I picked up several teacher planning books at the Target dollar spot similar to the one I used for PreK last fall. They have blocks for each day of the week and make it easy for planning. They should help keep us organized. After the move I am hoping to turn our old changing table/shelves into a work-box style education station where we can keep all of the current books and supplies organized and at hand.
One surprise of moving to the Live Free or Die state is that there are actually more legal restrictions on homeschoolers. For age 6 and onward NH requires an annual evaluation along with your annual letter for intent to homeschool, while in MA you merely need to send the letter with your intent to homeschool to your local school district. Granted, some MA towns are more homeschool friendly than others, but I was certainly surprised that moving to NH means adding extra restrictions.
Often we hear that there should be more standards and tests, although please ask yourselves the question of who makes these tests and sets the bar. Every child learns differently and has different talents in life, and I see homeschooling as a way to more naturally express these talents and focus on their interests. Learning is about context as well as content, cramming meaningless dates into your brain when learning history does not spark a love for history, yet spending time to understand the events and how they affected people often does.
I homeschool in NH too, and am saddened by the amount of regulation there is here. I'm hoping that we will have a friendlier legislature soon.
ReplyDeleteIf your boys like the Little House books, they may also like the Great Brain series by John D. Fitzgerald, too. When my sisters were reading the Little House ones, my brother and I read the Great Brain-it's set around the same time period, is much funnier (in my view) and I still love the series at 42 years old.