Plans for 2012-2013 School Year

In August, my brain is always busy trying to plan our upcoming school year.  I always get a bit carried away buying too much curriculum and planning too many activities because it all sounds so fun and I've just had a long break from school and feel like I can do everything!  Hopefully, I haven't planned too much.  My last post was about homeschooling clubs which have been a favorite part of our educational experience.  They help us fight the "unsocialized homeschoolers" stigma.  Hee, hee.  This is what we have lined up this year:

Historical Fiction Book Club--This will be a continuation of our past history club, but instead of using the Story of the World series for our text, we have picked a different historical fiction book to read and discuss each month.  I've discovered that we (my children and I) learn and retain history best if we have an exciting story to associate it with, so this should be a fun way to do history.  At our club, we'll have a discussion and do activities to go with our readings.  This club is for Kayla and Hunter and meets once a month.

Geography Club--This club will also be once a month, each family takes a turn hosting, and we focus on a specific continent each month.  The kids will each share short reports they've prepared on one of the countries from that continent.  Then we'll learn more about the place and do activites.  We've also made this a book club of sorts by asking the kids to read a book from the Magic Tree House series that takes place on the continent of the month.  This club is for a variety of ages, kindergarten and up.

Poetry Group--Also meets once a month, same group of friends as the Geography club.  Every child memorizes a poem ahead of time and prepares an illustration to share with the group.  The hosting mom plans a poetry lesson to share.

Five-in-a-Row Co-op--This is just for my little Tan Man who will now be a kindergartner.  I can hardly believe it!  Five in a Row is a unit studies program built around children's picture books.  The idea is that you read the book five days in a row and use it to do different subjects each day--social studies, geography, math, science, art, etc.  I'm not sure I'm up to reading the same book 5 days in a row, but I love doing activities related to books; can you tell?  Doing this with a group will ensure that I actually plan some fun activities to go with our story reading.  We're meeting once every two weeks.

That sounds like a lot of groups, but it works out to be about one get-together/club a week which is perfect.  We actually need some time at home to do the basic reading/writing/math stuff.

Classical Conversations
Kayla will probably only participate with the history book club because she is super busy with the Classical Conversations Challenge program.  One day a week, she goes to Classical Conversations and has classes in Math, Latin, Science, Geography, Literature/Writing, and Rhetoric.  Her teacher gives her assignments in each subject to do at home during the week.  This class started three weeks ago and it has definitely been a challenge.  Kayla enjoys the class and being with her friends, but the daily work load is more than she is used to.  I think it will be a good experience for her, once she adjusts.  It will also help once her brothers have started school.  It isn't fun to study all day while your siblings are playing all day!  Kayla is also hoping to attend a youth homeschooling group that will include drama, sports, and politics.

So, that's what's on the menu.  I'm excited!

Educational Clubs

A couple of years ago I wrote an article about forming homeschooling clubs.  I always meant to post it, but forgot until now.  I am currently planning some new clubs which made me think about it again.  Here is the article:

HOMESCHOOLING CLUBS

Organizing various classes and clubs for my children has brought me a lot of joy as a homeschooling mom.  My children love to do activities and gather with friends and I’m much more likely to plan something special for my own children if other children are joining us and I have a deadline!  I’ve discovered that all my grand plans of doing art projects, crafts, cooking, and games easily fall by the wayside if I don’t have something to hold me accountable to those plans.  Clubs have given life and vitality to our homeschool.  These are a few of the clubs I’ve formed over the years:

 

Liberty Belles

Before I started homeschooling, my sister told me about a “Liberty Girls” club in Utah that her daughter participated in.  Girls ages 6-9 would read books from the American Girl series and meet twice a month to discuss their readings and do activities.  This sounded wonderful to me and I kept wishing someone would start a club like that in my area so my 6-year-old daughter could participate.  After homeschooling for a year, no such club had magically formed.  I went to the LDSEHE homeschooling conference and met Diann Jeppson, the founder of the Liberty Girls clubs in Utah.  She was more than willing to let me “copy” her idea and put it into action out in Virginia, she just asked that I changed the name.  I loved her suggestion of a new name and thus, “Liberty Belles” was born.

 

Getting Started:

Diann gives excellent advice and very detailed explanations for starting a club like this in the book A Thomas Jefferson Education Home Companion.  This is how I went about it:

Step 1—Choose a girl from the series to read about.  Since we live in Virginia, we naturally started with Felicity Merriman--a colonial girl from Williamsburg, VA. 

Step 2--Make an outline for the club that includes club dates, reading assignments, and a basic idea of what activities, crafts, and lessons you would like to do at each meeting.  There are 6 books for each girl, you can divide that over 6 meetings or 12, I’ve done both.

Step 3—Establish club guidelines and fees.  Before finding people to fill the club, determine how many people you can manage having in your home and what ages you want to include.  It’s also good to clearly define what is expected of parents--whether or not they will need to help, whether or not they can bring other siblings if they do stay to help, and so forth.  For fees, I calculated how much I thought the projects were going to cost and charged that amount.  I didn’t try to make a profit, I didn’t even cover expenses for my own daughter (I remedied this in later clubs).

Step 4—Advertising.  When I started this club, I only knew one other homeschooling family that had a daughter in the age range I was looking for.  I was hoping to find at least 6 other girls to participate.  I put a post on a local homeschooling yahoo group and included an outline of what we would be doing, the dates, the cost, etc.  I was amazed at how quickly people responded.  It wasn’t long before I had 12 girls and a waiting list.

Step 5—Run the club and enjoy it!  This club was so much work but it was also very enjoyable and rewarding.  I was blessed to have 12 delightful girls come to my home every 2 weeks, eager to participate and be a part of the club.  As a group, we were introduced to famous characters in  history and we were able to learn about the events that led to the American Revolution and discover what people were thinking and feeling at that time. 

Our second year, we read about Kit from the Great Depression.  By this time, I knew the girls and their moms and I was able to recruit two wonderful mothers to share the load with me.  This made a big difference!  Previously, I had been doing prep work for 3 to 4 projects/activities before each meeting, planning a book discussion and an educational/historical lesson, and let’s not forget--cleaning the house (always a big project around here!).  It’s no surprise that I questioned at times whether or not I should have taken on such a venture.  Bottom line--get help if you can.

History Club

As much as I loved the Liberty Belles club, it was for girls only and I had a son that was growing-up who also wanted to be a part of a club.  I considered starting an equivalent club for boys but I knew it would be too much for me to run two clubs.  So, I dispensed with Liberty Belles and started a history club based on the Story of the World series (I also copied this idea from other homeschoolers).  I wasn’t up to running and planning the whole thing this time so I invited a few other families to participate and share the load.  Each mom agreed to take turns planning the activities and hosting the club meetings at their homes.

We are finishing our second year with this club and it has been such a blessing.  We have 3 families participating right now so each mom has to plan a meeting every 6 weeks, definitely easier than every 2 weeks.  It has been wonderful to have different moms planning things because they do things I would never think of.  They have strengths I don’t have and my children are getting exposed to different teachers and activities than they would have if I was doing it on my own.  The Story of the World series is great because each volume has an accompanying activity book with ideas of things to do.  The moms can choose something from the activity book or come up with something on their own that correlates with the readings.  Recently we read about Lewis and Clark and the hosting mom had us meet at a hiking trail instead of her home.  She talked to the kids about how to use a compass, how to draw maps, how to make a map key.  She gave them papers and clipboards and they mapped out the trail and surrounding areas as they hiked.  I wouldn’t have thought of doing this myself but I loved the idea!  We have also done Medieval tournaments, Shakespeare plays, and various field trips associated with our readings.

Variety Class

I formed this little class last year because there were several subjects I wanted to cover that I wasn’t fitting into our homeschooling life—Art, Music, Geography.  I knew I needed to organize something that would force me to attend to these areas.  I invited a few families I knew and set a limit of 8 kids (I’ve found it very difficult to have more than 8 kids if boys are part of the group!  6 is better).  I offered this class as a “drop-off” or “mom-break” class and charged a fee that went towards compensating me for my time, not just materials.  At each class we would learn about a famous artist and do an art project; learn about a famous composer and listen to some of his music; identify and memorize geographical locations; do a story assignment; and sometimes a drawing lesson.  I used the following books as guides:

 Discovering Great Artists by MaryAnn F. Kohl and Kim Solga

Themes To Remember by Marjorie Kiel Persons (Classical music recognition)

Drawing with Children, by Mona Brookes

Story Starters, by Karen Andreola (I ended up writing shorter story starters but this book was my inspiration).

 This class was a big hit with my kids.  My daughter loves Art and we were finally doing it!

 Final Tips:

·         When you first start a club, plan it for a short period of time—a 3 month semester, a 6-week session, etc.  If you end up not enjoying it, you can get through it and be done.  If it’s wonderful, you can start another session after a nice break.  Give yourself a built-in opportunity to reevaluate and change things.

·         Set behavior expectations from the start—boys can be particularly challenging.  Keep boy groups small and clearly define what is expected from the get-go.

·         Be careful about ages--too broad of an age span can make it difficult to find activities that appeal to the whole group.

·         Make sure you are compensated for your efforts or share the work equally with other moms.

·         You need to love the subject.  I tried teaching science for a co-op I joined and I was pretty miserable because it wasn’t my “love.”  I learned a lot but it wasn’t worth the high stress levels.

Closing Thoughts:

In starting any kind of class or club, it is important to consider your “season” in life and determine if you can balance running a class or club with the other responsibilities and duties that surround you.  I’ve found that I can handle different clubs at different times, depending on what is going on in my life.  After two sessions of Variety Class, I was in the middle of a pregnancy and feeling a lack of energy and inspiration so I took a break.  I hope to pick it up again later, when the season is right.  Even when a club is very successful, it doesn’t mean you will feel like doing it forever.  Your children’s needs and family dynamics will change over time, give yourself the flexibility to change with it.