- I’m cheap and I didn’t buy ANY CURRICULUM! If you are a veteran homeschool parent and are cringing as you read this, sorry. I knew we weren’t in this for the long haul and I also didn’t want to spend a lot of money. I also didn’t want to “waste” weeks / months trying things out only to find that they didn’t work for my son. So how did I even know what to teach? Lucky for me, I’m REALLY good at planning. I bought this book: Home Learning Year by Year, by Rebecca Rupp. This was an invaluable resource to guide me on the topics and core content to cover, and it even lists helpful resources (most of which could be found at the library) for each area of required instruction. It’s broken down by grade level and could literally be used for the entirety of K-12 instruction.
- I’m cheap, but I’m not crazy. I did buy a few things (besides that book). One of the best purchases I made was a subscription to Reading A – Z. I’m sure there are other similar sites that offer leveled reading books, but this is what we happened upon in the spring of 2020 and we kept using it through our entire home school year. Often you can find the same book written at 3 or 4 different levels so you can choose the one that is appropriate for your student. Each book has a few worksheets to go along with it (mostly related to language arts but also some quizzes and maps and other fun things). AND if you want to get really into it they have curriculums planned out for you with the readings, and worksheets, and a teacher guide all packaged into a unit study. It was perfect for us. We also used Eureka Math which was the math curriculum his (public school) peers were using AND happened to provide all of its content online for free. Teachers guides, student workbooks, parent resources; ALL of it. I’m not sure if the content is still free or if it was just during the height of the pandemic, but as I mentioned I’m cheap, so I created a dropbox file and downloaded EVERYTHING I thought I may possibly need. Let’s just say I could homeschool both kids for several years and NEVER pay for a math curriculum :O
- The library is your friend (did I mention that I’m cheap?). Lucky for us, even though the libraries weren’t open to the public during the pandemic, they did begin a “Books To Go” service around June or July of 2020. Basically you could log on to their website and place (almost) unlimited books on hold. They would gather them, notify you when they were ready and you could make an appointment to pick them up from an outdoor vestibule. It was really quite genius. I don’t think they are going to continue this service now that the different branches are starting to reopen to the public. However, I’ll bet that if it was a service you still needed, you could call and they’d do it for you. Our librarians are AMAZING. Alas, I digress. The library is 100% your friend for homeschooling especially if you aren’t purchasing any set curriculum. We literally could not have made it through the last year without library books to supplement our learning and sometimes to be the main resource for the subjects that we covered.
- Learn how your kid learns. First of all, you probably already know how your kid learns even if you don’t have a fancy name or label to apply to it. Does your child like to read and follow written instructions? Do they prefer you to say the instructions out loud? Would they rather use pictures and videos to figure out what they are supposed to do? Perhaps they are a hands on learner and need to take things apart and put them back together to figure out how things work. Do they need to verbally repeat back the information to you as their way of solidifying the learning process? Harness their natural inclinations and use this to help guide and structure their learning! My son HATES writing. Like loses his mind, tantrum on the floor, whining, kicking, maybe even spitting, screaming his head off, hates to write. SO, when I want to test his knowledge or get him to share ideas with me I CANNOT ask him to write it down. He will gladly take an online quiz or have a “book talk” with me. He will even answer study guide questions as long as I am doing the writing. This doesn’t mean I never made him write anything for the entire year. He had some kind of writing practice every day. BUT if I could tell him ahead of time how much there would be, and maybe the fun thing he would get to do afterwards, then he was MUCH more amenable to the writing work.
- Learn what MOTIVATES them when they don’t want to learn. Pretty sure I mentioned in the previous post (I Didn’t Mean to be a Homeschool Teacher) that the last year was not all sunshine and roses. There were definitely days where we got NOTHING accomplished. It happens. Don’t lose sleep over it. We ALL have days where we just don’t feel like doing the things we are “supposed” to do. When your child is fighting back a little, but you know the day can still be salvaged, don’t be afraid to pull out the big guns. My son loves video games. If I could see the day taking a turn for the worst I could usually bribe him with some video game time just to get the basics accomplished. But….
- Abandon ship when they are losing it completely — they aren’t learning when you force them to do the work AND at the end of the day YOU are still their parent (or guardian, or caretaker). There is no difference in their minds between the person who is trying to be their teacher and the person who is their parent. You still have to live with each other and maintain your relationship in the other 20 hours of the day. And to be honest, we accomplished SO much more in WAY fewer hours than a typical school day, that a few missed days of school due to “attitude” problems (on his part or mine) is simply no big deal. Take a breath, let it go, and try again the next day.
- Make it fun — and efficient! I’m a huge fan of project based learning, and I would attempt to include all the subjects that I could into one lesson. That said, it’s probably easier to do this with elementary aged kids than it would be for a high schooler. For example we spent the last 2 or 3 months of school on a “World Tour.” We would focus on one country for 2-3 weeks and learn about the history, geography, climate, culture, etc. for each one. This literally covered all the required core subjects AND specials (we would listen to music from that country, cook traditional foods, and learn about martial arts from each location — my son is a big TaeKwonDo fan, so this was key for him). We could also then incorporate movies (related to each country of course) as rewards for getting the more tedious work done. AND at the end of the section he had to do some sort of project to demonstrate everything he learned. I tried to have him create a travel brochure (which he hated), and then came up with the idea that he could write a speech and do a verbal presentation with visual aids. The presentations were recorded as well so he could watch them back. He LOVED doing this AND it reinforced his learning of the material as well as gave him practice at writing a speech and giving oral presentations. Plus, the guy loves to talk. Win, win, win.
- Ask what they want to learn. This kind of goes along with learning HOW they learn, but literally asking them about topics they are interested in or curious about can go a long way. I asked my son for a list when I was planning out the year and I’m pretty sure I worked in all the things that he suggested. I would also ask him (almost daily) in what order he wanted to accomplish the day’s tasks/ lessons. Usually he would choose to do the things he enjoyed the least FIRST. He wanted to get them out of the way so we could move on to fun things. Totally understandable, AND it actually helped as a way to get him to focus on the things he didn’t love.
- Get creative. To go along with making things fun for him I used a fair amount of online resources and I’ll be honest, my screen time rules changed. Educational videos used for school didn’t count towards his normal allotment of daily screen time. That said we were watching nature videos, and documentaries, and cartoons about anatomy and the revolutionary war. I also straight up admit that I asked my 4th grader what things she was currently using in her classes or what she remembered from previous years. Nearpod became a fan favorite for my son because the lessons were interactive and included videos, and, quizzes and polls and “drawing” on the computer. And let’s be real, I wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel every day. If someone else had created a lesson plan and put it out in the world of the internet for free, then sign me up!
- Don’t be afraid to unschool, or take your learning outside of the house. We didn’t do a lot of field trips because, well, Covid. But I absolutely counted some very informal things as “school.” Okay, let’s be honest, it was play time — but it was also art, or music, or some kind of STEM learning (aka –Legos). Yes, he was playing with Legos and I called it school. And he was happy. And he was quiet. And I got a moment of peace. But seriously, the kids was 7 at the time. And really, who would ever know…..
- Don’t stress yourself out — there are NO actual rules. Okay, so I’m exaggerating. There are definitely rules. The rules depend on the state you live in, so I can only speak to what Maryland requires, but I’ll be honest, it’s a little vague. The actual wording says that you have to show that you “regularly” covered certain subject areas (I think 8 are listed) and that you should keep a portfolio of your child’s work as evidence because you will be subject to an official review twice a year. Again, we did this during the year where EVERYTHING was online and EVERYTHING was virtual. So, guess what, so were our reviews. I 100% went overboard on documenting my son’s work. And I 100% went overboard in the beginning planning the lessons, searching for the right books, making sure we covered all the topics. As the year went on I got more relaxed about it and could have a general idea of what we would learn for the week but I could basically pull each day’s lesson plan together in about 15 minutes the morning of. This was also probably possible because of ALL the planning I had done up front, so I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a plan. I’m just saying, go easy on yourself. **If you are currently looking into homeschooling, I’ve included a few links at the end of this post. Most of them are specific to Maryland.**
- Planning and Tracking are KEY! Yes I just said not to stress yourself out, but part of that IS easier if you have a plan and know where you are headed. I started out using the Home Learning Year by Year book. I wrote down EVERY topic that I wanted to cover for each subject on color coded index cards. Then I put them together in an order that made sense for me to be able to do project based learning. I transferred the information on the cards onto 36 weekly planning pages (I literally just printed a random PDF from google). Once I had the general idea of the year, I used an academic / school planner to document what we ACTUALLY got done each day. I would also use the weekly planning pages to help determine when I needed to put certain books on hold at the library. The Holds to Go system was great, BUT there was never a guarantee that you would get the books at the right time. I would try to enter the holds about a month in advance, but it didn’t always work. For tracking, I think I mentioned I probably went over the top. That said, when it came time to submit the information for review, it never took more than a few hours to get an email back saying that we passed. There was also a HUGE uptick in homeschooling families and I’m sure the office that does reviews was overwhelmed and BUSY. They probably took one look at my google drive [sorted into folders by subject, with a word document (for each week per subject) filled with photos of his work for each day], smiled — or maybe rolled their eyes, stamped “passed” onto our paperwork, and moved on to more headache inducing portfolios.
**Additional Resources for Homeschooling in Maryland**
Home School Legal Defense Organization: https://hslda.org/
Maryland Homeschool Association: https://www.mdhsa.com/
Homeschool Law in Maryland: https://mdhsa.com/legal/comar/
MD Deparment of Education; Home Instruction Guidance: http://marylandpublicschools.org/about/Pages/DSFSS/SSSP/HomeInstruct/index.aspx
MD Home Instruction Guidance: Montgomery County MD Home Instruction Guidance: http://marylandpublicschools.org/about/Documents/DSFSS/SSSP/HomeInstruct/HomeInstructionFAQ.pdf
Montgomery County MD Schools; Home Instruction Guidance: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/homeschooling/index.aspx
