Homeschooling granddaughter in Maryland

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We decided that I would home school my granddaughter this year. We were going to do it anyway for middle school, but dcided to start with 5th grade since I am retired now. She did not do well with the e-learning through the public school last spring, even with her mom working from home. Now her mom is in the office at least 3 days/week and the schools have decided to continue virtual learning in the fall with proposal for hybrid learning in the spring. We could possibly deal with the school’s virtual learning (with a little help from grandma) but would have to stick to their schedules. I would not be able to help with hybrid due to my own health issues & potential exposure to all the regular kid germs thy pick up in school, not to mention COVID. So we opted for the flexibility of homeschooling. My daughter-in-law has homeschooled my other grands for years - she is now my mentor. I looked at two Catholic programs - Seton and Catholic Heritage Curriculum - but my daughter decided on a really basic online program from Time4Learning. It covers the 4 core subjects - Language Arts, Math, Social Studies & Science; however, Maryland law also requires Art, Music, Health & PE, so I had to find/build curriculum for these “extra” subjects. COMAR rules are vague & the state standards are complicated, but it helps to review them. (Though I could bet that the public schools don’t cover half of what is in the standards). PE - she has covered with tumbling & cheer practice. I integrated Music & Art with Religious Ed (family formation) topics using crafts & songs from VBC with some techniques & theory included. She may opt to continue playing the viola (hasn’t touched it since March), but that would require lessons (I can teach music theory & keyboard, but have no viola skills). For Health, I chose 4 “modules” - Emergency Preparedness (from Scouts), Protect Yourself Rules (from Scouts), Family Life (from Religious Ed) and Substance Abuse prevention (because that is my field). My daughter submitted her intent to home instruct, received a confirmation letter & forwarded it to the school - so it is official.
 
I was homeschooled from grammar school all the way through high school, and I can honestly say that a home education was such a blessing. God bless you for doing this for your granddaughter. She will get a more thorough and well-rounded education this way. Studies have even shown that young adults who are homeschooled perform better on standardized tests, and go on to be very successful college students. I understand it’s not feasible for everyone due to work schedules, but those who are able to make that sacrifice are really doing their children a huge favor in the long run. Your granddaughter has a wonderful grandmother! 🙂
 
Thank you! One of my grandsons just completed HS through homeschooling. In Maryland, they won’t award a diploma for completion unless you take the GED. But he took classes at the local community college during his senior year, so he just shows his transcripts. We are easing into an early start - one lesson/week - just to get her using the program & used to having me as her teacher. We’ll start the full schedule at the end of the month.
 
We are just now completing our second year of homeschooling (Grades 6 and 7). We construct our own curriculum (our state requires certain core subjects, though they are defined very broadly). Seton is very good, and if you change your mind about Time4Learning, I’m assuming you are fairly close to Manassas (Virginia) and you might want to drive out there one day and talk to them in person. We have been tracking Seton in math and religion, but finally had to give up on Saxon Math, there’s just too much there, it’s too intense, it’s too diffuse and random — there is method in Saxon’s madness, but it’s not best for every student, my son among them. We use the Baltimore Catechism as our “spine” for religion class.
 
This can be really rewarding journey, from my limited attempts at this. My two cents, you may want to supplement time for learning with something else. I like it, but I don’t know if it’s fully comprehensive. I think it may help to supplement the reading and math specifically… Maybe with a traditional curriculum as you mentioned with the programs you mentioned. As previous thread indicates i’m not a huge fan of saxon math, but it’s fairly straightforward to use. EngageNY has a completely free math curriculum that’s used in many public schools. I tend to like this. It’s more engaging than Saxon in my opinion. A lot of people like MathUSee also for math, haven’t tried it.

Don’t forget bookshark/Sonlight (Roughly same curriculum, Sonlight is more biblically-based. Not 100% sure if catholic friendly?) Reasonably straightforward to use. Multiple subjects. Can be pricey, but you can find used sets on eBay. I tend to like getting the Teachers guide alone with student worksheets on eBay, and buying the children’s books that go with it separately, to save costs.
 
Since it is my first year, I’ll give Time4Learning a shot. If I don’t like it, we can change. My preference would be a workbook style, but my daughter liked the online program. I thought the science was a bit light, so I have a supplement (Scout Nova programs) if she is not challenged by the T4L science curriculum. I think my daughter-in-law uses Saxon math & she might have some workbooks for me. I just did not find enough available in Seton or CHC for art, music & health. Only art was covered, so I still would have had to look elsewhere for those subjects. She is in the parish Religious Ed program, so I figured out a way to integrate art & music with the family formation topics. I found one workbook program for health from Horizon, but developed the health curriculum myself - after checking out the topics listed in the state standards.
 
We homeschooled for 9yrs. It was one of the most gratifying things I ever did. I treasure the years my son and I spent together, and also the education I received. We had a homeschool room in our house that was filled with books, science projects, art work, and critters of all sorts. When we reached jr high and high school we read classics, worked on math problems together on the dry erase board, and went on many school-related trips. Today my son is 27 and works alongside my husband with our remodeling business. He also contracts his own work. It was truly a wonderful time in my life.
 
I want to encourage you in this big rewarding path and with all the extra preparation it took for your family. It seems complicated to do all the curriculum!

Would she been able to do violin again and sport with schools that are more or less closed, and maybe the institutions that offer hobbies?
 
My personal opinion is to not having a student only before screen. It is not healthy for concentration and the formation of the brain.

Having books is better to focus yourself and make your brain work. Writting with a pen is definitely important . We all know that after leaving school we are becoming more disabled and have difficulty to writte! And computers does not help.

I would be benefical if she would have some activities and times out of screen every day and going out a little.
 
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Peaceable said:
Don’t forget bookshark/Sonlight (Roughly same curriculum, Sonlight is more biblically-based. Not 100% sure if catholic friendly?)
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I supplemented with some Sonlight and didn’t see anything objectionable to Catholicism. I’d avoid Abeka, however.

Bookshark and Sonlight are both wonderful but difficult to juggle with multiple siblings because of the heavy read-aloud requirements. Now I just read one classic book to all of my kids and then have them move on with their lessons. But it looks like the OP has only one child to homeschool. Different approaches work with different households.
 
With Time4Learning, the lessons & quizzes are online. There are offline Math practice sheets which are similar to workbooks and some hands on science experiments & writing assignments. PE, health, art & music are not online, but some art topics are integrated with Social Studies. Currently, she has tumbling 1x/week and cheer practice will start back up 2x/week very soon. She seems to have lost interest in the viola. If she wants to continue, her mom will need to set up lessons - but right now, those are online, too. I have some hands on activities, books & videos for the health topics. I can experiment with the schedule - having breaks in between subjects &/or having the offline class in between the online classes
 
blackforest said:
Bookshark and Sonlight are both wonderful but difficult to juggle with multiple siblings because of the heavy read-aloud requirements
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I agree with this. It does require a good amount of adult facilitation. But if you have the time, I think it’s fairly complete, and even challenging for motivated students. I’ve sort of fallen off the book shark bandwagon, make it back into it, purely due to time constraints on my end.
 
Yes, only one grandchild was still in public school (until now). I’m pretty sure I looked at some material from Sonlight. I also looked at Easy Peasy All in One, which is free. Many friends from my parish & from Scouting are currently homeschooling or they did when their children were school age. Scouting & Religious Ed topics provided many areas for integration & supplemental curriculum.
 
I homeschooled my son, my niece, and two nephews from kindergarten, till they took their GEDs at the age of sixteen. We used Kolbe Academy and my sister in law helped with languages (they were required to take Greek and Latin) and music, and I used a tutor for my son’s high school math. My son and older nephew took tae kwon do classes for PE, my niece went horseback riding with her father, and the youngest just stayed active as he had no definite physical activity interests. My sister in law took over the two younger boys when I had to take a second job and no longer had the time (or the energy!) to work a full day and then teach school. My son won a scholarship which he used at the local community college to study automotive technology. My niece (who graduated with my son) took a few years of general education studies before entering a Carmelite monastery. My older nephew is now 23 and will have his PhD in biochemical research (his mother died of primary pulmonary hypertension when he was 5, so he wants to go into medical research) before he’s 30. My younger nephew is 20, working full time and planning to go to college as soon as he decides what his major will be (technology or science.)

Reading was the hardest class I had except for my older nephew. My son didn’t like the readers Kolbe had (said they were “boring”), but we struck a deal where, if he read independently from our “school” library (used book sales helped us build this) and turned in a book report every two weeks, and he passed the tests that the school administered, we wouldn’t use the readers. I did this with the other kids, too, though my older nephew still used the readers and read independently. My niece struggled with reading though she loved it. They’re all good readers now. I actually got some of the readers from Seton to mix things up a bit for them, but I made sure a trip to the public library was a weekly event for them.

I don’t think I’ll ever catch up on all the sleep I missed with the way I had to work and school the kids but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. And the kids all say they were glad they were homeschooled (and yes, they all have friends, many who had public school educations, and still they’re glad they didn’t go to public school!)
 
Time4Learning has only 4 books in the 5th grade Language Arts & they used online excerpts - reading the whole book was not required for the lesson. I can use the Language Arts extensions - which has more reading & vocabulary, but I was told it is not required. Maybe I should add them.
 
cjsm93 said:
Studies have even shown that young adults who are homeschooled perform better on standardized tests, and go on to be very successful college students. I
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I don’t know of any studies, but I definitely have seen some homeschoolers outperform kids going to standard school, however I don’t know if this is a self selecting group. Some people homeschool because their kids are advanced enough that standard schooling doesn’t meet their educational needs.
 
I know in the state I live in that if you want to go to A state college they have a standard ACT score everyone has to meet. Say it’s 12, homeschoolers have to make 2 points higher to get in. So if I wanted to go to the same school, I would have had to make a 14(I was homeschooled from start to finish). Seems rather unfair to me. However, majority of homeschoolers where I’m from just wipe the floor with publicly educated kids. There are the exceptions, but homeschooling is huge where I live.
 
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