I love the start of a new semester! The excitement of curriculum planning has always appealed to me. This year I’ve decided to steer my kids towards a bit more rigorous and independent work, both because they’re reaching middle school and are ready for more independence and challenge, and because we have no social life vying for our time. So without further ado, my curriculum choices for this year:
Continue readingThis year was a hairy one, since I was working valiantly to balance academics with extracurricular activities and social opportunities. Here’s our curriculum for 2019-2020:
Continue readingIt’s that time again: time to list another year worth of curriculum! Read on for our choices for another year of mid-level elementary schooling.
Continue readingThis is the first year I’ll have three kids fully in the work rotation, though Pookie did some light daily work for the last half of the previous year. Here are my curriculum choices for everyone:
Continue readingThis is the third part of my series entitled “Homeschooling 101 (or Help, I Never Wanted to Homeschool and I Don’t Know How to Survive It!).” In my first post, I covered homeschool basics in the preschool years. Post two covered what you need to know to tackle early elementary (K-2). In this post, I’ll handle the upper elementary years, grades 3-5.
If your child is in the upper elementary years, hopefully s/he has already mastered basic reading, writing, and math skills. This is the age at which things get slightly more complex–but only slightly. You can still do this! Here are my tips for teaching upper elementary kids at home:
Continue readingIn my last post, Homeschooling 101 (or Help! I Never Wanted to Homeschool and I Don’t Know How to Survive It!), I set out to reassure those of you who find yourself reluctantly looking at homeschooling for this coming school year. After beginning the post, though, I realized that it would take much too long to include all my tips and resources in one post, so I thought I’d break it up. My first post covered suggestions for the preschool years. In this post, I’ll provide suggestions for handling early elementary school, or about kindergarten – 2nd grade.
While preschool might make folks a little nervous, elementary school is when things typically get really stressful for parents who have never considered homeschooling. How do I teach my child to READ? How in the world do you help them understand math? But this is still that glorious, golden age in which they are eager to learn and eager to please, and there are tons of resources available. Here are my tips for early elementary (K-2):
Continue readingIf you’re like thousands of parents in my metro region, you’ve found yourself unexpectedly (and very reluctantly) considering homeschooling, but you’re feeling a bit panicky and overwhelmed about the whole business.
Let me just start by saying this: you can do this. America’s model has been to turn teaching over to licensed educators once children get to be five (or even three) years old, so many parents feel that they’re not capable of teaching their kids. And this is not to knock teachers (I was one! I know the training and planning and hard work that goes into it!), but most parents are capable of doing a solid job of educating their kids.
Who is the most motivated to make sure your child knows what s/he needs to know to succeed in life? Who helped your little one learn how to walk, to talk and use a fork and ride a bike and make a pb&j sandwich? While grammar and math are a little more complex, you can use some of the multitude of excellent tools available to help you teach these, as well.
After starting this post, I realized how long it will take to offer even the most basic list of resources and helpful tips, so I’ve decided to break this into a few parts. What follows is Part 1: Preschool. Check out my other posts in the Homeschooling 101 series for Part 2: Early Elementary (grades K-2) and Part 3: Upper Elementary (grades 3-5). Hope you find this helpful!
Continue readingLooking to spend a day in Ft. Worth without spending a lot of cash? Here are a three places that have no entry fees and only minimal (if any) cost for parking:
1. 
Ft. Worth Stockyards: This National Historic District boasts quaint brick streets and classic Western-style storefronts that make for a fun stroll, though the highlight of this stop is the small, staged cattle drive that happens twice a day. Watch the cowboys herd their charges down the road and follow them back to the corral, where you can walk a long catwalk to admire them from above. There’s also a Visitor’s Center to poke around and a pretty neat little local history museum where, for a modest fee, you can view everything from cowboy accoutrements to a cursed wedding dress to a lightbulb that’s been working for 100 years, all in two jam-packed rooms. (The kids enjoyed doing the scavenger hunt that they offered!) If you don’t mind spending a bit more money, there are restaurants and shops for you to peruse. While parking in the huge, on-site lot costs a few dollars, there’s some street parking on the hill overlooking the paid parking where you can snag a free spot.
2. 
Ft. Worth Water Gardens: You’ll have to shell out a few quarters for street parking if you want to visit the Water Gardens, but it’s worth a stop. This park is separated into different regions, and the kids had a blast exploring them all. There’s a quiet, sunken pool area with water trickling down the walls and trees all around, a mountain-like area made of big concrete blocks, a sunken waterfall area where you can climb down on giant stepping stones, and a secluded area with a quiet pool full of small fountains. The one drawback here is that there’s little shade and the entire park is paved; it was warm on the spring day when we went, but I’d imagine that it’s miserable in the heat of summer.
3. Bureau of Engraving and Printing: If you’ve ever wondered how our nation’s paper money gets made, this is one of two places (the other being DC) where you can see it happening. Both the parking and the tour here are free. The tour begins with a video, after which you are given headsets and prompted to follow the numbered pathway while listening to a guide explain what you’re seeing. My 7-year-old found it unbearably boring, since there’s not much action (just machines making repetitive motions and people sitting around supervising). The attached museum had some interesting exhibits, however–especially upstairs, where they had stories about crazy money-recovery scenarios they’ve faced. Overall, though, this tour is best for older kids and adults. (No photos are allowed here, so you’ll just have to trust that we saw it.)
“Showing up is 80 percent of life,” according to the famous Woody Allen quote. That quote has stuck in my head lately, since I’ve recently been involved in planning several events at which people failed to do so. Though my experience is in the homeschool community, my sister assures me that this trend plagues the public school crowd, as well, and my mom recently expressed a similar frustration with her age group.
It’s hard to plan a party if you don’t know if you’ll have two attendees or twelve. (Photo by malcolm garret on Pexels.com)
There are several variants of this issue that I have found, all of which I see as problematic for society as a whole. First of all are the people who seem to ignore invitations. You’re planning a birthday party, and your child invites their friends or classmates to attend. How many of them actually respond? You post an event to Facebook; you get three “Going” responses, eight “Maybe” responses, two “No” responses…and thirteen people who have viewed your invitation but fail to give you any indication of their plans. Some of these people may have intended to respond but forgot to do so, but having such a high percentage of people who consistently fail to RSVP–in all sectors of society–is maddening to me. I can’t decide if people are that selfish, not caring about how their lack of response hinders the person planning the event, or if they’re all just utterly disorganized.
Every other year, my parents rent a large vacation home in some hidden corner of the country and the whole family converges for a week of togetherness. As far as families go, we have a middle-sized one–ten adults and twelve kids all together–but 22 people in one house is still plenty. For the most part, the kids’ ages overlap and they have a glorious time romping together while squeezing in a bit of sightseeing on the side.
Somehow, my mom and sister and I got to talking about genetic traits last fall. This resulted in the kids running around and surveying each other about their eye color, earlobe type, and hand-folding preferences, which in turn led to the epiphany that we should do a full-scale family survey at the next family vacation.
Of course, any self-respecting homeschool parent would be horrified to bypass an educational opportunity, especially one that the kids are excited about. So we spent some time leading up to our big trip delving into heredity. In case you’re looking for kid-friendly ways to approach the subject, I thought I’d share a few cool resources.
Our kitchen wall currently displays the most exciting aspects of our study of heredity.
butmostlymommy 