Raising Our First Born with Homeschool; The Analyst

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Our oldest is nineteen and a second semester freshman in college. He is on a pre-law track, double majoring in Business and Mathematics. So, I do believe in miracles, because math is not a language that I speak. This goes to prove that nothing can hold back a curious mind. A well rounded education can prepare your student for subjects that you have not fully covered yet.

Elijah was a curious kid. Bright from the start with a knack for the athletic. In family lore, he put a golf ball through the basement window when he was four. He was aiming for the porch from about 80 feet away. He only fell short by two feet and was more disappointed in missing the shot than breaking the window.  With his sincere disgust at his shot, we couldn’t even be mad.

If you read the last post you know that reading was a big part of our life in the early years of parenthood. The three oldest benefited greatly from having baby after baby show up in their lives. We had tons of reading time while I nursed babies and rocked little ones to sleep. We read thousands of books over a five year stretch.

I am not a believer in reading only books your child can understand and relate to. I believe in reading over their heads. Context is how I learn most new words in my life. Over those five years our kids went from picture books, to The Little House Series. We traveled the world with Jules Vernes books. How did we read so much? I read books that I loved. We all wanted to hear the end of the story.

Can Kids Readlly Learn from Adult Books?

Elijah thought the opening scene in Moby Dick was hilarious. Because we had time, I always explained difficuly or fast paced selections. His favorite book of all was 20,000 Leaguse Under the Sea. The world of Captain Nemo, the Captain’s turse conduct and secretive nature, the under ocean explorations and strange crew is enough to captivate any audience. We read it with each passing season. We devoured our personal library and raided the public library every few weeks.

For Elijah, we did little for formal school until he was seven. He was already reading and writing by the time we started seated work. Reading was just another game he wanted to puzzle out. He learned to make words by hearing the letter sounds from the little, yellow, Leapfrog bus we had. It taught straight letter sounds, a method I have used with all of my children. We rehearsed the letters for all of our family’s names and from there he started picking out little words.

We already had a reading structure that was working for us. What if you are trying to create this in your life? First read The Read Aloud Family. In it Sarah Mackenzie shares the importance of reading to your children and how it effects every aspect of their life. It was as though she had written my thoughts and we have a shared philosophy about books. Sonlight offers a Pre-K and Kindergarten curriculum that are full of great books. If you are not a reader and really want help creating a steadt habit, they are a worthwhile investment. As for seated work for littles wanting to do paper school, I picked up great little set of workbooks from Rod & Staff for young beginners and that was enough to satisfy the nagging voice that would creep into my head and say we “should do school.”

You can also just ignore that creep! What the heck were we doing while he was learning about the world around him? Learning has no set location. Listening and answering a toddler will fill your life with learning.

Early Learning: Play is School

Our school was the world around us. Especially in those early years, we specialized in play. My favorite medium was cardboard. We never needed anything we could not make. If we read about Vikings, it was helmets and shields. We made thrones, castles, armor, you name it. Lack of TV, rural living and no cash, can make anyone a really creative person. Play is vital. It is not secondary to learning, it is learning. Creative play time as little children developes social skills and problem solving skills that last all their life. If you are overstructuring your child’s day, stop. Make room for unstructured play time. Offer them a junk box to create wonders from.

Speaking of TV…

We didn’t have our TV hooked up for the first eleven years we lived here. We watched a VHS movie in the late afternoon, so I could make dinner and clean up. Mostly we watched old movies and cartoons. We struck entertainment gold when they released the Little House Series on DVD. We bought up all eleven seasons and made it a family time treat. We were low tech, but the kids didn’t seem to mind.

In the early years, I caught onto the idea of Homesteading. I ordered a subscription to Country Side magazine and a couple dozen chicks too. Having animals and farm-ish chores gave me a sense of purpose while I was essentially grounded. We owned a local restaurant, but Doug worked long hours and the staff was not steady. He often got called into work with no notice, so we seldom made plans as a family. Home was our nest and we filled it up with things to learn about for all of us. We’ve raised chickens, Muscove ducks, turkeys, Guinea fowl, and hogs. We kept rabbits, had a horse and many dogs, and a few cats over the years. 

In February of our first year of homeschooling, we had a new born, bringing us to the insane number of seven little kids seven and under.

School gave us the structure we needed. Since Sonlight was an extention of the reading habit we had already developed, it was not a big transition. We read with more structure and for a little longer each day. We found new titles to love together. That little voice that nagged me to “do school,” faded away. I probably couldn’t hear it over the kids.

Everything I Need, All in One Box

One of the reasons I chose to order Sonlight was that everything came in the boxes (Yay! Box Day!) at one time and you were ready for the year. Being in rural Iowa, I knew it was going to be difficult to find titles at the local library. With the number of littles I had to get bundled up and ready, I loved the idea of everything being on my shelf for when the time to use it arrived.

The Focus of the First Seven Years

School with Elijah was smooth sailing. He is a typical first born with a very strong sense of obligation and was grounded in knowing right and wrong.

Let me add a note here: and it is only my opinion, it is what we have seen work in our life.

The first seven years weren’t focused on school, but were oriented around child training and bonding with our children. These first three kids benefited from having a mom that was much less divided than I currently am. I had strong convictions about children obeying, but I also had a tender heart that helped me to not lean toward control or dominance.

We worked to make training fun and fruitful. If we had an area where we had trouble, we trained in it like it was a sport. We had “put on your shoes and get in the car” drills with a prize for getting it done under a certain time. When we had some behavior issues at the grocery store; I went shopping when I didn’t need anything, just so I could leave when they misbehaved.

I structured life so it made it easier for me to keep my word. Also, over the years I have learned to really limit my “no” and in turn, my kids respect them more. I say “yes” to a bunch of stuff I don’t particularly love, (slime, hot glue, driving a good distance to visit friends I like, and glitter, I will never say yes to glitter) because I want my kids to know that they are a valued member of the family with a voice that counts. There is no magic bullet. My kids are still disobedient at times, sometimes that comes at a high cost, but overall, we have built long-lasting, beautiful relationships through mutual respect and good boundaries.

Capture Them with What They Love

He hated writing assignments and would argue endlessly about them, but I learned that his concience would not let him ignore an assignment completely. He would sometimes give me less than great work, but writing was a subject Elijah struggled with and still does.

One way I encouraged Elijah to write was to let him argue in writing. Really, it is no suprise that he is going to study law. He wrote magnum opus in high school; a six page argumentative paper firmly backing his premises that “Video Games were Beneficial and in Fact Helpful to Students.” It was so well researched and sited that I could see his point and actually, he won me over to his side.

Growing Through Learning Difficulties

I first noticed when we added spelling, around third grade. He could not spell. Like, anything. I was telling a friend, it was like the game of Plink-O was going on in his brain; like those round chips, the letter were all up there, but when he spelled words they just kinda rained down in random order. It effected his reading. There was an instance when he was assigned a reading book about the Pony Express. He was giving an oral summary when he pointed to a word that was giving him trouble. The word was “Pony Express.” He read the whole book, but could not decode the main subject of the story. Adding regular spelling practice and reading helped Elijah the most. I think it made the correct spellings more recognizable.

Fortunately for me, I was very familiar with his condition. I had suffered from the same thing as a child. I assume it is a mild form of dyslexia. I could never do a word search as a child. The letters did not behave in front of my eyes. I had ever passed a spelling test in my time as a public school student. As I aged the condition lessened and it has with Elijah as well. He knows to use extra care when he is tired, especially when working with numbers because they tend get transposed more easily then.

Homeschooling Students Excel in Subjects They Like

Though Elijah had no taste for English, he did have a knack for Mathematics. I wish I had been a better Math teacher, because he passed me up very early on. Often, he had figures completed in his head when there was a multi-step formula involved.

In his early years I used a combination of Singapore Math and Miquon Math, alternating between the two each time we completed a workbook. I do feel like this gave this group of kids a great foundation in math. Miquon is a workbook that uses Cusinar Rods to create visual connections to Math concepts. I have since used Algebra for Breakfast On-line Visual Math and Art Math by NatureGlo for visual math learning.

Because Elijah did not like writing, but liked Math, I made sure he had the opportunity to do math first and as much as he wanted to do. We moved into Teaching Textbooks in the upper grades because it had the instruction that I could not provide. We also explored many STEM opportunities, engineering, computer courses, games, legos, robotics and other tech fields.

Your homeschool student can and will succeed in areas that you lack skill in. Don’t fear an educational blank space. Learn together.

– Amber @200fingersandtoes

Homeschooling tools have grown to the point that I feel confident that there is the right tool out there to help teach your child if you can not. I learned Algebra side by side with my son. As his skill grew, he left me by the side lines.

Avoiding the Comparison Trap

Though he was gifted in math, I chose to keep a steady pace in school. I am a second generation homeschooler. I grew up in the era when everyhomeschool kid was playing the violin at seven and in algebra by seventh grade. I watched parents push and mothers preen their gifted prodigies only to see them burn out of the areas they once loved. I think that caused me to be determined to keep a steady pace and to keep a level head when assessing our kids gifts. Want to learn more about avoiding the comaparison trap? You can read this article I wrote a while ago.

Young learners can and will excel in many areas because they can. Homeschooling allows it. I love that we can let their interests lead. But, pressure to be better than others seldom inspires a fire that will carry a passion into a career. I wanted him to obtain mastery and competency without really worrying about what level he was obtaining.

Allowing him to challenge himself and make decissions means a student ready for college or the world. I love that Sonlight turns the IG (instructors guide) over to the student in the high school levels. You students follow the guide and structure theur day to accomplish their assigned work load. By using Sonlight, our oldest three were already ready for college. They have worked from a syllabus for years. They were taught to break down large projects and check in with me, and they are doing the very same thing in college this year with their Professors.

Homeschool Means You Decide

Elijah didn’t want to accelerate his graduation date, so we steadily did a H/B/L each year until his Junior year. To graduate we needed to do H/B/L 420, which is Government and Economics. Since we had done H/B/L H (World History In Depth) in the ninth grade for Elijah we had a decission to make. The three oldest kids had schooled as a group up to this point. Would the three older students continue to school as a group or would the younger two could split off and do H/B (just the history and Bible portion) 320 next year adding a school year after their brother graduated. The alternative was, to do two high school H/Bs (220 History of the Church and 320 20th Century World History) in one year as a group and graduate together. I really felt that it was important that they didn’t skip the History of the Church, but I left it for them to discuss and decide.

After some discussion about how they wanted their Junior year to look, the kids opted to tackle two H/B in one year. It was unconventional. It was a ton of reading and a tremendous year of work. They were pushed and stretched. It wasn’t easy, but I encouraged them the whole way. (sometimes my encouragement might have looked a lot like yelling at them, because I am still a very human mother)

Elijah was a strong reader, and DID have all day at home to accomplish the work, so even though it was challenging it was a great learning year. I don’t think a crushing college work load will phase them too much after that school year. They are college ready, because of their literature rich learning experience.

Homeschooling still takes much less time that a conventional school day. One H/B/L takes about three hours to complete the daily reading. Then there is Math, Science and Language Arts work to complete as well. Reading for two H/B made for a full day, but we were meeting our personal goals. 

I’ve writen a bit more extensively about the final years of highschool and getting ready for college in these posts here. Graduation day finally did come. What a blessed day for us. We earned this moment together. What a gift this journey has been for me. Now that I see Elijah working hard in school, tutoring others, reaching out in student leadership, streaching himself to take a challenging class; I am blessed to know I had a hand in building the character of that young man. He and God get to finish the work.

This is just a little window into our schooling life. For brevity, I have not gone into depth but I am pretty sure when I finish the series on all ten kids we will have covered a lot. Feel free to leave me any questions in the comments.

Last year, I was a contributor for th Sonlight Blog and wrote 22 articles and they gave me 630 British Literature for my highschooler, which we loved. My contract has ended, so I have no monitary investment in promoting Sonlight. That said, I AM a Sonlighter for life. This is our fourteenth year using Sonlight and I love it. You can use my code AS20131425and get $5 off of any purchaes of $50 and you can us this link below to save 20% more while the offer is valid. Go take a peek and definately order a catalog.