I Want to Homeschool; Now What? Method

"I thought we'd have a little supper and talk some philosophy."   

              "I don't know a philosophy."  ~ Lonesome Dove

Choose Your Method

Growing up, there was only one curriculum to homeschool with that my mom was aware of, and it was in the textbook genre.  Fast forward 15 or so years and I assumed that same curriculum was my only choice for my children.  My world was simple.  Then I discovered the internet and all its research capabilities, and I immediately didn't have a clue what I was going to do for homeschooling.  I felt the textbook method was a little boring and wanted a more interesting path.  I dabbled with unit studies for the preschool years and did a year of eclecticism (what does that mean?!!).  This was a bit better than worksheets and fill-in-the-blanks, but I still wasn't satisfied.  One day I came upon a website that laid out several methods for homeschooling.  An epiphany!  I didn't realize there were more than two! Reading summaries of these different methods and seeing right away which one seemed to most fit our family was a breath of fresh air to my info-drowning mind.

A method of homeschooling is kind of its philosophy of education.  It's the thoughts behind what you do.  It answers the why questions.  ("Why do we do it this way?")  There are only a handful of educational methods that I'm aware of (and I'm not an expert, by any means).  Most of us probably have very distinct thoughts on our preferred method and don't even realize it.  We may recognize what we don't like, but have no guidance as to what we believe is good.  Some of us just use a curriculum peers are using without thinking about it.  

Choosing the right fit is important because school should be an extension of your life.  If you love sitting on the couch reading with your kids, choosing a self-paced curriculum where your child sits at the table with little input from you will shrivel your spirit.  Curriculum comes out of someone's thought process.  So before you choose curriculum, choose your method.

So what methods are out there from which to choose?  Some that I've heard of are Textbook or Traditional Method, Waldorf, Eclectic, Unschooling, Literature, Classical, and Charlotte Mason.  There are many sites that provide brief summaries describing each method, but a few that I found simple to use were:

Simply Charlotte Mason  

Successful Homeschooling

eHow 

A to Z Home's Cool Homeschooling  

Be aware that any person who wrote these summaries will have a personal bias (as we all do) and may not represent all the methods adequately.  But by reading several sites, you should get a basic idea of the methods.  Read the summaries, see what clicks with you, and then do more research on your top two or three choices.  

I right away recognized that the Charlotte Mason method was the fit for our family.  I had never heard of her before, but I felt at home with her ideas.  From there I read all I could about Charlotte Mason homeschooling and was able to narrow down my curriculum choices.  Which brings you to the next step:  Choose Your Curriculum.

Method
Go to Curriculum
Go to Schedule

"Liberty Lee's Tail of Independence"

"There are times, 'in the course of human events,'

People want to create their own governments."

 Liberty Lee's Tail of Independence by Peter W. Barnes and Cheryl Shaw Barnes covers the Revolutionary War time period guided by a patriotic mouse.  It is geared toward ages 5 and up.

There are a couple of sections to this book.  The first is the rhyming story in the voice of little Liberty Lee.  Colorful illustrations are detailed.  Several of the maps were helpful for giving an overview that my 10 year old had not grasped from our previous year's learning of this time period: one map shows the original 13 colonies and another shows where 19 of the battles were fought.  My 8 year old son caught that one of the pictures was a replica of a painting we have on our wall: John Trumbull's "Declaration of Independence."

While the illustrations seem geared toward a younger readership, the text seems geared toward an older one.  Many words and phrases such as "separate and equal," "self-evident," and "Continental Congress" won't all be grasped by a young child, but hearing them will help familiarize your child with the vocabulary of our founding documents.  My 6 year old has made her own "De-clo-ration" since the reading of this book.   It consists of her name written over and over again and the sheet of paper scrolled on the top and bottom.  She is treating it as a Very Important Document.

The second section of the book is called "The Tail End" and provides extra material for parents and teachers to use in presenting further topics from this time period such as "The Signers: 56 Men" and "Boston Tea Party."  It contains many facts that my 10 year old was constantly checking ("Mom, is this true?").  It was useful for reminding me of dates and details I've forgotten and for giving a quick overview of the subject.

Our homeschool chooses living books with which to learn.  (You can read more about that here.)  While I wouldn't label Liberty Lee's Tail of Independence a living book, I would use it as a supplemental extra to our current school choices.  It's a level or two above a DK children's book but not as living as something like "Paul Revere's Ride" by Longfellow, illustrated by Ted Rand.  Some parents will enjoy the great synopsis of facts describing how and why America became an independent country.  My 6 year old narrated back to me that it was about "a president" and "our country" and "We won!"  And she was very excited that we had won.
     



This review is a part of a TLC Book Tour where many bloggers give their opinion of the same book.  You can find more reviews of this book here at TLC Book Tours.


*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Teaching Reading: Conclusion

Since I've spent so much time telling about Phoebe's reading progress, I thought I'd report on my older two also.

Elizabeth is heading into 5th grade.  We don't do reading instruction anymore, but I do have her read out loud to me from different school books or the Bible each day.  There are a number of hard words that she mispronounces because so much of her reading is done silently to herself.  So I'm able to help her with correct pronunciation.  (And many times I have to look up a word to figure it out myself!)  She's able to practice clear, distinct reading also when reading aloud.

Jonathan finished Delightful Reading last year; so this first grade year has been about lots of reading practice.  He read "The Primer" by Harriette Treadwell (free to read online).  He is working his way through the extra sentences in the "Delightful Reader" ( we didn't do all the extra sentences last year).  And he is reading "Frog and Toad Together."  I alternate readers at the end of each chapter.  He also reads his copywork each day; he's working through "Hymns in Prose" right now.  And my plan is to use the "Hymns in Prose" reader with him next year.  It has great uplifting content with challenging words.

Jonathan is really catching on to the various phonics rules as he reads.  He simply picks up on them as I explain the way a certain sound works.  His personality doesn't like any exceptions or rules that don't make sense to him.  (Why does kn say n?  Why couldn't they just put an n?!)  I know he'll enjoy etymology when he gets older ~ I was thrilled to have an etymology course in high school because it explained so much about the history of words.

All the kids are progressing in reading.  Not all at the same rate.  And it sometimes feels slow to me.  But they learn a little each day and it all builds up to make a nice visible foundation when we look back on the year.

See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

Teaching Reading to Our Third: Part 4

I thought it might be helpful to break it down a little more if you are interested in using these simple plans.  You'll work on the sentence exercises for several weeks, so the sounds and words are not all to be learned in one day.  These are not broken down into daily lessons, but rather into sentence "chunks".  I'll give the sounds and words focused on for each of the 6 sentences from the previous post:

For the first sentence: Pam is tan.

1. Learn and/or review sounds p, a, m, i, s, t, and n. 

2. Learn and/or review words am, Sam, Pam, spam, is, an, man, pan, span, and tan.

3. Make old (if practice is needed) or new words using alphabet letters.

4. Show the word card and let your child copy it into word notebook.

5. Do a word or sound activity.

6. Once words are well-known, make a sentence with word cards.

For the second sentence: Tim spit in a pit.

1. Learn and/or review sounds s, i, t, p, m, n, and long a.
2. Learn and/or review words it, spit, pit, sit, Tim, in, sin, tin, pin, spin, and a.
3. Make old (if practice is needed) or new words using alphabet letters.
4. Show the word card and let your child copy it into word notebook.

5. Do a word or sound activity.

6. Once words are well-known, make a sentence with word cards.

For the third sentence: Sam is a man.

1. Learn and/or review sounds s, a, m, i, long a, and n.

2. Learn and/ or review words sap, map, nap, tap, apt, and imp. (These words aren't used in any of the sentences, and since the child has learned all words related to Sam, is, a, man, this is a good place to learn these words.)

3. Make old (if practice is needed) or new words using alphabet letters.

4. Show the word card and let your child copy it into word notebook.

5. Do a word or sound activity.

6. Once words are well-known, make a sentence with word cards.

For the fourth sentence: Sit on the mat.

1. Learn and/or review sounds s, i, t, n, a, m, and introduce short o.

2. Learn and/or review words on, at, pat, sat, mat, spat.

3. Make old (if practice is needed) or new words using alphabet letters.

4. Show the word card and let your child copy it into word notebook.

5. Do a word or sound activity.

6. Once words are well-known, make a sentence with word cards.

For the fifth sentence: An ant sat in a pan.

1. Learn and/or review sounds a, n, t, s, i, and p.

2. Learn and/or review the word ant and at and an words if needed.

3. Make old (if practice is needed) or new words using alphabet letters.

4. Show the word card and let your child copy it into word notebook.

5. Do a word or sound activity.

6. Once words are well-known, make a sentence with word cards.

For the sixth sentence: Tim sips tea.

1. Learn and/or review sounds t, i, m, s, p and introduce ea as having a long e sound.

2. Learn and/or review words sip, tip, tea, sips.

3. Make old (if practice is needed) or new words using alphabet letters.

4. Show the word card and let your child copy it into word notebook.

5. Do a word or sound activity.

6. Once words are well-known, make a sentence with word cards.

                               Our Third

See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Conclusion

Teaching Reading to Our Third: Part 3

Now that we have some simple word-building under our belt, I plan to add several steps: writing words in her word notebook, sound/word activities, and, once she is very familiar with some words, sentence-making.

I've selected 20 words from the list in the previous post and written them on cards. After Phoebe makes a word with letters, I show her the card and she copies the word into her word notebook. The Delightful Reading kit includes a word notebook, but any blank notebook will do.

Activities can include reading a word card while jumping up or down stairs with each word. I have her go back a step if she gets the word wrong; we go through the small pile of words over again until she gets to the bottom of the stairs. You can read a word aloud and let your child find the word among a couple of other word cards. You can hide the familiar letters around the room and let your child find them to put them together to make words. Are there other activities your child enjoys during pre-reading lessons? I'd love to hear more ideas to keep my active girl on task. The movement really does help her concentrate.

Once she is very familiar with a few chosen words, I'll have her pick up the words I tell her and lay them in a row so that she may then read a sentence.

The sentences I chose are:

~ Pam is tan.

~ Tim spit in a pit.

~ Sam is a man.

~ Sit on a mat.

~ An ant sat in a pan.

~ Tim sips tea.

(A couple new words are added to help make cogent sentences.)

So a day's lesson might look like:

1. Review sounds from chalk board.

2. Review words from previous lesson using word notebook or word cards.

3. Make old (if practice is needed) or new words using alphabet letters.

4. Show the word card and let your child copy it into word notebook.

5. Do a word or sound activity.

6. Once words are well-known, make a sentence with word cards.

This will be great practice for continued word-building with Delightful Reading next year. And then we'll be heading into "real" reading lessons!

Next post will show lessons broken down even more.

See Part 1,  Part 2,  Part 4, and Conclusion

Teaching Reading to Our Third: Part 2

I worked out ahead and made simple plans to help Phoebe word-build as we finish up the school year. I chose two vowels (using only their short sound), five consonants and one blend: a i n p t m s sp.

We go over these sounds at the beginning of every lesson. She says the sound or gives a word that starts with the sound.

For variety we alternate using our wooden alphabet letters and the ones provided in Delightful Reading. I keep them in their own little bag so I don't have to search for them every time we sit down for a lesson.

We take these 7 letters and put them together to make words ~ as many combinations as we can make. Phoebe needs lots of help with this part so far. It's helpful if she blends an ending first (like -at) and then adds a letter to the beginning ( s -at). Combinations include:

(it sit spit pit in sin tin pin spin Tim is tip sip sap map nap tap an man pan span tan am Sam Pam spam at pat sat mat spat ant apt imp)

Phoebe is able to to handle making 2-4 words a lesson. We work on the same words several lessons in a row until they are very familiar to her.

The next post will continue sharing word-building plans.


See Part 1, Part 3,  Part 4, and Conclusion

Teaching Reading to Our Third: Part 1

Phoebe is in the pre-reading stage of learning to read right now. (Simply Charlotte Mason has excellent articles on the different stages of reading that you can find here.) I've been using some ideas from Ruth Beechick's "A Home Start in Reading" along with CM suggestions from Delightful Reading to add activities as we learn sounds and word build. She just turned 6 and we consider this school year to be preschool. She's not overly interested in a lot of seat work (read "She will hardly sit still!"), so we keep lessons short.

We've spent this school year learning letter sounds with books and songs and wooden alphabet letters, puzzles, large wall cards...... anything I could find in our home that has the alphabet. She was very interested in her name and learned those 5 letters easily. We also drew the letters in the air and in a pan of sand (grits for us, actually) ala CM.

We then moved on to concentrating on a few consonants and vowels. Our list is a little longer than it should have been: M, P, Z, A, B, S, K, D L, I, J, N, T. ~Phoebe named things that began with the letter. ~I would point to 3 or 4 sounds and have her repeat them after me. ~Sometimes I would make a mistake on purpose to see she'd catch me. ~We used a children's dictionary for some sounds. She would look all through the pictures and say the words out loud. ~There are a few more ideas also in "Home Start in Reading". We didn't do more than one sound at a time.

It makes sense that you don't need to learn all the sounds or letter names at the beginning of this reading journey. You can teach a few and let your child begin to blend words, so she can feel the excitement of reading words on her own effort. Next time I'll share what we're working on for word-building during our last 12 weeks of school.

See Part 2,  Part 3,  Part 4, and Conclusion