Product Description

Finally, homeschoolers have a comprehensive guide to designing a homeschool curriculum, from one of the country's foremost homeschooling experts. , Rebecca Rupp presents a structured plan to ensure that your children will learn what they need to know when they need to know it, from preschool through high school. Based on the traditional pre-K through 12th-grade structure, Home Learning Year by Year features:

The integral subjects to be covered within each grade
Standards for knowledge that should be acquired by your child at each level
Recommended books to use as texts for every subject
Guidelines for the importance of each topic: which knowledge is essential and which is best for more expansive study based on your child's personal interests
Suggestions for how to sensitively approach less academic subjects, such as sex education and physical fitness

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27777 in Books
• Published on: 2000-11-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780609805855
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From the Inside Flap
Finally, homeschoolers have a comprehensive guide to designing a homeschool curriculum, from one of the country's foremost homeschooling experts. , Rebecca Rupp presents a structured plan to ensure that your children will learn what they need to know when they need to know it, from preschool through high school. Based on the traditional pre-K through 12th-grade structure, Home Learning Year by Year features:

The integral subjects to be covered within each grade
Standards for knowledge that should be acquired by your child at each level
Recommended books to use as texts for every subject
Guidelines for the importance of each topic: which knowledge is essential and which is best for more expansive study based on your child's personal interests
Suggestions for how to sensitively approach less academic subjects, such as sex education and physical fitness

About the Author
Rebecca Rupp, Ph.D., has homeschooled her three sons for more than ten years. The author of The Complete Home Learning Sourcebook, Getting Started on Home Learning, and Committed to Memory: How We Remember and Why We Forget, Rupp writes a monthly column for Home Education Magazine and produces and hosts a local homeschool television program. She lives in Shaftsbury, Vermont.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"Don't panic.
"-- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Kids, as any parent knows, are determinedly individual. Interests, learning styles, attention spans, growth rates, developmental progress, and food preferences vary wildly from child to child. One learns to read at five, another at seven, a third at ten. One is a natural athlete; another falls flat while walking across a room. One is fascinated by rockets, a second by insects, a third by Greek mythology. One thinks math is cool; another loathes the very sight of a number. So where do standardized curricula fit in here? What course of study can possibly fit all?

The answer is a resounding none. There is no effective one-size-fits-all mode of education. The public school system, which has to cope with some fifty million school-age children annually, does the best it can to meet the needs of the many, targeting its content and goals at a hypothetical average child. On a large scale, it's unfeasible, inefficient, and downright impossible to create curricula tailored to meet the needs of fifty million idiosyncratic individuals. In large-scale education, therefore, kids have to adapt to the decreed norm.

One of the primary advantages of homeschooling is the ability to bypass the decreed norm. Homeschoolers can design their own curricula, assembling resources and using approaches that best suit their own children's needs. Your child is enthralled by marine biology? Invent a curriculum that builds upon this interest. Read books, fiction and nonfiction, about the oceans; play ocean-related games; collect seashells; conduct experiments on water pressure, temperature, and salinity; visit an aquarium; adopt a whale. Your child is fascinated by ancient Egypt? Read ancient Egyptian myths; build a model pyramid; experiment with hieroglyphics; locate Egypt on the map; visit a museum to view ancient Egyptian artifacts. Find out how to make a mummy; read a biography of archaeologist Howard Carter; learn about the Rosetta stone.

When it comes to curricula, kids should always come first. It's not what teachers teach that's important; it's what children learn--and what children learn best is what interests them, what they want and need to know. This, in a nutshell, is the prime source of discord among teachers, children, and standardized curricula. The curriculum says Johnny should be studying long division; Johnny doesn't want to. Now what?

Homeschoolers, given this situation, have a wide range of options. No curriculum is written in stone. Perhaps an alternative math program will do the trick--or math games and manipulatives rather than workbooks; a computer software program; or real-world math exercises involving cooking, carpentry, and other hands-on projects. Perhaps the best course is to drop math altogether for the time being and concentrate on something that sparks Johnny's interest--say, space travel, rock collecting, or raising tropical fish--all of which, willy-nilly, eventually involve math. Our long experience in homeschooling has shown, time and again, that an intense interest in anything inevitably leads everywhere.

On the other hand, almost all homeschoolers, at some point or another, run into the puzzling question of sequence. Where do we start? How do we assure that our kids have an adequate grounding in the basics? What are the basics? What comes first? What should we tackle next? While public school curricula vary somewhat from state to state, all have similarities in that they attempt to present an appropriate developmental sequence of skills. Kids learn the letters of the alphabet first, then letter sounds, then the art of blending letter sounds into whole words. Addition and subtraction precede multiplication and division; studies of holidays and famous people prepare beginners for more structured studies of world and American history. Invented spelling precedes conventional spelling and grammar; basic algebra is a prerequisite for chemistry and physics.

Many states require that homeschoolers keep step with the public school curricula and demand proof--in the form of written assessments or tests--to ensure that they are indeed doing so. Colleges, though increasingly enthusiastic about accepting homeschooled students, often require a specific battery of high school background courses. For all of these reasons, it's to homeschoolers' advantage to be familiar with the general course of the standardized educational curriculum. The basic curriculum, however, should be used as a reference point and a guideline rather than a set of predetermined assignments. In many cases, there are equivalents and alternatives to the courses described here; and parents should adjust and adapt to best meet the needs of their own children.

Finally, no parent should view the standardized curriculum as cause for worry. Children vary, and homeschoolers inevitably will find that their more-or-less first-grader isn't quite standard. He or she may be reading at an advanced level but lagging in such essentials as arithmetic, time-telling, and the competent tying of shoes. Or, alternatively, he or she may have whizzed confidently ahead in math but be struggling with the awful process of grouping letters into words. As needed, move forward or back in the curriculum for lists of concepts and suggestions. The standardized curriculum can indicate academic areas in which kids need extra help and support--or creative substitutes and alternatives, or stress-reducing periods of being left alone. Variation, though, is normal, and our many individual differences are what make the world the interesting place it is. Kids are natural learners, and each will find his or her own best way to learn. There are many roads to an educational Rome.

Customer Reviews

A Must Have
We've homeschooled for 13 years. I co-founded a homeschool group and buy for the group's library. I purchase many books every month and read even more than I buy. If I had to chose what two books I wouldn't be without, my choice would be two authored by Rebecca Rupp, this book and The Complete Home Learning Source Book.
In our homeschool group the comment I hear most from other parents about homeschooling is "I'm just not sure we're on track". Home Learning Year by Year provides the information parents need to guage if they are covering what their child needs to learn. I'm a believer in letting the child's abilities set the pace but by using Rebecca Rupp's book, I have now made a checklist of what I want my children to cover and I have confidence that we're on track.
If you don't homeschool your child, you'll still want this book. As a former special education teacher, I remember parent meetings where parents were lost about whether their child was being taught what he/she needed to learn. Home Learning Year by Year can guide parents in taking charge and making good choices for their child's education regardless of whether that education takes place in the home or in a classroom setting.
The book gives the most complete listing of education goals grade by grade I've seen in any book. Ms Rupp suggests resources for each grade and its apparent to me that her suggestions and her goals have been carefully researched.

Great Resource
I was looking for a book that had just checklists of what to teach when- for example, when a child is finished with first grade in a public school what do they typically know.

What I got was a book that had this information and much more. It lists one thing that kids should be able to do (identify colors and mix them to make new colors) and then provides some resources or books that will help teach this concept.

To get the information I wanted I am forced to wade through the references and suggestions. That is why I rated it four stars. I think I'd like to have a checklist at the end of each section that has just the expectations of each grade. However, I'm not sorry I bought this book. I have a feeling that as time goes on I'll refer to it more and more.

Great resources. There are a variety of books and webpages that are given in this book as places to look for more information. I have looked at many of these references and found them to be high quality.

Very helpful, not overwhelming
I agree with the previous reviewers - this book is a great little resource. It begins by telling you that all kids are different and how that one of the great things about homeschooling is that you can adapt to your child's personal needs. That being said, for those of us interested in a guide to what types of things are generally covered at what ages, this is very helpful. I appreciate several things about this book - it does cover all ages preschool through grade 12. It gives some specific comments about what is expected - for example: identify pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollar bills; recognize dollar and cent signs under money and measurement for kindergartners. It also gives information about books and resources to help the parent and student. It does not, however, dictate how the child should be taught (ie Grade 3 month 2 do the following, the progress to X in month 3). As the children progress (mine are only 4 and 2 at this point, but I look ahead of course!) this infomation gives you broad headings to cover as ideas - for example in Grade 10 History: Western Europe in the nineteenth century. Topics include the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna, the growth of democracy, the Revolution of 1848 and the British Reform Laws, the unification of Germany under Bismark, and the unification of Italy under Garibaldi. Subjects covered include math, history, literature, grammar, art, music, foreign language, health and physical education, sciences geography (this is not necessarily an all inclusive list).