Week Five, Organizational Tools and Settling In

It gets a little easier each day. We are learning how to use our tools. He is making friends in the homeschooling community.

For now, we use Khan Academy for math. It's free, easy to use and thorough:
http://www.khanacademy.org/

We are also starting to use Life of Fred Mathmatics.
http://lifeoffredmath.com/

If these don't work well enough, we can try Math U See:
http://www.mathusee.com/about-us/homeschool/

Or we can use the several free math pages that can be found with a quick web search. At this time, now our strategy for math is to start over from the beginning, quickly going over the entire math curriculum on Khan until he gets to places where he struggles, and then spend more time in those areas until he is proficient.

For science and health, I am planning a unit study on physiology and the human body, which will start in April. Until April, he occasionally watches documentaries about science topics, reads his physiology books and is encouraged to look up science-y question that pops into his head.

Currently he is working on a unit study for Japan for history and geography. I'm planning to do a unit study based on the writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder, with the objective of covering American life from that time period. I'd like to use unit studies, special projects, and lap books to cover topics in science, geography, social studies and history.

For grammar, language arts, and spelling we are reading and talking about these concepts as they come up. We've also been using last year's bridge book. Now that math seems more under control, I'll begin to focus more on this.

We have a CD-rom software program for Spanish language, and another one for keyboarding skills. He takes classes out in the community in art, tap dancing, jazz dancing, ballet, and musical theater, and his dad works with him on guitar.

It seems that we are organically moving in the right direction. As a subject or a task becomes more comfortable it is assimilated into the routine. I am no longer losing sleep over whether we covered a certain subject on a given day. We will cover everything in time.

We have until July to decide whether he will be enrolled in one of the local district home-study charter schools, or whether we will continue with this eclectic, a la carte method of schooling. The a la carte method is good because it can be customized for the interests and needs of the child and household budget restrictions. Charter schools are paid for by the district but there is little or no flexibility. If we want to stay with the a la carte method, we will eventually need to enroll him in an accredited umbrella school that will provides curriculum flexibility. Some homeschoolers generate their own credits, but this is not a good idea if there is any possibility that the child may return to public school, because currently our district does not accept credits generated by the homeschooling parent, no matter how well-documented the work is.

Today I found several websites that provide free templates for getting organized:

http://www.calendarsquick.com

http://www.vertex42.com/

www.mommytracked.com

getbuttonedup.com

chartjungle.com

http://donnayoung.org/index.htm

http://www.keepandshare.com