussion of whether or not he should go back to traditional school in 6th grade.

While I think every homeschooler has these moments, wondering if it's time to send the kids back to the brick and mortar building, it seems to come up more in families that are not homeschooling against a system. We have friends that have always homeschooled and always will, up until the day that Junior moves out for college/trade school or marriage. Our other friends that fell into homeschooling due to medical reasons, academic reasons, military reasons or a host of other situations, wrestle with this every single year. Is this the year? What about next year?

We live in a district with a high proportion of charter schools that have lottery-based admissions. The most likely entry point is 6th grade. By default, most people who are looking to make a change- either from homeschooling to school or from school to school, have to make it in the winter of 5th grade. It's a huge decision because whatever you choose feels like it locks kids in for the rest of high school. It's painstakingly difficult to look at your 10 year old and try to determine what kind of person he will be in seven years and which high school is the best option.

After all the thinking, the pros and cons lists and the debates and discussions, we decided to forget about it for a year. My son is happy, sleeping well, as access to a huge amount of experiences, curriculum and life discoveries that he wouldn't have sitting in a classroom 8 hours a day with two more hours of homework. As I've said before, my irregular pentagon doesn't fit nicely in a square box anyway. I'm confident that the time will come when going to traditional school is a no-brainer and doesn't cause us to feel so tortured by the decision.

In the meantime, why would we want to give this up?