Home schooling


Homework bins - one for each kid (and Mom)
After looking into many different homeschool "school in a box" options, I opted to put together our own program so that the kids could learn about the areas we were planning to visit (a "roots of Western Civilization"/Mediterreranean focus) and to keep the continuity in the curricula used by their schools.  The continuity part is a bit hard since there's an element of uncertainty... Maggie is in a DC public school that ends at 5th grade and we'd like to transition her sooner rather than later into something else besides the middle school she would otherwise feed into, and we had to withdraw Hugo from his private school when we left. That was probably one of the hardest part about leaving for me (besides quitting my job)...not knowing exactly how things will fall back into place with schools when we get back.

After a bit of trial and error, it seems to work well for us to do homeschooling every day except those days when we have rough sailing days, or when we have all day shore excursions.  I write out the day's assignments and put them in the kids' bins so they can work through their homework a bit more independently.  I aim for one hour of math, one hour of language arts (spelling, grammar or reading comprehension), up to one hour of some kind of history/social studies work., and then foreign language and music  So yes, they "go to school" on weekends and in summer, but there are likely enough rough sailing days and field trip days during the week that it will all even out in the end.

The curriculum and textbook purchase list I put together doesn't seem to post very well, but I'm happy to send it to anyone interested, just e-mail me at johnandtessa.dc@verizon.net.  The kids' schools and teachers were amazingly helpful and almost any and everything is available on-line.  

In a nutshell:
Math: Everyday Math, supplemented by workbooks from Continental Math League, Spectrum math, and Math Olympiad; worksheets from www.superteacherworksheets.com, also Marcy Cook tiling cards, First in Math online practice, Khan Academy online lessons/practice, 24 game flashcards; Equate, Set, Sudoku games.
Language Arts: Write Source, WordlyWise, Rules of the Game, reading and journal-writing.
History/Geography: Nystrom atlases, inflatable politcal and topgraphical globes, History of Western Civilization by Riese & Lasalle, + various other Greek/Roman workbooks. Eyewitness books on Romans and Greeks. Course on Foundations of Western Civilization from www.thegreatcourses.com.  History channel documentaries on YouTube.
Science: Eyewitness book on Oceans, marine weather books, astronomy books/course from www.thegreatcourses.com.
Religion: Eyewitness books on Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
Art: Arts of the Islamic World - Teacher's Guide by Freer/Sackler Education Dept, Islamic Art by Jonathan Bloom, Islamic Design - A Genius for Geometry by Daud Sutton, various art sections from other books.
Field trips: Lonely Planet travel books for every country we hope to visit to help plan shore visits.
We also have several bins of books stashed in various storage areas and two Kindles. Plus a "Bad Boy" WIFI booster to facilitate internet research on various topics as they come up.  The kids also each have journals and small notebooks for taking on shore trips, and "mom worksheets" to practice what they've learned.   Glad the kids are still young enough that they'll listen to me when I tell them to get out their small notebooks when we go into a museum and write down five interesting things.  I'm sure they'll be glad I made them do it when they're older :). 
Before leaving, we also went to the library and checked out a pile of books about the Mediterranean and everyone listed 5-10 things they wanted to learn about.  Not sure we'll cover everything, but here's the list:
  1. evil eyes
  2. decorations
  3. pottery
  4. egyptian temples
  5. elements
  6. treasures
  7. sunken ships/cities/civilizations
  8. business
  9. robotics/electronics
  10. random processing
  11. physics
  12. power
  13. structural design
  14. photography
  15. where great battles happened
  16. the very "historic" ports
  17. classic trade routes
  18. the great landmarks (ie Gibraltar)
  19. the unique products (ivory, saffron etc)
  20. cool names of local winds/weather
  21. desalinization
  22. the story of the Arabian Nights
  23. the plays of the Greek playwrites (Aeschylus, Sophocles, etc)
  24. how to write in Arabic
  25. how to make perfumed oil
  26. how to make shadow puppets
  27. local vegetation
  28. mythological creatures
  29. all about greece
  30. sinbad the sailor
  31. islam
  32. mosques
  33. how to make a boat
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)