New to Home-School

When my husband and I first made the decision to home-school our youngest child for 8th grade, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to effectively cover all the core subjects. I instructed my son, "Close your eyes and think about what you'd like to learn," but I wasn't prepared for his answer.

"I want to learn Latin and how to make a potato cannon," he responded.

Unfortunately, my Latin knowledge consists of "carpe diem" (seize the day) and "veni, vedi, veci" (I came, I saw, I conquered). Neither of his interests matched my expectations but we're embracing new expectations on our home-school journey together.

Getting Started

Anne Arundel County provides excellent guidelines for what 8th graders should be learning. I just had to figure out how to match those guidelines with my child's closed-eyes dreams. I learned that I could use a recognized correspondence school, an umbrella group, or handle all paperwork and curriculum myself with oversight by the county's home-school office. 

I chose an umbrella group that offers organizational and curriculum resources, as well as social activities. The group also offers a broad range of experienced home-schoolers who can answer or know how to find the answer to any question I've had. 

Curriculum

After hours of research and trial versions, we now have a working curriculum. My son learns algebra and government online using a program developed by respected professors at well-known colleges. For Latin, we use a textbook with an online support site for audio, and are starting a "geography through art" series using books and local museums as resources. We will use library websites that offer virtual tours of their country's local exhibits and natural wonders. Grammar and writing is a combination of my teaching and online programming.  And it turns out there's a book that teaches you how to make a potato cannon so that's in the works too — and that project covers all three parts of Newton's laws of motion.

The U.S. Library of Congress makes it easy to plan specific units of study. I've found wonderful teaching units prepared by teachers for use by others. We'll be using a teacher-designed unit to read To Kill a Mockingbird from an historical perspective. 

Time Management and Socializing

Early on, I worried about how we'd spend our days. How would he and I do on a day-to-day schedule? I had no idea how many options are available for home-schooling. I was worried about isolation and now I've had to curtail some plans for activities.

Our options are seemingly endless. We are exploring a new museum each month. Next month, we head to the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore for their "What Makes Us Smile?" exhibit.  It's handy that we live in the state capital, which offers multiple opportunities to see our political process in action. Of course, we'll take advantage of being close to DC as well for art, history and government. 

We've been to the home-school kung fu class at the Jing Ying Institute in Arnold and Friday afternoons are spent in the park with a group of sports-playing teenagers. My son starts his home-school science class at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater this month, as well as home-school science classes at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore.

There's a group trip to Montgomery County's Brookside Gardens, home-school cooking classes at our local Whole Foods, LEGO days at Arundel Mills, and Anne Arundel Community College has classes just for home-schoolers. In November, we're signed up for a printmaking class at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.  

The area is thick with opportunities for home-schooling families. I'm working on finding as many interesting ones as possible. Next up, we're off to visit the Benjamin Franklin Learning Center since I've heard they still teach sentence diagramming. I'll keep you posted.