GIANTmicrobes

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Moving brings more excitement, challenges to homeschooling

Colorado ho!

 
Well, moving to Colorado has been great for us. The homeschool community here in Greeley and the Northern Colorado area is large and we've been joining in some of the fun. It has been nice. I looked up and joined the group a month before we moved to try to get to know the members ahead of our arrival. I think knowing that there were kids around his same age, who enjoyed the same things, just waiting to meet him here, made the transition easier for Nick. He even played Minecraft online with some of the kids before we moved.
The available resources (i.e., things to do for bored kids) are tremendous as well. We've been to several very nice restaurants (one that is completely based on fondue eating where we ordered a bowl of chocolate first and then dinner), a couple of sports games (the Harlem Globetrotters and a University of Northern Colorado hockey game), several downtown events, and have enjoyed what the local recreation department has available (rock climbing and swimming mainly but we are looking at the archery lessons).
We've learned there is a lot more educational opportunities available to us through the homeschool group and other new friends as well. We've learned about classes available to homeschoolers through the public school system as well as some charter schools. Some of the classes, including game design, sound very exciting and we are looking forward to starting those. There are several art classes as well that I know Nick will enjoy.

On to the challenges

 
So, those are the exciting parts.
The challenges started with the extra workload we've piled on since this is high school. Nick was having a hard time adapting from our previously, mostly unschooling style to paperwork. Lots and lots of paperwork. Practice makes perfect, we keep saying.
I really, really, really hated doing that to him but we've explained to him many times that a game designer requires loads of math. To help him understand, we sat and did research on how math is used in game design and 3D design. I've told him that I use Algebra, Geometry and Trigonometry on a daily basis as an artist, but he needed to hear that from other artists because sometimes Mom is wrong. It's true that I am sometimes wrong, but this time I wasn't. They even said a little calculus wouldn't hurt either.
Nick is also having to get used to a new teacher. His dad is being a tremendous help by teaching the math. Of course, he has a different style, so they are getting used to each other and their own learning and teaching styles.
And to make the situation more difficult, the Math-U-See that we bought isn't as helpful as we hoped. I had heard wonderful things from other homeschool parents about it and how it helped their children who learn best visually and kinesthetically. But none of those parents had made it to higher levels of math yet. The main reason I bought the program was to provide that different way of learning, but we are finding the manipulatives aren't used much. Also, the student text we got has very little and sometimes NO explanation on how to work the types of problems he's encountering in each lesson.
The parent book and DVD are somewhat helpful (though Nick finds the DVD lectures boring), and even without those, Nick's dad is able to work through Algebra I with Nick easily, and would be able to do geometry, Algebra II and trigonometry without much outside guidance. But we were hoping to have Nick learn how to work independently, as he will eventually need to do in college. The student text is basically just a bunch of practice pages. Practice pages are fine and definitely important in order to make sure Nick masters each type of problem, but we need something more.
That's where being a part of a homeschool group came in very handy! I sent a message out to the group requesting suggestions for higher level math. I got a couple of responses that I think we'll be quite happy with:
  • Life of Fred is a book series that provides math in the form of a narrative. It goes all the way up to calculus, statistics and linear algebra. I have used story form before to try to get Nick to see why we use or how to solve certain kinds of math problems, so this may work for him. Some of the other homeschool parents hate it and some love it, so I'll be checking it out of the library first before I buy anything. I have heard from most parents, however, that it can only be used as a supplement. So we'll still need practice pages.
  • The program that really caught my eye because it was described as working great with visual learners is Teaching Textbooks. I watched their demo online and it is definitely more involved than Math-U-See. The student text has the explanation we are looking for and there are DVDs providing a lecture on how to solve the problem types. After the student works through the practice problems in the text, they can then go to the solution DVD to see how to work the ones they missed. Every problem is written out and worked out right in front of their eyes.
There were other textbook choices provided: Geometry: Seeing, Doing, Understanding by Harold R. Jacobs and Algebra and Trigonometry: Functions and Applications by Paul A. Foerster, but I really like the idea of having something presented more visually or in story form.

Bringing it home

 
Other challenges we've encountered include additional chores, general teenage drama (though he's not nearly as bad as I was, so I'm thrilled), and not getting to see his old friends from Nevada as much (or play online with them as often).
Overall, though, when we ask Nick how he's enjoying Colorado and the changes, he tells us things are good. He enjoys the additional activities available and the additional time he gets to spend with his dad. He's teaching his dad some of his favorite video games and his dad is teaching him about sports (and math). Nick tells his friends in Nevada that he's making good friends here. We both enjoy the closer shopping and can't wait to go back to the fondue restaurant.
I'd say that despite the challenges, we are quite happy with the changes.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Great online homeschool resources

Here’s a collection of online resources of games, videos, audio and other things kids actually enjoy learning with. There's also some parent resources for putting together your own curriculum if you like or getting help teaching.
 

For Kids

Fun video/audio sites

  • LearnOutLoud.com has a bunch of audio and video resources. There are tons of educational audio books, MP3 downloads, podcasts, and videos. They are categorized wonderfully to make finding what you need easy, including a Kids section and a Free section.
  • Mangomon special education games are online games that help with reading and math.
  • Neok12 has a collection of free online educational videos, lessons, quizzes, games and puzzles. We recommend watching the videos first to make sure they are good quality because not all are.
  • Math Playground is for elementary and middle school students. Kids practice math skills, play logic games and have fun. There aren't as many math games for basic math like addition and subtraction as there are for decimals, fractions and percentages. Also the videos aren't exciting and fun like the games are.
  • Starfall is a great site for beginning readers. There are great activities for kids just starting out. It helps reinforce phonemic code with visuals and sounds.
  • Funbrain has a lot of educational games to help kids with a variety of subjects and several just-for-fun games too.
  • National Geographic Kids has lots of videos, stories and activities. This is more of a look and discover site. If you are looking for something specific to help teach a certain subject, you may find it hard to find exactly what you are looking for. But it is a fun site for kids to go to and learn while on the Internet.
  • The History Channel site has many free videos of their shows. Be sure to watch before showing any to your kids because not all are for kids. Because this is not a strictly kids' site, there are commercials to worry about before videos. This site also has games and a few other interesting features.

Some reading needed (audio or video may also be included)

  • Despite the name, some of the stories on Online Audio Stories are only available as text on the screen. You can click on the ALL AUDIO STORIES tab at the top to see the vast selection of children's stories available as audiobooks. There are a lot of children's classics, myths, fables, nursery rhymes, fairy tails, and poems.
  • The Exploratorium site covers science, art and human perception. There are plenty of videos and other things on this site that bring the subjects to life. This is also a good site for parents to pick up some lesson plan ideas.

Reading required (mostly text)

  • Science News for Kids has a lot of really good articles on a variety of science topics, especially recent discoveries and science news.
  • BioKIDS helps kids learn about animals. It provides plenty of photos of the animals along with information about their lifestyles and habitats. It is a good site for doing research for reports.
  • Project Gutenberg is the place where you can download over 30,000 free ebooks to read on your portable reading device. Their audiobooks partner site is LibriVox.

For Parents

  • Science buddies has many science experiments to help you enhance science lessons or to use for science fairs. The great organization on the site makes it easy to find exactly what you need for whatever science topic your kids are studying.
  • Math Projects Journal has lesson plans for teaching pre-algebra, algebra and geometry in multi-sensory ways to help make the lessons more memorable and fun.
  • A to Z Teacher Stuff is a teacher-created site designed to help teachers find online resources more quickly and easily. Find lesson plans, thematic units, teacher tips, discussion forums, downloadable teaching materials and eBooks, printable worksheets, emergent reader books, themes, and more.
  • Discovery Education has free lesson plans written by teachers for teachers. Classroom Resources has hundreds of original lesson plans for all ages of students. Use them as-is or as a base to develop your own lesson plans.
  • The Science News for Kids Teacher Zone provides lesson plans that go along with the most recent articles as well as a long listing of more websites that might be useful for parents or teachers.
  • Adrian Bruce's Educational Teaching Resources has fun educational games (that can be printed) and more to help create fun lessons for kids.
If you know of any other sites that should be listed here, please list it in the comments section below.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Homeschool High School

Homeschooling a high schooler is a whole new ballfield


Now that Nick is officially a high schooler, I thought, "We've got to get serious!"

I'm kidding, but only slightly.

We've been skipping along merrily for a while now, letting Nick decide his fate ... I mean ... education.

He's been learning Blender, the 3-D modeling program, really well and has created quite a bit with it. It still intimidates me, but he knows his way around it and I'm proud. He uses Blender Cookie for instruction and subscribes to their YouTube account so he's always up to date on new tricks.

He's decided he wants to lean toward the artistic side of game design, so I've shown him several websites for learning to draw and learning the graphics programs I use at work. We also purchased a video game character development and storytelling book that we are working our way through.

Most of you probably already knew that if you read my previous stuff, but what is new this time is that Nick is going into high school. I know we don't have long before he will be looking at video game design colleges. We need to be able to provide those colleges with some WOW factor, so I started doing a lot of research about what they are looking for in a college applicant.

High school transcripts for homeschoolers


The first thing I learned is that I'm going to have to somehow come up with a high school transcript all on my own. I'll admit, I freaked out ... a lot. I wondered how official they have to look, do I need to print them on special paper, what do transcripts even look like, things like that. I found a few sites that I found very helpful and I want to share those with you:

PEAH's Homeschool Curriculum Savings.com has a nice little introduction to creating your own homeschool high school transcripts and a little digging (scroll down very far on this page) allowed me to download a sample transcript and a template I can use for my own purposes. The only thing I didn't quite understand on their samples were the codes they used for their "TYPE" column. I get that it is requesting the type of class it is and some of the codes make sense, like MA for math, SS for Social Studies, EN for English and so forth. But for some of the classes I'll be teaching Nick, I'm not sure what code I'd put (since they didn't provide samples of all types of courses). I don't know if these are standardized or not, though I don't think they are because I couldn't find anything online about them. I tried sending a comment to the website owners but haven't even seen the comment published and I haven't heard back from them. Nonetheless, just seeing a sample transcript was very helpful.

After reading more articles about creating my own transcripts, I realized the "TYPE" column isn't necessary. The type will be obvious to anyone reading the course titles, I realized, after a couple of other articles mentioned I should be very descriptive when naming the courses. Rather than putting English II, I should put something like European Literature, 1300-1800. Below are some of the other articles I found helpful in creating homeschool high school transcripts:
Hopefully, I won't need that last one, but the information in it was very good.
 

What are game design schools looking for?

So, after panicking and learning about high school transcripts, I finally got back to learning about what game design schools are looking for in a prospective student.

Math

First off was a lot of math. Several said students needed to study math at least to pre-calculus. OK, math is not really my thing, but I got that covered already!
Math was tough for me to teach because I'm not as much a visual learner as my son is. It has been a lot of trial and error trying to create lessons that allow him to see what is taking place. When I studied math in high school, I just memorized what I needed to do and did it. Nick needs to know the why and how and I understand that, but it took a while for me to figure out how to show it. Sometimes I'd draw pictures of money or pie or number lines, but it still wasn't clicking.
My first tip came from the All About Spelling program we've been using. Our previous attempts at doing spelling never worked. Nick would learn his spelling words and make a 100 on every test, only to misspell some of the same words a day or so later in his regular writing. Clearly it wasn't sticking. When I ordered the All About Spelling program, there were no tests, but there's a lot of repetition as well as magnets, color coding, and a whole lot of other stuff going on. His spelling improved drastically within days and is still strong. 
Well, the program works because they not only use visual learning (the color coding) but kinesthetic and verbal as well (with the magnets and the repeating of information out loud).
So I applied this concept to math, allowing Nick to feel the math (with LEGOs, dice, rulers, etc.) and that has helped.
But now we are going into higher math and I was getting a little nervous. Even though I took up to pre-calculus in high school, that was a while back, so I am going to have to relearn it all in order to teach it.
That's when I finally decided to try Math-U-See. They teach higher level math all the way up to Calculus, so I ordered the Algebra I. I got the package in and have looked it over. There are blocks that snap to each other to demonstrate a lot of concepts. There are decimal and fraction attachments too. I watched the sample video lessons on their website and know that it is a very visual and kinesthetic method of teaching. The package comes with a teacher DVD as well to teach me the concepts I'm going to need to teach. Nick gets to watch the DVD as well, so that will help. We haven't started it just yet because we are currently reviewing general math (at least the fractions, exponents, decimals and pre-algebra stuff). I will keep you up to date on how well it works for us as we get more into it.

Variety is the spice of life and game design

After heavily emphasizing math, most of the game design folks said they were looking for students who study a wide variety of topics. They mentioned psychology, history, and science.
Mostly, though, they don't want kids who focus too much attention on working the equipment because they will be teaching them that stuff. What they want to know is that the students are well-rounded. Video games are interactive stories and the best stories come from those who have lived the most.
This is great news for us as unschoolers since we live to visit museums and learn new things all the time. However, I can't create a high school transcript based on all our esoteric talks with museum curators. But I also don't want to fence Nick in to regular classes like regular high school because that would sort of NOT be what the game design folks are looking for (on top of not being fun).
So, as well as considering very descriptive titles for courses that say "He LIVED!" I looked for actual interesting lessons and courses online that Nick would enjoy and have their own lively titles.
I was already using The Great Courses for some lessons in science, history and math. But I knew there had to be other options that are free that I could use to give Nick a well-rounded education which is also fun. Below is a list of free high-school and college-level courses I found (many are provided in video format as well):
I'll admit, we likely won't be using all of these, but they are there to provide education to all and I applaud these institutions for providing these opportunities to people.
 

Making high school count

So, that's what I've learned about going into high school as a homeschooler (and unschooler). Being prepared for life after high school was clearly essential and I'm glad I did my research ahead of time rather than waiting until Nick was a senior. Now I can really make what he learns count toward what he wants to do with his life (and make it look nice on paper too).