Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments A couple homeschool questions- just starting

Disclaimer: I'm a huge planner. I want to feel like I have some idea about how to start homeschooling (even though I fully expect this initial plan to change. Oh and ds is 6 currently a 1st grader.)
So, we think we've decided to homeschool starting at the end of this year. I have a few ideas about curriculum and supplementation.

Yet, what about where exactly to start (Without having to defend why he's ahead)? Do you have him take end of unit tests, if he passes with grade 85?, skip and move on?

He has been using Compass Learning at school based on MAP score. I'm wondering if the company could tell me where he's at? (I can try to ask the school, but I'm guessing they won't / can't tell me.)

I guess my concern comes from the fact that as a homeschool student, he will still need to take state standardized tests. Thus, I'm hoping to avoid lots of gaps.

Also, I'm planning a join a couple co-ops. The classes I've looked at are history, science, or specials (which all seems great and ds will love I think.) Yet, do you do additional enrichment in ELA and/ or math too? I was thinking I would do math and ELA at home. He already plays violin, so there's some music. Sign him up for maybe 1 academic class- history or science (work on whatever subject no in class with me) and another fun class like chess. I still need to figure out what to do about Spanish... Does this seem like enough or too much to start?

All thought, advice, experience anyone would like to share would be most appreciated. Thank you.

Though we started researching homeschooling very early, we've lucked out on the need so far. One thought, you might like to read through the common core standards to get a better gauge of where end of year testing will be going. http://www.corestandards.org/

I really liked the Unschooling Handbook which gives a nice perspective on child led learning. http://www.amazon.com/The-Unschooling-Handbook-Childs-Classroom/dp/0761512764

Portia and Zen Scanner, thank you.

Zen Scanner, I have looked at the common core. I will admit that I find it a bit overwhelming and uses educational verbiage (my background is in healthcare). Yet, that should be the ultimate resource, right?
I will check out the book you suggested.

Portia- In answer into your questions: my younger ds will be at church preschool in the morning, so I plan to have the project/ experiment/ work together time in the am. Yet, in the afternoon while the lil one naps, I need ds to be quiet (currently homework time). I was thinking this time could be for independent work, reading, educational videos (if needed). It could be quiet free time if work is done. Lots of exercise, playtime. Everything we currently do in general is when you complete task x, you can do y. I hope to be somewhat more flexible- like work to be completed by the end of the week vs assignments/ work per day. I want to take advantage of all resource our city and surrounding area offers. Ds is very social, but has been struggling to make friends at school. Yet, he can be alone with his thoughts for hours too.

I do have a WJ III achievement test (from last year), yet now it's a year later and he has some 2e issues. (He is leaps and bounds ahead from last year.)He is definitely is asynchronous. I know I will have to piecemeal on some level because of this.

I do appreciate your thoughts! I think idea that homeschool can be whatever I want is scary and amazing at the same time. It also makes he feel somewhat anxious that I'm doing the best I can do for my ds. I'm sure things will be easier once he's officially a homeschool. Usually the anticipation is worse.

Random thought... Maybe you could start now with a formal weekly class in a craft or such that you know welll, and get a feel for how that works. Make a syllabus, plan activities, do it for a specific hour or two once a week.

You might also lurk a bit on the Well Trained Mind Advanced Learner Forum. They seem to have some helpful information.

Six is very young. When my DYS was that age, we did virtually no formal academics. She did spend some time on time4learning.com. (Which utilizes compass learning products, IIR.) That helped her learn to read, but the math was much too easy and boring and we simply stopped it after a few months. What did we do? Took weekly trips to the science or natural history museums. Walked in the woods and collected rocks or leaves. Spent hours playing with friends. Went to the library and checked out at loads of books. Listened to hours and hours of audiobooks in the car. Waded in the creek. Raised monarch butterflies. Hung out in China town. Took a road trio to DC to see the terra cotta warrior exhibit. Hosted our own Chinese New Year feast. Made our own mead. Measured the length of a Viking longship in our backyard. Mummified a chicken. Grew our own crystals. Went on fossil hunting trips. Attended plays and concerts. Bowled. Swam. Learned archery. Cooked ancient Sumerian food. Wrote cuneiforms on play dough tablets. Read Gilgamesh. Read Norse mythology. Toured a piano factory. You get the idea. The great thing about homeschooling is you can really follow interest on the child, and you don't need to be bogged down by a curriculum. One thing that worked well for us was to pick a country or region of the world to study for the year. Then I would plan a lot of crafts, activities, field trips etc based on the history and culture of that place. We would get lots of books out, and watch documentaries.

Gabalyn- wish I could be so chill. I think because he has been to school, I feel compelled to have some structured learning. Ds also likes the idea of completing activities/ tasks. He's also self motivated and excited to learn new things. Given this, I'm hoping if I can introduce new things, with more depth than school gives and without a lot of repetition; things will go relatively smoothly. Not to mention, he will love more free time.

We followed that same rough sort of plan when DD was 4-6yo. It was (initially) a sort of Montessori approach that added a lot of external enrichment and included free reading time, and this gradually morphed into something of a secular Charlotte-Mason method, and then gradually was trending toward something WTM-like.


My only real problem was her reluctance to learn to write well.


It's a bit hard to explain, and there weren't firm boundaries between those philosophies for us-- it's just that I'm not sure WHAT to call it when you have a 5yo making a hand-bound journal to carry on walks so that we can produce histograms of what we "see" on those walks, and discuss graphical representations of data, etc.

Aside from that, we checked out a LOT of library books (I usually had a rolling list of about 65 items out at any one time, and sometimes as many as 120), visited a lot of free or low-cost cultural events, she did piano and Singapore Math, and a few random workbooks which were reading heavy and followed her basic interests.

I stressed out about it, make no mistake. But looking back on this time, I think that DD was actually BETTER educated using that highly eclectic method than anything before or since.

It's the only time that she really had meaningful instruction in the arts outside of music lessons, oddly enough. School has done a really poor job of teaching her social studies or art, IME. She's learned more about that from reading history and discussing cause and effect critically with us.

Just today-- at her piano lesson, her teacher looked up I. Chabrier...

who evidently was quite the fan-boy of Richard Wagner... which led to a series of observations about how the information age and social media have changed how much we KNOW about celebrities and those with public personae, and also to a discussion of what led to the toxic brew of patriotic fervor and overzealous ethnic pride that eventually created the juggernaut of the Nazi regime and all that went with it...

Cosima Liszt really had great taste in guys, didn't she?

DD and I also had a conversation earlier today about atheism and the notion of mysticism requiring an "unknowable" while science mostly argues that hypotheses are inherently invalid if they cannot be tested, followed by a spirited discussion of the addition of "faith" and "intuition" to IB's core ways of knowing.


Anyway. That kind of thing IS a learning opportunity for homeschooled HG+ kids. It's all connected, and there are meaningful narratives to be had everywhere, all the time. Socratically-inclined kids are deeply engaged by this kind of environment, and my DD can easily learn more from this kind of interaction than from all the textbook and multimedia presentations in the world.

So don't worry. It will be fine.

Thanks HK.