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, I shouldn’t be frustrated because my child doesn’t know something. That is the entire point of her going to school, is it not? If she knew everything, then there would be no point to her doing lessons. I’m going to take a deep breath and try to keep this in mind.

What is the latest problem? (Not really a problem…) My daughter wrote a paragraph, and in that paragraph, she made two spelling errors. I thought we were past those spelling errors. The words were actually very simple, and I know we have had these words. The words were “knot” and “their”. Here is the deal, she didn’t actually spell the words wrong, she just used the incorrect spelling for the meaning. Sound-alike words or homophones tend to be words that are not caught on spell checkers, generally, but the spelling of the words and the meanings associated with the spellings can be a place where students get confused. My daughter meant to use knot instead of not. And she meant to use their, but she spelled it there. I went out and checked, and for fifth and sixth graders there are many words that are on the list of homophones.

Here is another situation we ran into in a different paper. Capitonyms. Capito-whats you ask? I know, I had never heard of them either. Capitonyms are words that are spelled the same, but differ in meaning, depending on whether or not the word is capitalized. The classic example of this is Turkey and turkey, one is the country and the other is the creature we normally eat for Thanksgiving. Again, capitonyms are not found by spell checkers.

Here I thought we were making progress on spelling, and in the same month, I find two areas where we are going to have to step back and practice. And it reminds me that spell checker is not flawless. This situation reminds me that I need to hand grade her writing.  So, consider brushing up on the rules and examples of homophones, homonyms, and similar language arts issues, so that when your child runs into them you will be able to help her navigate that road.

My local school will begin the 2011-12 school year next week. While this doesn’t really effect my home school, it does increase my level of stress a little bit. We took an unforeseen break in June and July as far as school was concerned. Family issues required much of my time, and school was the thing that suffered for six weeks. We aren’t behind. Because we home school all year long, we have a cushion built in to our schedule. What I did lose by taking the unforeseen break was the extra time I had built in to help improve my daughter’s ability to take standardized tests. She is an excellent reader, scoring well above grade level, so that is not a problem. Her vocabulary is above level. So why am I concerned? Because is the year my daughter will need to take several standardized tests. We hope to move to a different state by this time next year, and I will have to have scores to present to the new state, even though we plan to continue home schooling.

There are three aspects of standardized tests that concern me with regards to my daughter’s ability to score well. She does not do well with analogies for some reason. She is a very literal thinker. Because of her literal thinking, analogies and metaphors just seem to be hard for her to understand and utilize in her language. Unfortunately, analogies are a staple for standardized tests. The way we are going to approach learning analogies is to simply do lots and lots of practice. That translates to lots of time practicing.

Another aspect of standardized tests that we are going to have to work on is my daughter’s writing ability. Even though I have a degree in English, and I write for a living, I find that I do not teach writing as well as I would like. Part of it is my impatience with my daughter’s unwillingness to actually write. I find it frustrating for her to be able to dictate a great paragraph, but not be able to actually write it herself. As far as standardized tests are concerned, this simply will not work. I actually think my impatience is detrimental to her improving in this area. I’m considering enrolling her in an outside writing course. Perhaps a different teacher will be more successful in teaching my daughter to write.

The last thing we are going to have to face is not really a language arts issue, but an overall issue. She can’t stand to be timed on anything, and any pressure put on her to get her to work within a limited time frame simply paralyzes her. She will not be able to do well on standardized tests, no matter how much knowledge she has in her head, if the test giver starts a set of instructions with, “You will have 30 minutes to complete this section.” I’ve got to figure out a way to help my daughter with this issue. I’m going to be doing some research on this area in the next month or so. Should I come up with a solution or suggestions on this issue, I will certainly pass the information on to those reading here.

I just wanted to add that it would be great if anyone had suggestions to help with these issues, or experience similar problems in their own home schools that they were willing to share through comments. All in all, I have to remember to stay flexible, and work harder when it is necessary, and work smarter when we can.

Are you getting ready for the new school year? It is right around the corner. While we do home school all year long, we still have a certain excitement that happens around the beginning of the traditional school year. We love going to buy school supplies, new pencils, pristine new notebooks, at great prices. Another of the things that helps us rekindle excitement at this time of year, is looking at our curriculum for the new school year. As a general rule, we follow our same core curriculum, Time4Learning. But as my daughter gets older, we have started to add other things to our core curriculum as she develops her own interests and her education advances.

Recently, I had a conversation with a fellow home schooling mom, and she was complaining that they were buying their fourth homeschool language arts program in as many years. Her frustration with changing programs was that different programs taught concepts in different orders. When the first program didn’t work, they tried a different program, but found that there were gaps in some places and too much repetition in other places when compared to the program they had used the year before. Other homeschoolers complained that they used an expensive all-in-one curriculum. The language arts program worked for them, but the math curriculum within the same all-in-one program did not work at all with the child’s learning style.

Part of the reason my family home schools is because my daughter needed to learn different subjects at a different pace, she needed flexibility that one teacher with a classroom of thirty children, could not offer. I hope your planning for the new school year goes well, remember to stay flexible, and enjoy the light you see in your child’s eyes when they really “get” a concept.

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?