What Bing Did...

I've only just realized that I hadn't posted in a while, so here we go!

This past week Bing:
Went to a medieval tournament in Middle Island, N.Y.
Continued his lessons on Time4Learning.com
Had a two-hour fencing lesson (with other homeschoolers) in Rocky Point, N.Y.
Went to his Parkour gymnastics class
Had his piano lesson
Managed a moving crew in N.Y.C. (okay, with Dad's help!)
Finished the third Harry Potter book and scored 100 percent on an online quiz about it
Began reading "Four World Views" and wrote an essay on "Ideas"

Thanks to some local parents, we have started a homeschooling co-op. One day a week, a group of homeschoolers get together and are guided through a subject, like American Sign Language, Drama, Art, or Journalism (yeah, guess who's teaching that!).

Bing has signed up for Design Squad, a take on Robotics.
http://pbskids.org/designsquad/

Because it's part of a co-op, it only costs $20 for four weeks.

However....

I am also considering signing him up for pottery (with the wheel and all) for $175 at Ross School, which is beginning its "Afternoons@Ross," a series of art and other classes open to the public. It's a large amount of money for us, but when else will he get a chance to throw pots?

Stay tuned!

Who To Be?

Bing has an exciting event to prepare for, although it is many months away.

The Suffolk County homeschool group hosts a posh Historical Ball at a hotel at the beginning of May. It's a free event, with food and fun. Participants dress up as a character they're studying, and give short presentations, present artwork, play music, or whatever. Prizes are awarded.

So....who to be, who to be?

Bing considered Leonidas, King of Sparta.

But let's face it....he'll just be running around all day shouting, "This.....Is.....SPARTA!!!!"

Plus, Joelie pointed out the mini-skirt aspect.

Or worse....

So the whole Leonidas thing has been tabled.

I'm pushing for our 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt. We will be studying his life by the time May rolls around, and, let's face it, Teddy was cooool.

He rode a moose. Who else can you think of who actually Rode. A. Moose?

He started the National Parks system.

He made up for being a sickly child by being totally bad-ass the rest of his life. He boxed.

He hunted all sorts of wild animals, except of course, for baby bears. Hence, the "Teddy" bear.

After he and his Rough Riders returned from the Battle of San Juan Hill (and if you didn't know this, since they had no horses, they actually ran up the hill with their swords out -- how badass is that?) they were quarantined in Montauk.
Yes, our Montauk.

I love a local connection!

Plus, Teddy was homeschooled.

And he went to Harvard, and became President.

So there!

Stay tuned.

Who Wants To Be A (Secret) Millionaire?

I've always had a complaint that the schools teach kids how to make money, but don't teach them how to save it, invest it, how to be wary in the world of credit, and generally how to keep it.

Now Warren Buffett is doing it for us!

Thanks to a fantastic Web site called homefires.com, which offers daily tips for homeschoolers, I've been hepped to the Secret Millionaires Club, a site for grades three to six to learn about money, hosted (in cartoon form) by none other than America's most beloved billionaire.

In four minute segments, Mr. Buffett teaches kids about everything from building a reputation in the business world based on honesty, to being open-minded, listening to your customers, and pursuing your dreams. The lessons are backed up by games, a blog, and even a chance to "Ask Warren" questions.

There's also a "Learn & Earn" section with grade-appropriate activities for teachers to hand out to kids. (In my world, teacher = mom!)

I am so impressed with the Secret Millionaires Club (even if it did leave out the possessive apostrophe after the "s") that I would highly recommend it for everyone with kids eight to fourteen, homeschooling or not. 

In fact, adults could learn a thing or two as well.

Stay tuned.

I'm HIP to IHIP

What is an IHIP, you say?

It's an Individualized Home Instruction Plan, and it must be submitted to your school district, or New York State, shortly after withdrawing your child and starting to homeschool.

The IHIP offers the district the dates when you will file quarterly reports (sounds scarier than it is), and your curriculum for the year.

One thing is for sure: I do not want Bing to fall behind. I plan to put him back in school in a couple of years or so, and I want to make sure that I am following all of the learning standards chosen by the State.

So I checked around: with other homeschooling moms, who generously let me see their lesson plans; online (the HSLDA has a great example of a blank sheet); and by asking teachers at Bing's school who were more than willing to help.

So Bing's sixth grade syllabus goes something like this.

In Language Arts (what we used to call English), Bing will learn (or already has learned): Silent and oral reading, summarizing, grammar, short stories, chapter reading, books, poetry, plays, increasing dictionary skills, cursive handwriting, simple outlining, spelling and vocabulary, sentence structure, Latin and Greek roots, writing book reports, oral book reports, creative writing, developing skills in locating information, Increasing indexing skills, developing encyclopedia skills, and utilizing parts of a newspaper, and state simulation testing

Books we will read this year:
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (He's reading the third one, so I figured I might as well throw it in!)
Holes by Louis Sachar
The Westing Game by Ellen Baskin
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
Candyfreak by Steve Almond
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Westing Game and Holes both have teacher packets, chock full of questions to ask and tests to give on the books that I can -- get this! -- download right onto my Kindle.

Candyfreak chronicles the true adventures of a confection-obsessed writer who visits the great (or no longer great) candy factories of the nation. It is a love letter to the candies of our youth, and Bing -- who vows he will someday be a candy-maker -- is enjoying being read to from this book every night.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is simply one of my "desert island" books. Again, non-fiction, but so engrossing, and who doesn't love the way Bill Bryson writes? It is The Wonder Years come to life, and I recommend it for anyone, young and old. Warning, there are a few "F" bombs thrown in the mix.

Bing asked if we could finish Huck Finn. We started it a few months ago and got derailed. Another read-aloud choice, after we finish the Steve Almond book. Needless to say, there are tons of teaching materials out there to go along with Mark Twain's work.

Besides the books, all of the other scary looking items listed ("I could never teach those! I wouldn't know where to start!") are things Bing accomplishes on Time4Learning, his online program.

Will write about the other subjects next. Stay tuned.

Work or Play?

Bing and I both spent the last couple of days fairly under the weather. However, being home yesterday allowed me to look into several options around the Hamptons.

One of the requirements for homeschooled kids is physical education. I, frankly, hate exercise. I wish I didn't, and yet, I do.

But trawling through the homeschooling Yahoo groups, especially the Suffolk County Homeschoolers group, I found a listing for Parkour gymnastics.

Parkour, as far as I can tell, is some kind of jumpy-flippy Ninja-style athletics, and a gymnasium in Westhampton offers it for boys over 8.

Most importantly, Bing is fascinated with Parkour.  He is so excited for his first class!

We've also signed up, with other homeschoolers, for golf in the Spring, four lessons, in Riverhead. And a fencing class for homeschoolers in Rocky Point.

Bing is doing all of his Time4Learning curriculum, with me choosing several lessons a day in the core subjects. He seems to really enjoy it. It is amusing and when I listen in to some of the spoken lessons, I find myself cracking up.

He then reads his Harry Potter book for a while, and at night I read "Candyfreak" to him. He has Parkour tomorrow, and on Friday, he has ice skating (again, with other homeschoolers) and then a piano lesson at Crossroads Music in Amagansett.

On Sunday, we are going up to Huntington to a meeting with the local chapter of the Society of Creative Anachronism -- sort of like Renaissance fair people, but not so hardcore. You can check out their Web site here - scaducks.org. They have all sorts of activities, and we are looking forward to eating mutton and throwing javelins, or whatever.

The point is, a lot of this probably feels like play, rather than work, to Bing. But it's all part of the whole homeschooling package we're trying to provide.

Stay tuned.

Curriculee, Curricula: Choices, Choices!

Now it was time to find some sort of curriculum. New York State requires that within a pre-allotted period of time after handing in the Letter of Intent (I think it's two weeks, but the best place to check is on the Web site, http://www.hslda.org, homeschooling advocates since 1983), one must submit an IHIP, or Independent Home Instruction Program. This is a fairly detailed syllabus explaining what you plan to cover, since your student must measure up to state standards (some states are more lax on the regulations; New York has some of the more stringent rules for homeschoolers).

Luckily, there are examples of IHIPs to be found all over the Internet. Just google it if you're interested in finding one.

I had joined several Yahoo groups of homeschoolers on Long Island, and found a curriculum program that we like, http://www.time4learning.com/

A sample page from Time4Learning.com

There are many, many choices out there. Some are "C-based" (Christian), and some are not homeschooling curricula per se, as they are actually private schools that just happen to have a virtual classroom. These come with tuition payments, but are still far, far less than a bricks-and-mortar school (around $2,000-$6,000 per year), and parents don't need to file as much paperwork because it isn't really homeschooling, it's private schooling at home. So there!

Time4Learning is $19.99 a month. It includes animated lesson plans in the four main areas of study (Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies), a parents' area (with a fantastic parents' forum, broken down by state and covering every question anyone could possibly have), and it also tracks your kid's progress -- how much time they spend on lessons and what they are studying. It assigns homework and grades tests as well. All of this can be printed out and added to the quarterly reports that parents must file with their local school (which acts as an emissary for the State Department of Education) four times a year.

Compiling lesson plans on Time4Learning.com

If this all still sounds overwhelming, do what I do, yell "HELLLLLPPPP!!!!"

I yelled on a local homeschooling Yahoo group, and within hours two of the local mothers offered to meet me, with their kids and my kids, at the Morton Wildlife Refuge in Noyac. While the kids (which included two other sixth-grade boys, hallelujah!) fed the birds, the mothers counseled me.

One of the mothers, Karen, a naturopathic doctor from Riverhead, promised me it wasn't that hard once you got going. Teresa showed me a sample IHIP, the quarterly reports, and other sundry and useful materials. Once I saw it in black and white, it really isn't that hard.

Choosing a curriculum is also based on some of the things I know Bing likes. For example, candy. He would do ANYTHING for candy, but he is also allergic to artificial dyes, especially the ubiquitous Red Dye 40, which has been linked in studies to ADHD and has been banned in other countries.

So, the candy, if any was to be consumed, had to be wholesome. I looked up the astonishingly talented confectionista, Miche Bacher, of Sacred Sweets in Greenport, and we went for a visit.

I probably should have made sure it wasn't just before one of the biggest sugar orgies of the year: Valentine's Day. Miche and Nanao were packing box after box, but made time to speak with me and my son. Hopefully, some candy-making lessons are in the works.

We also looked up a future field trip to Hershey, Pa., where we will take the Great Chocolate Ride and maybe it won't be as totally freaky as the ride in the movie of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," which still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

When we looked up Hershey's Chocolate World on the Internet -- glory be! May is Homeschoolers Month! If we can get together a group from Long Island, we get major discounts and all sorts of educational stuff.

We are also going to be reading "Candyfreak" by Steve Almond, one of my all-time favorite books. It is beyond Bing's reading level (Roald Dahl probably would have been a better choice) but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

As you can see, you can construct part of your homeschool curriculum around just about anything.
Stay tuned.

An Overwhelming Undertaking?

I think too many parents are put off from homeschooling because it seems like an overwhelming undertaking. The truth is, it isn't, especially nowadays with that new-fangled Internet thingie.

"I need your support in this," I told Eric, my husband, after we agreed that this would be the best route for Bing.

"You got it, babe," he said leisurely. Eric says most things leisurely. He's a sort of real-life Baloo the Bear, focusing on the bare necessities of life while I, the polar opposite, need to be yanked out of the downward spiral of minutiae before I become mired in its ponderous goo.

"I really mean it," I reiterated. "I need you to be a real hands-on parent with this. One hundred percent."

"I will." He spoke of taking his son kayaking and fishing, taking him to work, and playing chess with him. These are all good things.

The common perception is that homeschooling must be done at a desk, or that it takes six to eight hours a day, neither of which are even remotely true unless that's what floats your boat. Also that it is a lonely, solitary task, and also that the majority of homeschooling families are religious right-wingers or paranoid survivalists waiting for Armageddon. None of that is true either.

Sure there are nuts in homeschooling. There are nuts everywhere! But, according to The New York Times, "homeschooling is the new chic." Over 1.5 million kids in the U.S. were being homeschooled in 2007, a number that had grown 11 percent each year for a decade. A lot of the homeschooling families are devout in their faith, and you know what I say? Good for them! This is still a free country, I think, so as long as children are getting the education they need to succeed in the world, it's still up to the parents as to how that information will be disseminated.

But many parents are simply torn, as we are, between a public school system made up mostly of terrific, dedicated educators whose hands are tied by mandatory state testing, and private schools which now ask for tuitions higher than the Ivy League school I attended and which are filled with entitled, apathetic brats. Not much of a choice there.

We look at this as a blessing...and a possibility, as we say in Buddhism, to "change poison into medicine," take a potentially bad situation and turn it into something good.

For a few hours a day with a computer program, punctuated by reading at the library, special projects, group physical activities, and a little extra effort, you can homeschool too.

Stay tuned.