Home Ed Program 2013

Now with more detail and split into National Curriculum subject areas as best I can manage (because I fail at reductionism and bureaucracy seems to fail at holism; with some luck perhaps we shall collide in a catalystic rather than confrontational manner somewhere in the middle, and bonus if this helps someone somewhere in some way).

The players are an 8 year old boy, a 6 year old girl and a 4 year old boy.  Bookwork (which includes using the computer programs) is officially done weekly and is tied to their pocket money, they can do extra for fun and profit, and they don't get paid if they don't do the work.  The 4yo doesn't get pocket money and isn't required to do the bookwork though he will usually do some if everyone else is.

English

Tao

Mostly reading, writing and spelling practice, and making sure he understands and uses grammar rules.

Bookwork: Excel Reading and Comprehension ages 6-8
Computer: Reading Eggspress

He plays at least one computer game every day (how long for varies depending on the day and what else is going on) and is rapidly learning the folly of skipping instructional text because he's too lazy to read it.  He has been renaming items in Minecraft and both spelling them phonetically and asking for correct spelling, as well as continuing to write informative and instructional signs in the worlds he builds.  He's been doing comprehension exercises on Reading Eggspress, and reading either a short story to us before his bedtime story, or if they are short chapter books, he reads a chapter out loud.  Occasionally he will lie in bed and read a comic or short chapter book to himself.  Writing practice is a bit more of a challenge as he doesn't see the need for writing.  We've been doing session writeups after playing the Minecraft game I'm running but their interest in it has waxed and waned.  I'm looking to start up a Changeling game with some of their friends (with the obligatory session writeups after, and will also involve maths) to try to keep the interest up.  Also gently trying to convince him to start writing some of the stories he comes up with, and possibly some game reviews, but looks like we'll have to help him work out ways (note writing etc) to organise his thoughts first as he seems to get overwhelmed at the thought of writing anything (common excuse when asked to write a recount, "I forgot what we did" which usually translates to "I don't know how/where to start").

Ruan

Working on gaining fluency in reading and applying basic grammar rules to writing.  Spelling is a secondary effort at this stage.

Bookwork: Reading Eggs My First Sight Words ages 5-7, Reading Eggs My First Comprehension ages 5-7
Computer: Reading Eggs

No problems getting her reading and writing, she enjoys it, though both activities tire her out after a while.  Need to get her putting her notebook in a safe place where Cub can't get to it and encourage her to write whatever she wants in it whenever she feels like it (just so I can get to it, she generally doesn't care and will draw and write on whatever she can find, it has this distressing tendency to completely vanish in this house).  Might see if I can get her to write some of the songs and poems she makes up while she's floating around the house doing her thing.

Cub

Letter sounds, letter and sight word recognition.

Bookwork: Reading Eggs My First Alphabet ages 4-6
Computer: Reading Eggs

He can type his username and password into the login screen on the laptop and can occasionally write his name.  I'm not really expecting a lot from him at this stage.

All three kids enjoy roleplaying games and do it quite often around the house and with their friends.  On our weekly park meets the big two and their groups of friends often put on plays and concerts (as much as one can with improvised instruments and making up songs on the spot) and give speeches to each other in the amphitheatre.

Maths

Tao

Bookwork: Excel Multiplication and Division ages 10-12
Computer: Khan Academy, Dragonbox (tablet)

Continue practising basic arithmetic, make sure he does actually understand number place (he seems to get it), start covering fractions and decimals properly, basic geometry, basic algebra, probability and hopefully have some fun with number patterns.  Will probably start graphing seedling growth (outlined in the science section below).

Ruan

Bookwork: Excel Working with Numbers ages 6-7 (taken over from Tao), Excel Addition and Subtraction ages 10-12
Computer: Khan Academy, Dragonbox (tablet)

Continue practising addition and subtraction, bit more work needed on multiplication and division (sticking with concrete stuff until she gets it), keep working on number place, start touching fractions in a concrete way.

Cub

Loads of counting, measuring, pouring etc, concrete arithmetic, identifying polygons and identifying what shapes they are, fun with tesselation and working with patterns.

Bookwork: Kumon Numbers 1-30
Computer: Dragonbox (tablet)

The basic stuff is covered pretty much constantly while they're playing and eating.  One of the projects we're going to embark on (if I can assemble the tools) is a mapping project of the neighbourhood centred around finding all the houses from the same era as ours and working out how much bigger the blocks of land were.  The big kids are also going to start accounting/book keeping notebooks to keep track of their pocket money.  The lemons should be ready in the middle of the year and they are hoping to build a lemonade stand and sell lemonade from the driveway, in which case they will be book keeping that and we will probably drop the weekly bookwork for that time.

Science

I recently discovered the Double Helix Science Club magazines while checking to see if Scitech were going to be running any homeschooler classes for Term 2.  I've put in a membership application in the name of all three kids and ordered both Scientriffic and The Helix (the latter mostly future-thinking for Tao though he may get something out of it now).

Most of our science is zoo and Scitech trips, potion making in the front yard with whatever ingredients from around the house I can be bothered providing at the time, observing things and talking about what we're looking at, why it's like that and where appropriate, researching (on the readily available internet or getting out appropriate books from the library to find out more.  We've recently done the winter planting, so going to measure and record the growth of the seedlings (each child doing a different plot so they have a reason for each of them to be writing down a bunch of numbers).  The one I haven't made it to yet in recent history is AQWA because the drive scares me.

All the kids are fans of Backyard Science (which gets a bit of play) and the other science documentaries on ABC, Tao has an infrequently used science workbook.  We also have a microscope that needs more slides but that can otherwise still be used in the middle of the day in a bright location and a telescope that we've looked at random stars on but that we need a bit more practice with.

History

Everything is conversational.  They have seen the family tree in as much entirety as will fit on my screen (six generations at a time, a couple of branches on Josh's side of the family go back to the 1700s) as well as focused on the important bit (the one with them in it).  Their grandparents and even their parents tell them stories "back in OUR day, we had to walk to school barefoot through the snow uphill both ways, and there were no computers, and we actually had to talk to people...etc".  We look at different architecture and work out or look up what periods different architectural styles came from.  We visit the art gallery and various museums and swing past various memorials.  We look at how the land is shaped and try to work out what it looked like before people moved in, and why people decided there would be a good place to move to.  They get a good whack of Asian culture and heritage from our frequent trips back to Christmas Island (predominantly Chinese, secondarily Malay, everyone else is "miscellaneous") and we also do kung fu (which includes lion dance).

One of the things I would like to do is go for a walk around the neighbourhood and locate the houses built in roughly the same era as ours (we live in a Federation style house that was probably built late 1890s-early 1900s, started out as a 2x1 cottage and got expanded to its current 4x2 state) and plot them and the remaining citrus farms on a map to get an idea of what the suburb might have looked like before it was subdivided to the point of becoming metro with a vague semi-rural feel.

Leftover stuff from K-10 syllabus

The Arts

Ruan is the one that's mostly into fine arts (all of it, painting, drawing, sculpting, and more recently digital art which is a problem as she only wants to use my Cintiq and I use my Cintiq).  The boys will occasionally join her but are generally not as interested.  I'm hoping to be able to set up a space with a drop sheet for the messier activities involving paints and pastels, I've been actively stopping anything too messy as we haven't had a space that was easy to clean up.  I'm planning slightly more frequent trips to the Art Gallery to see any exhibitions that they might find interesting, and making an artbox for Ru to take out with her.  We listen to commercial radio in the car and the kids have to put up with whatever I decide to play at home (usually a combination of electronica, orchestral and classical).  All three have expressed interest in piano lessons so hoping to have enough money to buy a keyboard and hire a piano teacher.  We also do lion dance at kung fu.

Health and PE

We have a skate ramp in the front yard, and train kung fu 2-3 times a week (the kids usually come to the two night classes with me but aren't always up in time to go to the weekend morning one).  Tao is playing Auskick again this year.  All three kids want to do horseriding but that may be an expensive exercise.  We grow a lot of our own veges and have chickens and our discussions have extended further back from basic healthy eating to making sure any animals that are providing any produce we're consuming (extra chicken, red meat and dairy in our case as we collect the eggs the chickens aren't brooding and eat the roosters) have had a healthy lifestyle for the type of animal that it is as that would provide optimal nutrition over something that's been kept in a stressful environment and loaded with antibiotics to stay alive.

LOTE

Still elusive.  They hear a lot of Cantonese names of various kung fu stances and techniques from our instructor, and also the infrequent conversations he has with the Chinese students in Cantonese.  Tao kept a Chinese gentleman hovering outside one of the classes (parent of one of the students) in stitches as while the instructor was calling out moves we were supposed to do in the form, Tao was repeating everything he said, including inflection.  On Christmas Island they hear a lot of various dialects of Chinese and Malay as well as English spoken with various degrees of Chinese or Malay accents (and they also get to hear their mother flicking between Singlish and normal English depending on who she's talking to).  The Lojban has stalled as I haven't had the time to put together resources.  I have asked my mum to teach us Malay and we're going over in a few months so there will probably be a crash course involved.

Technology and Enterprise

Mostly comprises of Minecraft at this stage, with episodes of Khan Academy.  DuckDuckGo and Youtube get used to find things out (mostly Minecraft-related and various recipes, though we also use it to research stuff), things get built with Lego.  We're trying to get a couple of the IT dads together to acquisition and plan Lego Mindstorms sessions to teach the kids programming basics.