My daughter is a voracious reader. She always has a book in her hand, whether it is an actual, physical book, or an e-reader, or a computer with e-books on it. She loves to read any and everything, Because she loves to read so much, I have not worried much about her vocabulary. She seems to retain a lot of what she reads, and she seems to be able to put those words into her spoken vocabulary. For this I am grateful. That is, until I read an article about ways to expand vocabulary. This article indicated that only about 20% of information that was read was actually retained, but that information that was read, spoken, and heard was retained at a level closer to 90%. Wow, that is an incredible difference in retention.

I have always said that playing games helps my child learn, and more and more studies are showing that the more ways a child is exposed to a piece of information, the higher the retention of that information is. So, once again, I’m advocating the use of word games, like word search, or word ladders, as a way for students to practice vocabulary. This also means that my child will be doing more repetition, because it seems that repetition is a good way of retaining information also. She hates repetition, and so I will have to be more and more inventive. This means that I am looking for more ways to be a sneaky parent. I need to find out more ways to allow my daughter to repeat her work without actually looking like she is repeating it. And I will throw that question out to home school parents out there. Does any one have a new or inventive way to get your child to do the repetition that they dislike, without the repetition becoming boring? I’d love to hear some suggestions!

 I’ve been asked whether it is easy or difficult to home school. My usual answer is something like, “well, that depends on what you consider hard!” In reality, the answer is dependent on where you live, how committed you are to home schooling, and probably how organized you are.   

I’m fortunate. Ok, there are many reasons that I am fortunate, but among them is the fact that I live in a state in which it is very easy to home school. I don’t have to jump through any hoops. I don’t have to get approval, I don’t have to have my curriculum approved, I send a letter once a year to the State Department of Education and voila! We home school.

I know that some states have much more difficult laws about what parents have to do to be able to home school. Some only require a home school portfolio. This is basically a record of the child’s achievements. This can vary from a simple list of subjects, chapters completed, and a grade for the chapter test. Other states require portfolios that show every detail of the home school plan from a copy of their printable lesson plans, to the number of hours spent per day, on which subject, and where that instruction was given.

Because there is such variation, it is important that you know the laws of your state, and what is required for you to stay off the radar. By this I mean something like this…does your town or municipality have a daytime curfew? Daytime curfews mean that local officials like policemen, may stop your child if they are out of the house during the hours that would normally be school hours. That official may question your child, and may turn them in to a truancy center. If your locality does have rules like this then you need to make sure you are with your child, even if you have them in the front yard for P.E. during the day. Another thing to consider is the errands you run during the daytime. If you are doing mundane errands such as grocery story, or picking up the dry cleaning and you have your school age child out during the day, be prepared to get strange looks, and even questions.

We do have doctor’s appointments, pharmacy pick ups, and field trips, and library trips during the day, but we try very hard to not to do household errands. My child is clean, fed, dressed appropriately, and hair brushed (ok, most of the time anyway!) if we have to go out. There is no need to play into any preconceived notions about home schooling by being careless.

In the end, the more you comply with the state laws, and local statutes, and the better the records you keep, the easier home schooling will be. It is important for you to take your child’s home schooling seriously, letting it take priority over other outside commitments, at least during the hours you designate at your school hours. The more seriously you treat school, the more seriously other people will take your home schooling. You might even get support from unlikely sources, if you show dedication and consistency. While this all may seem like a lot of trouble, the benefits of home schooling might just be worth the difficulty!!

Words. It is hard to remember how much there is to actually learn about the English language. Every day that we do language arts in school I remember something that I have forgotten. Who knew English was so complicated? For those of us who grew up speaking the language, over the course of many years, we learned all about homonyms, and compound words, idioms and oxymorons. No wonder our children are frustrated sometimes. We have got to be patient, because English is a hard language, and we have learned so much that our children have yet to learn.

It is important to use every resource at our disposal to help our children in learning the rules of language arts. One of the things we like best at our house is games, but for some families children learn better on paper, like by the use of workbooks. Or perhaps flash cards are more your child’s style, or word blocks. Sometimes your child might just need the lesson taught one more time, by one more method. So after your child has done their main lesson on a language arts subject, and you think that he or she didn’t quite get it, or needs a little more practice, pull out the compound word video lesson, or let your child play a game contraction game. Every little bit of practice in helping your child learn one of the most difficult languages on the planet, English, will go a long way in all of their school work!

Wow, it is time for summer to come to an and to get back to school. That is, unless you never stopped school. For some of us, we home school all year long, and the summer time is not even a time to slow down. Part of that is because it is so incredibly hot and humid in south Louisiana. We just need to stay in the air conditioning! Ok, so we are wimps, but the apparent temperature for most of this summer was 115 degrees F. The apparent temperature is a combination of the actual temperature and the humidity, figured together to tell you what temperature it “feels” like. 115 Degrees is HOT!

Another reason to school during the summer is an unsuccessful previous school year. Ok, what do I mean by that? Well, sometimes a student falls behind in one or more subjects during the traditional school year. Or perhaps they do poorly in the standardized tests. When that happens sometimes they need to do extra work during the summer. Sometimes that work can be accomplished by the student going to a brick and mortar, traditional summer school. Sometimes that work can be accomplished by the student attending an online summer school program.

As the new school year is set to begin it is not too early to begin thinking about what your student might need in order to avoid having to spend a summer in summer school, reviewing work they have already been presented. If you can keep good tabs on what your student is learning as they go through the school year, it is easier to address problems as they happen. One way to do that is through having your student do addition work in a subject that might be difficult for them. For example, spelling is a tough subject for my child. She just is not a good speller, doesn’t retain the correct spelling of a word when only reviewed once or twice, and did I mention my child hates to review? So, one of the things I do to help her see a correct spelling of a word, and practice it without seeming like it is a review is to find online spelling games for her to play. She enjoys the playing, she enjoys the air of competitiveness that games present, and she is getting more exposure to the correct spelling of words she needs to learn how to spell. Games like that can be found for math, language arts, and other subjects.

Best of luck as you begin the new school year, enjoy the time with your children. As you buy clothes for them at the change of season, you will see the truth in this….they grow up too fast!!

I know we are not the only homeschoolers out there that do not test regularly. Fortunately for us, we live in a state that does not require us to submit standardized test scores. This is not to say that we don’t regularly have chapter tests, and quizzes and that sort of thing. We do use that type of testing throughout our school year. Sometimes it is hard to tell if we are truly on level. I use scope and sequence that are attuned to state standards to try to keep us on target as far as level is concerned. I feel fortunate that the curriculum we use, Time4Learning, does a great job of making sure that the information presented is at least grade level.

There are times when I feel like I need to do some spot checking just to reassure myself that we are doing the best home schooling, and learning the right stuff. I have found that checking things like grade level math words, or other grade level vocabulary word lists help. When my daughter makes it through word lists that are grade appropriate, and I ask her to explain, or define the words and she is able to do that with ease, then I am reassured that she learned the concepts and is storing them in long term memory. In reality, it is almost better to spot check for this information at a later time than it is to test right after we finish a chapter. When we have just finished a chapter, the information may just be in her short term memory. When she can remember the work weeks or even months later, I know that she really learned the information. Do you do spot checking like this? Do you depend on the standardized tests to confirm this information? Do you have a different way of spot checking that you would care to share?