Gentleschoolers, start your engines!

We officially start kindergarten tomorrow.

Egad!

I've got a notebook outlining the stuff we'll be covering (reading, writing, math, Spanish) along with afternoon activities (arts & crafts, field trip ideas, games, etc.). I've got a giant box filled with school and art supplies--paints, construction paper, rulers, glitter, lined paper, workbooks, modeling clay, you name it. I've got a list of the specific learning outcomes I'm shooting for K-S to achieve by the year's end, which I've based loosely on the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Kindergarteners. (We're trying to overshoot where possible; if I can't do a better job of teaching my kid than an underfunded public school, I'm in big trouble.)

I've also got a freezer full of food that will buy me a "night off" at least once a week for the next couple of months--granny-licious fare like homemade lasagna and sweet-and-sour meatballs and beef-and-veggie soup and blueberry cobbler and sugar cookies. (The kind of stuff I grew up on but eschewed pre-kid when I actually had time to chop eight different kinds of vegetables for a single side dish.) On account of I won't just be homeschooling this fall, but finishing up a master's degree in education that won't leave me more than a couple of nanoseconds of spare time to whip up something to feed us.

So why am I all googly-moogly inside?

K-S is excited, as I've told her we'll get to do more "fun stuff" in kindergarten than we did before--including math, which for some reason she's fixated on these days. (Must've skipped a generation :-) And we made a special end-of-summer brunch today--homemade sausage and angel biscuits--to celebrate our new undertaking.



So I'm ready. K-S is ready. Husband is the most ready of all: he never stopped the music lessons he started with K-S last year, and he enrolled her in jiu jitsu at the beginning of the summer (music and P.E. are both subjects he got dibs on), so he's not even sure what The Big Deal is all about.

And still, I'm all googly-moogly...

How "real" teachers do it

Homeschooling is a lonely business.

K-S and I are getting out more these days, beating the bushes for other homeschoolers and hooking up at museums and parks. I'm on a couple of online homeschool groups and lists, I subscribe to a couple of homeschool-related magazines, and I have a growing library of books on education in general (and homeschooling in particular). All of these have been crucial in strengthening my resolve and maintaining my sanity.

But on a day-to-day basis, it's just us.

With no active homeschool group in the area (I'm not counting the one that wants to pry into my personal relationship with the Big Guy Upstairs) it's tough to get a feel for what's normal.

Yes, I know K-S is unique. Yes, I know the whole point of homeschooling is to Do What Works For Your Family. Blah, blah, blah. That's not how I work. I work by researching as much as I can, making sense of what I find, and then choosing and adapting what I believe is the best approach.

Take reading, for example. I know what I'm doing with K-S, and why. And I know how far she's gotten, and what she struggles with. What I don't know is where she fits on the spectrum of "normal." (Yes, yes, there's a wide range of variability at this age, but there's also Something Seriously Isn't Right Here.) What could I be doing better? Are there things I haven't thought of? Approaches I could learn from and adapt?

All this wind-up is to say how excited I was to come across Annenberg Media Teacher Resources. This site might not be big news to folks with televisions, but for me, it's a bonanza. It offers a wealth of educational workshops and documentaries (most of which I suspect have aired on PBS) for instant viewing: how to teach art, how to teach math, how to teach reading, and a gazillion more. Science. Geography. Algebra!

Some of them you can buy on DVD, but a lot of them are free, such as this Teaching Reading K-2 video that shows a "teach the teachers" workshop. You get to see teachers conducting reading exercises with kindergarten, first grade, and second grade classrooms. You get to see what they're doing and why, what they could improve, and how their students respond.

Best of all, you get to see that you're right on track--and that your very own K-S is doing as well as you secretly thought.