Homeschool Organization Methods - From the Early Years all the way to College

Summary:  Does your child or teen struggle with organizing his work?  Does she have executive functioning issues?  Here's the organizational methods that worked best for us in our homeschool.  #homeschoolorganization #adhd  #homeschoolhighschool



This week was not a cold one here, as it was in so many places around our country....We were lucky to have sunny mild weather here.  We hope those of you with snow, maybe piles of it.. are warm and cozy at home, or playing outside in it, if it's only a little.....   

This week was a regular one for us, with my daughter's college midterms being over.  

Monday evening I sat down with my newly college student daughter as usual, to hear her college study plans for the week.  This was an outgrowth of our weekly study meetings from our homeschooling years. 

Then she pulled out this....  

 

It was a simple organizer, that she had designed herself, to hold her assignment sheets and papers from each of her college courses. 

I had no idea she was working on this!  It kind of resembled our old system of workboxes, but in a new way.

I don' t know if I shared this before, but my daughter used to struggle a lot, with organization, especially in the elementary years.  A LOT.  

We tried a number of ways to help her learn to be organized in her studies, and finally settled on workboxing.  

Homeschool Organization Methods

Work boxing can be a real help for kids and anyone who struggles with organization or executive functioning skills.

During the earlier homeschool years we often used work boxing as our organizational method.  That just involves putting each subject's book, papers, etc in a desk top box, one for each subject.

Later, in the early teen years and in high school, we used spiral notebooks for each subject. That way important papers did not get lost. 

SO there was one spiral notebook for math, one for history, etc, etc.  All of the math problems were worked out in the math spiral bound notebook.  

The for English, all of the written work was done in the English spiral bound notebook, until it was time to write on the computer.


Did that save a lot of headaches.

But it still was a day to day struggle for many years, with papers getting lost, notebooks being misplaced, pens disappearing, and such.  We just kept practicing the organizational skills...

Things began to improving around middle school, but to see her come up with this idea, on her own, was really rewarding to see.

My Teen's Own College Organizational Method

Referring to the photo above:

There was a folder for each course, plus one for printer paper.  She used notebook folders, from the dollar store, and put them into a clear envelope that she had found around the house.

   

This made the package thinner, lighter, and easier to carry, than if she had used a notebook.  So everything was at hand, and there was always  paper for printing things at college.

Simple and frugal, and kind of like our old system of workboxes....

When a homeschooler goes to college....they take their organizational skills learned in homeschooling with them.


All the organizing and study planning that we do with our high school kids, and all the efforts we make to teach our kids organizational skills from early on...makes a big difference for our kids in the future.

A lot of kids from public school may not have these skills in structuring their time, and setting a study schedule, like our homeschoolers do.  

Do we give ourselves credit for that?

College Activities and a Potluck

1)  My daughter, on the way to class, on campus, 2) volunteering with a friend from college, 3) lettuse from my neighbor's greenhouse garden, 4) pizza casserole for the church potluck 

Fruits from the garden

Well, my fall/winter garden took a hit from the cold and wind....We had some nice green onions, but lost some due to the cold.  I made a big salad using lettuce from our friends, and added in some of our remaining green onions.  We had that with a pizza casserole and some roasted acorn squash. 

Nature Road Trips

We also went to a potluck at church, as a family, and enjoyed seeing friends.  Then, later in the week, my husband and I got out for a mini road trip.  

We have a favorite country road that we like to take, by a local river....wishing that my daughter could come with us, but she has lots of studying to do these days...This gave my husband and I an all daylong date...

...and the mountain was out!

Nothing like getting out in nature!  As the native american prayer goes....

Beauty in front of me,
Beauty to the left of me,
Beauty to the right,
Beauty behind me...................

Glorious...How was your week? 

Do you use the workboxing approach in your homeschool?  What type of organizational issues come up in your family? 

I love reading your comments...

And thanks for stopping by BJ's Homeschool,

Betsy

Betsy is mom to her now college grad, whom she homeschooled through high school.  She blogs at BJ's Homeschool, about the early years, highschool, 
college, gifted/2e and wrote -Homeschooling High School with College in Mind, 2nd Edition,   She offers homeschool help through messages at BJ's Consulting,  and has had some of her articles picked up by the Huffington Post.

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Copyright @ 2021 BJ's Homeschool

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8 Tips for Getting into College for Homeschoolers

Are you considering the college option for your teen?

There can be so many things to think about, it can be overwhelming, with such details as:

SAT, ACT, PSAT, 
personal college essay 
admission requirements, 
Common Application
FAFSA
etc....

Well, first, I have to admit, I did get nervous....initially.  But once I got started, it became more than possible.  It became probable!  And now, a reality.

My teen who was always homeschooled, received admission offers,with scholarship help, from each of the colleges that she applied to.  Including a tier one U.

So today, I'd like to share with you how I helped get her there....

Below are 8 tips for going from homeschool to college based on our experiences and my research on the topic.  

To get started....let's start with the college's websites.

1.  Know your prospective college's admission requirements

We began by researching our college admission requirements.
Once you know the requirements that are typical for your teen's college choices, you can then add in your electives.  

So our first step was to research the college websites.  We needed to find out what our daughter's college entrance requirements would be, at her most likely college choices.

This information was easy for us to find, just by looking at college websites, and clicking on the freshman admission requirements. 

We found these requirements to be similar from college to college, with some variance.  

For example, some asked for specific courses for social studies, and others gave us a wide range of choices.

How did we find this information?  We just clicked around until we found a heading like this:

______________________________________________

College Academic Distribution Requirements (CADR)

I looked up the most likely colleges that my daughter might attend. The requirements were similar, but not consistent from college to college.  

And some colleges had extra requirements for their homeschooling applicants, and some didn't. 

Starting this research early is a help, but it is still possible to do this any time in high school, by just recalling info from their previous studies, and going from there.  

And you can always add in an extra quarter or two, to make up for any requirements that you might have missed.

Be sure to search for "homeschool requirements" on the college websites, as sometimes they are not easily found.  These are extra hoops to jump through for homeschoolers.  

But the good news is that many colleges are now dropping these extra hoops.  But not all of them.

Search for "Homeschool admission requirements" for each college website you look at. 

For more on college entrance requirements, click below, for my chapter on "Getting Started with College" as a FREE download.

2.  Choosing Your Homeschool High School Curriculum

It is not hard to find our curriculum as the available homeschool high school curriculum has expanded so much over the last few years.

There are video based courses, dual credit courses, and we found that many of our favorite curricula from middle school worked just as well for high school.

My daughter interests in high school focused on film making, and political science. We made sure to center her electives around those interests.  

At the same time, she needed to complete her college entrance requirements in the basic subjects (LA, social studies, math, foreign language and science), for either path.

It is important to know the specifics that your colleges are requiring while searching for your core curriculum.

  

For example, does your college ask for labs to be done with each science course?  Do they require two science courses, or three?  What do they ask for in math?  

Once we had our curriculum selected, we just needed to keep track of what we had done, and assign high school credit to her work. 

Having these records made it much easier when it came time to make our teen's homeschool transcript. 

3.  Making Your Teen's Transcript

Knowing what the college’s want to see on your teen’s homeschool transcripts is key to getting into college. 

I recommend that your transcript to be just one page. 

The homeschool transcript should include all the courses taken, at home, and any outside courses, too.  

That way, your homeschool transcript serves as the clearinghouse for all of your teen's high school coursework.  

Be sure to include your grading scale and your student's GPA on your transcript.  

If you have any special courses, such as AP or courses from a community college, just note them with an *, and mention that at the bottom of your transcript.  

It is also helpful to put your teen's best scores on their SAT or ACT somewhere on your transcript. 

Here is my Transcripts FREEBIE for you:

Get your Guide to Homeschool Transcripts

4.  Do High School Electives 

Did  you know that your teen's electives can be key to getting into college?  They want to hear about your teen's special interests and skills.

Colleges want to see what activities and electives your student has completed.  

Whether it is in music, art, drama, web design, medieval history or Latin, colleges want kids who show initiative and perseverance.  

And activities are a great way to show that your student is able to work well with others.

Having the time to delve deeply into my teen’s interests is one of the reasons that we homeschooled all the way.  

One of the things that colleges like to see is leadership skills.  I have a number of links to leadership activities for homeschooled teens in my book, below.

Taking each of these steps, one at a time, let us keep our own homeschooling style through high school. And we still had time for the fun, and lots of time to explore my teen's developing special interests.  

5.  Add an additional credit or 2 in a core course.  

There are many ways to show rigor to the colleges.  

It can be done by doing an AP course, adding in SAT subject tests, or doing a course at community college.   

But we did not do any of these things and my teen got into each college on her list.  Some colleges do ask for these things though, but ours did not.

We found an easier way to show the colleges rigor, ie, that my teen would do well there.  

--Adding in an extra core course or two can show rigor.--

One thing our colleges liked was to see was more credits in one of the required subject areas. 

So if 2 credits were required for something, say science, you might think about at adding in an additional one, to make 3. 

I did this based on my teen's interests.  

We added in Speech and Debate.  My daughter was doing speech and debate in one of her activities anyway.  So I made speech into a homemade course, and it gave her the additional credit under English.

This shows your college that your student is motivated and responsible. 

These additional credits in the core subjects were never required, though, but they helped her get accepted.  But it really does depend on the colleges, as some look for AP's, etc.  

Next, you will want to know how many credits are required by your prospective colleges... 

6.  Know # of high school credits will be required by your colleges. 

This can vary from college to college.  It will be on the college's page on freshman admissions requirements.  Our prospective colleges asked for 24 credits.

The hardest part for us was dealing with college testing.  Let's talk about that next.

7. Do the PSAT and Prep for SAT or ACT

Whether you choose the SAT or the ACT test, I recommend doing the PSAT, which is usually done in fall of 11th grade.  

But with my daughter not a comfortable test taking, we actually did the PSAT in 10th grade, then repeated it in 11th. 

In our state of Washington, it was given out at our local public school.  

We contacted them early in September to make the arrangements. That was an important step.  Some families do that the spring before.  
The PSAT gives your child practice in taking a comprehensive test, which can really help with the actual college testing later.  This gave us helpful tips for what she needed to study, to prepare for later testing.

You may have heard that some college are no long requiring formal testing.  

But, alas, it is still a big deal at most colleges in the US.  And scholarships and merit aid usually ask for testing scores from their homeschool applicants.

It can be helpful to schedule the SAT or ACT during the junior year of high school.  I recommend doing some test prep first, as it helped us a lot...and consider taking it more than once.  

But which test should we do?

Most colleges give you a choice. The ACT is more of an achievement test, than the SAT.  For some colleges, the ACT may work to verify your teen's homeschool courses. There should be information related to that on the college's website.  

The ACT includes all the basic subjects - English, mathematics, reading, and science reasoning. It also has a writing component.  

The SAT "is designed to assess your academic readiness for college" and focuses more reading, writing and math. and doesn't include science.

Some colleges are offering a few other options for testing.  Check with your likely colleges on that.

We did our testing in 11th grade.  My daughter took her test twice, which helped her to raise her scores to better reflect her abilities.

Test prep can become a high school credit, in either English or Math.  One of our helpful SAT prep books was the book - Hack the SAT, along with others I wrote about below.

Click below for lots of FRUGAL resources for test prep.

BJ's Guide to the SAT/ACT /CLT 

8. Get the College Application, & FASFA in.  

The Common Application, which is used by most colleges, comes out in the fall.  But some colleges prefer their own application and they will let you know that.

There have been many changes to the Common Application for homeschoolers, so I wrote up a guide for you on that.  It is complicated but with my guide it is not hard to do.

College admission tend to be on a first come, first serve basis, so try to get your teen's college application in early. 

The FAFSA

For scholarship consideration or financial aid,  the FAFSA comes out in October, or this year in January.  

The FASFA is your application for financial aid, but it is also used for scholarship consideration by your colleges.  The colleges have "x" about of money, and they give it out first come, first serve as well. 

I encourage you to get your FAFSA done early.  It comes out on the fall now.  It is not necessary to have your taxes all done to do this form.  

My teen received merit aid from her college choice which was a big help for us.  If we had not filled out the FAFSA, she would not have been eligible for it.

SO the time it takes to do the FAFSA was so worth it for us.

And - Don't forget the Fun.....and PE!

This last one is not in the usual college planning lists, but it sure helped us to de-stress. 

With deadlines to meet and SAT test prep to do in junior year, my teen was getting stressed out.  So was I.  That's when I made sure to include PE  each year. 

My daughter took dance classes, did a jogging program, and we made sure that something PE oriented happened every day. 

And not just for her, lol!  I worked in my walking program daily.

I also found out that our prospective colleges allowed PE as a high school elective...That is something else that is helpful to check on, with your college choices, when you are planning.  It should be right on their website. 

PE can be a way to add in the....FUN!   

Getting out in nature helped us so much and built us up, to deal with the next deadline, or new detail at hand.  And to build those memories.

Not all colleges will require all 8 steps.  It really depends on the college. Easy to get into colleges will often only require #1. of this list.  

Harder state colleges or some private colleges will likely want to see higher test scores, may want AP's, SAT subject tests, volunteer work hours, and more rigor.  And ivy's - well, they will want the exceptional student.  And that is another post, lol. 

On AMAZON 

FREE to Read on Prime

It includes more details and resources on:

• homeschool transcripts
• assigning high school credits
• homemade courses
• getting scholarships 
• course descriptions
• the FUN of electives
• lots more.

Thanks for stopping by BJ's Homeschool,

Betsy

Betsy is mom to her college grad whom she homeschooled from the early years.  She blogs at BJ's Homeschool. She offers homeschool help through messages and here is more on that - BJ's Consulting. 

Want to stay in touch?  

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Copyright @ BJ's Homeschool
Revised 2024 - All Rights Reserved

Teaching Homeschool Spelling & Help for Struggling Spellers

Summary:  How to teach spelling to a child who struggles with it, and our favorite resources for spelling, phonics, and early reading. Note - This post may included affiliate links to products that we love and have used or would use in our  own homeschool. Please see my disclosure policy.

Are you looking for a solid spelling curriculum for your child?  Spelling is an important component to good writing, as you know.  

But it can come very slowly to our young writers.  Do you find that with your young writers, too?

My daughter was a struggling speller.  Do you have a child, like me, who feels she should already know things, before she had learned them?

Spelling and Writing

My 2e daughter, as a young learner, was all about writing, but had trouble spelling.  She loved to make little books, write in her Hello Kitty journal, and do very simple reports, usually on penguins or airplanes.  

But when it came to spelling, she struggled.  She did not have a special need in their area, was not dyslexic, but just had trouble learning to spell.  

She tended to spell phonically, ie, how she thought the word sounded.  And many kids do that, in the primary, and even the later elementary grades.  

I didn't want to squash her creativity by correcting each misspelled work in her written work.    
  

One of the hardest things my 2e daughter encountered as a young learner was having her work corrected.  If I showed her a spelling error on an essay, she was crushed.  Then that would inhibit her desire to write, which of course we wanted to avoid.

Sharing today, how we deal with her spelling struggles while not inhibiting her passion for writing.  

Let's start at the beginning...

1.  Written Work with Lots of Spelling Errors

When my child do her weekly spelling work, she did quite well. But applying that to her writing just was not happening.  When she wrote essays, stories, or whatever, she tended to fall back to spelling her words phonetically.  

At the same time she was a good writer.  

She just could not transfer the skills developed in her spelling lessons to her written work...for many years.  

She loved to write in her Hello Kitty journal and create simple reports, usually on penguins, toucans, or airplanes. She also enjoyed creative writing, and made her own fiction stories.  

Correcting her spelling left her frustrated and upset.  As a 2e kid, being corrected was such a blow to her self esteem.  She felt that she should already know things....before she had time to acquire the skills.

Can you relate?

We wanted her to feel free to express herself in writing.  So we needed to find a way to separate spelling skills from her written work.

So next, let's look at how we did that....

2.  Separating Spelling for Written Work

I didn't want to squash her creativity by correcting her misspelled work in her written work.  

Our plan was simple - We did spelling work, with spelling tests each week.  And we also did a lot of written work without correcting her spelling,.....at all.  

This freed up my daughter and then her written work flourished.  
At the same time, she was developing spelling skills through separate spelling study.  Some would say that would lead to bad habits in spelling....But it didn't.....for her.

And eventually, she learned to apply her spelling skills to her written work.  Next, here's what we used for spelling curriculum in the meanwhile...

3.  Phonics Based Spelling Resources

Explode the Code 

This phonics program is research based.

During the K and early elementary years, our spelling was done through the Explode the Code series.  We were using this program anyway, for phonics.  While our student was learning phonics, she was also learning spelling. 

This program is offered for kids from preschool through 6th grade.  It is research based and has been shown to improve reading skills in students who use their curricula.  It is also one of the approaches that is recommended for kids with dyslexia, although my daughter did not have that issue.

We started with their pre-K Primers.  For more information on that, feel free to check out my post on Explode the Code. 

Using these primers not only gave my daughter a good start in both phonics and spelling, but it also gave her a feeling of success, which was so important to her.  And phonics is the basis for spelling of course.  We continued with Explode the Code through elementary..

Explode the Code - Elementary 

 This phonics program goes from preK through 6th grade.

We continued working in the Explode the Code series each year, starting in Explode the Code - Grade 1, then Grade 2 and so on, through 5th grade.  

Are you familiar with this series?  

"Following the same consistent pattern in each lesson, the series progressed to more advanced phonics, such as consonant blends and phonetic patterns, preparing the child for intermediate reading." from my review.  Click here, to read more.

The format and layout of the lessons helped make the learning easy.

Then, in second grade, we started a phonics based spelling program by Evan-Moor.

Building Spelling Skills by Evan-Moor

We loved using this spelling program starting with Building Spelling Skills – Grade 2 by Evan Moor.  

I like this program by Evan-Moor Publishers, as it is developmentally based and is by a very well respected educational curriculum publisher.

Features of  BUILDING SPELLING SKILLS – Grade 2:

Each lesson includes 10 spelling words, with room to add ones that your child wants to learn.  The lessons are centered around common phonics rules, making them easier to learn.

 Click here to read the complete review of this spelling  program.

As my daughter worked in Explode the Code, and her Building Spelling Skills program, she gradually developed her spelling skills with their well researched phonics based programs.  

Each week, she looked forward to her spelling tests, and did quite well on them.  Finally, let's discuss how we reinforced success  in spelling and writing, while dealing with each of those subjects separately....

4.  Reinforcing Success in Spelling & Writing 

Our daughter enjoyed earning points for her spelling lessons and then after earning enough, turned them in for a small toy at the store.  That was our thing at our house.

And each week, she enjoyed her writing assignments.  She learned to write good sentences, paragraphs, and later, stories and essays.  

She started writing easy reports in 2nd grade.  

My daughter was becoming a great spelling and a great writer.  But these two skills did not show up together...... for many years.  By doing her spelling program, she learned good spelling skills that did eventually generalize to her written work.  

But these two skills did not show up together..for many years.  By doing her phonics based spelling program, she learned good spelling skills that did eventually generalize to her written work.

It can take a LOT of practice, and sometimes, years, to be able to apply newly learned spelling skills to one's actual writing.  By late elementary and middle school, her spelling skills showed up regularly in her writing.

I was recently asked to write for the top special education site on this topic.  I invite you to click 8 Tips for Homeschooling a Twice Exceptional Student for more ideas and encouragement.

What would you add to this list?   I love reading your comments.

Thanks for stopping by BJ's Homeschool,

Betsy

Betsy is retired O.T, homeschool blogger, and most importantly is mom to her 2e college grad, whom she homeschooled through high school.  She blogs at BJ's Homeschool, about the early years, high school, college and 2e.  

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