Scholastic News at Home
I’m Homeschooling…. Now What??
Our journey to and through homeschooling has been quite, well, Tumultuous. My oldest just turned nine, in public school, she’d be starting 4th grade in August. Here at home? She’s reading at a 6th grade level, playing with numbers on lots of levels in many operations and still counting on her fingers at times. Her little brother will be five next week and we’ve been officially doing preschool at home since he was 2. He LOVES to listen to audio books (another blog on this later), counts about average for his age, and until recently, couldn’t care less about the sounds letters made. My youngest will be two next month, is already counting quantity to 5 and loves to practice letter sounds. These are simply facts. I care much more about their personality, kindness, compassion, daily living skills and willingness to help others. Even with academics not being MY priority… as I follow my children, academics happen and I roll with them.
Such was the case with Scholastic News.
In our first year, I was SO torn over not being able to offer my daughter the full scope of Montessori materials for her age that I started her in a Montessori Homeschool Co-op. It was a beautiful blessing! Her teachers were right after my own (Montessori) heart and they were fabulous, beautiful people. They offered a subscription for Scholastic News. It was like $8 for the year, so why would I NOT?? Scholastic News started coming home with her. She’d read a bit on the way home and then pile them in her room. After a few months we had a ginormous stack and I couldn’t bring myself to just toss them. So we read a few together and I saw how AMAZING they were.
As far as I can tell, you order them in ‘class’ amounts. So maybe I’ll have to get a group of homeschoolers together when we move to keep this going ;)
Anyway, they had a predicable format, quizzes at the end for comprehension, and links for videos online to further knowledge.
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| Front covers with great images really catch her attention. even in subjects I wouldn't think she's care about. |
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| Fun short stories to get her thinking, interested and engaged. |
So I, being the tech savvy, Montessorian that I am, saw opportunity. I looked over a few scholastics and created a worksheet for my daughter to fill out while/after reading each one.
She did these intermittently for a while. As part of lots of different options to her school day. Now, she does them as her ‘days work’ when we have a co-op event, field trip, or other learning opportunity that takes us out of the house for most of the day. She’ll do her Scholastic news before we leave or after we get back.
It’s easy to see when our kids encounter things they love. It’s also easy to see when those things are helping develop their ‘thinking brains’, as we say in our house. But it’s not always easy to see how we, as parents, can help them take it a step further.
I’ll eventually blog on a few other things; ‘games’, that we’ve incorporated into our homeschool routine at different points over the past few years. Oh, and side note? On non-outing days she’s currently working through a self guided workbook that she loves. So Scholastic News is not the only thing we’re doing right now. We live an eclectic life and thus our schooling has the same philosophy.
ING
!jen
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