Samy started her home education experience a bit later than Leah, beginning in earnest around the end of January 2020. The primary driver for Samy was seeing how well it was working for Leah.
The primary driver for Jana and I was a general loss of faith in the institutional schooling system, exacerbated by certain occurrences. For example, Samy took a test in her science class. One question was, true or false, all cells in the human body have the same chromosomes. Samy chose false and was marked wrong. As we were discussing her test, she noted the obvious example of gametes (reproductive cells) which are haploid, rather than diploid. Obviously half as much as something is different from all of something. There are numerous other examples, such as genetic abnormalities caused by cancer or radiation or the interesting condition called chimerism. Samy approached her science teacher, asking for her answer to be reevaluated. Her science teacher wouldn't budge - he told her the answer key said it was true. As luck would have it, parent-teacher conferences were right around the corner, so I figured I would address the issue personally. It should be noted I developed my interpersonal skills in the Army, an environment where conflict is not exactly discouraged. I went in prepared, expecting a quick victory, as the facts were on my side. I raised the issue with him. He was familiar with it and I guess was expecting to defend his position. I laid out the examples. He admitted they were correct, but beyond her grade level and unbelievably stuck to his answer key. I noted that if my esteemed fellow Polack, Mikolaj Kopernik (aka Nicolaus Copernicus), had accepted the answer key, we would still be in the center of the universe, valiantly struggling to explain such astronomical basics as retrograde motion.
To make a long story not as long, his resolve crumbled. He noted that she still has an A, even without the credit for that question. NOT THE POINT! Science class, if nowhere else, should be eager to reevaluate dogma and the "answer key." The fact that the science teacher (the only science teacher for sixth through eighth grades) didn't get it was deeply disappointing.
Another, briefer, example happened when we were preparing for a social studies exam. Samy really liked her social studies teacher - it was her favorite class. The question came up of who was the founder of the 19th century Hudson River School of artists. She knew the answer - Thomas Cole. I didn't remember who founded the movement, but I was somewhat familiar with it (I took a year of art history in college). I asked her what the style looks like. She was not able to tell me anything more than what she studied - that it was founded by Thomas Cole. We delved into it more, looking at images of the paintings on the Internet. We discovered there is a collection of Hudson River School paintings housed in our very own Metropolitan Museum of Art. This episode left me with the dual feelings that Samy was getting short changed and that we could do so much better. Of course institutional schools only have so much time to teach their material and often have to cater to the lowest common denominator, it's relatively easy for parents to match or exceed the educational outcome from institutional schools.
Samy has always been an outstanding student. We always figured she would end up in at least the top three in her class. Realizing this extraordinary potential is also a factor in our decision to educate at home.
Anyway, like Leah, Samy started out centered on Power Homeschool, aka Acellus. The format is basically a short video lesson of around 5 - 10 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. We signed Samy up for History, Science, English and German. Also like Leah, we would study math using materials from Singapore Math.
English
We used Power Homeschool's Grade 7 Language Arts/Reading. This course lasted from the end of January until mid-April 2020. It covered what one would expect and merged with what she had been studying. These are the major components:
- Reading Strategies and Skills
- Plot and Characterization
- Literary Techniques
- Poetry and Figurative Language
- Nonfiction
- Vocabulary Building Strategies
- Grammar – Working with Parts of Speech
- Grammar – Sentence Construction and Agreement
- Conventions
- Argumentative Writing
Note that it only took about three and a half months to complete, but this was the entire seventh grade curriculum. Overall, we were happy with the course. There was plenty of discussion about the theory behind writing, but there is no writing component to the course. Luckily Samy is a very strong writer, and we will come up with a solution for this in the next batch of courses.
History
We used Power Homeschool's Middle School American History. Samy finished this course at the beginning of May. This course covered these areas:
- Early People of the Americas
- Age of Exploration
- Colonization
- French and Indian War
- Causes of the American Revolution
- The American Revolutionary War
- The Constitutional Convention
- The United States Constitution
- The Federal Period
- Age of Jackson and Reform Movements
- Westward Expansion
- Industrial Revolution
- The Civil War
- Reconstruction
As you can see, it started, yet again, with the founding of the country and got through the Civil War. This is pretty much the same material she had been studying at institutional school. I offered to let her pick up where she left off (at the Jackson era), but she chose to start from the beginning.
In addition to the course, as a family we watched some very high quality TV shows, such as The Men Who Built America, John Adams, Mankind The Story Of All Of Us and America The Story Of Us. Having studied this period, it's interested to visually see the events. It's also reinforcing when we know about things the show is talking about.
Science
We used Power Homeschool again for this - their Life Science class. Overall, the class was okay. For most, it was more than fine. Given my "sciencey" nature, though, we are probably going to look for something more focused on science following this course. As the name of the course suggests, this course was a survey of some major aspects of biology. Included was:
- Exploring Science
- Science and Nature
- The Nature of Life, Cells, and Classification of Organisms
- Simple Kingdoms and Classification
- Fungi and Plants
- Simple Invertebrates
- Vertebrate Animals
- Skeletal and Muscular System
- Nutrition
- Major Systems of the Body
- The Nervous System and Senses
- Genetics
- Alcohol, Drugs, and Tobacco
Samy started this course a bit earlier, to fill in where institutional school was leaving off, so she completed the course in early April.
Math
Based on our experience with Singapore Math for Leah we went with this for Samy as well. This is not an online course - it's a physical book and I do the instruction one-on-one with her. We started her off at grade level, with Dimensions Math 7B. Disaster. It's strange because, like all of her classes, Samy always got A's in math. The course started off with number patterns and something called sequences. To be honest, this is something I wasn't even familiar with (and I took a year of calculus in college). The concept was challenging, but shouldn't have been overwhelming. But it was. It was painful. The problem was she was just missing many of the underlying concepts and a general familiarity with how math "works."
Singapore offers placement tests, so Samy took them. Even though Singapore says they align with US grades, Samy placed in sixth grade. At that point she was half way through seventh grade. As I researched this, I found it was extremely common for kids coming out of institutional school to place one, two or even three years back. So, as they say, back to the old drawing board. I ordered the Dimensions Math 6A books.
The topics covered include:
- Whole Numbers
- Fractions
- Decimals
- Negative Numbers
- Ratios
- Rate
- Percent
The set of books consists of a student textbook, an instructor manual (which explains the topic and goes over the examples in the textbook), a workbook and a solution guide for the workbook. Throughout, there are tons of problems to work through in various formats. In particular, there are quite challenging word problems. While some of the material was review, we went through it all to make sure she had a firm understanding. 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!
Architecture - Outschool
This year, Samy took a great class on Outschool on designing a home using a service called Planner5d.com. The specific class she took was "Architecture: Designing a Home." The course met live once a week for four weeks and costs $80. The class introduced the fundamental elements of home design, then applied those elements to designing a home of her own. This was a great experience for her and she had a good time. We look forward to taking more Outschool classes in the future.
Girl Scouts
Samy has been a Girl Scout since kindergarten. Jana runs both Leah's Brownie troop and Samy's Cadette troop. Up through March, the troop met every other week and enjoyed some great activities. In addition to working on their badges, the girls went on field trips, worked on service projects and did some intricate crafts like woodworking and hydrodipping.
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 Amish Country. They were able to sample some of the food, learn about the culture. This should have culminated in a trip to Lancaster, but was unfortunately canceled due to Covid.
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. The girls are working on their Silver Award, the second highest award in Girl Scouting, where Samy's group is working on making a kennel at a domestic abuse shelter more beautiful and comfortable. This combines helping local families who are in need and helping animals - a topic near and dear to Samy's heart.
We were able to have a day camp where Samy 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 also fell victim to Covid.
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 another of Samy's extracurricular activities, which we added in the Spring of 2019. Samy was elected President of the club in September, when the year "officially" began. 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 in the Summer. 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 Samy - she's typically not shy, but doesn't have many opportunities for something like this. Of course, her topic was on horses! 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.
Horseback Riding
This is Samy's sport. She's been taking lessons since kindergarten and currently rides at Casey's Equestrian Center here in Washington, NJ. Horses are Samy's one true love and have been forever. She takes amazing care of any horse that she's riding. She is able to instantly memorize a complicated course, though she seems to have trouble with sequences like "brush your teeth and get ready for bed."
Entrepreneurism
Samy has been running her own pet care business for years now. She has loyal customers in our neighborhood and makes enough money that she is able to pay for a lease on a horse throughout the year, which lets her ride the horse whenever we are able to get to the barn. Some of the lessons have come harder than others, but there has been tons of value: responsibility, marketing, bookkeeping and customer service are certainly among them. Some assignments are easier than others, but there have been quite a few days when she has had to get on her bike early in the morning to take care of her morning clients.
Conclusion
Like I said with Leah, 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. While Leah has been utterly enthusiastic about this journey, Samy has been a bit more circumspect. It's not clear at this point if Samy will continue down this route or if she will re-join institutional school. As she is maturing and becoming more of her own person, she no doubt feels conflicted about the choice. Right now, we are taking a "let's see how it works out" stance, which is fine.
