HI homeschool

Vicki has finally mastered her color words and is able to identify her colors 90% of the time something I’ve been aiming for this past school year. I will say that part of her regression in learning aside from losing oxygen that affects brain cells in her brain is her medication phenobarbital. I have heard for some kids with her seizure mutation(More on her seizures and genetic mutation on her page Vicki's) that are on Phenobarbital some kids experience regression. However for V it is worth it and I don’t plan to pull her off it anytime soon.

The past month we’ve been trying a new curriculum IEW which is supposed to be helpful in getting Sped students to read successfully so here’s my thoughts on it.

The IEW curriculum comes with AAR(All about reading level 1 aka AAR Green cards; apparently it’s too advanced for Vicki.Though she’s able to identify her letters most of the time she’s still not able to give the correct sounds on her own. A conversation with her 👵 said she can but for me to go forward I have to see it myself. That said a year or so ago she was able and actually able to read some of the green card words. I strongly believe later she’ll be diagnosed by drs with ID especially with the amount of oxygen she loses during each cluster of seizures. I have noticed over the years it’s affected her learning how much she is able to retain.

We’ve used AAR in the past with good success so I’ve ordered the pre primer/aka yellow cards for review. With some review maybe we will be able to try level 1 again.

Vicki’s cutting has gotten so much better in the past year. I showed it to my mom who of course said “you know this year she’ll be comparable to third grade yet she can really only count to 12.” A lot of it is related to her seizures which is talked about on her medical page. But the reason I homeschool amongst many other reasons is to go at her pace wherever that may be.

For her grandma’s “homeschool” as well be in Hawaii unknown time and the idea is to v help care for me later I ordered Bju but unknowingly til after I placed the order the current textbook were published in 2021 which means they meet ccs guidelines so I’ll be returning it unopened and once I get a refund I’ll purchase horizons k. I’ve used horizons before with wonderful success.

Vicki is very close to starting “a new year “ of homeschool curriculum. We don’t have an official start or end date but it is usually when she’s finished her current ones I move on to the next regardless of grade level I always go by current/most recent progress in mastering skills/concepts this I use scope and sequence by various companies (non common core) and place accordingly. We also school year around and don’t take scheduled breaks.

Her next curriculum I’ll be working with her will continue to encourage and consist of tons of tracing words and number to get her to write independently at least 50% of the time somewhat legibly. Each year I’ve been doing tracing with her she’s getting better but this year I’m pushing her slowly more to trace as much as possible and attempt to write independently occasionally. The curriculum I’ve chosen to do with her is masterbooks and I’ll be doing science,math, and a few others including continuing queens homeschool for preschool. Believe she has one to two more books in the series before we start the elementary. For science we still have science shepherd and I love it as the lessons are very short but since she’s still not writing on her own we’re going to come back to it then eventually branch out on curriculum from there after she is writing independently some.

Choosing curriculum

I don’t do grades in my homeschool. I don’t do “place child at x grade because child is x years old”. I don’t do x will be (further)behind because x x x. Imo there’s no behind only where x is at. I’ve always done mastery. If you’re new to hi homeschool I only do M, I or P. M is mastery which is 80-90% accurate I means introduced a new concept/skill P is progress. If I circle something it means of two things it’s something she needs to work on or she did on her own. If there’s an x it means she got it wrong either intentionally or she’s not focusing. I keep lessons relatively short unless she’s very willing we do more than 10-15 minutes at a time.

The very easiest “traditional “ curriculum imo is in order for math
Masterbooks math(Charlotte Mason approach,5 minutes a lesson)
BJU(Bob Jones university)(borderline common core note year if using and is an concern)
Horizons aop
Abeka
All Christian curriculum I’ve used and loved. I’ve also used other ways to get her to master skills/concept like toys,kits,free worksheets from other homeschool moms(not common core aligned) or make my own with createprintable.com,listening by audio etc.

One thing to keep in mind is always look for a scope and sequence. Sometimes I have v repeat a book/ “grade” up to 3x by different companies before bumping her to the next “grade”.

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V did some school with Mom and Grandma seperately so she could get 2 hours of my phone. Initially due to behavior she wasn't allowed to have it but to earn phone time back is very difficult because she needs to do what I ask of her with minimal behaviors.With Grandma she did some of her ABC’s which I think was “pressured” and answered with prompts from Grandpa whereas with me I printed out one of uppercase and one of lowercase letters just to gauge where she is to see if Grandma is accurate or not…When I did upper and lowercase abcs with v I just pointed to the letters and had her name the letters for both upper and lowercase.If she was guessing and I can tell when she is then I might say something like Vicki don’t guess… Tell me what letter this is…Then after if she is still guessing like I’ll tell her V if you don’t know then just guess whatever you think it is…Sometimes she’ll get it right others not but when she does get it right I praise her with hugs and kisses. With me she got 25/26 (95%)lower case letters and upper case 20/26(75%).I don’t do letter grades.The way I grade is M,P,I, which means mastery,progress,or introduced or improvement.If I’m just introducing a concept or skill I note it on the page. To get M is difficult because I require her to have the skill or concept down 80% of the time over an extended period of time.
I am buying her some workbooks to help her with the uppercase abcs since she is still not quite at 80%.Lowercase imo she’s got it down already.

Trying to do more school regularly again but breaking it into smaller time periods. Today she actually wrote the number 4 on her own for the first time so it’s progress.We did some reading Queen’s Homeschool Preschool Book 2 for little ones.I love this curriculum especially to introduce language arts because there’s very minimal writing but the lessons are very short.We also did some math concepts with a few worksheets from 3dinosaurs. My goal is to keep repeating a skill until it’s met about 80-90% of the time. Often one way I get V to learn new words or recognize a word for an example today in the Queen’s Homeschool workbook there was a sentence like Don can not sit a lot. In a lesson above this specific lesson which included 2 sentences there were some words she doesn’t know like(only examples not taken from the workbook itself) lot, cot,not, and on. So as an example V reads *Don can *not sit a *lot.The * words are the ones she doesn’t know.If the lessons above include similiar words I have her re read with help then the ones she has a difficult time with I’ll point to the word “on” and then I’ll have her find the word on and point to the section of the page that has the word “on” up to maybe 2-5 times depending how engaged she is. As you can see we use curriiculum but sparingly.

As (Toxic living conditions)resumes V is still homeschooling.d Today she read a few sentences from Queens Homeschool for me which she is getting pretty good at. We are still doing the preschool workbooks but she is progressing well in spite of not being able to write which we are still working on. I’m also following her interests in teaching where unschooling comes in. Tomorrow is dinousars.

Hello and welcome back to hi homeschool if you’re still following our journey to homeschool in Hawaii. As such life in Texas was short but still homeschooling regardless.