Part 1
In the past with Hayzel, I have been practicing what is called eclectic home school. This means that I don’t adhere to any set schedule or follow a particular curriculum. Instead, what I’ve been doing is taking bits and pieces from different programs/sites and making things up as I go. This seemed to work but I kept having this nagging feeling that I may be missing key concepts that he should be learning. I want to make sure that I do this right and that he learns everything he needs. My main concerns are Language Arts (LA) and Math. So during school vacation I stated researching for a curriculum that would work for us.
With the amount of home school sites that are out there this seemed like it would be a piece of cake, but I was wrong. While there are MANY companies that cater to people teaching at home, the majority of the curriculums I came across are faith or bible based. We are not Christian, so the programs I found that looked promising were rejected based on their religious platform. Some of them don’t include anything involving evolution, dinosaurs, Greek mythology among other things because it doesn’t mesh with their religious beliefs.
One day I came across really neat forum called Secular Homeschool. This forum is geared towards people who homeschool without a religious base. It includes families from all kinds of backgrounds including spiritualists, atheists, and wiccan. What I like best about it is that no one on the site tries to impose their beliefs. Everyone understands that we come from different backgrounds so religion is never brought up. Through some members of the site I found an online-based curriculum called Time 4 Learning (T4L). I did my research trying to figure out if this was the best choice for us. I finally decided to give it a try based on the fact that it was the only secular curriculum I found that seemed to be geared towards younger students.
One of the first things I had to do was decide which grade to put Hayzel in. The way I’ve been gauging Hayzel’s grade levels are by following the recommendation of World Book. This is not an official guideline and it is not endorsed by the Salem School District, but it works for me. Based on the site, at the end of kindergarten Hayzel should have learned the following:
Language Arts
* Phonics
* Choral reading
* Listening to literature, music, poetry
* Nursery rhymes, fairy tales, fables
* Social listening
* Constructing visual images while listening
* Oral communication skills
* Role play
* Following and giving directions
* Paraphrasing and summarizing
* Organizing ideas
* Experience stories
* Relating events and experiences using complete sentences
* Listening for correct speech habits and word usage
* Beginning writing process
* Manuscript handwriting
Mathematics
* Simple counting to 20
* One-to-one relationship
* Concepts of more, less than, same
* Sequence of events
* Correspondence of quantities
* Ordinal-cardinal relationship
* Number-numeral relationship
* Recognition of basic sets
* Meaning of addition and subtraction
* Introduction to number line
* Estimation
* Elementary geometry (shapes)
* Calendar and clock
* Denominations of money
* Basic problem-solving strategies
* Basic chart and graph concepts
For the most part he has mastered all these skills. But just to be safe, I have placed him at the kindergarten level in T4L. I will admit the material is really easy, but there are some things that I did miss such as teaching him the parts of a book (title, author, illustrator…….), more and less than, denominations of money, ect…... It may seem redundant, but at least I will have proof in writing that he has done Kindergarten work. I’m not worried about retracing my steps as he is still way ahead of other kids his age. One of my favorite things about T4L is that it gives me the ability to pull up a report of Hayzel’s progress whenever I want. If I see that he gets a low score on something, I do a review with him and then make him do it again, until he has mastered it.
All the modules in T4L have teaching tips and worksheets that Hayzel can complete if he needs additional help mastering his lessons. On certain occasions we do use them, and sometimes I have to try and cater to his kinesthetic (hands-on) learning style. For the most part he is flying through it. The following are some pictures of Hayz completing his T4L work.
^online lesson
^worksheets.Notice Fever the fish in the background. He does school with us every morning.
One of the first snags we encountered was during the “Fewer (less than) or More of (greater than)” lesson. Hayzel wasn’t exactly catching the concept and the worksheets weren’t helping either. So I dug out some m&m’s and came up with my own thing.
I would ask him to put the candies into 2 groups depending on the number given, then I would ask him to pick the group he’d like to eat from. It took him less than 15 seconds to catch on to the concept of fewer or more.
The next thing he had a problem with was positioning. He kept missing placing a certain object in front of, behind, next to, and in between another object. So here’s what I came up with:
We practiced placing Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi in different positions for about 20 minutes. When we went back to the lesson, he aced it.
Each lesson takes about 30 minutes to complete (longer if worksheets are involved). Grade K math has 6 chapters with 5 lessons included in each chapter. LA has 18 chapters with 1-2 lesson in each chapter. Right now we are averaging 1 chapter a week for math and 1 1/2 chapter per week of LA. This means that Hayzel will officially be done with K math by the end of February. K LA should be completed by the end of April.
Here are more pics. Notice how the lesson are sometimes done in the kitchen, living room couch,or my desk. We’ve also had a few lessons done while laying in bed. Part of the fun of HSing.
Thanks for keeping up with us. In the next couple of posts I will be showing you how we are doing with our other subjects.^^^ That was his first quiz on T4L!
Also if you are leaving a comment, don’t forget to put your name. I moderate the comments and I won’t post any from “anonymous”.
Stay tuned!
May
Click here for Part 2
