Homeschool Graduation Ceremony

After homeschooling for thirteen years, my daughter is the first homeschool graduate in our family. I wanted to recognize this great accomplishment, and decided to plan our own family graduation. We live in a small town in northern Ontario where Catholic homeschoolers are few and far between, so we knew we were on our own. I talked to my parish priest, and he was glad to let us use the church basement for the event. My daughter and I designed simple invitations, and printed them (on card stock) on our printer. I designed a grade 12 graduation diploma (on the computer), and matted and framed it. I also included some cute graduation accessories that I glued on the mat (easily available at the scrap-booking section at Walmart).

Our church has a regular Thursday night Mass, so we chose a Thursday evening, to fit in with Father's schedule. My daughter will be doing the readings, and my sons and their two homeschooled friends will be the altar servers. Father agreed to let us write the prayers of petition for the Mass. After the Mass, our friends and family will gather for desserts and refreshments. I have asked two friends to make a 'toast' to Kaitlin, and for her father to say a few words. My son, Noah, has been working on a power point presentation for the event, featuring his sister and her accomplishments. It also includes some homeschooling memories over the years.

I wanted a simple tribute to my daughter, but one that also recognized the role that God and the Church has played in our lives. It is also an opportunity for me to thank the people that have been so supportive to my family, and our homeschooling endeavours, over the years.

contributed by Kathie from Ontario, Canada

Using a Program in High School

I’m writing this in hopes of giving a “frazzled mom of teens” an option other than the local highschool. It is between the parents and God where their children attend school but when I felt called to Homeschool high school and it wasn’t going well, this option turned out to be such a blessing, I wanted to share.

I always love putting together my curriculum for the year. It is so much fun to pick and choose and BUY new books. Over the years I believe I did fairly well! Then, when my oldest entered high school age I began to feel overwhelmed. It wasn’t just highschool. It was many things, personal as well as normal family life with a large number of children. Many friends struggling with the same things put their teens in school, which was fine, but my son didn’t want to go to the local high school and I wanted to teach him.

So for the first time I considered using one of the schools Like St. Thomas Aquinas Academy, Mother of Divine Grace, Seton…thankfully the list grows year by year and I can’t mention them all…but ask around and you will find them on the internet!

At first I was nervous, so much money, paperwork, time and they would see my flaws in teaching! Not to mention, I would be truly accountable to someone…Yuck! But after prayer and talking with my son we decided to sign up with a school. I won’t tell you which one as the school needs to fit the family and my choice may not be a good fit for you!

This has turned out to be such a blessing! We did indeed find some holes in our learning and teaching but now we could fix them! It did cost more and there is more paperwork, but the savings in TIME and STRESS is significant. I don’t have to go looking for books, there is someone else who knows my children and can give suggestions, the “school” I am with allows me the final say in curriculum so I can always use what I feel is best. The paper work is the minimum of what needs to be done yet it is complete. I don’t have to read the prep for college after Homeschool books and wonder if I’m saving the right thing, calling the class the right thing, etc.

Not only that, my son is thrilled. He likes knowing someone else is helping me evaluate his work and that his thoughts and feelings count too!

So if you are feeling a little frazzled and wondering what to do able the high school years or your child is feeling a little wary of your abilities, prayerfully consider the Catholic schools offering to help you. They can be a help!

Keeping Those History Books Organized

Since we have so many books of historical fiction, biography and other living books, I write the year that the story took place (date of death for a biography or other appropriate date as I see fit - e.g. 1492 for a book about Columbus) on the book's spine. This allows us to easily identify where to fit the book into our curriculum, and offers a simple way to keep our bookshelves in order. (Anonymous)

Timeline Ideas

The following ideas are by no means uniquely mine, but bear repeating because they work! Creating a history timeline and Book of the Centuries have been two of our family's most valuable history activities. We've seen timelines of all sorts -- in binders and on poster, straight lines and curves -- ours currently runs like a wallpaper border around our kitchen. Likewise, the possibilities are endless for just what to attach. We use holy cards and pictures and are planning to add book covers (scanned and reduced, the idea coming from a wonderful friend) to help the children visualize where their reading fits into the broader picture of history. As a family project, such a timeline just can't be beat. It's very inexpensive, yet offers visual support to everything we do. It has also helped me and my husband to connect all the little pieces of history that we were taught in school.

Our Book of the Centuries is a binder with page divisions marking 50 year increments. Just how to divide your book will depend on the age of your child(ren) and how specific you want to be. We've chosen to make a separate binder for each of our children, though we know some families who've made one binder for all the children to share. Our pages include narrations about famous scientists, saints, explorers, etc. Pictures and maps can be inserted as well. Again, as with the timeline, each new addition forges more connections among what is being learned.

For us, these are both works in progress. They span many "school years" and don't get set aside for the summer. They give us, as home educators, a sense of continuity, and help make our study of history a continuing quest.

contributed by Mary from Wisconsin

No Wall Space for your Timeline, No Problem

Save your walls for book shelves and put your timeline on foam board. It works great! Get two large pieces of foam board from an art supply store (one 48 x 60 and 40 x 60). Cut the 40 x 60 into two pieces (20 x 60) and tape them with cloth tape to the edges of the larger center board. Thus it became a tri-fold display, much like the science project display boards, but much larger. The light weight foam board stands very well, moves easily by folding up the outer boards over the center board to be put out of the way when not in use. I discovered this wonderful use of foam board when I needed to display my Timeline for conventions. I had people wanting to buy the foam board display.

Contributed by Marcia Neill
author of Catholic World History Timeline and Guide

Fun with Latin

I belong to homeschool co-op with four other families in which I teach Latin to the older students. One fun project we did toward the end of the year was make a Latin calendar. I used the calendar templates from A Year With God: Volume One (Catholic Heritage Curricula) and blanked out the names of the months, and the days of the week. I printed these sheets out on cardstock and the students filled in the Latin names of the month and days of the week. They used Roman Numerals to fill in the dates. The fun (and tricky) part was when we started adding birthdays, feast days and holidays in Latin. The students enjoyed coloring in the beautiful decorations from the templates and making nice covers. You can have the calendars spiral bound at your local copy shop. (Alicia from WI)

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One assignment that proved to be challenging and interesting, particularly when we came across a chapter that didn't have a lot of translation, was to have the students write up sentences (English or Latin) for their fellow students to translate. This really made them think, review their vocabulary words carefully. The final results were usually both educational and entertaining as silly sentences were encouraged and the students were very attentive to their own (and their fellow students') mistakes. This would also work in families for older (or more advanced) students to write up sentences for their younger siblings. (Alicia from WI)

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We use Latin for Beginners by Angela Wilkes in 5th grade as our formal introduction to the language (after spending 2 yrs with "English from the Roots Up"). LfB is published by the Usborne folks -- lots of pictures, lots of captions, with a total Latin vocabulary of about 350 words and a brief look at the first few declensions and conjugations at the end.

The vocabulary is everyday sort of stuff -- family members, days of the week, counting and colors, giving directions and placing an order for dinner. So part of how we use the book is to label rooms of the house, furniture, pictures of foods and pets, and so forth, to give the students a hands-on and visual approach to the language. Other lessons include scheduling their day in Latin, labeling the family pictures with name, age, and relationship to the student, and so forth. Three of our children have used this book so far, and they thoroughly enjoy doing their lessons on post-it notes and putting them up around the house! (Sue R.)

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Latin Treasure Hunt: Keep an eye and ear out for Latin words or phrases that are used regularly in 21st century America! For the co-op high school Latin class that I teach, I gave them a list of Latin words and phrases (like emeritus and bona fide) to keep track of over the summer. (You can find an extensive list with meanings and pronunciations in Amo, Amas, Amat and more by Eugene Ehrlich). I will be awarding a prize to the student who records the most entries (you have to very specific about the rules though!). I think this is an excellent way to make Latin more relevant to students. (Alicia from WI)

Learning to Read

When my son was four he wanted to learn to read and was beginning to slowly work his way through the Bob Books, but was reluctant to work on many pre-reading skills. He hardly every drew or colored. When I bought him some coloring books he kept them in a nice stack and liked to look through them, but didn't want to start coloring them. I think he might have been worried about messing up the books or not drawing very well. This went on for a year or a year and half and I was getting concerned about his small motor skills keeping up with his interest in reading. As I began to see his interest in writing grow (just simple things like his name) it became evident that writing was very difficult for him. I finally picked up an plastic sheet of alphabet stencils at the local teacher's store. The sheets were 8 1/2" x 11". One sheet had upper case letters and one lower case. Matthew fell in love with these stencils and was so proud of how nice his letters looked when he wrote things with the stencils. It really helped him gain confidence and fine-motor-skill practice. It wasn't long before he started drawing and coloring too! (Alicia from WI)

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It's amazing how different each child is. With my first two children, a lot of their beginning phonics was done by studying phonogram flash cards when they were first learning to read. My third child, however, had absolutely no interest in this. All she wanted to do was write words on the chalkboards. One of the beauties of homeschooling is its flexibility and I was able to turn this toward my goals by having her write out a set of words each day with a common phonogram and have her practice making the sound of that phonogram (this also provided her examples of where that particular phonogram could be found. (Anonymous)