Homeschool Housekeeping…

Posted by Lorren on August 18, 2008

Our new school year is starting in 2 weeks. It seems like we just finished… perhaps it is because we just did. Because of the house fire, we didn’t finish the last of the history lessons until mid-July.

But all of dd’s friends are already in school, and we kinda have to start with only a short break, because otherwise we’ll end up in the same situation next year as we did this year… a short break. You never know when life is going to throw you a curveball, and starting school on time ensures that you can stretch things out the next year if you have to. Like we did this year after being uprooted after the fire.

I’ve been putting together the lesson plans, and I have them done for the first month in all subjects. This year I’m tackling something new… grades.

Dd does well in her classes, but there are days that she doesn’t put as much effort as she can in there. I think that she’ll be motivated by grades. Her grades will mostly depend on participation and effort. I’m not going to develop or purchase history and science tests… I don’t think that memorizing every little detail at this point is important. I will grade worksheets, math tests, spelling tests, and English papers. But mostly participation.

Some different companies give kids bonuses and the like for good grades. It would be easy for me to just print up a report card that says “A” on it… but it wouldn’t be fair to just give her an “A” because I like her. By recording what she does, I can better track her grades to give her what she deserves.

Since she is only 1st grade age, I’m not going to grade her too strictly, I’ll probably add in actual tests for subjects like history and science next year or the year after that. But I think some accountability is a good thing. Not to stress her out, but to motivate her.

My grading sheets were adapted from the ones on the Donna Young web site. I only do 4 day school weeks, so the sheets that she had didn’t really fit my school, but it wasn’t too difficult to throw together my own 4-day grading sheets using Excel.