#homeschool posts

I used to homeschool little ones, now I'm here sharing about high school homeschool organization. My oldest has graduated and gone on to her dream job and my youngest is starting 10th grade. I am a former high school science teacher and so high schooling is what I know. Now, after 15 years, homeschooling and being organized is what I do. And I learned a few things along the homeschool high school way. While we learn to keep it simple, we also deal with complex emotions. I can’t promise I won’t have you crying by the end of this post though.

(This post includes a free printable and video)

Time Passes and Suddenly We Are High Schooling

I remember our homeschool was a room full of books and tables and manipulatives, and paint and crayons and posters. Today my son’s room and his desk is our homeschool. 

My desk in a nook is my area. 

So much has changed. In this post I want to share with you what I know, how I organize, what you may be doing that you don’t need to do, pressure you’re putting on yourself that you don’t need to and what IS important. I will share with you pictures from the last years my daughter was home. I will share with you how I organized myself as a teacher and why. First year teachers are notoriously a stressed out mess because they are thrown into the fire and have to learn what’s important and what isn’t, how to organize themselves as the paperwork necessary behind the scenes far exceeds the work necessary to teach. So I too went through the hazing, the stress, until after a few years I got it organized, learned what was important and what could wait and became fully engaged with my students.

I now bring those skills into my high school homeschool organization and wanted to share them with you. There are things I see high school homeschoolers stressing over that is unnecessary and things missing that I hope you learn to include. It’s far easier than you think but oh so easy to fear the pressure and make it complicated. So let’s get to it! There are records you’ll need to keep and keeping them is far easier than you think. Colleges need only a few things and they are not important to worry about until the senior year. Until then there are truly simple things to do each year of high school so you have what you need. But the most important thing to do is enjoy these years. It will get easy to lose sight in being overwhelmed, putting too much on yourself and stressing and missing out on the best and last years of homeschooling your child.

Our New Order Slim and Sleek

My work is one simple book, my plan/grade book. My desk now has only a few things on it, pens, files for graded and not graded paper and I have a bookshelf.

 Life, while more full of things to teach, is smaller now. My son’s desk has his laptop and his book bag has his books. That’s our school now! We’re on schedule and life is organized and easy. Even those days that surprise us we treat as another chance to go with the flow. The no regrets part...keep reading...

Record Keeping

So how about grades and all that insane transcript and portfolio stuff?

Firstly, colleges and trade schools are only interested in high school transcripts. So up to 8th grade you can keep a relaxed planner or any records your state requires but you don’t need to make a transcript for anything before high school. So let that go. You can use my RELAXED HOMESCHOOL PLANNER I made. It’s free. Here. You may have to go to page 2 to find it.

Teachers in schools have 2 things, a plan book and a grade book. But that’s only for administrative purposes. You do NOT! At home, you can have one book each year. Don’t over complicate it.

I use a $12 planner. It’s the 7-subject plan book by Action Publishing. I get it from Amazon.

 I start the year off by counting out the 180 days required and then tear out the remaining pages. Down the left side I cut off a thin slice of the pages to reveal a strip where I can write each class/subject so I don’t have to re-write it on every page. See this pic….

Once I trim the edges off, I now have all the subjects in the margins, written only once.

From there, what I’m about to tell you is VERY important. Kids get sick, we go on vacations, we get stressed, you can’t teach every single day. Sometimes you can’t teach for a week. If you PRE-WRITE in the dates in the entire book before the year starts, you will be setting yourself up emotionally. Those days you can’t teach will sit empty, the plans sitting there that you’ll have to erase and then re-do down the line.

So what to do? Start out by knowing that life will happen. Create a pacing guide. All teachers have it, perhaps you know what one is. A pacing guide is what you plan to cover each day, not by date. Just something your child can look at and see, next up do this. Then they can cross it off and tomorrow do the next thing. It takes about 2 weeks per subject for you to make it (during summer) but once you have it, it’s everything. It takes all the stress away. Take the time to make one for each semester at a time.  Take into account how many weeks you need to cover, divide the chapters into those weeks and work it out so that you finish what you want to cover in 180 days. Keep in mind, as a teacher we never covered all the material in the book. We had to choose what was most important to cover. Here’s the one I just finished for upcoming year 1st semester. Each line is a day of work. He’ll do that, cross it off, turn it in. Next day, next line until we finish the work at the end of the semester. This isn’t all of it, it goes on for another page but you get the idea. I make one of these for every single subject. That way he knows what he’s doing every day. Yes it takes time, but it’s your work. Do it before the year starts and your year will be simple.

You’re Normal

This is something I see homeschoolers stress over. Let me say that again. We NEVER covered the whole book. I skipped at least 5 chapters in everything I taught. It’s what we asked other teachers, “What are you leaving out of it?” I realized what I was leaving out, they too were leaving out. Like instead of spending a week on lab safety and the scientific method which the kids have had every single year, I spent a day on each. Instead of teaching the entire history of the subject, we did maybe 2 days then moved on. Each book had careers in the field, after every chapter, we skipped those and did a project on a single day about careers. Stuff like this saves you time and keeps you from attempting the impossible.

When we’re ready for school to start, I have all the subjects outlined as to what to cover and the pacing we will use based on the number of days I have in the year.

 Once school starts, we do week one without actually writing in the plan book. At the end of the week, we write in what we covered each day that week. The grades for each assignment go in same square as the assignment. 

Then just tally up the week’s grades and put that total at the end of the week.

As a teacher I had to turn in an official plan book in advance. It meant nothing. It was a joke. All teachers laughed at it. It was busy work. We knew we’d never cover all that. Why? Constant interruptions. Kids acting out in class, sudden assemblies and half my class would have tickets and leave, calling me out of the classroom to attend an IEP meeting, half days, holidays, teacher work days, the death of a student and the school was in mourning, homecoming week (nothing got done that week), pre-holiday weeks, the kids were too restless, more assemblies, fire drills, tornado drills, you name it, it was truly rare to have a week that didn’t involve losing at least a day.

Toss Perfectionism

I know this feels odd and I know perfectionism kicks in but in reality, that’s fear. You think that if you plan it all out in advance you’ll prevent things from going wrong, getting off track, getting disorganized, but in reality, you’re creating that very thing. Letting go is the first step to REAL organization. Facing that life is going to get in the way is the first step to becoming truly organized. And this was the thing that messed with me the most in my early years as a teacher. I found me and my plan book a hot mess. I learned by my 3rd year to turn in the ridiculous plan book then in MY book, plan one week at a time, shoot for a certain test day, notebook check day and I’d say about 50% of the time that actually happened.

At the end of the semester, I only have to add up 18 grades (18 weeks). And that is the semester average, takes me 10 minutes. I have one book, I plan one week in pencil, I put the grade in the day of the assignment in ink, I add them up on Fri and put the week’s grade at the end of the week. At the end of the semester I average up 18 numbers and done. Simple. Easy. There’s a higher purpose for this. We’ll get to it. Remember... no regrets!

Portfolio

All colleges will need is a transcript and the portfolio. A transcript is NOT a list of every single assignment and grade on every test. It is ONLY the 1st semester average, the 2nd semester average and the year’s total average for that course. So why bother with making it all complicated? If you keep their work, you’ll have that and you’ll have what you need for a portfolio. Here’s what I do. I keep his notebooks, all his map work, his workbooks, his worksheets, book reports, photos of fieldtrips, everything he does goes in an accordion file. At the end of the year I label it and put it away. Done. The good, the bad and the ugly are all in there. When it comes time to submit a portfolio I will be able to sit down and go through it year by year and find highlights, according to what the school wants, maps, reports, video, projects, and pull from all of it, the best thing that portrays what he is, what he did, how he evolved, etc. I leave all that for when that will be necessary his senior year.

For now, we focus on one week at a time, get the best information in the best way, go on fieldtrips, make things, have fun learning, take time off, rearrange the schedule because it’s written in pencil when he’s sick or we just need a day off, make it up on the weekend or double up one day next week or work in the car while running errands, or just erase that assignment completely and do it verbally and not give it a grade because we can be flexible because we homeschool.

Remember that no regrets part? Here we go...

Get out!

We don’t stay at home to school now. With no more littles in the house my son and I are free to homeschool anywhere. In college you’re in class for the lecture but if you’ve got time between classes, you sit outside and study, go to the quad, cafeteria, library, back to your dorm, etc while you wait for your next class. So we homeschool in different places, a coffee shop, this cool French market with outdoor seating, at a bookstore, in a park, we get out and in doing this I am showing him how to study anywhere. It’s good for his mind and will prepare him to do the same when his brain will need that break the most. If you have a high schooler and some younger ones, see if you can get a sitter at least once a week and take your high schooler out just the two of you and school somewhere else. This is us schooling at a coffee shop:

So like them, we too need to learn time management and it starts with letting go of fear, which helps you let go of doing too much, planning too far ahead, pressure and fear of failure. It means slimming down, taking it one week at a time, doing only what’s necessary so you can enjoy the last few years of your child at home instead of sweating those years out with your nose in books and papers and your mind in a state of stress.

 No Regrets

You’ll regret every moment of your stress. You’ll never regret slimming down to only what’s necessary and using that free time to be with your child, living life and engaging with them and their friends, going places, taking weekends away, field trips, taking days off and going to teen meet-ups. With my daughter we would have her friends suddenly show up, eat with us, stay late and we’d have a blast. We would go to a concert together, yes TOGETHER even if I didn’t like the music, I played and danced and took pictures with her,like this:

 then the band would be hungry so there I was at 10pm in the grocery store buying food to take home and feed them all and we’d be up till 2 in the morning laughing and eating and talking. Nowshe lives in another state. I have pictures on the wall, on the fridge, from those times. I have them because I quit stressing, and knew these times were the ones that mattered. My pictures from that time aren’t of her working, they aren’t of me with my nose in books at 2AM. These are the things that teach them how to live when they leave home. Be a stressed out mess and they will take that with them and become that in life. You raised them, trained them well, showed them love all for these years when you get to BE with them and enjoy them. These years may be focused on learning but in reality, they are about a small window in time where you can enjoy them on a whole new level and before they leave home. It’s a small window. Don’t waste it.

Be flexible, be simple. Stick to your small amount of work in a timely manner.

Be what you want your children to be when they leave home. They will leave healthy, with a love of life, with joy! And what more could we want for our children?

I taught middle and high school science for 8 years before giving birth to an Aspie son and taking my daughter out so I could teach them both at home. I knew what it was like to start a new school year, in school, things got overwhelming fast! And at home it was no different. But I learned a few simple strategies that changed all that. I want to share them with you.

We’ve been homechooling for 15 years and in that time I see so many posts in my groups of all the pressure parents are putting on themselves with no built-in rescue plans. So read along with me here, and before you even begin this year, build these things into your plans so that you have an escape hatch to stay sane and keep the stress away!

When I was a teacher, I had files full of quick and easy go-to activities to grab in an emergency. They were a lifesaver, I don’t know how I would have survived without them. The first step is to already plan and accept and expect the excitement to wear off quickly. Expect the kids to still be in summer mode and still want to get outside. Expect things to go wrong. They always will. In class, it seemed like just when we would really get going, they would announce a spontaneous meeting in the gym for half the kids in my class and out the door they’d go.

Sometimes, like during homecoming week, the kids were going and coming and getting so restless they took it out on me and I spent more time in moving seats and discipline or trying to get them to pay attention. THESE were the moments when I grabbed my rescue activities. It was welcoming to the kids, it helped get us through impromptu interruptions, missing kids, fire drills, storms outside, holiday excitement and anything else that seemed to cause the kids to just not be present and to be rebellious. Yours are no different.

So when your curriculum isn’t working like you planned, when the kids fight you, when you’re dealing with a sick child, when you’re exhausted, when you’re overwhelmed, when they are too excited to work, you’re going to have back up plans and you’ll use them and you’ll be glad you did!

MAKE THE BIN!

You know those plastic long flat under bed storage bins? Get one. And start with the back to school sales and grab the following:

Markers

Scissors

Crayons

Colored Pencils

Tape

Glue

Glitter

Rulers

Blank paper

Graph paper

Tissue paper

Card stock

Glue sticks

Open them and dump them out into the bin and mix them up. Then add these items as you find them:

Spice tins

Altoid tins

Magnet paper

Popsicle sticks

Foil

Ribbons

Craft paper that comes in boxes shipped to you

Magazines with lots of fun pictures (thrift stores)

And anything else you can think of to throw in there. Mix it all up.

This bin is the basis for everything else. You will find activities in this post, you’ll find activities all around my blog here, you’ll find them on Pinterest. And most of them will require these things and you’ll bring this bin out and the kids will get all happy.

So when you find yourself struggling, STOP. Go to your printables file, or Pinterest or come here and grab an activity and relax. I have a lot of pinned things you can make ahead of time on my Pinterest board “Educational Littering Activities”. I will leave links at the end of this post.

It’s best for you to start now and print out the easy rescue activities that are educational, age appropriate and put them in a file ready for use. Make things ahead of time, and put this bin together. That way, when you need it, you know right where to go, grab it and set them loose on it. Then you go make coffee or tea, spray a calming scent in the room or boil a calming essential oil smell, then breathe. They are doing educational stuff and having fun. You are taking a break. They can make a mess, because you’re going to put a bed sheet on the floor, put the bin down, give them the activity and let them have at it. You’ll simply toss everything back in the bin, throw away what’s left and shake the sheet outside. Done.

Yes, I did floor time with my high school kids, they loved me for it.

So here’s a bunch of things to get you started.

Grab the periodic table of elements coloring book here. Go on and make copies of some of the pages and put it in your emergency file.

Go here to find fun easy activities you can do with those pages.

Get a lot of activities that are self guided or do alone from my Pinterest board here.

Grab these free science coloring pages here.

I have a group on Facebook called Free Lessons. Join and grab lots of stuff.

Outline maps are essential for your homeschool.  Grab these if you want.

See this post on how to use outline maps in rescue situations. And where to find more.

Print some mazes! They are great for critical thinking skills, logic and patience! These are great and fun!

This is a picture I drew in ms paint. I am learning as are my kids. As we all are, right?

As a former high school science teacher, who went to college for 8 years so that I could teach and the fact that this person is a school admin and feels the same way....when those of us on the inside start saying something's up here, perhaps something's up... I defected 8 years ago and now struggle with family and other teachers and those who are just not keeping up with the research. The criticism the polarized thinking, the old way vs the new way, the lack of ability to concede that perhaps we can use the best of all that's available. It's not about proving teachers wrong or homeschooling right. It's about doing what's best for the kids using every single thing at our disposal to make that happen....Teresa

I don't post other people's work. But this was just too amazing to NOT post. I will link to her blog at the end here. Thank you http://12most.com/author/lisa-nielsen/

12 Compelling Reasons To Homeschool

I’ve been a public school educator and administrator for more than a decade, so you may be surprised that when parents ask for my advice about education, I often suggest they allow their children to leave school. Education reform is happening today, but it’s slow and often ineffective. Parents need to do what is in the best interest of their children, right now.

For some this means working hard with a school to adapt to meet a child’s needs. But many schools are rigid and don’t believe students are entitled to a customized learning experience. For these parents the best option is often to leave school behind and empower children with the freedom to learn what they want in the way that is best for them.

Here are the twelve most compelling reasons for leaving school behind if your child is not finding success and happiness there.

1. Learning is customized not standardized

•  In school learning is standardized to what someone else says is best. •  At home learning is customized to what the child and parent feel is best.

2. Associate with those you enjoy rather than those who share your birth year

•  In school students are grouped by date of manufacture. •  At home children can choose to be with those whose company they enjoy.

3. Freedom to learn with their tools

•  In school students are often banned from using they tools they love to learn with — such as a cell phone. •  At home children can learn with the tools they choose. For many children technology open doors that schools slam shut.

4. Socialize with those who share your passions not just your zip code

•  In school students have little opportunity to socialize and even when they do it is generally confined to those with whom they’ve been grouped with by year and geography. •  At home children have the opportunity to socialize and make global connections with others of any age who share their talents, passions, and interests.

5. Real life measures are better than bubble tests

•  In school we measure students success with bubble tests and response to prompts. •  At home we measure success by what children accomplish that matters to them. Some teens like Leah Miller have developed their own personal success plan (see hers here). She sets her goals and then assesses her success in meeting them.

6. Don’t just read about doing stuff. Do stuff!

•  In school students are forced to sit at desks all day reading and answering questions about stuff other people do. •  At home children don’t need to spend their time reading and writing about what other people do. They can go do stuff.

7. Travel when you want

•  In school they tell you when to go on vacation and families hop off to crowded destinations together. •  At home families can decide when travelling works best for them and also get better rates.

8. You are more than a number

•  In school the only things students have to show for their work are numbers and graphs known as report cards, transcripts, or data reports. •  At home children often put together meaningful portfolios that can be reflected upon and powerfully capture and celebrate learning. This can be done at school, but it rarely happens as little time is left for assessment and reflection after testing and test prep.

9. Do work you value

•  In school students do work someone else wants for someone else’s purpose. •  At home children can engage in meaningful work for reasons they determine are important.

10. Independence is valued over dependence

•  In school students are dependent on others to tell them what to do and when. They spend their time as compliant workers and are discouraged from questioning authority. •  At home children are encouraged to explore, discover, and develop their own passions and talents and given the freedom to work deeply in these areas. They know how to learn independently because they are interested, not because they are told to do something.

11. You don’t have to waste learning time with standardized tests

•  In school students and their teachers are spending a large percentage of their time preparing for tests and testing even though test have little to no role in real life. My last test was more than a decade ago. How about you? •  At home children have the freedom to enjoy learning without the burden or stress of testing. Although many children and parents have been trained to believe testing is a necessary evil in school kids who have the freedom to learn without testing are doing just fine and exploring their passions as grown unschooler Kate Fridkis explains in her article that reveals how we can learn successfully without testing.

12. No more meaningless worksheets and reports

•  In school students often complain they are forced to do meaningless worksheets and reports that have no real purpose or audience. In fact these worksheets and reports often actually suck the joy out of learning. Think about it. When was the last time you read a great book and thought, “Wow! I want to write a report or fill in a worksheet.” •  At home children can do work that matters and has meaning. If they read a book they love they can hop online and discuss it with other people who’ve read it or publish a review for Amazon. If they want to learn something they have an unfiltered world of resources (inaccessible in many schools) at their fingertips to do so.

Parents of Generation Z have woken up and realized that the industrial model school’s of today are preparing their children for a world that no longer exists. They know that those who receive outdated, classroom-based instruction will end up with the rest of the young people Occupying Wall Street and beyond.

However, there is another option! Home educating families are onto something. The children of these families will grow up as adults who know how to take ownership of their learning and their lives. They will be empowered with the ability to attain satisfaction and success in life and career.