Stuff We Like

As fairly new homeschoolers (2012-13 is our first full school year at home), it's hard to imagine that our "likes" won't change a ton over the course of Sarah's learning journey. At the same time, I hope others who are on similar journeys find it useful to know what's working for us right now.

If you really want to see the kinds of things we tend to do, check out our unschooled version of a sort-of-curriculum for a seventh-grade-ish daughter.

Beyond that...

Learning stuff we like

This post on our Top 5 Homeschooling Resources sums up a lot of what we like. Books. Being outdoors. Those are some of the biggest ones.

This post shares 5 Things We Learned NOT To Do in Our First Month of Homeschooling. That's pretty self-explanatory.

Here, you can read more about our relaxed approach to learning. An excerpt from that, which pretty well defines us (for now):

We ARE informal.
We ARE trying to grab teaching and learning moments as they come.
We ARE letting Sarah make the decisions in as many cases as possible.
We ARE trying to find what works for us, and are willing to change as we go if something isn't.
We ARE actively engaging with our daughter and with the world around us.

We AREN'T using any "textbooks" at this point.
We AREN'T judgmental about other schooling approaches, including public school.
We AREN'T worried (well, at least not too much) about what goes into our portfolio at the end of the year.
We AREN'T comparing our days to what Sarah would have done in her former school.
We AREN'T experts.

I have to especially give credit to the Ask Pauline website, a compendium about homeschooling in Pennsylvania. I based the entirety of our "paperwork process" - removing Sarah from public school, filing our affidavit and objectives, having our objectives pre-approved because of Sarah's IEP in public school, etc. - on material from that site. I found our evaluator there. I found the book log and attendance log I've chosen to use there. If you're homeschooling in PA, I highly recommend it.

This article, "Learning With Asperger's: A Parent's Perspective," by Anita S. Charles, says a BUNCH of stuff I wish I was articulate enough to have said on my own. The reasoning in here is a HUGE part of why we homeschool - we want to work to Sarah's strengths instead of constantly having her feel like she's supposed to be "fixing" her supposed weaknesses.

Bloggish stuff we like

Some of the graphics on this site are created by me using stock material from Webtreats.

We're powered by Blogger for now, but we also enjoy self-hosted Wordpress, which I use for much of my professional work, as well as Squarespace, which I use for several small-business sites I've developed for clients.

My full-time boss, Adam Baker, runs one heckuva blog, Man Vs. Debt. It's his guidance that allowed me to quit my office job, work (for him!) from home and, in turn, have the freedom to homeschool Sarah. Thanks, Baker.