I'm back. (Bad one!
) While I was suffering, you got some GREAT help! Yay!
We were emergency HSers, beginning in October of 1st grade. I, too, was completely paralyzed by the curriculum websites and lists. Some people love that stuff, but I just found it overwhelming. (Still do!) Add in the fact that I had no time to research--we were just thrown into it--and you can see why we went a bit more "off-road" than most at first.
But even this year, when I had lots of time to research, I found that curriculum makes me panicky. Lorel had to talk me down when I let it all freak me out back in July or August. She very wisely asked me why I felt the need to change everything and use a set curriculum if what I had done the previous year had been a success. Smart woman, that Lorel.
And last year WAS a success! I think this year has been, too.
We are eclectic homeschoolers, which just simply means that we can do whatever we want. We are not wedded to a teaching method, but we grab whatever works and use a variety of approaches.
I think there's some benefit in at least looking over the approaches before you buy anything. I think one approach or another tends to sound appealing when you read a list of them, and that can help to steer you toward or away from things that will never work for you. Especially for those of us who are easily overwhelmed by it all, it can be a good starting point. Take a look here:
http://www.homeschooldiner.com/index.html . The quiz or the "Homeschooling Basics" might be useful for this purpose. This is a good spot, too:
http://www.homeschooldiner.com/basics/curriculum/do_i_need_curriculum.html .
As eclectic HSers, I love that we have maximum flexibility. DS7 is a GT kid with a wide variety of interests who just soaks things up and is very asynchronous. Spending a bunch of money on various curricula the wouldn't fit him in a month seemed like a big ol' waste of time and money!
Instead, we mostly just dive into the library. We also rely on some books that help us make sure we're not missing anything important:
What your Xth Grader Needs to Know by E.D. Hirsch and
Home Learning Year by Year by Rebecca Rupp are good ones. I like using both, snce sometimes they differ a bit. It helps me feel more sure that I'm not missing anything major. (And since I'm talking books, here's another vote for Lisa Rivero!
)
Using the library approach is free. It's easy. It allows us to cover anything we want to cover. It allows me to stretch his reading skills or get something easier and just quickly cover the material, depending upon what books we choose. It's great! And it's not as hard to do as as people think. All that's really involved is deciding what skills you want your child to learn, what material will suit that learning, and what books appropriately cover that material for his age and ability. That's really not hard to do for elementary school kids!
And it lets us follow the thread, as someone was saying (Shari, I think?). That's where real connections are made! I don't think I got that sort of learning about how it all fits together until I was in grad school! Seeing connections between various subjects raises the whole tenor of a child's education, I think.
Here's my approach in a nutshell: during the summer (and then again in December for the second half of the year), I ask DS7 what he wants to study in the coming year. We brainstorm together, discuss and expand as needed, and then I hit the library catalogue to request books on those subjects and others that I deem important for coverage. For the fall semester, I tend to follow his lead almost completely. I usually save spring for covering anything we missed that a kid his age is supposed to know. Frankly, it takes a week or two to fill in any gaps, tops! When you've got a GT kid, they tend to be so far ahead that it's not necessary to "cover" very much.
Anytime things get boring or slow for us, we brainstorm again and pick up something new and interesting. DS7 understands that this is HIS education, and he is responsible for it as much as I am. If he's not into what he's studying, he needs to say so and--more importantly!--do something about it. That means it's never my job to "entertain" him; it's his job to dig up (or at least suggest) topics and resources that interest him. He's responsible.
My overall goal is to be sure that I'm doing at least as well as (and generally WAY better than!) the public school would have done with him. That's setting the bar pretty low, given our particular 1st grade experience (no skips, no differentiation
), but I figure that's a valid option since it's what he was getting. Setting the bar low helps to keep me from making myself crazy with perfectionism. Perfectionism and HSing do NOT mix!
Beyond that, I try to meet the following minimum time goals:
> one day of the "S for HSers," which includes a class on fractions, decimals and percentages, a creativity class, and a social studies "kids around the world" class, plus 3 recesses.
> 30+ min. of math, 4 days/week.
> 30+ min. of fiction reading, 4 days/week.
> 30+ min. of free reading (whatever he likes, fiction or nonfiction), 5 days/week.
> 15+ min. of being read to, 7 days/week.
> 45+ min. of nonfiction reading, 4 days/week (this includes science, history, health, etc.).
> 3+ lines of writing, sometimes focusing on handwriting, sometimes focusing on composition. I try not to do both at the same time, since they are two different things requiring two different kinds of attention.
> Clean up time every day.
> Do one thing he loves every day.
> Art class, music class, some sports (changes seasonally), and Arabic class, each once per week. Plus practice time.
> Two weekend GT enrichment classes of his choosing. This session it's Mad Science and Japanese.
That's pretty much it.
And don't be fooled by how little time we seem to spend. 30 minutes of one-on-one time in math, for example, is REALLY intensive. He's done several years' worth of work in one year both last year and this year. And because it is so focused, he retains it very well. We spend almost no time reviewing. What goes in doesn't fall out!
We did start with Singapore Math last year, which is a good choice to start out with, but we moved away from it because he needed more conceptual challenge but hadn't memorized his times tables yet. Singapore just kept hammering away at the multiplication, so we skipped WAY ahead to geometry last year, leaving even a set math curriculum behind. This year, we just worked on the times tables through math games and such, plus lots of bits and pieces from problem-solving workbooks for 3rd-8th graders depending upon the books, and DS7 did some work on experiential calculus/physics with my DH. Oh, and he covered fractions all the way from "this is half a circle" up to adding and subtracting fractions with different denominators. Yes, that was all before the math class started in January!
BTW, Aleks is another good, flexible choice if you want your child to do his math online.
Speaking of having a lot to say...Sorry! HTH, at least!
