Leah lead the way to our homeschooling experience. What brought us to that point? It's kind of a long story, but the root is a group of uncontrollable kids in her third grade class. We knew and respected Leah's third grade teacher, she having been Samy's third grade teacher, and were looking forward to her school year. The problems mounted quickly. Leah's class had previously been split in two classes, but was combined for the third grade. This, apparently, created a critical mass of bad kids. The reports we were receiving from Leah on a daily basis, and which were corroborated with other kids in her class, were nothing short of horrifying. We were hearing about the class being constantly disrupted, these kids using the worst profanity, sexually suggestive behavior (third graders!), etc. By the time we met with Leah's teacher for Back to School Night (within a couple of weeks of school starting), she was very distraught about the situation. Fast forwarding, we worked with Leah's teacher and the school administration (with whom we had a great relationship) for the remainder of the semester. Despite almost-daily communication, the situation did not improve. During a meeting with Leah's teacher, this teacher was literally in tears over the situation and told us she was going to retire and switch careers. At that point, we knew this would be Leah's last semester in public school.
At the end of November 2019, we started a trial of what homeschooling would look like. We opened an account with Power Homeschool, aka Acellus. The cost was $25/month/student, so we figured this would be a good way to do a test and see how Leah liked it. The format is basically a short video lesson of around 5 minutes on a particular topic. Following each lesson is a short quiz to check for understanding. Periodically throughout the course, there are chapter tests as well as a mid-term and final exam. There is also a Pre-Test, which is only for informational purposes. The purpose of this experiment was to judge how well Leah liked this format and to judge the quality of the instruction. We signed Leah up for Social Studies, Science, English, Ecology and German. It might sound like a lot, but we didn't push her - she only did a couple of steps per day, at her own pace.
By mid-December, we declared the experiment a success and notified the school that Leah would not be returning after the Christmas break.
English
We used Power Homeschool's Grade 3 Language Arts/Reading. This course lasted until the end of April 2020. It covered what one would expect. These are the major components:
- Nouns and Pronouns
- Writing Personal Narrative
- Explanatory Writing
- Verbs, Adjectives and Adverbs
- Opinion Writing
- Writing That Compares
- Expository Writing
- Writing a Story
Note that it only took four months to complete, but this was the entire third grade's curriculum. Overall, we were happy with the course. There was plenty of spelling and vocabulary practice, but there is no writing component to the course.
Social Studies
We used Power Homeschool's Grade 3 Social Studies. Leah finished this course at the same as English. This course covered these areas:
- What is a Community?
- Types of Communities
- People Move from Commuity to Community
- Community Celebrations
- The Environment of a Community
- Where Do Communities Start?
- History of Communities
- Changes in Communities
- Commerce in a Community
- Producing Goods
- Governments: Rights and Responsibilities
- Local Government
This was a fairly easy class. Much of what they talked about related to different areas of the country, but there was a concentration on Seattle, which didn't really resonate with Leah, as we have never been there. There were quite a few biography lessons - I never heard of most of the people featured in these lessons, which I guess is good in a way.
Science
We used Power Homeschool again for this - their Grade 3 Science class. Overall, I was happy with this class. It included a relatively brief introduction to many areas of science. Included was:
- Plant Life
- Animal Life
- Animals and Plants in Ecosystems
- Animals and Plants Living Together
- Water
- Weather
- Rocks and Soil
- Changes on Earth's Surface
- Earth's Natural Resources
- Properties of Matter
- Changes in Matter
- Forces and Motion
- Simple Machines
- Introduction to Energy
- More About Energy
- Sound
- Looking at the Sky
- The Solar System
- We Use Science Every Day
Leah wants to be a veterinarian, so she was enthusiastic about this class.
We also supplemented the Power Homeschool class with the book Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding. This is something Leah and I are both enthusiastic about. The book suggests bouncing around between different areas of science while building a comprehensive understanding. It's a little tough to follow, as the book is not arranged in the suggested order, so you are continually skipping around between four different sections of the book. This book is very comprehensive and offers a lot of tips for conducting the lessons, but I found it requires a good bit of preparation. I approached this by creating a summary in Google Slides. I embed photos and short videos into the slides so we use that as a framework for the discussion.
Ecology
Elementary Ecology is an elective offered by Power Homeschool. Leah enjoyed this class a lot. There was some overlap with the science class she took, but there was plenty of unique material. It was a very visual class with lots of pictures and short videos. The class consisted of these topics:
- Ecology Basics
- Environments
- Food Chains and Food Webs
- Food Chains in Environments
- Changes to Environments
- Animal Structures and Functions
- Plant Structures and Functions
- Environmental Factors that Change Ecosystem
- Natural Resources
I would go so far as to say this was the favorite class of this semester. Definitely a nice introduction to the topic.
Math
We love Singapore Math! Leah has always been strong in math, so we started her off at grade level, with Dimensions Math 3B. This is not an online course - it's a physical book and I do the instruction one-on-one with her. I think she not only enjoys the interaction, but she learns faster because I can watch her and see the kinds of mistakes she makes and immediately correct them. This is a big winner and I intend to use this program through to the end at eighth grade. The topics covered include:
- Multiplying and Dividing with 6, 7, 8, and 9
- Fractions
- Measurement
- Geometry
- Area and Perimeter
- Time
- Money
The set of books consists of a student textbook, an instructor manual (which explains the topic and goes over the examples in the textbook) and a workbook (answers are provided in the instructor manual). Throughout, there are tons of problems to work through in various formats. For example, there are challenging word problems, but also fun problems like solving codes or riddles by working through different problems. Overall, I'm very happy with the quality of this material.
Art History
This is a fun course we are taking as a family. It's offered through the University of California and costs only $29 for the semester. It's video based and on-demand, so you can go through the material for as long as you like. There is another level to these courses where UC provides a teacher (for $399), but we didn't think that was necessary. We find this course very easy to consume, interesting and informative. The topics covered in this course include:
- Introduction to Art
- Elements of Design
- Principles of Design
- Art Making
- Art History Early Civilizations
- Early Christian to Gothic
- Renaissance to Rococo
- Early Modernism
- Modernism
- Exploring World Art
- Careers in Art
In addition to this course, the UC Scout program offers many other courses across the full range of high school studies, including many AP courses. Definitely worth checking out!
Girl Scouts
Leah has been a Girl Scout since kindergarten. Jana runs both Leah's Brownie troop and Samy's Junior troop. Up through April, the troop met every other week and enjoyed some great activities. In addition to working on their badges, the girls went on field trips, service projects and crafts.
Girl Scouts have an annual event called Word Thinking Day, where all of the troops in the area join together to learn about a country. This year, they learned about Ukraine. They were able to sample some of the food, learn about the culture and learn a few words in the language.
This year's community service consisted of cleaning trash from one of the roads in our community and writing Christmas cards to our soldiers stationed abroad.
We were able to have a day camp where Leah learned about archery, fire starting, knife safety, knot tying, crafts and making camp food. An overnight camp was planned for the end of the year, but it fell victim to coronavirus.
We attended some very high quality events at our county library. One that we attended with the Girl Scouts focused on mechanical engineering, where the girls designed and tested their own cars made out of recycled materials (similar to a pinewood derby).
They powered through to the end of the year, but were limited to only Zoom meetings once we were under quarantine.
4H
This is Leah's other extracurricular activity, which we added in September 2019. The theme of the group is "hobby farm" and is held at the leader's farm in Oxford. The hobby farm consists of a ton of chickens, two goats, a pig, two ponies, ducks and geese. The kids had a great time with this and learned a ton. They enjoyed a fishing derby at the leader's pond before winter set in. We also took a group trip to the Rutgers Geology Museum, which was awesome - highly recommended, once coronavirus lets it open again.
Each year, 4H members are required to make a public presentation. This was a great experience for Leah - she's typically not shy, but doesn't have many opportunities for something like this. Additionally, we were able to attend the PA Farmer's Fair in Harrisburg through 4H. It was very educational walking through all of the exhibits. At the end of the day we were even able to attend the rodeo! Unfortunately, meetings stopped in April due to the quarantine and the highlight event, the County Fair, was cancelled. We're hoping things will resume next year.
Karate
This is Leah's sport. She's been taking karate at Golden Rule Karate and Fitness since 2017 and really enjoys it. It has done wonders for her self confidence.
Conclusion
Well, with all of the educational disruption in the institutional schools caused by the coronavirus, we are sure glad we got a jump on things and set out along this path. It's certainly possible to jump into homeschooling by just taking a grab-and-go approach - just pick from among the major curricula and roll with what they offer. To be honest, most any selection will likely result in a better outcome than institutional schooling, just because your child will be able to move through the program at their own pace and will be able to take the time to truly understand the material. When the goal is education rather than prepping for standardized testing or making the school's statistics look good, the dynamic is much different. Our goal is to prepare our kids for an extraordinary life and we feel we are on track as of the end of April 2020.
