Standardized Testing and Homeschooling

We are at the end of the school year. Of course, as discussed in my last post, The Girl will be homeschooling in a couple of specific topics over the summer, but the general academic homeschool year is over.

Sometime before August, I have to provide proof of adequate progress to the school board, and this brings up one simple and inescapable fact: school boards like standardized tests.

They really like them.

A portfolio assessment is an option, but our school board has never done one, and offers no suggestions as to HOW to do one. They offer several acceptable choices for standardized testing, however.

On the one hand, I feel that I've spent all year growing away from these arbitrary measures of memorized facts and the interpretation of trick questions. It's one of the reasons we homeschool, and it feels a bit fraudulent to go back to them now.

On the other hand, as a single mother who is going to be forced to take on more work next year, rather than less, I feel the need to keep our hand in with these tests. After all, The Girl may have to re-enter the school system at some point, and good test scores will smooth the way.

I know this is true because every one of my teacher friends that I have discussed this with gets a looke of relief on their faces as soon as I tell them I am planning on having The Girl test this summer, and not only that, but we are practicing for the test by taking our state standards released tests for fourth grade. This is generally seen as a very smart move on my part, as a way of making sure The Girl is on a level with other fourth graders in our schools.

Still, part of me is disappointed that we have to test at all. After all, I work in the system, I know how arbitrary the tests are. I know that we don't really know what we are measuring with them more than half the time. I know that the scores off of any of the tests that I give her will provide only the tiniest sliver of insight into what she has actually accomplished this year.

And yet, we will be testing.

Not because I feel it will tell me anything I don't already know, but because it prepares The Girl for the day that she has to go back to being a cog in the academic machine, just like I am preparing to go back to full time work, and be a cog in the employment machine.

Not Dead Yet

I found something out about myself. I can juggle about four things successfully. Add that fifth ball and I start dropping things.

This year, life just kept throwing extra balls at me, and so my online life got almost completely dropped as I worked on keeping jobs, The Girl's homeschooling, and my credit score from self destructing.

Being a single mom is all about managing, and sometimes you have to manage what you are going to drop.

While I missed being online, I'm happy with how the year has turned out. The Girl appears to have successfully made it through fourth grade homeschool. she has written essays, just finished Trumpet of the Swan (a book she would have refused to even try to read at the beginning of the year) and did a great poster of the Solar System for her final project in astronomy.

Along the way, we had a pretty good time with our plant unit, learned more about the Powhatan Indians and the Jamestown settlement than we ever really wanted to know, and learned to love division. Most importantly we discovered The Girl's musical talent, which is considerable. Who knew!? She is learning three instruments now and is excelling in all three and just had her end of year recital last week.

We are wrapping up this year, and looking ahead to next. I'm still juggling, and hoping I don't drop anything else, and next year we will be homseschooling fifth grade. The summer is going to be spent mostly at home, working on Japanese, art, and music.

Summer is looking good!

My first Usborne show went well, and our first week of homeschool has been great. Things seem to be settling down, and although I have a few money issues on the horizon, I'm feeling pretty good about the economics of the house.

I think I have learned more about my daughter in the last week than I learned about her all last year.

1. She loves to make music. I never knew this! She spends hours now playing her electric keyboard and she wants to take guitar lessons. why did this never come up before? I think she was just too tired - school didn't leave much time for anything else.

2. She has a real love for art. Not just coloring, which I knew she liked, but painting and drawing and looking at other people's work. I'm blown away by this.

3. She writes well, but could care less about spelling. Oh well, I guess it couldn't all be good news.

:-)

4. She ADORES math beyond all reason. At least beyond my ability to reason, since math was always my least favorite subject.

Last Monday this conversation really happened:

Me: Okay, so you can do these math exercises for practice tomorrow at Grandma's house. Now go finish your chores and then you can watch TV.

The Girl: But I want to do my Math practice NOW.

Me: Well, okay. You can do the math practice tonight if you want to, but you have to go and finish your chores first! Absolutely no math until your chores are completed, young lady!

The Girl: Oh, all right. *pout*

I still can't get over it - I would have scrubbed toilets to get out of math! I think she must have been switched at birth.

Learning a Business

Tomorrow, I'll be hosting my first Usborne Book party, as both the consultant and the hostess, and the only person more excited than me, is The Girl. She has already figured out which of the books she is going to recommend, and which of her old teachers might like which books. All this work is to help her sell books. She's getting five dollars for every show she helps me set up and break down, as well as a dollar for every book she sells.

:-)

She's been figuring costs, discussing the good and bad points of books, and working on how to be polite to customers. Even if I only break even with my investment in Usborne, it's worth it. The experience is better than any curriculum I could have bought.

Usborne Books at Home is not my main business, or anything. I went into it hoping to bring in a little extra money every month. My main goal being to pay for health insurance which take a huge bite out of my monthly income at the moment, while getting bunches of The girl's favorite books at discount prices.

So, I'll let you know if she ends up starting her own fortune five-hundred - hopefully she'll be able to support me in my old age!

:-)

How to start the homeschool year, without starting school

Next week, I go back to school (I teach part time, and we go back WAAAAYYYY before the kids do). So school has been on my mind.

I'm itching to start our homeschool routine. The Girl, on the other hand, is offended by the very IDEA that we might start homeschool before all the other kids start regular school. She is very much stuck on the calendar, still, and I can understand that since this is the first year we have homeschooled at all.

Rather than push it on her, I have just gotten out some of our cool new curriculum items and started planning for our first week. It took about two seconds for The Girl to come and look over my shoulder.

"What's that?" (Points to picture in Oak Meadow text)

"That's part of the instructions for the model we are going to build for your social studies lessons." ( I continue making notes.)

"Huh." (Looks completely indifferent... and yet does not walk away.) "What're those?" (points to stack of sketchpads)

"Those are going to be your main lesson books and journal. That's where you'll have your writing and stuff. And you get to write everything in colored pencils."

"Cooooooool." (Eyes light up and she fingers the paper.)

"Hey, remember we don't get to start until September!" (I start putting things away.)

"Oh, right." (Long pause.) "Can I just look at the math book for a little bit?"

"Well, okay, but just look through it. We aren't starting school yet."

What followed was a 45 minute review of place values, how to do math in your head and check it with a calculator, and an introduction to double digit multiplication.

Bwahahahahaha!

My evil plan is working!

Scurry and Scratch

The worst thing about trying to homeschool and being a single parent has to be the tension that develops between working and educating you child. Working from home certainly sounded a lot easier when other people were talking about it. There always seems to be something that has to be done this second, and there never seems to be enough money.

So, what do we do? (Besides start a blog to whinge and moan in?)

First of all, realize that something is going to have to give. You can't do it alone. I moved 250 miles to be near my mother because I knew she would help with childcare. If you don't have a family member that is eager to watch your child on the days when you have to be out of the house, then try to hook up with friends, other homeschooling moms, a babysitting co-op, or in a tight pinch, a reliable babysitter for occasional days. (It's often easier to get regular days scheduled, so you might consider that as well, if you can afford it.)

Another thing to think about is ways to take your child to work with you. When The Girl was an infant I was lucky to have a job where I could take her to work with me. Now she is almost ten years old, and she generally knows how to behave when I have to have her at a job site for some reason. We often go to the library together where she can study and I can do research, get on the Internet to check mail, and work on other projects.

Finally, I have actually gotten a part-time job outside the house to smooth out my cash flow. Because it is only part time, I can still spend a lot of time at home working on my business and one our homeschooling projects, and my mom loves taking her most local grandchild on field trips while I'm out at the salt mines.

It makes for a hectic life, and a fair amount of running up and down the road in the car, but I wouldn't change it for anything.