Homeschool Convention
As I mentioned in an earlier post, we returned recently from the annual conference of the North Carolinians for Home Education. It is held the Thursday through Saturday before Memorial Day each year in Winston-Salem. Very smart, by the way, to have the conference in the same place each year. It’s centrally located, there is plenty of lodging nearby, and regular attendees don’t spend a lot of time getting the lay of the land.
While there are some very good workshops, the bigger draw is the Book Fair. It rivals anything I’ve seen at even the biggest CS conferences I’ve attended. Again, the major vendors occupy pretty much the same place in the exhibit hall each year, so attendees know just where to go for their materials. And boy, are they prepared! Many of them bring carts in order to haul the curricula and supplies they purchase at the Fair. It’s pretty amazing to watch the whole thing.
We were better prepared this year than we were for last year’s conference (our first exposure to this whole culture). Still, we had a lot of work to do. I handle Math, Reading, and Spelling, and I was dissatisfied with the curricula I had chosen in all three of those areas last year, so I was “shopping” for new ideas for our daughter’s “second grade.”
I attended several vendor workshops to become more familiar with some of the curricula that had been recommended to us in math and reading. For math, we settled on Math*U*See, which teaches a lot of arithmetic concepts using a set of manipulative blocks. Our daughter responded well to the use of manipulatives last year, and I’m impressed with some of the ideas that the Math*U*See folks demonstrated to me.
For reading (and spelling), we’re going with Joyce Herzog’s Scaredy Cat Reading System, which like Math*U*See uses a very hands on approach to teaching and learning. Again, based on my experiences with our little one last year, I have high hopes for this program.
And of course, that’s one of the great things about homeschooling. You can make fairly real-time adjustments to respond to the needs of a specific child (OK, it’s especially easy when you’re only homeschooling one, but you get the idea).
Hands on is the theme for us this year. My wife is doing science (space and earth science) and history (the Middle Ages), and we found a lot of good interactive material for teaching in these areas as well.
I’ll report through the year on our progress with the math and reading programs (and the rest of the stuff, too). Should be interesting both for fellow home educators, as well as any math and English profs who happen by.
June 5th, 2005 at 8:58 pm
I was curious as to what kind of science background your wife has, if she’s handling the science duties. Also, what kind of time frame do you operate with during the day — does the schooling take place from 8:00-3:00, one block in the morning and one block in the evening, or what?
We’ve kicked around the idea of homeschooling our daughter (she’s just 17 months old so we have a lot of kicking left to do) but neither of us could commit to staying at home full time to do it at this point, which is why I am asking the second question.
June 5th, 2005 at 10:21 pm
My wife has a business degree, so no science really beyond whatever she needed for high school and college liberal studies (she reads this blog, so she can chime in to add her two cents). Still, at this age, the stuff is pretty basic. In many ways, she’s learning some things along with her student, and that’s not the worst way to teach someone.
As for schedule, we try to keep it to the morning. My spring semester schedule had no morning classes, so I took first watch — math and reading first. My wife is a stay-at-home mom, so she took over when I was done. In the fall, I don’t have a tough morning schedule, although we may adjust slightly to accommodate the morning classes I have. I just put in extra hours in the evening and on the weekend (but of course I can do a lot of planning and grading at home). My courseload is three classes, which is probably what makes this possible. If I carried any more courses, it would be tough.
We have found that mornings are the best time for our daughter to learn. That leaves afternoons free for other activities (including things like brownies, field trips, library, etc.)
June 5th, 2005 at 10:36 pm
Our experience this past year was that most of the work was completed before lunch. This left the afternoons free for gymnastics, Brownies, 4H, piano lessons, library, getting together with other homeschoolers for arts& craft, or just for a play date.