Jasmine has had nothing but work experience from September 7-16. She clocked 104 hours of work at the Kansas State Fair. She was in a booth selling showerheads.
I have spent this morning looking up high school graduation requirements. I thought I knew them. Now I find myself confused. For Kansas it lists units. It doesn't say anywhere just what a unit is. I've done many searches and the best I can find is stating that a high school credit is 120-180 hours based on what the study is. No help.
At one time I had a chart for graduation and it stated exactly on academic hours and it stated that an academic hour was 50 minutes. If anyone has any help for me, please let me know!
I was going to give 2 credits of work experience but now it looks like one credit, and it will go under the elective units.
Here is a photo I took of her while she worked one day. She happened to have just restocked the table and was tearing down the box.
Looks like I have my work cut out for me calculating hours.
I picked up a whole set of famous Kansans trading cards as well as a book to go with them free at the state fair. This will be more than enough for the requirement for Kansas history. Not to mention that we recently took the vacation trip and visited museums too!
I'm also reading that one of the science requirements is a lab course. We recently bought a microscope so looks like I need to find material to study using it.
I'm linking up with:
I am finally getting back to posting these weekly.
Generally we start school each year on August 1st since that is the first day of the fiscal school year. We start slow, introducing a different subject each day, the doing just 2 or 3 until the first day of the public school.
I guess we sort of did that this year too. Jasmine and I went through her work books and the software. I explained to her what my expectations are for the year. We didn't, however, do any "real" schoolwork until the first day of public high school, which was August 16.
I have built a new squidoo lens that will highlight our schooling throughout the year. It's already pretty full, but will continue to grow. I do hope you will click over and check it out. It will open in a new window.
Homeschooling 2012/2013
I'm going to close this week including the photos of the main things we are using in our schooling this year. These photos are also included in the lens:
I am happy to once again be linking up with:
Again last week we only ended up with 2 days of what I call full school. By that I mean that all of the books got pulled out and we worked every subject.
I am super busy with my crafts. I've decided it's a must to up my income. They won't sell if they aren't made!
We always go to the library each Tuesday after Bible study. Right now we still have 5 books about Greece to read. I'm building a squidoo lens highlighting the books we are reading, photos, and what we are learning. I will share that once we get through all of the books. This last week we went to the video section. For now, watching educational videos throughout the week is going to be part of our routine.
We only watched 2 last week. One was on Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes and the other was Alex Anderson Teaches You to Start Quilting. Ok, the quilting video was for me, but she really paid attention to it. So much that I'm sure she will be reminding me a lot of what the lady was teaching. Yep....home-ec.
I need to work harder at cracking down on her to work on things that she can do on her own.
I have a software to review called the Algebrator. I hope to get that done tomorrow. Along with the review will be a giveaway here on my blog. Jasmine is actually excited to give it a try and see if seeing the problem worked in front of her will help her understand it better than me working problems on the board for her to see and reading how to do them out of a book.
I will leave you with this photo of Jasmine holding up one of her chalk pastel drawings.
I can't say that we had the best of week's as far as book work, but it was a good week.
The grandkids were out of school Friday for Veteran's Day. I didn't figure we would get much schoolwork done with 5 kids in the house. It ended up that her youth group decided to meet for the day since there was no school. They had a 6 hour or so get together. It's good for her to go and socialize with kids her own age, so in the long run I was glad she got to go.
Tuesday was sewing club at church for me. Usually we can't get Jasmine involved in helping with anything. We make quilts that we give to the Domestic violence center and meet once a month from 10-3. Jasmine still attends the Bible study upstairs and then comes downstairs with us. Once she is downstairs we have lunch. She brings schoolwork in her backpack for the afternoon. This time we talked her into doing some tracing of letters for us. We are making a banner for the church's 125th anniversary next year.
She did end up doing some math once she was done cutting out the letters. I would actually much prefer she spent the afternoon helping us cut material, tie quilts, and learning to sew.
We are still reading books about Greece. The current book we are reading is Teens in Greece. I planned on moving on to England next since her youth group is supposed to make a trip to England in March. However, they still need $6000 to make the trip so now they are talking about going to Disney World instead. We may still study England, time will tell on that I guess.
I am super busy working on quilts and things each day now. It's something I have to do for myself and for our money situation. I've decided we will start picking up educational DVD's at the library each week again. If nothing else those can work in with history and science for times when I am working. I read a lot out loud to Jasmine in our studies. It's the way she learns best.
I'm going to move on this week as we need to head out the door to Bible study for this week.
Alas, I have no photos to show this week. I've got to get myself together on those.
We had a good week. We pushed to make sure we had good days. All subjects were covered.
In math I brought back out the overview book. I had been using this in the past as a way to keep some concepts fresh in her mind with a few problems on the dry erase board each day. It's a great addition to the day, especially those busy days since she can work on the board on her own time.
We are still reading the books about Greece. I plan on starting a squidoo lens tomorrow sharing some of what we are learning and the books we are reading.
The Introduction to Business is proving to be very interesting. She had to ask me though, "Why does this book have so much math in it?" Silly girl--business and math go together. I'm glad I happened across the book in my books for sale!
I'm glad that she is taking the time on her own for physical activity. She is making a point on her own to get out and walk, ride the bike, etc for a set amount of time each day.
We are heading out the door right now for our weekly Bible study class at church.
I am linking up with:
For a birthday gift, one of the lady's at church gave Jasmine a $30 gift card to Hobby Lobby. She spent it buying a sketch pad, drawing pencils, blending tools, and chalk pastels. Jasmine loves to draw and is good at it too. She is self taught through books and the internet. I'm thinking of a squidoo lens to highlight her drawing as part of my homeschool series there for this year. Here she is drawing this past week:
In other news this past week---I feel we had a pretty good week.
Another thing that Jasmine bought with some of her birthday money was a Belly Buster. This has her actually doing daily physical activity according to the instructions.
Sunday she was still at camp until after noon.
We made it through every subject throughout the week.
I checked out a lot of books on Greece from the library. They are from the children's section, but have wonderful pictures. We are reading through those. They will also turn in to a squidoo lens.
She's enjoying the Introduction to Business textbook. I'm glad as it will help her understand a lot more than business.
In home-ec we read through the section on doing laundry. It's prompted her to want to get back to doing her own laundry--now if it would just prompt her to put it away instead of leaving it in piles in her room!
She's making sure to write in her journal on a regular basis.
Math is math---we were studying rates and ratios last week. We will continue with that this week as well as she will work in the Algebra 1/2 textbook.
And, only Jasmine would do something like this---she is reading the ebook of How To Raise Up A Child. She chose to read it since we are having so many behavioral problems with my 2 yr old grandson. Last night she asked me if I would read it out loud to her instead though.
I'm going to hop along for this week. We will be leaving soon for our weekly Bible study at church and our weekly trip to the public library.
I am linking up with:
Yes, last week started out with Jasmine's birthday. She's 15 years old now. Soon she will be grown and out of here. It's a sad though indeed. She is my youngest of 4 children.
Here are a couple of photos from her party:
The second one is my 2 yr old grandson having fun with the noisemaker and hat. She had a nice party with family and friends over. And, she got her prized gift of her own cell phone.
In other news for the week of homeschooling:
We had a pretty good week. Tuesday was my sewing club. As much as I would love for her to put down the books for the day and help us and learn to sew, she doesn't have an interest. She works on schoolwork on her own while we sew until 3 pm. She doesn't get down there until almost noon after Bible study upstairs. Bible study at church is something we do each Tuesday, but I miss once a month for sewing club.
Although we only made it through every subject 2 different days last week, I am still very pleased with the amount of work we accomplished.
Jasmine attended the weekend fall retreat at the Kansas Bible Camp. She's good about telling me what she's done that would count for school. This included all of the chapel times, all of the game time, as well as their service ops time.
I went to list a textbook up for sale in my half.com account, but then decided I want to use the text with Jasmine. It's Introduction to Business. It's been a fun textbook so far, and very interesting. I did list it, so, if it doesn't sell (at least not right away) we might get to finish it. If it does sell, in the meantime, I am going to work in it with her until such time.
I have bookshelves in the other room of books for future use---books we've used in the past but maybe didn't finish----and then I have milk crates full of books that I have for sale. Always something to find at my house. So much, in fact that I have considered opening up a homeschool lending library and contacting our local group to let them know about it. We used to have a lending library at a members home but they have long since been done with homeschooling and moved away. I know that I sure miss the opportunity to check out books. I'm sure if I did open a lending library that several families would donate books and things for me to have available to share as well. I'm sure going to keep this in mind.
I better move along for this week. I'm linking up with:
As I look over my notes from last week I see NO math listed. That's not a good thing.
Monday we did get to a few subjects---not many. One thing that was wrong Monday was that I was doing an online party 8 hours of the day to sell my crafts.
Tuesday we went to Bible study at church in the morning as we do every week. The rest of Tuesday I can't tell you. I remember--she attended a choir performance at the high school. A friend is in the choir and she was surprised to find several of her other friends also performing.
Wednesday is my husband's day off work. He tends to turn on movies or maybe the History channel. We don't tend to get a lot done. We strive to have things for her to do that she can pretty much do on her own. (She doesn't like how he butts in with commentary and answers LOL) She did attend her youth group meeting Wednesday evening.
Thursday--I don't remember Thursday at all other than we spent the evening at church for family fun night--playing bingo. Wait! I remember something. We are using the Every Day Fit program put out by Subway (kit received free over the internet). I had her take 3 of the grandkids out and play 4-square. It was one of the assignments to stay fit from the program. Here is a picture I took of them playing:
Oh yeah, the public school was out on Thursday and Friday for conferences. This means the grandkids were here all day. She went to spend the night at her friends house Thursday evening. Then she spent the night at another friends house on Friday. A friend stayed overnight with her Saturday.
She informs me that she did a lot of things while away for the weekend with friends that would count for school: attended a football game, baked cookies, and lots of walking for exercise.
So there you have it--this is what happens during a crazy week. I'm not even certain that I even wrote down everything.
So far this week is looking a lot better! Her birthday was Sunday, but I will share more about that in next week's post.
I am linking up with:
Last week I wrote about my frustrations of being away from home so much and feeling like we weren't getting much schoolwork in.
The week ended up better than I thought as I did end up getting to stay home 2 days of the week. Both of those days we did get in all subjects. That is such a nice feeling!
One of the other days when I had running to do, we took schoolwork in the car with us. I have to take my mom a lot of places, so Jasmine and I can work on schoolwork while she is inside different places. That actually ends up working out quite well.
Let me explain a little bit---I do a lot of reading out loud to Jasmine. Yes, she is almost 15, and perfectly capable of reading to herself. However, I enjoy reading out loud to her and learning along with her. Also, her learning style has proven that she gets more out of being read out loud to than reading it herself.
On one of our trips away from home Jasmine took her laptop along. It seems she is writing a story that I didn't even know about. She was up to chapter 3. I will ask her to share her story with me once it's done....and I plan on sharing it online as well.
For the weekend Jasmine went off to a youth convention with the youth group she attends. Those are always educational, but also physical. They played lots of games, did lots of walking and swam too. This is helpful for our PE time.
Lesson learned---rant all I want, but in the long run, learning is going on all the time regardless of whether I feel it is or not. Relax, have a good time, and don't sweat the small stuff.
This week is looking great and it's only Tuesday, but I will be reporting on that last week. I'm hoping to start getting some pictures taken. I have done squidoo lenses with our journals. This year I'm doing just one lens but haven't taken the time to get it started yet.
Just how you handle the stress of having a very busy life outside the home and trying to find time for schoolwork??
Maybe the real question is how NOT to have such a busy life outside of the home?
Last week the Kansas State fair was in town. we were so busy away from home I didn't even do a bolg post here about our homeschool! But, let's go to the week before that.
We are early in to the school year and I'm already feeling major stress over lack of time at home and the lack of "book work" that is getting done. I keep weekly notes of what we get done. This year Jasmine is in high school. This means that not only am I jotting down what we do, but I am also keeping track of how much time is spent on each thing. The week of September 4th was a holiday week. Labor day meant no school for the grandkids. With them home all day, doing school work with Jasmine is virtually impossible.
Here is what I have down in my notebook: Church 60 minutes---Bible study 90 minutes--Guideposts devotions a total of 17 minutes---reading in book for history a total of 75 minutes---math 60 minutes--Home Ec reading 15 minutes---English 120 minutes----Science 22 minutes----Reading on her own 15 minutes----youth group 120 minutes, (When I type it out this way it doesn't look so bad I guess, and it is early in the school year---maybe I just need to relax??)
This past week of Sept 11 was horrible for me. We spent endless hours at the Kansas State Fair. Four of those hours was with the Headstart class, the rest on our own. I have made myself a list of different education things we did at the fair such as visiting the petting zoo, the animal birthing center etc. I've also included a lot of the walking time as PE time. But man, with those trips to the fair we only did most subjects just ONCE for the entire week (as far as working in our stack of books)
This is the week of Sept. 18---didn't start well when I have to be gone yesterday almost 5 hours with my mom to a dr. appt. I wasn't prepared to be away and all I asked Jasmine to do was to work on cleaning her room! Once home all I thought about was a nap. Wait!! I want to talk about this week next Tuesday so I'm going to stop.
This is more of a rant than anything else......a way for me to get my stress and frustrations off of my chest. However, I do want to know how many others are out there like me and having this time problem.
I am now linking up weekly (or attempting to) with:
Going through the Hip Homeschool Moms blog, she has the Ultimate Homeschool Blogroll.
In this linky you can list your homeschool related blog in categories of how you homeschool. There is Charlotte Mason, Classical, Eclectic, Montessori, Traditional, Unit-Based, Unschool, and Other on her list to choose where to place your blog.
First let me give a little background for those who don't know me. I started homeschooling in 1999 with my oldest child, and only son. He was doing very poorly in school after missing a lot of days with migraine headaches and then not caring anymore. He blossomed at home with me.
The following year my 2 oldest daughters asked if they could be homeschooled too. My son was in 10th grade at the time. The following year curcumstances didn't allow me to homeschool but I did start with the girls. They were in 8th and 5th grades. My youngest was going to Headstart.
Circumstances again stopped me from homeschool my oldest daughter. She got pregnant at the age of 14 and was gone from home for a time. However, I continued to homeschool my middle daughter until she graduated high school. I still homeschool my youngest daughter, who will be 15 October 9th and is in 9th grade this year.
We have always been a poor family, so buying a full set of curriculum has always been out of the question. Along the way we've found some Bob Jones, Abeka, etc at yard sales or homeschool sales. Book sales at the public library have been a Godsend as well as checking out books from the library.
So.....help me figure out just what homeschooling style we use. I call is eclectic.
Currently we are reading out loud out of books I've checked out from the library pertaining to history and science (gardening).
I have bought the book Home-Ec 101 that we are currently reading out loud for Home Ec. We read each day in a Guideposts for devotions. We are working math out of the Math Doesn't Suck book because she has trouble understanding math. At the same time she is also working out of Saxon Algebra 1/2 handed down from my middle daughter. (I have all the teacher's editions to this set). We are working Earth Science out of a text book that I picked up at one of the library book sales. We are doing English out of a textbook, also bought at the library book sale. I get books to read and review, those, along with books she chooses of her own at the library comprise her reading. We attend Bible study at our church once a week. She attends youth group at another church weekly. Another thing we do is print out This Day in History papers to read out loud. I also make some of these in to squidoo lenses. She has books on drawing that she works in regularly for art. Bible study is big for Jasmine and she does this a lot on her own both in her own Bibles and through the internet. This is all for now.
I am keeping track of time this year since she is high school and I want to make sure she is earning the proper credits to graduate.
What would you call our style? If you care to, you can check out a couple of the lenses I have built on squidoo documenting our homeschool journey. The first one is an old one when she wanted to attempt unschooling. The second one is one from this past school year. Please let me know what you think.
Our Unschooling Journal
I'm going to build at least one this year. My plan is rather than a journal type to highlight books we are using throughout the year. This may or may not go in to a 2nd lens. We do use a lot of books.
This is my first week to hook up with Hip Homeschooling Mom's and her weekly Hip Homeschool Hop.
