The journey

Homeschooling is hard. Plain and simple. The reason this is so hard is because these are your kids. You have more than just a passing interest in seeing that they do well in school and in life. Add the stress of trying to find the perfect match in every curriculum and subject and it's enough to make anyone's head spin.

Some things I've learned along the way... not every curriculum has to be an exact perfect match for my kids. They will still gain something from a curriculum even if it isn't tailor made for them. Obviously something that is completely a bad fit isn't good but I had to learn to stop nit-picking everything we tried, the perfect curriculum does not exist because they all have faults.

In a loving home with parents who are available to answer questions, spell words when asked, help research questions they can't answer themselves, expose the kids to new ideas, talk to their children throughout the day and make available things like paper, pencils and other "creative supplies", THEY WILL LEARN. I know it's hard to see sometimes, I remember being just few years into our journey and people telling me the same thing and thinking "I can't see how that can work, if I don't "teach" them, how will they learn?" But they do, you can't stop them from learning. All you need to do is facilitate by answering questions and making materials available and maybe make a suggestion or two if things get stagnate.

They might not follow an outlined progression developed by someone with a PhD in Education but they will follow their own timeline which IMO makes things easier for everyone. I tried to make sure they were up to par with the public schools but I only accomplished the same thing the public schools seem to do, suck the fun out of learning. When I relaxed and let them take things at their pace, they made giant leaps. Literally sometimes they would jump a grade level in understanding in just one day. Not everyday mind you but just when I'd start to worry they were dreadfully behind, they would make a giant leap and be on level or ahead. It took a while but I've finally become comfortable with the fact that learning at their pace does not look the same as learning at the public school pace and not only is that ok but it causes less tears and frustration. (Notice I didn't say "no tears or frustration" just less. )

As for how to teach without planning, that's easy, I don't teach. I facilitate their learning. I make available the supplies for them to teach themselves. I have a big cabinet in my den full of every imaginable art and science supplies, everything from paint, pencils, crayons and a dozen different kinds of paper to a microscope and supplies, magnets, dissection tools, wildlife identification books and glass prisms. Did I have all this stuff when my oldest was 6yo? No. Did I need all of it then? Not at all, I've picked things up here and there as I could afford them or could find them for free. Do I always have exactly everything I need for an experiment? Usually, but not always. But the anticipation of a much awaited science project hasn't killed anyone yet. And they are now pretty good about when we go out shopping to say, "Mom don't forget we need xyz to do that science project."

I know it's hard but relaxing and letting things go might be just what you need to do. Think long and hard about why you choose to homeschool. Most people don't choose to homeschool just so they can mimic school at home. Set priorities, for your homeschool and for each child. For instance, in K-3, my goal for my children is for them to be reading, writing and able to do basic arithmetic. Everything else like history and science sit on the back burner. We get them here and there but the 3r's are our priority. Manners and character are things I would teach my children no matter how they were schooled, public, private or at home. I teach those the same no matter what, I use teachable moments throughout the day. No one can do everything and do it well. Set priorities and re-evaluate them every few months and change them as needed. If you focused on reading for a few months and now your child is doing fairly well with it, change your focus to math for a while. If the child is still struggling, work on reading for a little while longer or if you seem to have hit a wall, change focus anyways and come back to reading in a few months.

No one is going to ask your child as an adult when they started reading, how old they were when they first wrote a sentence or if they were reading chapter books by second grade. You have more than 10 years to teach these basic skills. As for knowledge subjects, like science and history, no one knows it all and everyone has certain subjects they know more about that others. They will have gaps and they have a lifetime, their entire life time, to learn everything there is to know. Think about it, how much have you learned since you started teaching your own children? Were you limping through life without that information before you starting teaching them? You can't teach them everything there is to know but you can give them the tools for learning so they will be learning for a lifetime.

This was a response I wrote to someone on a message board asking about how to "do it all".

Read it again Mom! A review of FIAR

(This is a repost from my old blog. Originally posted July 24, 2008)

As promised, here is the first in a series of posts about the curriculum we use. This week I've chosen to talk about our main curriculum, Five In A Row.

Five In A Row is a unit study center around wonderful children's books. A unit study is where all your studies (history, science, literature, art and even some math) center around a particular theme for a prescribed amount of time. In Five In A Row (FIAR), we read a children's book each day of the week and then discuss and find out more about a different subject relating to the book each day of the week. For example, if the book we read is about cowboys, we could learn about the American West one day (history), the desert habitat another day (science), tall tales of the American West another day (literature), study the pictures in the book another day and compare it to other works of art and prehaps try to create our own works another day (FIAR picture book selections are known for their beautiful pictures) and measure our rainfall for a week and see how it compares to the average rainfall in the desert (math and science).

There are 4 FIAR manuals aimed at elementary school aged children containing a total of 70 children's book selections. The book selections are classics and twaddle-free. Many of them have become my children's favorite stories. The manuals contain many ideas for topics of study while reading each book. Some are obvious, like studying the Old West while reading about cowboys, others are more subtle and obscure like figuring years between events in the book and events in the child's life. You could probably come up with many of the ideas yourself but I really appreciate having all the ideas ready and waiting for me to use when we choose a book or subject to study. It saves me time and energy I can use to teach and play with my children rather than having to think up lessons all the time. There is also Before Five In A Row which is aimed at preschool children or very early elementary (K-1) and has 24 book selections plus a myriad of just plain fun learning ideas. And for older children there are 3 Beyond Five In A Row manuals which are aimed at upper elementary and middle school aged children. Beyond Five In A Row uses chapter books rather than picture books and there are 4 book selections per manual, 2 fiction and 2 non-fiction biographies.

Before FIAR is simple a collection of ideas for adding little bits of learning to your young child's day. It's not a structured preschool program or a means of accelerating your child's education. Just fun ideas to show your child the wonders of the world in a sweet and gentle way. My 2yo dd loves many of the Before FIAR books and I have put some of the lessons associated with the books on index cards so my older children can read the book with her and choose an activity to do with her. They get to "play school" with her and actual learning takes place for both children, how can you beat that?

FIAR is more structured in that there is a subject assigned to each day of the week. Mondays are history and geography, the lessons include map work, country studies, culture studies, relationship and character studies and of course history studies. Tuesday is Language Arts, the lessons include analyzing literature, vocabulary, author's techniques, types of writing and genre. Wednesday is Art, the lessons include picture study, artist technique and style and applying those things to the child's own artwork. Thursday is Applied Math and includes lessons on math in real world situations. It may be as simple as counting and grouping things in the book or it may be measurement or geometry all related to something with in the book. Friday is Science and FIAR runs the gamut from nature study to chemistry to physics and everything in between. You read the book each day before doing the activities. That may sound redundant but each day the child is assimilating the lessons he learned the day before each time it is read. It's like built in daily review. Plus, as I said before these books usually become fast favorites, what child doesn't want a favorite story read over and over again?

Beyond Five In A Row recognizes that older children tend to out grow the desire to read the same story over and over again. Chapter books are used instead of picture books and instead of assigning a subject to each day, each chapter has a list of study suggestions. Not every chapter has every subject, some weeks will be heavier with science topics to study, others will be heavier on history and some will have a good mix of all subjects. It's up to you and your child how many days you spend on a subject or chapter. The lessons in Beyond FIAR ask more of the child than the FIAR lessons. They do more research and dig deeper into subjects. These studies can be almost completely self directed if your child is a motivated learner.

We started using FIAR when my oldest son was in K. Since then we've strayed in different directions but we always seem to return to FIAR. Most recently, our return to FIAR was at my children's request. To me, that really says something about this curriculum. FIAR can be a structured or relaxed as you want and it is easy to add other studies as you desire but it's not necessary to do so. While FIAR was originally designed to spend a week on a book, nothing says you have to spend only a week. You can spend as much time as you want if a subject interests your children. I think one of the biggest advantages of this curriculum is that it's extremely flexible.

I'm so glad we found FIAR early in our homeschool journey. My children love the short, gentle lessons and with the frame work already laid out for me, implementing FIAR is very simple for me. "Deceptively simple" is the best way I like to describe FIAR. Learning hardly feels like work at all with FIAR which is the way it ought to be. ;)