Burning Questions...(part 2)

 Here are a couple Questions that I thought might be fun to do a Q&A type response to.  AND because I like to blabber, some answers are long(ish) sorry...sort of.  :)

How do you use child led learning AND accomplish Alberta Ed requirements?

I find that my boys ask questions and I lead them to the answers. I also mostly decide what we are studying at any given time, just so that we actually accomplish the requirements in Alberta. If we do find something that is interesting to us though, HS has given us the freedom to take a detour and explore our interests. (like my littlest, he is studying Snakes right now...fills his requirements and his curiosity)

As I talk to other parents with young children many say that their child was bored at home and definitely needed school. My kids seem fine at home now, but they're still on the young side. What do you think about that issue? Do your kids ever get "bored" at home?

OK, here is my personal opinion. I preface that because sometimes my opinion is offensive to some, and I really don't mean it to be.  Please remember that as you read it.

I think that parents who's children are "bored" are missing a vital part of parenting. I 100% think that there is never a reason to be bored. If your children are missing something, provide it.

I think that these parents, while good intentioned, are missing a point of being a parent. Our jobs are to facilitate learning. Really. We teach our children how to be adults. Spiritually, physically and mentally. I honestly believe that if you give a child something to learn or do, and let's be serious, sometimes you have to provide that something for a few years, they will never be bored.

When you go into life knowing YOU and not school, or primary, or church are the teacher, you know that YOU must provide those times for your child. My boys were never bored before school, but we have always been busy. We go for walks, we explore nature, we read, we go to the library, we go to the museum, we play, we paint, we craft, we visit the elderly, we visit with grandparents, we garden, I am sure you get the idea. These things can be done no matter where you are, or what your situation. They all provide education and the desire to learn if you take the opportunity. I don't want my children to have learnt everything vital from someone else. I want them to know things because Dh and I taught them, even if we had to learn it first! 

What do you do for other subjects you may not know, or ones that your children have surpassed your knowledge?

Ok. School prep and resources. I am not going to list them all unless you want a huge list, but I will give you a few places to start.

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For science I have found that unit studies and lapbooks are what we like. I love Hands of a Child for lapbooks. They have pages of information already researched for you. So if it is a subject or area of study you are lacking in, it is already done for you. Lapbooks are wonderful little books that you collect all your information into and then can re-read over and over. I enjoy them alot. For unit studies I really like Thames and Kosmos. Right now we are using their Milestones in Science kit that you can take and replicate 100 of the most influential science experiments of all time. My boys are really enjoying it. Each experiment builds on the previous one so it really helps them visualize the timeline. It also opens up great history discussions as some of these experiments were really far back there in time.

For History I recently discovered the Human Planet DVD from BBC. (I blogged about it here, here, and here) We used this for a portion of our SS this year. We also discovered The Great Courses which we bought many of, and are using them to supplement.

We use Teaching Textbooks for Math and I make up English at the beginning of the year. Luckily we are now repeating with G what I have already done with K, so I am done his prep already! (keeping what you have already prepared and tweaking it for your child is a good idea so you don't have to redo all your work)

Keyboarding is supposed to be taught and I use Mavis Beacon for that.  I just saw it last week for $20 at WalMart.

My boys also blog to accomplish a few things that otherwise might fall through the cracks.

Art I just use what I find on Pintrest (my board) and around the web. I love to expose my boys to all sorts of art things so this encompasses stuff from all aspects of art. (we just did Sound of Music and it was AMAZING)

How much time a week do you think you spend prepping?

Prep? I sit down at the beginning of the year and write out a basic outline of all the stuff we are doing to accomplish the Alberta Ed requirements. I decide what curricula we are using and how long (approx) it will take to accomplish that. Then each week I take about 2 hours or so and sketch out the week. Each night I take an hour or so and print off the next days work (if there is some) and plan a bit for each child. So, I don't think that there is excessive work, I just have to discipline myself. I find that if I take that time right after we are done school, then I get it done and it is not eating into my time with Dh at night.

I'm very interested in your mom cash system. I'd love to hear more details on what is required to earn cash and how you let them spend it.

I did blog a bit about my charts here for a basic overview of it. I also blogged about work here if you want to see what else we do in our family. If you want to know more, I would be happy to tell you more. These two posts will help you get an idea of how this system has evolved over the years for us though. I would start by writing down the basic jobs you want kids to do. Here is a great little list by a friend of mine of chores by age. (her blog is amazing if you ever want to explore)

So there we have it, any more questions?  I would love to answer any at all, they don't have to be about Homeschooling, they can be about our home life, activities we enjoy, things I love, whatever you want to know.  Sometimes I would love to know what you enjoy reading about.  I love to blog, and love blogging about whatever tickles my fancy, but what would YOU like to read about?

Cheers

Burning Questions...(part 1)

Over the course of our Homeschooling journey here in Alberta, I have had a few people ask some questions of me. 

As a result I have developed a few different answers for them and general links for information that I thought might help others. 

I know not all of you are homeschooling, and I am sorry that this is all about HSing, but possibly there might be something here for you as well.

• Here in Alberta we must follow and achieve the parameters that Alberta Ed sets out for us.  Alberta Ed has a bunch of links for you, this page is where they are all found.

In Alberta, you must give notice that you will be home educating. This can be done with the school board you are with right now, or if your children are not in school yet, with the government. There is a link on that page above telling you a bit more.

• In Alberta, you are entitled to funding. Every student in Alberta has funding assigned to them from the gov't and you are entitled to your student's share. This can be different for every school. For example, when we were schooling with School of Hope, we were in a blended program. This means that we had a teacher facilitator that checked up on a few subjects, and a few subjects were parent led. So, for a teacher led program we had to follow what the teacher asked of us, the parent led ones we could find our own curriculum and teach it the way we wanted to. This gave us $1200 per student. If we went totally teacher led, it was more...totally parent led, it is less. We just switched schools to Wisdom (more on why later) and are totally parent led so we get a little over $700 per student enrolled.

In Alberta you MUST be enrolled in a school. Here is a list of boards that are in Alberta. (if that link does not work HERE is another one)

• I have dealt with a few of them and later on will attempt to list pros/cons of the ones I do know about.

To find out what the course of study that every student has to follow in Alberta you can go right to the Alberta Ed site. This will give you a brief overview on what each grade learns for the year. You can follow it how your school directs. (more about that later)

• There are always traditional ways of assessing where your child is at. There are resources that are available like exambank.com, CTBS test, and of course, PATs. If these are not what you want, you don't have to do them with SOME school boards.

I personally am not a huge fan of testing, I am my children's teacher and I feel like I can assess where they are and how they are doing. (although I do make use of the CTBS tests to "prove" it to myself every three years)  It is there however if you wish to take part of it.

School boards. Here are a few that I have dealt with:

• School of Hope: We had a wonderful teacher facilitator named David Abma. He was willing to work with me and let me teach our children the way I wanted to, and still access the maximum funding available to me. School of Hope is Catholic and you have to take a religion course. This still worked for us as our religion has a program that we could follow that they had already approved. We schooled with them for 2 years and really loved them. The con would be that there is very little support here (in my city) for extra programs. They also wanted more in the way of testing than I was comfortable with, asking for more "proof" that we accomplished our work than I wanted.
• The Center For Learning: This school is great. We do all of our field trips/extra stuff with them. I do not school with them, but they allow me to join in with whatever they offer. For example: We have gone to a local natural park that has programs for schools to access the programs there with them, we have done art classes, science classes and even dissected sheep eyes with them. They have great support here, but are very similar to School of Hope in the way they run the schooling part.
• Wisdom: This is the board we are going through right now. We decided to switch schools to find a school that is less "restrictive". I am fairly independent and am willing to research to find alternate methods of achieving our Alberta ed requirements. This works great for us. Wisdom also has many wonderful (in my eyes) online courses and "extras" that I am excited for my boys to try. They are more along the line of a Charlotte Mason/classical type school, making it more of a classical education, but they are willing to let us work the way we want to. They will let anyone do the schooling they want to. (no tests and no teacher checking every month is what I am after) This is not for everyone, but if this is what you are looking for, than this is a place to start.

I have a few links you might want to check out: This link explains a bit about the different ways that people choose to school. We fit the relaxed, eclectic category the best, using a little of this and a little of that to achieve what we are setting out to do. :)

This is a quiz to sort of help you get started on the above. :) Just some things to think about and sort of point you in a direction.

I have a few things on my blog, there is a tab on the top that is labeled Homeschooling, and that will take you to a page of links.

I love how this fits with our family.  I love how we can make use of so many different things as we school. 

I hope that this has not been too boring for you.  I have one more post (next Monday) about different things we do with school and family life.  It is sort of a how we school and make life happen in our home post. 

Do you have any questions?  Is there anything you want to know about how we do things here?  I am open to doing a few different posts if there are questions out there in bloggy land.  :)

Cheers