Homeschooling - the Ugly Admin side of it.

A friend from FB asked me some questions that a lot of other have asked me in the past regarding the administrative side of homeschooling. Something I both like and dread. I've been doing this for 3 years and it's only now that I feel I have gotten the hang of it and it doesn't stress me out that much.

Before I go into it, I need to explain that although I am primarily a homeschooling mom, I have a lot of other engagements that take me away from my home.  This means that when I conduct trainings for others, or I do my coaching/counseling and consultancy work, I cannot homeschool. I have had to make provisions for these things.

MASTERPLAN:

At the start of the school year I go through each and every book of Andrea. I divide each book into 4 parts so that I know how much I need to complete per year. I normally front load the schedule because I take into consideration the Christmas period and that my months tend to get hectic when it's the end of the school year as well. Here's a sample of a general Master plan:

• Math  
• Chapter 1 - Addition
• Chapter 2 - Subtraction
• Chapter 3 - Multiplication by 2 and 3
• Chapter 4 - Division by 2 and 3
• Science
• Unit 1 - Senses
• Unit 2 - Senses Working Together
• Unit 3 - Growing and Developing
• Language
• Chapter 1 - Sentences and Personal Narratives
• Chapter 2 - Nouns and Friendly Letters

Monthly Plan/Weekly Plan:

I then break down the Master Plan into 10 weeks. I have 10 weeks because 8 weeks are for the lessons, 1 extra week for any catch-up or overflow and the 10th week for the exams.

When I break things down here I go into detail. In my excel file I specify the dates, when I would have quizzes. And my ideas for projects that could possibly integrate the different subject matters. My project ideas are very malleable though because our projects are ultimately Andrea's ideas.

My excel file looks like this:
1. Columns are labelled as Week 1 - Week 10
2. Rows are subjects.
3. I input the specific topics per cell. I also include ideas like movies, trips, books to help me.


Daily Schedule:

We don't have a daily schedule. Sometimes we homeschool for 4 hours a day. Sometimes 8 hours a day. Sometimes 0 hours a day. It's easy to adjust as long as we don't stray too far from my weekly plan.

What Made You Decide to Homeschool?

This is a question I have been asked quite a lot this past year. You see, I have been very vocal about my choice and it's getting people more curious and that is making me happy. So to answer this question, here's why I'm homeschooling.

1. Andrea went to a progressive preschool and they are taught lessons based on their skill levels. At the age of 4 she has learned everything she needed to learn for preschool and was already touching on Grade 1 lessons. So now, I am torn between sending her back to preschool and having her go through the stuff she has already learned (or learn things she will eventually have to study again when she goes to big school). This would mean I would pay the school to teach her something she already knows. This sounds pretty illogical to me. I looked at my options and I found homeschooling. I have always been curious about it and the more I read about it, the more I fell in love. The beauty is that I get this one year as a sort of trial period. If it doesn't work for us, I send her back to school. If it works for us, then I continue homeschooling her.
2. The lack of character education in kids nowadays. I think my daughter is smart. 98% of parents feel the same. It's our contractual obligation as parents to think our kids are the best! =) However, I know that all of the talents and skills God gave my daughter will be useless if I don't help mold her character. It will be incredibly hard (but not impossible) for me to do this if she is spending 80% of her waking time in school. 
3. My cousin sends her kid to an exclusive school. She spend 120k a year on basic expense (not including around 35k on service, baon, school supplies, etc). the kid spends around 5 hours in school. then goes home to study for 3 hours with my cousin. There's a lot of frustration during these sessions because they are both tired. I spend the same amount of time homeschooling my daughter. So why the hell would I spend more to have someone teach my child only to have to augment the teaching for 3 hours daily. It doesn't make sense.
4. The rains/typhoons don't affect our curriculum =) 
5. We get to go on trips without cancelling classes. 
6. I get to see my daughters weakness/character flaws and actively work on them. 
7. I see my own weakness and character flaws and actively work on them. 

Homeschooling Helper

My daughter went to a great progressive preschool for 2 years before starting homeschooling for her Prep year. It's great in a way, because she has learned so much in that school. The drawback is that, I am now forced to "re-teach" things she has already learned because that's the required curriculum for Prep. 

The academic adviser was kind enough to really help me customize Andrea's lessons more fitting her strengths and weaknesses. For example, she wasn't given a reading text book because her reading level is already way past what is required. Instead, we were advised to read her longer story books instead. 

I realized that more than the lessons I need to teach her this year. I want to mold her character and her independence.  I have taken to leaving her when she works but she always goes to me to ask if she's already completed the pages for that day so I decided to use my handy dandy (and very colorful) flags.

Basically, our arrangement has been:

• Blue - Monday
• Green - Tuesday
• Yellow - Wednesday
• Pink - Thursday
• Orange - Friday

SHE LOVES IT. She has this sense of satisfaction every time she gets to peel off the flag after finishing the activity. 


We use it for her daily bible reading. 

For her textbooks. 

And even for her story books!

And guess what, I use these flags for my books as well.

I bought those flags for only 20 pesos and I've been using it incessantly and I have barely made a dent on it!