{"id":5674,"date":"2014-08-15T09:14:45","date_gmt":"2014-08-15T13:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=5674"},"modified":"2014-08-22T14:55:31","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T18:55:31","slug":"in-the-home-school-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/15\/in-the-home-school-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Home School Zone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"SONYThe first day of school for our school district is Monday but we are just finishing up our 2nd<\/sup> week of homeschooling (when I told Honeybun we decided to homeschool<\/a>, she was so excited she wanted to start right away!)<\/p>\n

So, the question is: How\u2019s it going?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s sort of a hard question to answer because I didn\u2019t go into our journey with many expectations.\u00a0 I went in with a flexible attitude knowing we would have to adjust as time went on, as we learned our process and as we got into our groove.\u00a0 So far though, it\u2019s working.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most surprisingly is how much we\u2019ve accomplished.\u00a0 While it may not sound like much (especially to a skeptical husband who is still worried about it \u201cworking\u201d), I believe we have done MUCH more than her classmates will do in their first two weeks AND we\u2019ve done it in much less time each day.<\/p>\n

Despite going to gymnastics each Wednesday, the park last Friday, shopping three days and an ENTIRE Tuesday away from home, we\u2019ve easily achieved the goals I\u2019ve set for Honeybun\u2019s learning.<\/p>\n

I decided to set up a flexible schedule in which we have daily, weekly and monthly tasks. We start each \u201cschool\u201d day (which some days is afternoon time) with journal writing and then do our calendar (I\u2019ll get into each of these individually another time).<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a>We have three tasks which are required to be completed every school day which are: reading, spelling and exercise.\u00a0 Most days we read together from a chapter book but some days Honeybun chooses to read herself (usually during the little ones\u2019 nap time). \u00a0Exercise is flexible and is fairly easy to achieve.\u00a0 Since we don\u2019t have a strict schedule we are able to walk to do errands or ride bikes to the park (both 1.5 miles round trip).\u00a0 The girls also swim almost daily and once we (hopefully) get back into dance classes, that will count as well.\u00a0 We are using a spelling curriculum which I will explain another day but usually takes us about 10 minutes to complete (depending on how much Honeybun argues and complains!)<\/p>\n

Each week she is also required to complete four language arts assignments, four math assignments, one handwriting assignment and one research project.\u00a0 Language arts assignments so far have included grammar work and reading comprehension and her math has included worksheets, playing math games together and working with manipulatives (aka Legos).\u00a0 For handwriting I\u2019ve been making her sheets at —- focusing on letters she needs to work on and each week she researches a topic of her choice (again, more on this another day.\u00a0 I have so much to share!!!)<\/p>\n

Our monthly assignments include art projects, science experiments and foreign language which she must complete 4 each, each month.\u00a0 So far we haven\u2019t worked out how we\u2019re going to do her foreign language so we may leave that one for this month.\u00a0 And while art, science and social studies are not individually defined in the common core curriculum (which I am following, read why here<\/a>) and a lot of it is covered during \u201cteachable moments\u201d coinciding with daily life and Honeybun\u2019s incessant questioning, I\u2019ve decided to include science and art as requirements to make sure she is getting the experiences since they may be easy to forget.<\/p>\n

The greatest part of the daily\/weekly\/monthly set up is the flexibility it provides.\u00a0 If we have a busy day and don\u2019t get \u201ca lot\u201d done, we can make it up another day.\u00a0 I have set the load based on a 5 day school week, but I definitely do not discourage Honeybun from working on the weekends (this month I have our school week running Monday-Sunday but Id don\u2019t like using the weekends to \u201ccatch up\u201d so next month I\u2019ll probably switch to school weeks running Saturday-Friday so weekends can be used to \u201cwork ahead\u201d instead.)\u00a0 The tasks we do (after journal, calendar and usually spelling) are up to her to decide.\u00a0 I do sometimes guide her, make suggestions and even push her to certain tasks at certain times, especially as we near the end of the week or if she\u2019s been favoring one area or fighting others.<\/p>\n

As I said, it\u2019s working so far and I hope it continues to work though I will gladly tweak and adjust as necessary.\u00a0 And as you can see, I have so much to share about what we\u2019re doing and what we\u2019re learning about school at home and parents as teachers that I am eager to share!<\/p>\n

If you want to be sure not to miss a single post, be sure to follow Beyond Mommying in one of the following ways:<\/p>\n

Subscribe to the blog<\/a> (top right of the page, just enter you email address and confirm via email.)<\/p>\n

Like Beyond Mommying on Facebook<\/a> (I post all my new posts)<\/p>\n

Follow Beyond Mommying on Pinterest<\/a> (or my specific Home School Zone board<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Connect with Beyond Mommying on google+<\/a> (I try to share all my latest posts)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first day of school for our school district is Monday but we are just finishing up our 2nd week of homeschooling (when I told Honeybun we decided to homeschool, she was so excited she wanted to start right away!) So, the question is: How\u2019s it going? It\u2019s sort of a hard question to answer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[284],"tags":[285,294,218,296,295],"class_list":["post-5674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-home-school-zone","tag-homeschool","tag-organization","tag-planning","tag-scheduleing","tag-time-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5674"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5679,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5674\/revisions\/5679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}