The field trips really are a cool part of homeschooling. I was grateful to the home school coordinator in our group in Colorado.
I personally got all excited about seeing the inside workings of the post office. (I’m one of those people that still likes to handwrite letters and all, and my son has a penpal, so it is fun to see how the letters come and go). We went to the Rock Pile Museum over the weekend. It’s great that it is free. We especially liked the covered wagon you can peek into, and I admired the old machines (sewing, washing, phonograph, etc.) That Adventurarium is pretty sweet too, very hands-on.
I agree about music being an important part of education. I did the choir and band thing too. Played violin, drums, still practice my clarinet. When we homeschooled we’d often put the classical music on during independent work. “Peter and the Wolf” is really worth checking into for music time. Each character is represented by an instrument. My son really likes the piano when we go to Grandma’s house. I am trying to save up for one so we can both keep learning...
Wanted to mention 2 other book resources worth mentioning:
A+ Activities for First Grade and A+ Activities for Second Grade by Naomi E. Singer and Matthew J. Miller. These 2 book are gems I stumbled across at my local library. Had to buy my own copies and mark them up. Each page has 2 activities. Objective, skills taught, materials needed, are all listed. Written by 2 school teachers. Invaluable resource. I mainly used the activities that teach language arts and math (used them before kindergarten, so you certainly don’t need to wait till 1st or 2nd grade - and they are valuable beyond those grades, teaching skills necessary throughout elementary). They also cover science and social studies. The books are broken up into those 4 categories. What I love about the activities is they are pretty much all hands-on, very fun ways to learn stuff. They target so many topics: games that help to teach phonics skills (short and long vowels, 2 and 3 letter blends, etc), synonyms, antonyms, homonyms/homophones, onomatopoeia, create your own rhyming books, main idea, story elements, all kinds of math games, etc… They were simply one of the biggest tools I used when my son was younger. Last time I checked you could buy both of them together, used, for under $10 through Amazon. Just a treasure trove of activities that teach important skills.
Neil Ardley’s science books. You can find them at most any library. He has them by topics: water, light, hot and cold, weather, electricity, sound, magnets, etc. Top quality. Concepts clearly taught. Appealing visually. Very hands-on.
Just wanted to mention a couple more things about the Singapore math curriculum. They have Home Instructor guides specifically for home school. They are less expensive than Saxon. One thing I did like about Saxon, and did use, were the timed fact sheets. (But you can make your own.) Also, specifically, I highly recommend their Challenging Word Problems workbooks. They also sell manipulatives (the place value mat and base 10 units we used all the time).
Two reasons that led me to conclude that the Singapore curriculum is at least 1 grade ahead of our American counterparts, beyond them blowing us out of the water on the international TIMSS scores, were
1) comparing state standards (what we expect each student to know and be able to do by the end of each grade) to what is taught in the Singapore curriculum for any particular grade and
2) when my son took the ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills, a nationally standardized test) about this time last year, at the end of 3rd grade, he scored a grade above in math (4.7 grade equivalency).
You’ve probably heard the statement “a mile wide, one inch deep” referring to how we teach math here in the U.S. I’d have to agree with this in some respects. For example, with the Singapore curriculum, by the end of 2nd grade, they are adding and subtracting 2 and 3 digit numbers mentally, plus adding and subtracting money amounts using dollars and cents. They go deep. And I’m impressed with the sequence of instruction in that it is not overwhelming to get to that point at a young age. There are clear steps helping children move from the concrete to the abstract in understanding.
By the way, I know WY doesn’t require standardized testing like Colorado does, but I would have done it anyway. It’s worth doing. Just to make sure you are on track, and as evidence of teaching/learning. I recommend a nationally standardized test over a state test if you are doing your own thing and not following along with the state scope and sequence. But a state test would be great too. I’m pretty sure they would make that easy to do at any school district.
FYI, here are Wyoming’s state standards:
http://www.k12.wy.us/SAA/standards.asp
Might give you an idea of what things to cover each year in your homeschool curriculum. You can access any state's standards by going to the state board of education website for that particular state.
I also recommend recording the time you spend teaching each day and the subjects covered. It’s true, the cool thing about homeschool is you don’t have to adhere to a strict schedule. When my grandmother was sick with cancer, we were able to move our "home school" to another state so I could spend evenings with her at the hospital. That time spent with her I will forever treasure. And I couldn’t have done it if my son was in public school (almost a month we were gone). But homeschool is also not for the faint of heart. It takes plenty of time. You have to put in the time. Otherwise you are short changing your child. We averaged about 5 and ½ hours a day. But it varied anywhere from 4 hours a day, to 6 and ½. We didn’t have a strict schedule time wise, but we did have our schedule up on the wall and we’d rotate through. If we didn’t get through it all in one day, we’d start where we left off the next day, but always making sure math and language arts were done every day. I had a yearly time goal, broken down into months, as well as a set number of days I wanted to make sure we homeschooled. I am pretty right-brained, so organization isn't exactly my thing, but you really do need to apply a level of organization to your program to ensure you're giving your child the best education you can, and covering all the subjects you need to.
Here is one of the math activities we really had fun doing when my son was a toddler… it’s a great way to teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division starting concretely (hands-on). Having a concrete foundation helps them more easily transition to the abstract, mental math concepts and algorithms down the road… I’d give him word problems (verbally) to solve using objects around the house. Use your imagination and have fun. Here are some examples…
Use Miss Bunny (or whatever stuffed animal you’d like to use at the moment) (I guess I’m thinking Easter still)… Miss Bunny has already found 4 eggs and has put them in her basket. Hooray! She finds 3 more scattered about the living room. (Your little one helps Miss Bunny find them and put them in her basket.) If she had 4 eggs to begin with, and found 3 more eggs, how many eggs does she have now, altogether? 4 plus 3 equals 7 total.
Oh no, Miss Bunny got carried away with hopping around happily and 2 eggs spilled out and are nowhere to be found… (hide 2 eggs). How many does she have now? 7 eggs…take away 2 that are lost…that leaves us with only 5 eggs. Poor Miss Bunny. You get the idea…
Multiplication and division are just as simple… Have your little one gather several stuffed animals (dolls, action figures...). Say he/she chose 5 stuffed animals. In this scenario they are siblings, and together they want to pick flowers for their mom for Mother’s Day, so they can make her a beautiful wildflower bouquet. (You can use blocks, marbles, etc. in any scenario to represent objects, or some children might want to draw, color, and cut out flowers, or you might have silk flowers on hand). Each brother or sister is determined to find 3 flowers to add to the bouquet, and they are successful. After all their searching, each one has found 3 flowers. How many flowers do they have altogether for the bouquet to present to their mom for Mother’s Day? (Line them up in front of each stuffed animal. They come to learn that multiplication is really just repeated addition. You can show them that 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 15. After you’ve done this for awhile you can teach them the concept of multiplication and show them 5 X 3 written out.)
For division… There are 28 pieces of candy and 4 friends. (Use those stuffed animals and real pieces of candy if you’d like.) If they were to divide the candy
evenly between them, so they all had
the same amount and it was fair, how many pieces of candy would each friend get?
Anyway… the word problem scenarios are endless. Children love this. The time with you, the stories, using their imagination, the challenge of figuring out the problem. They’ll even come up with problems of their own too.
Place value is sometimes a tricky concept for children. But when you start concretely with that too, it's easier. Grouping objects in sets of ten, like pennies, is a good way to start. Representing a 2-digit number by tens and ones is a good next step. You can make your own place-value mat by writing "Ones" on the right, "Tens" on the left, a dividing line down the middle. Then represent 2-digit numbers on the mat. You can use staws. Singly in the ones place. Grouped in tens with a rubber band in the tens place. For homeschool you can have 3 cups labeled "Hundreds", "Tens", and "Ones." Each day have your child add a straw to the "Ones" cup. When there are ten, they bind them with a straw and add the bundle to the "Tens." When there are 10 bundles of 10, you bind them up 100 altogether and add them to the "Hundreds" cup. (And celeberate the 100th day of school!) Visually this helps them to see place value. And frequently ask them "How many days of school have we had so far?" So they have to look at the 100s, 10s, and 1s place to see.
Okay, just a bit on fractions, and then I will say no more...
The kitchen is your friend with fractions. Dividing up that pizza, that orange into slices. Having them count the whole and then talk about fractions while you munch. And cooking together using those measuring cups... Lots of math in the kitchen. And teaching pre-number concepts like greater and less than. Who has more food on their plate? Daddy or mommy?
I forgot to mention we also did the Pledge of Allegiance for homeschool. And weather/temperature each day. (Weather/temperature is a great way to get graphing in too.)
Happy homeschooling everyone! Or working and having fun educationally with your children beyond public school!
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