Let me start off by introducing myself and my family:
- I'm Karen. I graduated from Glen Burnie High in June of 2002. Austin (my son) was born in November of 2001, so I received my final 5 credits from a state-issued tutor. I attended Anne Arundel Community College thereafter, where I had a great interest in Psychology, Human Services, and English. I hope to return to college soon, so that I can earn the remainder of my credits towards an associates degree.
- Austin is my only child. He is 14 and absolutely loves technology. Right now, he wants to be a famous youtuber when he grows up. This is our first year of homeschool, so I'm trying lots of different ways to teach him. His favorite is, of course, youtube instructional videos. He also enjoys writing sentences for his vocabulary words.
- Ray is my boyfriend and partner in crime. We met in Maine back in 2008, so I think of him more as a husband. This one followed me to my knitting group every week, wooing me with Big Cheese pizza and claw machine prizes. Despite what little time we spend with each other, he's my right hand man, my therapist, my backup, and my speed bump when I start to go off the radar.
- I have one more family member: Poppy. He's a Chi-Terrier that we adopted in 2010 from Guilford animal shelter. Poppy is the most appreciative, self-sufficient creature in this entire house. He's smart and spoiled. Right now, I'm laying on the bed with Ray, Poppy, and abut 8 dog toys...every night.
Oh, let me tell you our daily homeschool schedule. We started on August 3 2015. We have school Monday through Friday, with special themed activities on or near holidays. I wake at 6-6:30 when Ray hops in the shower, but I don't wake Austin until about 8. I let him watch the news while I set up the table. My master binder tells me where we left off the day before and where we will start for the day.
1. I open his assignment binder to the math section and that's where we start. The number of problems depends on the extent of work each problem requires. Right now we're attacking lateral equations, so it's about 4 problems a day right now. We use AOP LifePac math. I also purchased Saxon Algebra 1/2 and a Spectrum Algebra workbook, but I find that the LifePac and youtube instruction are the easiest for us to follow.
2 A. For Vocabulary, we use "1,100 words you need to know for the SATs" each day, there are 5 vocabulary words. The words are introduced in a paragraph. The student has to use pick which word works for each of 5 sentences that are unrelated to the paragraph above it. Then they have to match the definition to the word. I also make Austin write his own sentences, which he loves because I let him use computer screen names and game terms (as long as they're capitolized and he uses proper punctuation). I learn new vocabulary myself.
2 B. We recently added a language arts section, which Austin is not thrilled about. A friend of mine found LifePac grade 9 curricula at a thrift shop for $8.99 a piece and I just couldn't resist. Ask and you shall receive books to teach the boy. Before this, I used parts of speech worksheets, grammar practice worksheets, novel assignments, journaling...With this Language arts set and the vocabulary, English feels a bit more complete.
3. Right now, we're studying Taxonomy as 10th grade Science with LifePac. We just finished 9th grade Science with LifePac. I'm learning to lengthen and branch out from our lessons with videos and activities. In a few days, we will be watching an hour long documentary of the Tree of Life and discussing the different theories of how life originated besides creation versus evolution. I don't see how evolution could start without Divine or special creation, but that's subjective.
4. For history, we use another LifePac. We're ending the grade 9 and will start grade 10 soon. I use lots of videos and activities for history as well. We study bits and pieces of scholarly articles, do projects for timelines and read 'baby books' that I can find for free at the library. Many of these books are narrated on YouTube for free, if they're not accessable. We apply our geography in odd ways. For example, we just watched a video on how the sun hits the earth. I stood in the center of the room and made Austin be the earth. He had to spin on an axis and rotate around me for what we respectively noted as being 365 days. I had him identify parts of his body that would be North America, the equator, and such. We also used our recent print of the daylight hours in NC and compared it to the sunrise/sunset of Maine to see how the equator affects day time differently than daylight savings reflects latitudinally.
5. Specials - I don't give Austin extended holidays because I find them unnecessary when an average instructional day is 3-6 hours, depending on the quality of his attention and length of interjections. Instead, I give him holiday packs. I find holiday-themed worksheets, activities, games, and videos for him to do. On Veteran's Day, I tried giving him a pack to do independently. He neglected it almost entirely. For thanksgiving, I gave him a folder of work that we did together.
Here's a link to a video of me giving a visual description of our Thanksgiving workbook:
I do allow Austin to have lesson days off on holidays and trips, but we chose to work a seasonal lesson on Thanksgiving day and took the next day (Friday) off.
I will be sharing our activities, worksheets, games, and crafts in as much detail as possible with you on this blog. You can use the 'Keyword Search' box for a specific holiday, subject, theme...etc. Remember, just because it's designed for a 14 year old boy, you can alter it for a student of any age. I always tell Austin, "We'll get through this together" when he struggles with concepts and methods. We certainly will get through it together. Hopefully, this blog will help make the journey a little less bumpy.
