Emergency Homeschooling: Benefits

Mental health improves as students learn to think for themselves and trust their own instincts, instead of relying on other students to give the right answers.

Physical health improves with less exposure to the germ-factory classrooms. My children suddenly stopped having continuous colds and conjunctivitis (pink-eye), when we switched from public school to homeschooling.

Emotional health will be calmer with a routine at home, instead of the unpredictable chaos and fear in the public classroom.

You will know exactly what your children are doing and learning each day. You can focus in immediately on whatever they may struggle with and resolve it, rather than waiting to be surprised with the news at a parent/teacher conference, weeks or months later.

Your family will be much stronger as one cohesive unit, because closer relationships naturally develop when parents and children work together. Your children will learn valuable life skills and independent learning skills that they will use for years to come.

Your child will be able to concentrate on topics of his own interest, because 1) he’s not surrounded by 20-some other students, all clamoring for attention, and 2) the freedom provided by homeschooling’s more efficient use of time gives him the opportunities (both in time and energy) to look into new interests.

It is personally rewarding to see what has been learned, whether evaluated on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly level. Children (as well as parents) grow in confidence, when they recognize their own accomplishments.

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Emergency Homeschooling: What Supplies Do We Need, and Where Do We Get Them?

You may already have many basic supplies leftover from last year—notebooks, pencils, crayons, colored pencils, and so on. If your current stash is limited, you can certainly purchase more, but what you will need at home is not nearly as extensive as the list schools send out each year. Include a backpack (again, the one from last year may be adequate) if your student will be carrying his supplies to a sitter or Grandma’s while you go to work.

Our favorite curriculum items are ones we have recommended time and time again—without any compensation from the publishers, so you can trust that we really liked these. We did use many other products, but these have remained outstanding favorites.

 

Alpha-Phonics teaches reading just as well as the super-pricey programs, but for 1/10th of the cost. The book is not loaded with childish drawings, as some others are. If you find you need flashcards or other manipulatives, you can easily make some yourself with index cards. Let your student help! We supplemented this with beginning reading books that used words similar to those in the lessons, and had no need of other materials offered.

At Last! A Reading Method for Every Child! It’s a hard-to-find book, but it does contain a 2-week crash course in remedial phonics, which was ideal for my formerly public-schooled child with reading deficiencies. (This book has been updated since I first bought it; the chapter for the crash course is now called “Uniform Approach.”)

Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting Series was my favorite for very simple but elegant handwriting that, incidentally, converts to cursive with few changes and little difficulty for students. I used these workbooks with my children and did the program myself to improve my own poor handwriting, so I can recommend it highly. Book E covers both a printed manuscript and cursive handwriting—the suggested place to begin if you already know basic handwriting. I used a plain spiral notebook for copying my exercises, leaving the workbook for my student and giving myself plenty of room to practice.

Miquon Math is an excellent program, designed to be used in grades 1-3, but is so thorough that students can step directly from it into Saxon 6/5 (6th grade) without difficulty. The set of 6 workbooks, normally done 2 per year, step quickly into complex math, but in a way that even 6-year-olds can understand. Miquon teaches adding and subtracting, then moves into multiplication as a logical extension of addition. Before the series is finished, the student is graphing rectangular coordinates with complete confidence! Grade 1 uses the Orange Book and Red Book; grade 2 uses the Blue Book and Green Book; grade 3 uses the Yellow Book and Purple Book. The Lab Sheet Annotations book is the teacher’s guide and answer key, and is a must for teaching this material, along with a basic set of Cuisenaire Rods (wooden or plastic sticks in 1-10 unit sizes; the wooden ones sound better when falling off the table). The student workbooks are printed on newsprint in colored ink, but are relatively free of kiddie pictures, other than cartoon-style illustrations necessary to the lessons. Miquon is my favorite program of everything we used!

Key to Fractions (also Decimals, Percents, and Measurements) series of 3-4 workbooks are excellent for any students who may be struggling with the concepts of fractions, decimals, percents, or measurements (we used each of those sets with wonderful results). Their Key to Algebra and Key to Geometry full-year series also break down scary math concepts into do-able steps and make the subjects simple to understand. All workbooks are thin, comic-book-style, and completely non-threatening and un-intimidating for math-phobic students. Answer keys are available and great time-savers. Key to… workbooks are definitely my second-most favorite program.

Easy Grammar is no-nonsense, straight-forward, and easy. We used this program in its early stages, when there was only one level, simply called Easy Grammar. Its treatment of grammatical rules is simplified by learning prepositions first, then eliminating all prepositional phrases from a sentence, to easily identify the other parts of speech. Easy Grammar was a godsend to my public-school-refugee student, whose previous classroom experiences were built on presenting incorrect examples every day, without teaching correct examples first. Easy Grammar taught the correct rules very plainly and simply. We loved it!

Saxon Math uses continuous review to keep concepts fresh in students’ minds, rather than working on a single concept per chapter, as is done by most math textbooks. The “homeschool kit” includes a test booklet, with instructions to give a test after every 5th lesson, but even those testing questions are reviewing material covered 5-10 lessons ago. (Test #1 covers Lessons 1-5, but is given after Lesson 10, and so on.) As I recall, the tests were 20 questions each, a few less than daily problem sets. We used the tests as our method of review at the beginning of the year. The student did test after test, as many as they desired each day, as long as they could get each problem correct. A perfect score allowed them to proceed to the next test. If any mistakes were made, they were analyzed for cause: hasty errors or misunderstanding. If the student could rework a hasty error and get the correct answer, he moved on as with a perfect score. If the cause of mistakes was misunderstanding, that indicated a lesson that needed more work, and we tracked back to the group of 5 lessons covered by that test, as the place for that student to begin math lessons for that school year. My students came up with this plan as a challenging way for them to refresh their “math brains” and to skip over the tedious review lessons at the beginning of the books. Since we often had kept working at math over part of the summer (to finish up the past year’s book), their ability to do math rarely waned, and intense review wasn’t needed. My students also presented a logical argument against taking regular math tests, since Saxon already “tests” on a daily basis through their continual reviewing of previous concepts. Not testing became a great time-saver, which allowed us to keep moving forward with daily lessons. An answer key is included with the homeschool kit, but it lists only the final answer to problems. The Solutions Manual is valuable for showing the step-by-step solutions to more advanced problems. We bought the Solutions Manual for Algebra 2 and Advanced Math—there wasn’t one available yet for Algebra 1, when we used that book. Other Saxon Math textbooks we used were Saxon 6/5, Saxon 7/6, and Algebra ½. (For levels 5/4, 6/5, 7/6, and 8/7, the 1st number is the typical grade level; the second number is for exceptional students in that grade—so 5/4 is for most 5th graders, or exceptional 4th graders.)

Biographies, including historical figures, scientists, inventors, and artists, gave my students a look at the more personal side of history, science, and other subjects. We could find interesting biographies at the public library (in both the children’s and adults’ sections); biographical movies were another good source for seeing the human side of topics that can sometimes be harder to delve into. Exploring one person’s life story gave my students a desire to know more about others, drawing them into the topics more deeply than ordinary textbooks would have done. (My test for finding an interesting book is to read the first paragraph. If I have to restart several times and force myself to get through it, I put that book down and try another one. If I find myself in the middle of the second paragraph or suddenly turning the page, engrossed in the story, I know that I will enjoy reading the whole book.)

“Uncle Eric” Books by Richard Maybury are an often-overlooked series of 11 books that deal with everything from history to economics to government to politics. These books offer a unique perspective that Americans usually don’t see and deal with root causes of worldwide conflicts, rather than just the surface view. The tricky concepts of economics and world governments are clearly explained for middle school to high school level. We used the following titles, but there are several more that have been added to the series:

  • Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?
  • Whatever Happened to Justice?
  • Are You Liberal, Conservative, or Confused?
  • Evaluating Books: What Would Thomas Jefferson Think About This
  • Ancient Rome: How It Affects You Today
  • The Clipper Ship Strategy
  • The Thousand Year War in the Mideast

The Elements of Clear Thinking by William F. McCart is a high school level program for teaching Accurate Communication, Critical Reading, and Sound Reasoning. Simply put, how to say what you mean and how to analyze what an author meant and whether or not he succeeded. This set is 3 thin workbooks, but don’t be fooled into thinking students will zip through them. The 3rd book contains some especially weighty passages to read and analyze. (I had to buy the answer keys.) When my second student struggled with some of the more difficult reading selections, we opted for finding our own reading materials at the library, and I wrote questions for those, similar to what was used in the workbook. However, the section on “Fallacies of Reasoning” is excellent and redeemed any issues we had with other parts. This series was excellent preparation for my students’ future college classes, for in-class discussions, reading assignments, and writing papers.

 

Materials in your students’ grade levels may be ordered online from: Amazon, Rainbow Resource Center, Christian Book Distributors, and many other reputable suppliers.

Public libraries are an excellent source for reading material for all topics, but some may have limited access during your year of Emergency Homeschooling.

Wonderful supplemental activities can be found at Timberdoodle and Miller Pads and Paper, as well as the hands-on learning supplies available at Target’s Dollar Spot, Dollar Tree’s educational supplies, and other dollar-stores, bookstores, and office supply stores.

Supplemental learning aids can be as common as the play money from a Monopoly game, the letter tiles from a Scrabble game, and a deck of playing cards (using Ace-10 becomes a math deck for all sorts of practice). For more advanced learning tools, hit up the grocery aisles for sugar cubes and alphabet macaroni (use it dry and uncooked), but keep these on a cookie sheet to minimize any mess.

Start with the “3 R’s” of reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic for teaching your students the most basic skills. For history and science materials, look at whatever seems to fit your student’s interests and grade level. Some students may enjoy the all-in-one-workbooks, like What Your Second Grader Needs to Know, and other students will prefer separate workbooks for each subject. Be aware that online learning programs and some pre-packaged learning programs will require the student to answer every question on every page of every book. If your student would be overly burdened by that, choose a less aggressive approach.

You know your children best, so trust your instincts or discuss with them what is available and give them an opportunity to provide some input on what seems more appealing to them. For this emergency year, anything-at-all will be far better than nothing-whatsoever, so don’t judge your efforts too harshly.

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Emergency Homeschooling: FAQ’s

How can we homeschool when both parents work? Homeschooling is flexible—even emergency homeschooling. Some options are to do the homeschooling in the evenings, or go over work the student has done during the day and set up tomorrow’s assignments. Schoolwork can be supervised by Grandma or a nanny, who can answer questions to keep the student on track, while he works independently. (“Do these instructions mean I should draw the picture first, and then solve the problem?” Yes!) Some students may work better in the evenings, or whenever a parent is available. Depending on the parents’ work schedules, the schooling could even switch to a 4-day week or go through the weekend with the “weekend” break falling somewhere during the week.

A recent innovation being used by some emergency homeschoolers is “pod-schooling,” a sort of mini-co-op arrangement, where a few families swap child-care and schooling supervision duties. Each family, in turn, hosts all of the children at their home for two days, while the parents from the other families work. They all share child-care, and all of the students are supervised. Win-win.

What if other families are doing something different from what we’re doing? Focus on your own family—your spouse and children—not on your friends, your neighbors, your siblings, or your parents. Do what is best for your family. This year, everyone will be doing something different from everyone else! Different is okay.

How do I plan lessons? Many textbooks are already set up for a sufficient number of lessons, but you can also divide those differently to suit the needs of your students. Do half-lessons on some days, do two lessons on some days, or do whatever combination works best with your family’s schedule.

My preferred method was to divide the number of pages in a textbook by the number of school days we scheduled, then round up to the next whole number for the approximate number of pages to do each day. Example: suppose a textbook has 484 pages, divided by 180 days, equals 2.69—and round up to 3 pages per day. That will balance out with some sections obviously stopping in the middle of a page, some pages may be full-page illustrations, and the table of contents and index take up a few pages. This is a basic plan that will keep you from stressing out over trying to write detailed lesson plans in advance and then striving to make them happen. This is simply a target, and a student who does a little less or a little more once in a while won’t hurt anything.

How do we fill 8 hours per day with schoolwork? You don’t. Your students won’t be wasting time standing in line or waiting for “that one kid” to stop talking and pay attention so class can proceed. Homeschooled students can typically finish all their work for one school day in less than half the time required to do the same amount of work in a classroom. (Sometimes in much less than half the time.) After schoolwork is done, your student can expand the day with electives: art, music, home ec, games, and any personal interests. These extra-curricular, bonus activities also work well as therapy, to help students relax and feel normal again, during this very not-normal season of life. Activities will vary for each student, but they still count as learning.

Do I have to lecture? No. There is no need for lectures or extensive explanations. Most textbooks do an adequate job with the instructions for each lesson. If the student is capable of reading and comprehending instructions himself, you will rarely need to stand over him to supervise, explain, or answer questions.

What if my student gets stuck? Students who are capable of doing their own internet research can use Google, Siri, or Alexa for assistance, when you are not available. That comes with the bonus of keeping their research skills sharp. For other students, it can help to ask them exactly which part has them stumped. Then ask what they think it means, to get them thinking and to teach them to trust their instincts.

Do I give them homework? No. Students can read the lesson and follow the instructions themselves, doing the work immediately, while it’s fresh in their minds—not hours later in a study period or as homework. Again, no waiting, just getting it done. If the student does have a question about the lesson, the parent, grandparent, or nanny who is supervising can answer it right away, not waiting while several other students ask their questions first. Supplemental lesson activities can often continue after the basic lesson, as “stealth learning” that reinforces concepts with a “playtime” feel.

How do we decide which classes to do when? It is perfectly acceptable for the student to choose the order in which he prefers to do various subjects. It is also acceptable if he chooses to do them in a different order each day. Most students will settle into a routine that feels best to them, but an occasional shake-up to that routine can also be refreshing.

How do I know what materials to pick for my child? Students who enjoy reading will learn well from workbooks and textbooks. Students who prefer watching will learn well from videos on platforms such as You Tube. Students who are hands-on learners will learn well with manipulatives, doing experiments, or even duplicating experiments they have watched on You Tube. Students who are action-loving doers will learn well from standing up to do lessons, lying on the floor to do lessons, going outside to do lessons, making lessons bigger—write out the lesson with chalk on the driveway, sweep it clean to erase, and do another lesson. Doers also learn well from watching videos that are first-person perspective, so they feel like they are the ones doing it, rather than the more passive third-person perspective of watching someone else do it.

Do we need to stay home all day, every day? No. Schools take field trips, and so can you. Learning happens wherever you go, so don’t feel like you are skipping school, even if you are running a few errands. The more efficient routine of homeschooling added extra hours to our day, and we used those hours as we desired, with learning-on-the-go as an added benefit: shopping easily converted into consumer math, driving across town used geography and navigational skills, and every interaction with people was experience in public speaking. Don’t do public situations, if you’re not up to it. Do go to events that will be uplifting and enjoyable, but only if you can avoid the Negative Nellies.

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Emergency Homeschooling: You CAN Do This!

Normal? There is no normal right now—not for anyone at any school! Even veteran homeschoolers are finding their routines disrupted by closures and “distancing” requirements.

Different? Everyone is doing something different from what they’re used to doing, so you’re not alone. And every family is doing something slightly different from what every other family is doing, so again, you’re not alone.

Survive? Yes, you will survive this, just as you survived that one vacation where everything went wrong, just as you survived when everyone in your family had the stomach flu at the same time, just as you survived all the times when the school events and the sports events and the work events all conflicted on the calendar. You found a way to survive, and even though those times may not have been pretty or popular, they created hilarious family memories and stories that are still told and retold at special moments. And this will become another one of those legendary family stories of perseverance and survival.

Once you have made the decision to homeschool (whether to get your students through this crisis or as a more permanent situation), the hardest part is already behind you! No one else could help you determine if this is the best solution for your family, but there are unlimited sources (both online and in real life) to help you with what comes next, every day.

No matter why you have chosen Emergency Homeschooling, those reasons can help you make it the best option for your family. Your priorities during this crisis will follow much the same pattern as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: your family’s mental health comes first, take care of basic life skills next, and then you can worry about the schoolwork.

Mental Health
In any emergency, your family’s needs must come first. You know the analogy about putting the oxygen mask on yourself first, before you put the masks on your children. See that your own family’s immediate needs are met, before you think about lending a helping hand to others. What is most important to you right now is that your family members can stay safe and well, and that your children can have some means to continue learning.

Restore the mental well-being of your family members by making them feel secure. Stop watching the news on TV. You may allow yourself to read selected news stories online, if the information is vital to your family, but reading also allows you to stop the flow as soon as you have acquired the important details—the bad-news reporters on TV will just keep blathering on and never stop.

Limit social media to only the people, pages, and platforms that leave you feeling encouraged, uplifted, and positive. “Unfollowing” is a handy feature for keeping them available for when you are ready to see them again—but that allows it to be your choice.

Listen to music that makes you happy. Avoid the slow, melancholy stuff that can add to depression. Trying an out-of-the-ordinary genre can help change the negative soundtrack that won’t stop playing in your head.

Nourish your souls by encouraging each family member to pursue an activity that is enjoyable and relaxing. They may only spend a few minutes on it each day, but those minutes add up over time to lower the stress level. If you have multiple enjoyable activities, alternate or rotate through them, giving each of them a chance to bless you. Drop any activities that prove less helpful than others, so you can focus on the most beneficial activities.

Life Skills
As soon as you are all breathing a little more calmly again, you can expand your focus to Life Skills (Home Ec.) by working together on meals, dishes, and laundry, teaching the skills to your children as needed, but also using those opportunities for bonding through casual conversation and Q&A related to the children’s concerns over current events. (Use age-appropriate answers and try to focus on positive elements.)

Nourish your bodies with good food, hydration, fresh air, sunshine, mild exercise (walking outdoors, if possible), and good sleep. With everyone being at home for a while, each person needs to do his part to help out, so that the chores don’t all fall to one person. Keeping up with basic home-chores can help every family member feel better about how nice their environment looks: doing the dishes, making the beds, and generally tidying up.

Schoolwork
Ultimately, parents want their children to 1) be safe, 2) maintain the skills they already have, and 3) improve those skills, if possible. This year’s learning situation will not be identical to previous years, but nothing will be, for anyone. This will definitely be different from “normal” schooling—you may be using different materials, a different manner of instruction, a different location for learning, and a different schedule.

Your school-at-home days will very likely not be what you’re used to. Some days will be smoother than others, and some days may take longer than others. Remind yourselves as often as necessary that this is a temporary situation and that you can handle it.

Nourish your minds by reading a book you’ve loved before—it will feel like a comfortable visit with old friends. Your situation may have changed, but the characters in the book haven’t—there will be no unexpected plot twists, but you might find a fresh application to your own life. It’s a small sample of “normal” that can make all the “different” feel easier to take. Encourage your children to play board games and card games as valuable practice in the basic skills of reading, math, and logic. You may even want to join in the fun!

This totally different, anti-normal situation will be okay. You are doing the best you can, the best you know how to do, and that is what really matters. So what if you can’t write as eloquently as Longfellow? No one is expecting you to do that. So what if you can’t do advanced math as well as Einstein? No one is expecting you to do that. So what if you have never traveled the globe or made an important scientific discovery? Neither had any teacher I ever had—and no one is expecting you to do that either.

The mission before you is to help your child learn. That can mean showing him how to draw letters and numbers in such a way that his Z’s won’t be mistaken for 2’s. That can mean showing him how to use graph-paper for math lessons, so his numbers stay lined up where they belong, instead of wandering all over the page in rivers of chaos. That can mean replying, “I don’t know, but let’s see if we can find out,” when his questions stump you, but were important enough to spur his curiosity in the first place.

Don’t stress yourselves by pushing too much, too far, too hard, too soon. Do what you can, when you can, because every little bit counts. Don’t underestimate the learning situations in daily life; see yourselves as learning from everything that happens. Learning is a normal activity, regardless of where or how it occurs.

Arthur Ashe said, “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” Even if everything about this school year seems to be different, strange, and unnatural, a pencil is still a pencil, and learning is still the acquiring of information or skills that we didn’t have before. Yes, this year will be very different from what you are used to doing, but different isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, different can be very good, and since everyone is doing something different from everyone else this year, who’s to say that your version of different isn’t the best version? You can make it the best for your family.

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