Unit Studies

For a classic literature group that we're participating in (starting next week), we've been reading "The Song of Hiawatha"

Without intending to, reading and talking about the stories have led to other discussions. We've talked about our Chippewa heritage (related to some of legends) and how I visited Minnehaha Falls (discussed in several of the stories) during my mission to Minnesota.

That got me thinking about related enrichment activities that could be used to supplement her reading. Art projects (make a canoe like Hiawatha did, or draw a book cover)? Creative writing (a poem in the style of "Song of Hiawatha")?

"If you went to public school..."

Now there's a phrase you'll hear from time to time in our house, especially at back to school time, when jealously rears its ugly head.

"Yes, but if you went to public school, you....

• would have to get up earlier in the morning and go to sleep earlier at night
• would have to get dressed as soon as you woke up
• would have to do schoolwork even if you wanted to take a break
• would have to sit in a desk
• would have to be quiet and raise your hand if you wanted to talk
• would have to ask to go to the bathroom (thanks "Mean Girls" for pointing this one out)
• would be at school most of the day, then do homework & chores when you got home
• probably wouldn't get much one on one interaction with your teacher
• probably wouldn't be able to work ahead when you had mastered the material
• wouldn't get to watch TV at lunch time
• wouldn't get to do things during the day, like go grocery shopping or to the library

I could go on here, but you get the idea. I can rattle off a hundred reasons why she wouldn't like going to public school, but if I'm short on time I get right to the "deal-breaker" - the ultimate argument in favor of homeschool....

"You wouldn't be able to spend all day with your sister"

...and that puts an end to it!

When does school start?

We have school throughout the summer, though I have to admit that its a lot more casual than the rest of the year (and we're pretty casual to begin with). Having a baby that has just learned to crawl has made the usual annual planning more difficult that usual (I haven't exactly gotten around to it yet...). So, for the most part we've been doing book reports and reviewing math. If I have our real curriculum planned out by the time public school starts, then I'm "ok".

Since we started homeschooling, we've practiced dialogues that come up at this time of year. Well-meaning adults at grocery stores and in the neighborhood are always interested in talking to her about "back to school". At first, she didn't know how to answer their questions, which tended to make it kind of awkward. So, we practice. I ask things like, "Are you excited for school to start?" or "Do you like your new teacher?" so she has a chance practicing how to respond. These days, she has figured out that she can answer just about every question with "I'm homeschooled" (and then no further explaination, so I feel obligated to jump in with a cheerful "Ya, we have school all year round, but she's excited to start a new grade" or whatever is appropriate).

$9.00 worth of school supplies?

I've seen some Wal-Mart commercials that advertise school supplies and claim that you can get all of the school supplies you need for $9.00. Now wait a minute Wal-Mart - all the supplies for just $9.00? I've seen the school supply lists the school put out. $9.00? Is that for one day's worth of supplies? Well, I've seen those commercials dozens of times, but apparently didn't read between the lines well enough to understand that they mean "$9.00 each", as in each item. $9.00 back-packs, $9.00 t-shirts, $9.00 lunch-boxes, etc. I haven't been over to their school supply section yet, so I had to figure this out for myself on their website.


Some "factoids" I found on youthnoise.com when searching for info on the average back-t0-school costs for students:

Factoids: Back to School Costs
(It ain't cheap!)

• $483 • The average amount of money families with school aged children will spend on back to school items
• $219 on clothes
• $90 on shoes
• $73 on school supplies
• $101 on electronic/computer equipment

• $14,790,000,000 •The total amount parents/guardians will spend sending elementary and high school students back to school

I also found some "average" amounts that were even higher. Again, YIKES!

Back to school purchase o-rama

One of my favorite homeschooling perks: not being forced to purchase a ridiculous array of unnecessary and expensive school supplies. Kendall has had the idea for the past few years (thanks for nothing TV commercials and store displays!!!) that August means that its time for an entire new wardrobe, an enormous set of new school supplies, and a complete room makeover. Think again, batman! Sorry - you're homeschooled honey, we're not buying into that. Literally.

YAY test scores!

Kendall's CAT 5 scores finally arrived in the mail today and she did FANTASTIC! She was rated a stanine score of 9 (the highest possible score in the above-average range) and scored higher than 98% of children in her grade, nationally.

Kendall has always done well in school, but since we've always homeschooled her, its nice to get some outside "validation"

SEMINARY at home for primary-age children

A friend emailed, asking about how we do our version of "seminary" for grade-school students in our homeschool. She also asked a few other questions, which I'm happy to answer, but my reply started getting really long, so I decided to break it up into sections and post it on my blog instead of boring her to tears with a rambling novel-length email! Here's the first installment:

I started doing "seminary" a couple of years ago, 3rd grade I think, but only because I didn't think of it sooner! The way I do it could be adapted for any age, though. Kendall likes to think she's doing things like the teenagers, so I used that to my/her advantage - when she found out that the teens go to seminary she really wanted to do it. I went to the church's seminary website http://seminary.lds.org/ and looked up their curriculum (I decided to do the book of scriptures that we're studying for the year at church instead of the book of scripture they would be studying in seminary for that year. Like, this year I think seminary did New Testament, but we did Doctrine & Covenants at home instead. I thought it would help her to retain the info if we went along with the same scriptures/stories they would be using in Sunday School/Primary).

They have the materials for all 4 years on the website, so you can pick whichever one you want to do. The website has the whole student manual/workbook and other things (pictures, timeline, audio files for scripture mastery verses and related seminary songs). You can print out the pages from the manual as is, or copy the text to a word document and modify them if you want. This year, I was able to give Kendall the worksheets pretty much as-is because they aren't too complicated (I do leave out some of the bonus questions if the assignment was getting too long!). I have her do a section (or part of a section) of the manual every day, and I also give her a list of vocabulary for the week (included in the manual) and we do a quiz on Fridays.

When she was younger I modified the assignments to be more age appropriate (I'd type up a similar assignment with shorter, simpler wording). Also, when she was younger, I also focused more on the scripture mastery, too. I found some mp3's with the verses for the year set to fun music or hymns and she liked listening to those. There are also websites where you can print the flashcards, etc. I think I remember you saying that your daughter likes memorizing, so she'd probably love doing that for "seminary". We haven't done great at working on the scripture mastery this year, but I want to do better at that over the summer. When I was looking for more materials to use for our seminary, I just typed in something like "seminary Doctrine and Covenants helps" or "LDS seminary printables" in the search engine and found a lot of helpful websites.