Friday, July 10, 2015

A homeschooling year in review

This time of year we love receiving the year-end reports from our families, who inspire us with everything they’ve been learning over the past year. We leave the content of the report up to each family. Our primary goal is for them to summarize what they feel was of educational value for each child in the past school year.

We sometimes get inquiries from families who would like to see some samples of what year-end reports look like. To help provide that, one of our families who is homeschooling their 13-year old daughter has given us permission to share the year-end report that they created. They have been homeschooling for the past 6 years. 

This is a great example of how to write a report. It is a short summary of hands-on projects mixed with academics, illustrating an eclectic approach to homeschooling. They say:
“Homeschooling is a journey and we seem to be changing just a bit each year, but I try to include any curriculum we've used or experiences she's gotten to have that contribute to her learning (or as we seem to say more and more: "Anything and everywhere is a chance to learn!”)”

Materials
Scholastic Daily Word Ladders, grades 4-6 workbook
Wordly Wise 3000, Book 7
Learning Language Arts Through Literature, The Tan Book
Creative Teaching Press: Sixth Grade Math Minutes workbook
Math U See, Zeta: instruction book, workbook, dvd, and test booklet
Holt Science & Technology, Texas Edition, grade 7
Creating America: A History of the United States – McDougal Littell
The Care & Keeping of You, Books 1 & 2 – American Girl
The U.S. Government (workbook) – Remedia Publications, 2009
Wordly Wise, Book 4 – Kenneth Hodkinson & Joseph G. Ornato
Youth Digital Mod Design 1, Learn Java using Minecraft
Youth Digital Server Design, Program Your Own Minecraft Server

Activities
We had a house built between June 2014 and November 2014. Our daughter got to see and participate in all of the planning, designing, and creation of our new home. She saw “real world” applications for knowing area and perimeter. She saw framing of the house, wiring, instillation of fixtures, and all of the work that finished the inside and outside of our new home. She also got to see how much paperwork is involved in buying a house!

Activities this Spring included: “Crazy Chemistry” at the local library March 31, a STEM event for girls at St. Mary’s College on May 2, 2015, a visit to the local Civil War Memorial: Point Lookout Prisoner-of-War Camp on May 17, explorations of the beaches around the Chesapeake Bay with our guests on May 17- May 20, a visit to the local Naval Air Museum at NAS Patuxent River on May 19, a trip up to the National Mall which included visits to the Washington Monument, the Vietnam War Memorial Wall, The World War II Memorial, The Lincoln Monument, and the Korean War Memorial, on May 20.

This Summer our daughter will continue to work on her Java script course and her server design course on the computer. She is participating in Minecraft events at the local library. She attended one on June 30, and she has two more this month: July 14 & July 28. She will be spending the night in the National Archives in D.C. on July 25 and gets to sleep in the rotunda with the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence! In August, she will be taking a Nature Trekkers Art Class August 4- August 7 in Leonardtown, Md. 

Grades              30days  60days  90days 120days  150days  180days Final Grade
Vocabulary          94.8       99.3     93.7      93.3       93.9        97.8         94.6 A
Language Arts     94.7       93.2     93.6      96.3       95.9        99.2         95.4 A
Math                    91.4       95.4     95.5      93.2       89.9        86.5         91.9 A
History                 96.6       96.4     95.0      93.3       93.8        95.5         95.1 A
Science                97.0       99.0     97.4      95.0       96.7        96.6         96.9 A

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