A Homeschooler Responds to the Common Core

As the states gear up to implement the Common Core Standards, I have heard more than one person wonder what it means for the homeschool community. More than once, I have heard it said that we need to implement them because colleges and universities will expect our students to have the knowledge addressed in the standards. I doubt I am the only one who has heard these things. These statements have the potential to cause undue alarm in the homeschool community.  I hope to mitigate that alarm a little bit.

In short, as homeschoolers in this state, we operate as private schools in accordance with NC law. This means we have autonomy in choosing what to teach and how to teach it. We are not bound to the requirements of the state or federal government. There is nothing we "must change."

Many families homeschool so that they can tailor the education of their children to their individual needs as well as to reflect their family priorities. To me, it is part of the beauty of homeschooling. We are able to teach the right material at the right time in the right way for our students. Moving to the Common Core standards would strip this customization from our environment. Homeschoolers should think very carefully before considering the Common Core as a method of education, it is but one of many options available to us.

As far as college admissions are concerned, as long as international students, private schools and homeschools are in the picture, there will be people going into college with a variety of educational backgrounds. Some will meet the Common Core standards and some will exceed them. To state that we must comply with the Common Core in order for our students to remain competitive in college admissions is misleading. It would assume that the colleges, both public and private, will have the same standards that the federal government has for high school students. It also assumes that the Common Core will be sufficient to gain entry to a college, which, while highly likely, remains to be seen. I expect that the competitive universities will continue to require their potential students to far exceed the Common Core standards. As the Common Core is implemented across the country the applicant pool will become homogenized. Our students will continue to stand out as bringing unique knowledge, experience and diversity to the university community. Additionally, to say that we need to adopt the Common Core implies that we do not have sufficient standards on our own. With homeschool students from North Carolina being admitted to a variety of universities around the country with rigorous admission standards, we will continue to send our students to UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, Harvard, Yale and the service academies as well as to Wake Tech and Louisberg College, among others.

As far as curriculum is concerned, traditional textbook publishers are revising their books to match the Common Core Standards. Should homeschoolers adopt these new textbooks? Should those books written expressly for the homeschool students be revised as well? While that is certainly an option,  we have a wide and varied number of resources available to us. While some families choose to use textbooks for all subjects or selected subjects, we also employ a variety of other resources in order to customize that educational experience. To limit ourselves to textbooks would mean that we would be relying on a textbook company to predetermine not only what information to deliver to our students, but how it is to be delivered. Focusing on completing a textbook also diminishes the likelihood that a student will be able to pursue an academic passion in an in depth manner at an early age. Again, this would take the ability to customize an education out of our hands.

As a point of interest, federal education funding for the states is tied to their adoption of the Common Core standards. Failure to adopt them results in huge budgetary issues for the states, a risk most can't afford to take. We will never know how many states would adopt these standards if they were not tied to money. The education of our children has become politicized like it never has been before.

As parents, we are held accountable by the state of NC to educate our children and we have choices in how we go about doing this. Whether or not to adopt some or all of the Common Core standards in our homeschools is one of those choices. We also need never forget that no matter how we educate our children about the things of the world, God holds us to the standard of Deuteronomy 6: to teach our children about Him, His faithfulness and the gift of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

Weekly Review - Week 31 (March 29 - April 2, 2010)

This week was Spring Break! We really needed this one, too. Of course, we always need a break this time of year. Our weather was gorgeous and we had a staycation instead of traveling. One of my goals for the week was to fix our drippy kitchen faucet. The drip had progressed from an occasional drip to a regular, frequent rhythm over the past months. Renaissance Man takes a hands off approach to plumbing repair and was all for calling a plumber. I remember watching my dad do stuff like this around the house and the business he owned, so I decided to give it a try. I logically decided is was a gasket issue. Of course, I had no clear memories of my father doing this, so the exact step by step process was fuzzy, to say the least. So, I headed off to our local Lowes Home Improvement. Now, people who aren't from around here may wonder why I specify Lowes Home Improvement and don't just say Lowes. It's simple, in our area we have a chain of grocery stores called Lowes and they get the short name. So, once at the store, I made a beeline for a plumbing department too seek out a wise, gray haired man to help me. Lowes Home Improvement usually does a great job at hiring knowledgeable gray headed men to help people like me. Well, I didn't need the gray haired man because the faucet manufacturer had a wonderful display with a cutaway of my faucet and a troubleshooting guide! So, I simply had to find my problem, follow the arrow to the part numbers and get the parts. I studied the cutaway for a few minutes so that I would know what to expect when I opened it up. In all, it was a very simple job to do. I was right about the gasket, but found it needed two gaskets and two springs. The guide also said that if that didn't work, there was a ball that would need to be replaced. I decided then and there that I would replace the ball 'cause I didn't want to have to open the faucet up twice.  When I got home, I opened my faucet with a wrench and dismantled it. Sure enough - the springs had sprung and the gaskets were disintegrating. I easily replaced the springs, gaskets and the ball and in less than 15 minutes had a drip free faucet! I am so happy! I spent $15 on parts and absolutely nothing on labor! I think a plumber would have been at least $75 for that job! 

Here is a picture of the sprung springs and worn out gaskets.

These are my dirty thumbs - I had washed them once before I thought to take a picture, so they aren't so dirty, but you get the idea.

On Tuesday, Rocket Boy had a tooth come out. So, what does this homeschool family do? We attempted to type the blood! Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful at collecting enough blood, so the test was a bit of a bomb. Here's a picture anyway.

Thursday and Friday we all worked on getting ready for this months Scouting for Food run. We stapled notes on paper bags and ran out of staples during the process. Renaissance Man went off to get staples and came back with 5,000 staples! We will not run out of staples for a very, very long time!  Friday, Rocket Boy's First Lego League worked a shift at the First Lego League booth at the regional FIRST competition. The robot ran better at the exhibition that it did at the state tournament in February! Sometimes things just work out that way! On Saturday morning, Renaissance Man  and Rocket Boy got up and joined other scouts from the troop and distributed the paper bags to a nearby neighborhood. The scouts will return in two weeks to pick up the bags - hopefully filled with food to donate to a local crisis ministry.

Next week we will be back to the regularly scheduled program!

Weekly Review - Week 28, 29, 30 (March 8 - March 25)

It has been fairly quiet here - not many outside activities going on right now - and that's a good thing! We've been plugging through school and are so glad we are on spring break this coming week. Take a look at the update:

Bible: We are through chapter 13 of Numbers.

Middle School Essentials: This is a homemade course that rotates on and off of our schedule. Over the past few weeks, we have read an excellent book published by Boys Town Press titled A Good Friend, How to Make One, How to Be One.  This book covers some basic friendship skills, including: Conversation Building Blocks, Do's and Don'ts and Shyness. This book is extremely well written and is not preachy or pretentious at all. Reading this resulted in starting some great conversations about friendship. We have also started  reading through Total Health: Talking About Life's Changes. This is a wonderful, Christ centered health textbook that covers not only care of our physical bodies, but mental and spiritual health as well. The exercises provided in the student workbook are very thought provoking - no fill in the blank questions here! We will cover some of this book over the next several weeks and will continue it next year.

Fine Arts: Rocket Boy is doing the same kinds of things as he was the last time I updated. Guitar lessons and a co-op drama class as well as working on his drawing. He spent a couple of weeks practicing drawing with markers and working on drawing some cars. His skills continue to amaze me - I have problems drawing stick figures! Here is one of the drawings he completed with chalk pastels.

 History Odyssey: We have studied the American Revolution, reading a few books and also reading excerpts from Common Sense by Thomas Paine. Of course, map work and timeline work have been completed as well. As soon as spring break is over, we will have to race to the finish line - all the way up to Lewis and Clark before the end of the school year. It's going to be one quick ride through early American history.


Language Arts: Rocket Boy completed reading Johnny Tremain and also continued spelling. The big news is that season two of Analytical Grammar is now complete! Rocket Boy has accomplished so much with this easy to implement curriculum and we are now laying aside grammar until the fall when he will do the third season of Analytical Grammar.

Pre-Algebra: We have completed Keys to Algebra, Book 1 and portions of book 4 - these helped Rocket Boy understand operations on integers a little more clearly. We are now reviewing the same topic in the Chalk Dust textbook and will soon pick up where we left off. Pre-Algebra will continue during the summer months.


Life Science: The study of viruses, bacteria, protists and fungi has been completed and most of the plant study. We will finish with that when we return to spring break and will work through the human body.

 That's how things stand - now I'm off to start spring break!

Planning for the Future - A Deliberate Education

I am a big planner. I like to plan, plan, plan! This is the perfect time of year to be both a planner and a homeschool mom - it's time to choose what we're going to study next year! Catalogs are arriving daily, message boards are humming and homeschool moms are getting together to review successes, failures and to look at each others curriculum libraries. Part of the reason that I enjoy this time of year so much is that I think it is best to be deliberate about academic education.

A large buffet is available in schooling choices, and no where is this more evident than in the homeschool community. Some of the items on the menu include: unschooling, Charlotte Mason, Montessori, Thomas Jefferson Education, classical, whole-hearted education, school in a box and the ever popular, ecclectic, which is where I typically hang my hat. There are a great many things that people learn through the normal process of life (how to do laundry, balance a checkbook, change the oil in the car, etc.). There are also a great many things that are beneficial to know to operate in the twenty-first century that must be intentionally studied. It has always been my desire to take the approach that seems most effective at the particular point in time, child development phase and academic readiness combined with the need to ever-expand my son's knowledge base. I have done research on many educational philosophies and methods, reading several books and taking a little bit from each one as it was appropriate to our situation.

I originally heard about classical methodology during my son's preschool years. I was delighted to find a classical, Christian school nearby and we enrolled our son. The school implemented the classical methodology differently than I expected, with unit studies being the focus for history and science during what they called the phonics stage, K-2. After second grade, we decided to homeschool for a variety of reasons. We happily came home and began using Sonlight Curriculum for history and reading, filling in the other subjects with a variety of other materials.

This week I have been reading The Well-Trained Mind, Third Edition by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise. At 814 pages, it is quite the undertaking. This book acts as a guide to those who desire to provide a classical education to their children through homeschooling. The first day I started reading, I was overwhelmed with what seemed like a demanding and complicated process. The second day, I was intrigued enough to begin underlining and bookmarking as well as formulating questions about classical education as seen through The Well Trained Mind (TWTM) lens. The authors have done a great job of engaging and inspiring me. Through this experience, I have found many ideas that I am considering implementing in our learning lifestyle when we begin school again in August.

My primary concern right now is that I don't try to do too much and overwhelm myself in the planning phase. It is a good thing to get help when you need it, so I will probably continue with the history portion of Sonlight for the ease of the available schedule. I will be supplementing it with other resources recommended in TWTM. I am also considering the concept of keeping a history notebook and am thinking about what that would look like with the combination of Sonlight and the grammar stage recommendations. I think that it will be a small change in the way that we have approached history in the past, one that will require more thought and deliberation on the part of the student, but won't necessarily put more stress on my planning and implementation time. We will complete the two part world history that we started this year, so our history sequence won't line up with the recommended sequence in TWTM, but that is really a minor difference.

For literature, I am considering two changes. One is to add Lightening Literature to our schedule. This will provide the structure that I need to teach literature analysis at an appropriate level. The second change is to move away from the exclusive use of the Sonlight reading list. In years past, I have thought that their literature selections were very good, but this year has been a bit disappointing. I have also seen that there are many really good books appropriate for my son that are not included until later grades (this is a result of his advanced reading level). Together my husband and I will look at several different book lists and come up with a list of books for him to read over the next two years. They will be a combination of original sources, novels, plays and non-fiction resources. Some will relate to the time period we will be studying, some will be simply what we consider "must read" books.

Apparently, I have been approaching the study of grammar, vocabulary, science and math from a perspective that aligns very closely with the recommendations in TWTM. I will be tweaking a bit, but overall, I seem to be on the right track.

For grammar, I had originally intended to use Shurley English, but to be honest, I was not too excited about it. While it contains a wonderful method to help students remember parts of speech and to parse sentences through a question/answer flow, it has many drawbacks for where we are in our school. The teacher involvement with the students daily work is high; we would not make use of the writing portion of the program, rendering 20% of the book uselesss; and it does not cover sentence diagramming. With the help of the folks on TWTM message boards, I have found a program called Analytical Grammar, which we will begin implementing
next school year. It looks to be a great program! I found a used CD of the Shurley English 6th grade jingles for $3 at our local homeschool store, so I have that to supplement if needed.

As we wind up our sixth grade year, I am looking forward to attending the HEAV conference in June. The seminars look great and there is a large variety of vendors in the vendor hall. There is a used book sale, also. A good friend and I are going together & we are looking forward to a great "girls weekend."

I look forward to fleshing out the school plans for the next few years and hope you will continue to enjoy "listening in" as I think by writing!

Fun With Words!

In a house that contains three voracious readers, it is no wonder that long words abound! We have always enjoyed words at our home, and today I found a site that will help us do that a little more: Miriam-Webster's Word Central. It contains a couple of games, a word of the day feature and a dictionary where you can add your own words, complete with definitions. Great for that occasional day when our homeschool just needs some variety. Related to that, Miriam-Webster has a visual dictionary online, as well. It is arranged topically, includes a search function and has some delightful pictures.

Man of the Family by Ralph Moody

I have found a new "favorite author," Ralph Moody. I have now read the second book in his series about his childhood, Man of the Family. Mr. Moody certainly knows how to tell a story! These books are great, page turning adventures that I think the entire family will love. Get out a box of tissues for this one!

Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank Gilbreath

This school year I am making it a practice to read school books before I assign them. This has worked out very well for us, & I have made a few changes to our schedule as a result of knowing about the books.

I recently finished reading Cheaper by the Dozen and I will be eliminating it from our schedule. There are two primary reasons for this. The first reason is the language used in the book. While I was reading, I picked up a pencil and started marking words/phrases to leave out while reading this book out loud to Rocket Boy. In some cases, I ended up marking out most of the chapter. There really isn't much left to say about that, then, is there? The writing style would be a difficult one to read out loud. It is a memoir-written from the adult perspective, not a child's. I am not sure that there would be any interest on his part, and there are other books that I'd rather read, so this one is off of our list.

I do plan to try to rent the movie - the old one, that is. I remember seeing years ago & thinking it was funny. I don't think that they allowed the bad language in movies at the time it was made. I will rent it and find out. If it's good, we can watch it on a family movie night.

Little Britches by Ralph Moody

This book can be summed up in one word - delightful! This book is part of our school reading for Sonlight Core 4. It is a well written "western" just right for a read aloud, although a typical 4th-5th grader could easily read it on their own. The language is wonderful - evoking the scenery in your imagination and enabling you to follow along with the conversation as if you were really there. Depicting wholesome morals - a refreshing thing in today's culture.

The Not So Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List

November was a very frustrating month for homeschooling. A friend of mine sent this list to me in early December, doing a great job of making me laugh. I recently came across it again on another Sonlighter's blog. Mary Grace did a great job of adding some comments, also. Check it out in her Jan. 3, 2007 entry.

Homeschool Your Child for Free

I first scanned through this book back in October and came across it again today while I was looking for something else, so I scanned through it again. The subtitle of the book is More than 1,200 Smart, Effective, and Practical Resources for Home Education on the Internet and Beyond. It sounded really good. I have to give it a middle of the road review though. First, I will cover the good, then I'll cover the bad & ugly.

The Good
This book is inspiring. It is full of ideas for topics to cover, gives information on developing curriculum and a typical scope and sequence. It has a broad scope of subject area information, including information on the humanities, 3 r's, history & science. The sidebars include some real life home school stories and interesting quotes about education. The topics presented gave me some good ideas for internet search parameters.

The Bad
This book did not deliver on it's promise of including information beyond the internet. There is minimal information provided on field trips, libraries/inter-library loans, city/county community resources, church resources, etc.

The Ugly
Most of the book consists of dead website links. I was very disappointed in this, although looking at the copyright date (2000), I should have expected it. The author makes a promise on the back cover that they will have a website with updated links, but the website is not updated. There is a link to a blog on the website, but it has not been updated since 2001.

Recommendation
Honestly, this book is so out-of-date that I am surprised this book is still available for sale. I recommend that if you are interested in exploring this book, that you get it from your local library. If your local library doesn't have it, request it through Inter-Library Loans. Our local library has it, and I am sure they will be glad to send it to your library!