WoW!!! I never realised that Homeschooling would have such an impact on our lives & can hardly believe how it’s changed our family in such a short period of time.
Misha’s been homeschooling for 6 months now & I am proud to report that he’s made major progress since August last year. He scores above 80% on most of his worksheets, although seems to hate these with a passion. We are therefore looking into the options of a more interactive curriculum in order to address his learning styles. Thanks to technology, there’s some awesome material available to make learning more enjoyable.
Tannie Hettie reckons in a month or so he won’t be needing her assistance with remedial anymore either. To date I do not know what we would have done without Tannie Hettie… her assistance the past few years have been invaluable.
Of course, SmartTutor also played a huge roll in his performance because it addressed the topics in his learning styles in a way no classroom could. It also made learning more fun than the mundane worksheets. Let the results speak for themselves…
Of course the improvement in reading & comprehension is most remarkable as his report below shows…
Who would have thought that he would achieve this all in just 6 months? He’s starting to enjoy reading much more too & has started to read a little more on his own. At least, it seems we’ve managed to get rid of his hatred for reading.
As for Jesse, in spite of of finding his schoolwork very “boring” and his books being aimed more at a classroom environment than for homeschooling, he still averaged above 70% this term. I can just imagine what difference a proper homeschool orientated curriculum will make to his results. My guess is that he’ll be able to achieve A and A+ if his curriculum is more self-study friendly.
It seems Le-Amen turned out to just provide “regular school at home”. They have quite a heavy schedule in many instances it’s even worse than private school. Their primary school curriculum consists of loads & loads of worksheets. I have marking them coming out my ears & Misha hates them with a passion. For high school they expect far too many tests on top of the exams they provide, but those I need to set up myself. To top that, the high school text books are aimed at a classroom environment, with every other task being group work. The teacher’s manuals are aimed at qualified teachers & not sufficient to assist a parent with little or no subject knowledge to assist the student. All that stress in order to obtain an “official school report” at the end of the year is just not worth it.
Watch this space, we’re planning some major changes in order to address their “likes” and learning styles.
Firstly, we’ll be replacing their core curriculum with Switched on Schoolhouse from Alpha Omega Publishing, a comprehensive Bible-based curriculum that offers computer-based learning for grades 3-12. It includes a PC textbook with animation, video clips, and other fascinating multimedia to enhance their learning. Best of all is that 85% of the quizzes, tests & exams are automatically graded, thus reducing my workload in marking books. Student learning can be customised to fit individual education needs.
Jesse prefers the text books for Math, so we’ll be switching over to Teaching Textbooks. It’s a regular Textbook / Workbook curriculum, but includes teaching DVDs for all the lessons & solutions, so if he doesn’t understand a particular concept he can watch the teaching DVD to help him. For the grades 3 to 7 it includes PC-based exercises, that are are automatically graded, which of course will be perfect for Misha.
Misha has taken to “Lapbooking” and we’ll be bringing a lot of those in for him to exercise his creative skills for learning purposes.
I trust that these changes will help us take the “school” out of homeschooling & bring education and fun back into their lives to help them reach their full potential in life.
We had a hectic term this was. I’m totally wasted & think the boys must be quite tired too…
For now, we’re taking a well deserved 2 weeks break.
