Wednesdays

Wednesdays are now officially our Preschool and early elementary days.  If you have students who fall into this category see below for a description of the activities for our youngest members.

Marine Biology at Kelly’s Wednesday mornings from 9:00-10:00

This is an elementary school science class exploring the oceans and it’s creatures.  We will be working from the Apologia book Exploring Creation with Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures of the 5th Day.    (There is an accompanying notebook put out by the publisher.  We will not be using the notebook in class, but if you wish to add it to your at home studies that is totally up to you.)  In our time together we will be using the book as a jumping off place to do more explorations on the sea.  There will be storybooks, experiments, art projects and field trips to ‘flesh out’ the lessons.  This book is written for an older elementary school reading level, however it can be used by students from 4 on up if their parents are willing to read the book to them.   With this in mind, younger students are welcome in the class, but parents will probably want to stay to help them with some of the work.  Also, children will get a lot out of the class, even if they do not have the book…this may be an option for some parents with younger children who just want the additional activity/exposure.  (The book is worth the investment though.)

Group Time at Kelly’s Wednesdays 10:00-11:30.

This time will focus on group interactions,  story time, finger plays, singing, art experience, science exploration, and mastering basics preschool/kindergarten skills. Parents are encouraged to stay and participate. The last 15-20 minutes of our time we will have a snack and some free play for the kids, while the Mom’s focus on the skills (homework if you will) to work on for the coming week.

Park Days – Wednesdays from Noon to 1:30ish.

It’s the park, ending times will be dictated by the kids moods more than likely. Picnic lunches are encouraged. This is an unstructured play time at the park, allowing the kids more time to interact and for the Mom’s to talk. Parents of elementary (or older) kids from Grace are also encouraged to come to Park Days. Some of our Park Days will have a theme…a water day, chalk day, jump rope etc. Note: In the event of rain, Park Day is canceled. If the weather is unusually cold (or worse, very windy) we will also cancel. I send texts, emails, and will post on Facebook a final decision.

Field Trips

There will be at least one monthly field trip, frequently more. In order to simplify scheduling, if the field trips are specifically for our youngest students I will try to schedule them on Wednesdays. For regular school field trips, we try to stick to Tuesdays. Obviously, some venues only have certain days available so we must work within those guidelines.

Some of the trips we are planning for this year include: SeaWorld, the Post Office, the Fire Station, Tide Pools, the Pumpkin Patch, Petco, Snow Day, LaHabra Children’s Museum, and Whale Watching. There will be many others, but that gives you an idea.

Parent Training

We have a mandatory monthly parent meeting. The first half of the meeting deals with details like signing up for field trips, scheduling school photos etc.

The second half of the meeting is dedicated to training about a specific area of homeschooling to assist parents in staying on track and implementing new ideas.

School Photos

These are generally taken the beginning of October. Students and parents are issued student body cards. The cards for students are free, parents are $2. The parents card qualifies them for Teacher Discounts at some stores…such as Joanne’s.

Yearbook

Each year Grace puts together a yearbook and our preschoolers will have a section featuring them.

Fairs

During the course of the year we will have a World’s Fair where students make posters about a country of their choice, then we all get together and listen to them share. We are more than happy to have our youngest students participate, it’s great for them to get up front and speak, even if it is only a sentence or two about what they have learned.

Students are also encouraged to participate in Science Fair (and yes, homeschool students can move on with their public school counterparts to compete at the County and State levels.) While the preschoolers are too young to officially enter, I’d encourage parents to do a scaled back, fun version to get their kids thinking about finding out about the world in a new way. More on this later.

Summer Newsletter

For those of you who are a part of Grace Prep School, the summer edition of our Newsletter has gone out. Let me know if you don’t receive it over the next few days. There are new registration forms, information for Fall classes, and an HSLDA form in each.

Classes, Sports, Theatre….How Much is Too Much????

Every year, you as parents and teachers, are faced with an ever increasing number of options for your students. Curriculum, Friday classes, soccer, CYT, Youth Theatre, baseball etc. How do you decide?

First, recognize that you can’t do it all. Each of us has time limitations, money considerations, and other work, family, and church commitments to fit in. Be realistic. The addition of outside learning can be a fantastic addition to your homeschool day bringing you a break, both during the time of the class and in terms of preparing that subject…but too many outside commitments can compromise what you are trying to accomplish.

Second, evaluate your goals for your child. What are trying to accomplish? Will this activity aid you in that journey? How old is your child? My suggestion would be the younger they are the more carefully you consider the number of outside activities you involve them in. A seven year old should not have a schedule that rivals an overworked middle-aged executive. They should have hours of free play time to build cities in the mud and curl up with books. Children need time, time to be loved, time to explore, time to play. A hectic schedule robs them of some of these most precious years. There will be plenty of time later on to involve them in outside activities, they don’t need to ‘do it all’ in kindergarten.

Every family is going to look different, you all have different commitments and different needs. For us the boys were always heavily involved in family, not just our immediate family, but we have a large extended family that we spent a lot of time with. They were always involved with church, in Sunday School, mid week activities, and special events. To us, these were the center, other things would have to fit around these two. As they got older we added some sports, then music lessons. They still had plenty of free time during the day.

By high school things had changed. High school students are beginning to become independent, they want to try things outside of home, spend time with friends. My boys love having a packed schedule and knowing that they will be jumping from one activity to the next. (You still need to keep from going overboard…but things change.) Time with family and at church remained constant, but they were eager to expand their horizons. I found it healthy for them to develop varied interests and to keep their minds and bodies productively occupied.

I had a couple of criteria I would look at before deciding if we should participate in an activity. I’ve listed them in no particular order.

Criteria One: Is this something my child will miss out on by not being in school. There are things that happen at school that you cannot duplicate at home with just you and your children…like competitive sports. My boys wanted to play sports so we found ways to add those into our school year. Figure out what things YOUR child might miss by not being in school, evaluate if that is a good thing or not, and then look for other ways to provide that experience.

Criteria Two: Is this something I’m not qualified to teach? I am not musical, all my children are…so I paid for music lessons. It was worth it. We try in our Friday classes to provide those subjects that parents might not want to do on their own, like Latin, Art History or Biology. For me, it was worth it to have someone else help out with those subjects I was tentative about. (Please note that I truly believe that with all of the curriculum choices available to homeschool parents now, if you are willing to put in the time and effort you can teach any subject you want on your own. You need to evaluate whether or not the trade off in having someone else do it is worth it.)

Criteria Three: Is this a subject that is better learned in a group setting? Over the years I’ve been doing the Friday classes I’ve discovered several things. First, some classes like Shakespeare, are just more fun to do in a group where you can act out the plays. Second, I’ve found that in classes like Chemistry or Latin that are especially challenging, students benefit from having others to commiserate (grumble) with. It seems to make the struggle more bearable.

Criteria Four: Will participation in this class/activity provide my children with healthy socialization, a chance to make friends and create positive feelings about homeschooling? While I believe that the non-homeschooling world is far too concerned about the socialization of homeschooled students, (research has shown repeatedly that homeschool children have enhanced social skills) we still want our children to have places to interact with age-mates and make friends. In particular, children who are transferring from a traditional school setting to homeschool are concerned about when they will be able to see friends. Knowing that each week they will be in classes, sports, and activities where they will see other children makes them less resistant to the change, and provides times each week to look forward too. (Conveniently, it also provides an answer to those relatives who are concerned about your child’s lack of ‘socialization’.)

Criteria Five: Does this activity move me toward my goals for my child, or way from them? Does this activity reinforce what we are trying to accomplish? I had written intentional goals for each of my sons and when it came to choosing between activities we always tried to choose those activities that reinforced what we were teaching them ourselves. With such a variety of good choices in front of us you need a way to weed through all the good and find the best. The ‘best’ for your child and your family will probably not be what is ‘best’ for someone else.

To sum it up, we found that adding outside activities was a crucial and fun part of our homeschooling experience adding a depth and breadth to our years that we would have missed without them. We also found that saying ‘yes’ to everything quickly led to frustration and stress. So while we wish to present you with many choices for the coming school year, and we hope you participate in many of those choices so that you have a rich, productive year…keep in mind that each day only has 24 hours and you don’t need to (and shouldn’t) fill each and every one of them.

Keeping the Doors Open

When you begin to homeschool you face the inevitable questions and confrontations from people who basically think you are nuts. When you choose to continue to homeschool through high school, believe me the confrontations become much more heated. I’d like to share with you some of my thoughts on why continued to homeschool through high school with our four boys. Even if we had the money for private school or lived in the county with the top rated public schools we would continue to homeschool.

When we are in high school we begin to make choices that effect the rest of our lives. We begin to decide what kind of people we want to be, to visualize our role in the adult world. Oftentimes the choices we make have far-reaching effects. They either open or close doors. Decisions regarding drugs, sex, alcohol, and peers can affect us for the rest of our lives. Doors can be shut that can never be opened again. Emotional scars can be formed at this tender age and can last a lifetime and shut even more doors.

It is easy to see these shut doors when they are glaring and obvious, like a teen age pregnancy. Harder when they are shut in more subtle ways, like lack of time to pursue an interest, the closing of a mind due to boredom, the slow sink into depression because we don’t seem to fit in. When I considered what I wanted to do about high school I found the concept of opened and closed doors very revealing. Let me explain.

When Timothy, our oldest son, was in Jr. High he had had an unconventional schooling experience. He had never attended school and had met very few actual textbooks. Instead we had tried to instil in him a love of learning. We have exposed him to the exciting world of books, of nature, and of music. We have made sure he is as comfortable in libraries and museums as he is in his own home. We have encouraged him to be observant of the world around him, whether it be the current political climate or the wildflowers on the side of the road.

We have tried to open up for him as many doors as possible. Not so he could master a set of facts, and thus be declared “educated,” but so he would realize that no matter how long he lived there would never be enough time to explore all that interested him.

(This picture is of Timothy the summer he spent working as an intern at a training center/children’s home in Kenya.)

Academics are very important. We have tried our best to hold up a standard of excellence in terms of our children’s academics, but it is certainly not the most important aspect of education. Giving our children a strong grounding in God’s word and a solid understanding of how they can have a personal relationship with Him provides the foundation for any education that follows. More than a good “education’ we wanted our children to have good character. What good is knowledge without integrity, compassion, and strength?

When I considered our high school options it helped to think of it in terms of open and closed doors. I believe wholeheartedly that a home education has served Timothy well in the area of academics. I believed that even with a homeschool high school experience he would be able to get into the college of his choice (which he did). I knew that he could continue to play the stports he loves so much in venues other than high school. I knew that he would have time to pursue his interests in music, to write songs and stories, to play in sports tournaments, to work, and to serve in various church ministries.

All of these might have to be drastically curtailed if he were in a traditional school dealing with the extended schedule and homework. I know that he is free from undue peer influence, not from all contact with peers as is often feared, but from the constant pressure that can undermine his own sense of self.

We need a vision for what education can be. We need to move beyond meeting minimum requirements or keeping up with relatives expectations. We need to throw off the mediocre and even the good to pursue the excellent. Our goal should be far beyond reaching graduation, it must be to inspire our children to be men and women of integrity, curiosity, strength, and courage.