Quick Overview for Quarantine Homeschoolers

Hello fellow quarantine homeschoolers,
You can read through the entire blog and find a lot of info about how/what I do. The information overload may overwhelm you. So here's a condensed view of what our homeschool currently looks like (as of May 2020).

Two Middle Schoolers:
They take one class at Palomar College each semester. With lots of help from me.
They independently do all their other work. My biggest difficulty with them is making sure they're doing a quality job on their work, because they'll hide away in their rooms doing school and if I don't check it religiously, they'll do a shortened, poor version of it. Will they be ready for high school? We will soon see. But the college classes have taught them many things about school that I never could - deadlines, tests, following other people's instructions, etc.

Two Elementary Schoolers:
I tend to focus my attention on them and school goes well and is high quality. I would rather teach elementary school kids - I love their wonder and enthusiasm and the fun activities we can do together. It's hard to balance my focus and attention between the two age groups. I need to focus on the older ones because they're going to high school soon, but at the same time, the younger ones will lose their innocence and love of learning and I want to take advantage of that while it lasts.

School Week:
M - school
T - math tutor, piano lessons, guitar lessons, art class
W - school
Th - school
F - school or field trip

School Day:
Timing is flexible. I workout and cook in the morning. When I'm ready, I start school with the littles and get done in a couple hours. Usually from 9-12ish. After that, we all have free time. Once quaratine ends we will have sports every day starting at 4ish.

School Chart:
I use the same one I've used for years. I print a new one off each week. Every kids' is a little different. And I tweak it all the time. Here's one of them:





Curriculum:
Refer to this post which has been recently updated: https://oldfashionedschoolhouse.blogspot.com/2019/07/curriculum-in-nutshell.html

Organization:
Instead of bins and closets, every person now keeps their books and notebooks in a backpack. That way we can do school in other places. My kids focus better and go faster when we are doing school elsewhere (library, institute building, back yard).

Charter School:
We use Inspire Charter School. They give me a lot of flexibility (which I have to have), plus $3000 per child per year. I use the money on things like curriculum and music teachers. I only have to turn in one sample per month per kid (plus other easy stuff like attendance). My kids take 1 or 2 tests through them each year, which is a small price to pay to help keep charter schools open.

College Goal:
I wanted my kids to do college during high school, and count it for both. That way when they graduate from high school they'd have their Associates and would be Transfer Students instead of New Students. However, as of right now, my kids want to go to public high school (to see what they're missing out on), so my college plans may not work. But if you're interested in doing it this way, I know a lot of teenagers who have done so. It works!

Staying Organized - Schedules, Charts, Bins, & Books

In order to homeschool I think it's pretty vital to stay organized. But maybe that's because being organized is one of my passions ;)

PLANNING THE WEEK
Planning our homeschool week used to take a couple of hours. I would usually do it Sunday evening or Monday (while my kids were at the charter school). However, now there is minimal planning because in all my curriculums I just follow along in our different books. Lots of books. Lots of book marks. In the perfect world I would do prep work on Sunday nights and have our youtube videos or coloring pages printed out, but now I just find them and print them right when I need them.

My School Binder
I have a binder with divider tabs in it for each subject. When I print off coloring or map pages for History, I stick them in the History tab and know where to find them when I need them.

My Weekly School Chart
I no longer use this. But here it is just for reference sake. Basically, this is a chart of everything I wanted us to complete that week. It needed to be updated weekly and was useful when I was coming up with activities myself. However, now that I am just following along in our different curriculum books, I no longer need this.

Kid Weekly To-Do & School Chart
This is the main chart I use ALL THE TIME. I have tweaked it many times to fit each child's needs. It's divided into "jobs" (make your bed) and "school" tasks. And among all the tasks, the ones I have to help them with are bolded. That way, if I know I have 30 min to help child #3, we can hammer out the things he needs my help with. Then he can get everything else done on his own. Or if it's a day we're not doing school, he knows just to do the "jobs" portion. It does need to be printed weekly. Each child has their own chart and I cross off each task once its complete.

Weekly Schedule
I used to use a wall calendar and would write all our activities on it. This was useful when my kids were younger. Now the older ones have their own phones with a family calendar on it.


I'm Bored Chart
My kids have more free time than other kids. They have at least two hours of free time after lunch, plus whatever they had before breakfast. Over the years they've had a lot of practice coming up with activities to keep themselves busy without relying on me or on screens. This is definitely a skill to be learned and practiced. Sometimes they do need a little guidance from me, so I've typed up a list of all the different activities I could think of and have it displayed in our kitchen.
I updated this list during quarantine...

 

Screen Chart
I used to use this chart to keep track of their screen time. Now I keep track on their weekly school chart. We have tweaked their "screen rules" many times over the years. But here's a way to keep track of their weekly screen time if that's the method you're using.

ORGANIZING OUR STUFF
Keeping our books and supplies organized is also very important. It's very frustrating when I tell someone to "write a sentence in your history book" and their history book is nowhere to be found. So here's what we do with all of our "school stuff". 

School Room
Every house we've lived in since we began homeschooling has had a designated school room. In our last house it was the formal dining room that we converted into the school room. I had to purchase a storage cabinet for all of our school bins (and I used the coat closet too). In our current house we have a guest bedroom downstairs that has been converted into our school room. This room has a closet, which is very convenient for all of our supplies. In this room there is a school table (long and rectangular, it used to be our dining table),  our upright piano, a storage cabinet, a large wall map & timeline, and a large white board. I know some people do school in their kitchen, but I prefer having a separate room so we don't have to clear off the kitchen/school table every time we want to eat.

Bins
Every person, including myself, has a bin for their school books (notebooks, workbooks, teacher guides, etc.). When school starts we each just grab our bin and put it by our seat at the school table. (Yes, we do have assigned seats to prevent unnecessary quarreling). *Update - we now use backpacks instead of bins. That way we can take our work on-the-go easier.

Books
In their school bin, each child has a:

• History notebook - Any writing assignment we do that is mostly historical goes in here: biography based writing assignment, current events, history coloring pages or maps, etc.
• Writing notebook - Any other writing assignment goes in here: poetry, literature based writing assignments, spelling & vocab, etc.
• Math workbook
• Beast Academy workbook (Math supplement)
• Handwriting workbook
• Science notebook 

Supplies
The supplies we use all the time are left out on top of our storage cabinet in the school room. These include crayons, black pens, colored pens, colored pencils, markers, tape, glue & scissors. All other craft supplies are put away in a bin in the closet.

*Since this post, we moved again. We now have a designated school room that is actually supposed to be an office. It's complete with desks, cabinets, shelves, etc. We keep our backpacks in the cabinets and our supplies in the drawers and cabinets. A school room can be made out of any space you have on hand - kitchen, bedroom, dining room, or even car.