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A (practice) homeschooling day
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We had a practice homeschooling day yesterday. Well, okay, a practice homeschooling 45 minutes.
Pixie (1st grade) took the Saxon Math Homeschooling Placement test. Go to the website and you can print a brief assessment test (that you administer and grade at home) to help in selecting curriculum. I have heard good things about Saxon from various sources and I am pretty confident we are going to use it for math.
Pixie (who loves math) was very excited when I told her that she was going to get to do some math. She reminded me about it this evening and it looked fairly straightforward, so I went ahead and gave it to her. She insisted on starting at the very beginning (so she could warm up, she said) in the kindergarten material. The
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hardest part for me was collecting all the dang coins you needed for it. It gave me a pretty good idea of what a homeschooling might feel like. I emptied the dishwasher, started dinner, and supervised the 2.5 year-old who wanted to ‘play with the coins, too!’ as I gave Pixie the test. My husband walked in from work in the midst of all of this and just grinned. He got it, too, that this is probably what our days will look like. I should mention here that while I was actually cooking, the house was not picked up. I assume it will be one or the other most days, and probably neither on some days.
I was happy that it felt like a pretty normal level of chaos for our household, and not totally overwhelming. I did have a flash of the fatigue I imagine I will experience, with this multiplied over several hours a day.
Pixie bounced up in the middle of her test when she suddenly thought of something she needed to tell her daddy. I didn’t stop her and she returned quickly. I was a little worried about how all the distractions might impact her, but she didn’t seem bothered by them for this activity. She had no more distractions then she has in her classroom. (If you think your child is learning in a calm, centered environment at school—volunteer; you’ll wonder how anyone can concentrate with all the interruptions the class has.)
I feel confident with the test results, as they match what her teacher had said at our parent-teacher conference recently.
Phew! Okay, math for one kid solved…
For more info: Go to Saxon Homeschooling for info on their curriculum and to download placement tests (they do Math and Phonics).
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