The 2016-17 year--my fifth year homeschooling, or sixth if you count a year of formal home preschool--I was teaching grades 4, 2, and Kindergarten, while caring for a preschooler and a toddler and pregnant with Baby Number 6 (who we anticipate arriving late this summer). I feel like I am getting my sea legs, and that I will know how to teach elementary school just in time for middle school to begin for my oldest, by which point I will be clueless again.
Changes That Worked Well For Us
Student Binders
This was the year I upgraded the children from a slim folder to a three-year binder. The children's master binder contains their daily assignment lists and weekly schedule, and some daily basics like spelling, grammar, and math drill worksheets.
Daily Assignment Lists
First of all, just having an assigned list every day is incredibly important to keep mom and students on track. That was a total game-changer to our school, but we made that change years ago. Since then, we have tried innumerable ways of assigning daily work over the years. We tried online programs this year, but the learning curve was too steep for me and most of our work is still daily trudging ahead (e.g., just do the next math lesson, just do the next spelling lesson), so I don't need to plan months in advance.
Our longest-lasting success for daily assignment lists has been using the templates from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I print them out on the weekends and put them in the children's Binders.
Prior to that, we used the spiral notebook method for probably a couple of years, so that was very successful too. But with three kids, my hand was getting seriously cramped writing everything out, especially since it was so repetitive!
Daily Schedule
I was drowning trying to teach homeschool after having Baby Number Five. It felt like it was all chaos and all I did was 'put out fires.' I didn't have a map of where I was going.
All that changed when I created a master schedule, following the technique of Managers of Their Homeschool by the Maxwells and using the handy-dandy template from Confessions of a Homeschooler. The master schedule shows where I am and every other child is during every half-hour segment of the day. I have to know that I am teaching this one child, the other two children are doing independent work (but they're not interfering with each other), the preschooler is occupied doing such-and-such, and the baby is under safe supervision.
Many factors need to be accounted for, such as making enough hours for piano practice, but not double booking kids on the piano during the same slot, and not booking time while the baby is napping!
Another important factor is making sure I emotionally feed the preschooler, who mostly feels ignored during the school morning, so I purposefully scheduled in snuggle time with him on the couch.
After creating a master schedule showing all family members, I created a subset schedule for each child, showing only his schedule. The schedules show five days of the week, since various activities change what the daily routine is. However, the more regular the routine is, the better for children who need to know what to expect.
Someone Else Teaches Math
This was the year I could no longer teach everyone math. When a daily math lesson takes 30-45 minutes per child, I couldn't possibly teach that to three separate children anymore. I switched my second and fourth graders to the Teaching Textbook programs, which uses CDs on the computer. The children watch an interactive lesson (not a recorded DVD like Saxon uses), complete the lesson, get clarification on problems they get wrong, and the program grades the lessons and records the score in the computerized grade book.
I still teach the Kindergartener math out of a paper book, and I look forward to handing her off to Teaching Textbooks just in time for when I have to start teaching math to Joseph.
Math Drill
This year I got serious about daily math drill. My kids always did their math lessons, but I didn't understand at all the necessity of drilling the facts till they were memorized (ideally within three seconds).
One of our children does wonderfully online and we find the free website Math Facts Pro to be fantastic and effective.
Another one of our children does much better with paper, so I've begun printing out daily worksheets from Math-Aids.
The two older children do a daily worksheet each to drill addition, subtraction, and multiplication. The Kindergartener is drilling daily on addition and next year will add in subtraction.
Recording our Spelling
I still love All About Spelling, but was struggling mightily to sit down with three children each day to give them spelling dictation. This year, I figured out to record all the dictation sentences as voice memos on my smartphone. I label each one per child, such as "Spelling for John Lesson 16 Day 2" (there being four day lessons per week). The child then checks his own spelling afterward against the book, and has to write anew any words he missed. I do spot checks later to make sure the children are checking their work. The entire recording process for the week takes me about ten minutes, whereas it probably took me 30 minutes cumulatively per day to sit down with three children.
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