Any tips? homeschooling for medical reasons

[Anonymous]

DD has missed quite a bit of school already, due to health issues. She was unenrolled, due to missing enough consecutive days. We considered homebound instruction, but our schedule is not consistent, between doctor appointments and not feeling well...

We've decided to homeschool, with the goal of re-enrolling as soon as possible, health-wise.

I've started to use MobyMax as a curriculum, though I'm saying I am the teacher, rather than enrolling her in an online school. We are in Virginia.

Any tips for structuring our time each week? Catching up on all the time spent in limbo? I'm worried the principal will make her repeat a grade. She has missed about 2 1/2 months of 5th grade.

[Anonymous]

1. If you have the money, I would get a private tutor or go to a tutoring center at least for math. They teach it very differently than how we learned and if the goal is to go back to traditional school having the same strategies the school uses will be very helpful.

2. Also Khan Academy is free online.

3. I think most homeschoolers kind of ease into the day with quiet time in the morning to read, do mind-work like puzzles etc and then get into the serious work after a meal. You'll be shocked how quickly you get through things so go ahead and join a local Facebook group so you can then do afternoon activities and meet ups.

Good luck and don't forget you have all summer to get her caught up if you're worried about repeating!

[Anonymous]

Thanks. These are good general recommendations. My daughter is too sick to leave the house, and we can't schedule a tutor on a regular basis, because we are (and have been) at the mercy of cancellation lists, procedures, more doctors, etc.

I need to work in homeschooling during the half hour here or there that she isn't just lying on the couch. Unfortunately, there are no afternoon activities or meet ups happening.

[Anonymous]

1. Concentrate on getting your daughter better. Homebound instruction has a terrible reputation so I think you made the right choice. As long as you follow the county guidelines for homeschooling they won't put you back.

2. Go onto well trained mind forums and ask for advice. There are thousands of people on it with lots of experience homeschooling sick kiddos.

3. Concentrate on math, reading, and writing in the time you do have. Personally I don't love Moby Max. A fifth grader can make up science and social studies content with out any problem in the coming years. Being sick is the perfect time to boot up a lot of videos. BBC documentaries are great. Blue Planet, Animal Planet, Chasing Ice, Chasing Coral, Crash Course videos. Let you daughter pick things she is interested in and is able to watch with you.


4. Consider a asynchronous homeschool class. Those would be more specialized and more time consuming. Let me know if you want names of companies that do this and I'll post ideas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1. Concentrate on getting your daughter better. Homebound instruction has a terrible reputation so I think you made the right choice. As long as you follow the county guidelines for homeschooling they won't put you back.

2. Go onto well trained mind forums and ask for advice. There are thousands of people on it with lots of experience homeschooling sick kiddos.

3. Concentrate on math, reading, and writing in the time you do have. Personally I don't love Moby Max. A fifth grader can make up science and social studies content with out any problem in the coming years. Being sick is the perfect time to boot up a lot of videos. BBC documentaries are great. Blue Planet, Animal Planet, Chasing Ice, Chasing Coral, Crash Course videos. Let you daughter pick things she is interested in and is able to watch with you.


4. Consider a asynchronous homeschool class. Those would be more specialized and more time consuming. Let me know if you want names of companies that do this and I'll post ideas.

I was going to say exactly this, beginning with Well Trained Mind Forum. In elementary school, you really are focusing on acquiring basic skills. Even when kids study social studies in school, they are mostly learning about how to study. Content itself may change from state to state or even school to school so no need to feel particular pressure. If you can keep your child reading, writing and progressing in math, you will be do fine vis a vis state requirements!

It sounds really tough--I am sorry you are going through this. Keep in mind that there are many ways to acquire skills. If your child is not feeling well, she may still be able to listen to an audio book and discuss it with you--and thus gain very important "reading" skills. (My kids LOVE audiobooks and will almost always ask for a hardcopy to reread after listening to anything.) She may be able to dictate summaries and thus work on important "writing" skills. My son, who used to be the world's most reluctant writer, has become an impressive writer in middle school. He takes an online class through the Well Trained Mind Academy and they spend a lot of their time in class writing outlines of short texts--it sounds so simple, but think about what an important skill to really master . Anyway, what I am trying to say is, it is actually good teaching practice to break reading and writing down into separate, discrete tasks and work on them individually. It may be much more manageable for you as the teacher and for your child as well.

[Anonymous]

Also, don’t get too focused on trying to prevent being held back. If your health crisis goes on much longer, that may happen. Just make the progress you can make.

[Anonymous]

Wow, thank you! This is extremely helpful to our situation.

Re: Moby Max. We had bed now using it for math, but we tried it for reading yesterday. DD brought me in to show me there were two correct answers on the 4 answer multiple choice. I didn’t even see it at first, but she was right. She said that was common, and received an 84% on the assignment. I had ambitiously set the pass rate to 90%, so Moby Max was making her repeat.
Then she tried Social Studies and she said it was “baby level.”

Among other great pieces of advice above, thank you for the specific curriculum suggestions. Moby Max is clearly not going to work well for us!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, thank you! This is extremely helpful to our situation.

Re: Moby Max. We had bed now using it for math, but we tried it for reading yesterday. DD brought me in to show me there were two correct answers on the 4 answer multiple choice. I didn’t even see it at first, but she was right. She said that was common, and received an 84% on the assignment. I had ambitiously set the pass rate to 90%, so Moby Max was making her repeat.
Then she tried Social Studies and she said it was “baby level.”

Among other great pieces of advice above, thank you for the specific curriculum suggestions. Moby Max is clearly not going to work well for us!

OP, I'm wondering how it is going?