I get a lot of questions about homeschooling. “Where did you begin?”, “Is it hard?”, “Do the kids actually listen to you?”….  Right now we are in a good rhythm with school so it seems to be a good point to discuss how I am teaching them and also have a record of it for myself. I know someday I will be the one asking the questions to myself – “How did I homeschool the boys that year?”.

WHY? This is the first question. Parents decide to homeschool for numerous reasons, religious, health, economic, travel, personal, athletics, the list goes on. For us, homeschooling the boys this year was the only schooling option that made sense. We knew this adventure was only one year so we wanted their studies to parallel the curriculum from their schools at home as much as possible. This would be a challenging if not impossible task given the diverse curricula you encounter abroad.  If we’d signed on for any longer than a year,  you’d better bet I would’ve had them enrolled somewhere! The other answer to this question was travel and freedom. What would be the point in traveling to another country and yet still being locked into a firm school schedule with mandatory attendance, homework and commitments? To us this just didn’t make sense. Part of why we created this “recess” for ourselves was to have the freedom to spend more time together as a family as we please, to travel, to surf, to live an unhurried life. Brick and mortar school seemed counterintuitive to what we were trying to achieve.

HOW? I have two friends who homeschool so my first step was to contact one of them and start my inquiry. I will always be grateful to Susan who spent so much time with me guiding me on this new scary research project! In New Jersey, the homeschooling laws are quite liberal. This would turn out to be a big plus for us as not all states make the process so easy. And every state is different. I joined HSLDA.org and utilized their website to ensure I was doing all the right things. I simultaneously created my curricula for the boys while I researched the legality of homeschooling them here on the island. Many countries have their own rules and laws for homeschooling. And many prohibit this freedom we’ve been granted. In fact our friends in Europe cannot believe we are legally permitted to homeschool as its nearly impossible to gain permission to do so in their country. Here it IS legal (although discouraged) to homeschool once you’ve gone through all the proper paperwork, including curriculum submission and interviews with Ministry of Education. It literally took 6 months to just get a proper answer on how to go about doing this. So by the time we had a handle on “how” we were halfway through our school year. I had found out from a mom who recently battled all the red tape here that it took “several months” and a few hundred dollars per student to gain approval. For one year of this…. not worth it I decided. I am doing all the right things as best as I can in terms of sticking to our curriculum and documented most of their work. Therefore I sleep well at night knowing they are being educated. So back to the “how” stateside…….

Both school administrations of their schools graciously gave me the curricula for their grades. This was my starting point. I also reached out to ALL of their teachers and requested any and all info they would share with me. Some gave me tons of info including Shane’s LA teacher who met with us for over an hour going over much of the year’s lessons! Some gave me very little to work with. I also researched homeschooling programs – of which there are hundreds and hundreds! www.cathyduffyreviews.com was instrumental in helping me make a decision on which books, programs and online courses were best for each child. I will leave the specifics on books/programs to the end so it can be skipped by anyone not interested…yawn 😉

On our initial flight here, the boys’ suitcases were primarily books! Thankfully you don’t need much clothing on a Caribbean island! We set up one classroom in the guest room (Collin’s) and one in the boys’ bedroom (Shane). Each child has a laptop to use. Over time I did need to purchase and have Dan schlep in small tables which have served as desks. I bought an inexpensive printer here. Both boys have a large 2″ binder with folders to keep all of their assignments organized. I created a schedule of subjects which we loosely follow. The day always starts with reading (at least 30 min), then LA, then Math. So the subjects that require the most brain power for them are completed earliest in the day. Every evening I create the next day’s lesson plans for them. Sometimes this takes me 20 minutes, often it takes me an hour. I work hard at coordinating their online work with workbooks & other online sources. For example, right now Collin is studying the Panama Canal in Social Studies. He is reading the chapter in the book but I also found 2 educational youtube videos on the Canal which he watched. He will read the section in Shane’s history book on the Canal. He will interview his dad & make notes as his dad has visited the Canal. Together we learned about how islanders from the West Indies sailed to Panama to help in the building of the canal. So now he will be writing a short essay on this piece of history. Learning subject material from different sources and mediums are what makes our classroom more interesting.

It all sounds so neat and clean, right? Not exactly. The truth is some days, ok many days, the plans don’t go according to the plans. Sometimes a friend will stop by mid school day with an amazing surf report and we will drop everything. Sometimes one kid’s work will take 2 hours longer than the other and so I will cut him some slack & have him skip out on typing and Spanish. Teaching language arts has been the hardest subject for me. I do not know how to teach small people to write and while I am doing the best I can, I know they are lacking in this area. But the biggest deterrent to effective homeschooling is having a revolving door of visitors! School just does not happen when we have company. And since we have had nearly nonstop guests since January…..we have not had enough school days. We have made peace with this as our visitors have enriched our time here and we wouldn’t have wanted this year to go any other way. Needless to say the boys will be having some summer school!

As far as the question – do the kids listen to me? – goes. Yes and no. Generally speaking, I have to brag, my boys are just good kids. They are rule followers and hate getting in trouble. So I have that going for me. I have certainly received some push back from them with complaints that I’ve given them too much. The first few months were the most challenging as we were all adjusting to our new roles. I may have yelled. A lot.  But luckily I have the juiciest carrot to dangle in front of them: surfing. When the work is complete, they surf. If they whine or complain, they must skip a day of surfing. I only had to enforce this once, per kid, and since then its worked like a charm. And just like when they were in school, its always hardest to get back on track after a break. I have one (not naming names) who rushes through his work, finishes first, but is always messy. And I have another who is pokey, slow and meticulous with his work. This keeps me, as a teacher, on my toes. I have learned so much about their learning styles, their interests, but mostly their strengths and weaknesses. One boy is an avid reader but a mediocre writer. So I have him write more. The other boy hates to read but writes beautifully. I have him read more. I have found it tremendously rewarding spending my energy tweaking their day in an effort to improve their weak areas. They also write a lot about what they have learned here. The island’s inhabitants, flora, fauna, languages, experiences, you name it. They will treasure their journals forever.

Is it hard? Of course its hard! Many things worth doing in life are hard. The hardest part for me personally is not the making of the lesson plans, or the teaching itself, but the lack of alone time for me. I am literally never alone. Thank God I really enjoy being with my children. If my kids regularly drove me crazy (truthfully sometimes they do) homeschooling would be a no go for me. The pressure of whether or not I am meeting their educational needs also is a constant burden I have to deal with. I cannot duplicate the expertise of 12+ teachers. I just remind myself that I am doing all that I can with the resources and time available to me.

The biggest pluses for us: 1) getting tons of sleep  2) schedule freedom  3) more time together  4) individualized learning  5) less stress  6) 14 snack breaks a day

The biggest cons for us 1) no alone time for mom 2) not enough school days 3) less socialization 4)lack of various authority figures placing demands on them 5) 14 snack breaks a day

All in all, homeschooling has been a wonderfully eye opening experience. I have always had much respect for teachers. But now, huge huge props to homeschooling parents as well. Regardless of their unique reasons, homeschooling parents are incredibly self-sacrificing. I can say that now because I have done it. Next Fall when that school bus shows up I will meet it with mixed emotions. No matter what, I will know I have earned my coveted alone time!

 

Here are the details on the learning materials we used this year:
For Collin, I purchased on Amazon his grammar, vocabulary, social studies and math books and their respective teachers’ editions. After copious research I bought a math program, Teaching Textbooks, which came with a workbook and CD. So for math he uses Teaching Textbooks (7th grade) AND the coordinating workbook pages in his school’s math book. Typing is an online course and Spanish is Rosetta Stone Homeschooling Spanish. I also purchased an online program called Time4learning.com. With this program Collin works through LA lessons (3 times/week), Science, and sometimes social studies. I fill in the spaces between all these books and programs with other online sources such as BrainPop, Timeforkids.com, Khan Academy, quizlet, etc. Collin keeps a regular writing journal and he does notebooking on occasion as well. For notebooking, he is given a subject to research, write a paragraph about plus draw, color, or paint the subject on the same page. (Art class – check!). Also he has had writing assignments such as a persuasive essay, a big research paper, biography,  poster presentation, poetry, many book reviews and book reports. All of these writing assignments were created and facilitated by me.

Creating a “classroom” for Shane was a bit trickier due to his age and complexity of middle school subject matter. I purchased the same math program (Teaching Textbooks) but for prealgebra. Time4learning online for his LA and Science. Science is supplemented with Human Body Encyclopedia by Smithsonian and my own personal brain! He also works through the reading and writing assignments in the Little Worlds short story anthology. His vocabulary words come from the books we are reading and studying this year (just finished The Giver for example) and from vocabahead.com. His writing assignments given to him by me are similar to Collin’s: persuasive essay, research paper, biography, book reviews, etc. Since so much of his work is computer based I wanted to have him absorb history via an actual book. He studies US history with Encyclopedia of US History by Smithsonian. We simultaneously watch History Channel’s DVD series “America the Story of us”. I create quizzes for him based on his readings and sometimes will have him do additional research and writings on certain topics we want to learn more about. Spanish is Rosetta Stone (he says he’s not learning much though), and typing is typing.com. Although the math program walks him through the material and then has him do practice problems and tests, he usually needs me to help with math. Math by far takes up the most of his classroom time. He also completed an online real world budget program called Banzai.com.