For Students Entering First Through Fifth Grades: Fill & Download for Free

I taught my son through the fifth grade. I had highbrow ideals for homeschooling before he was born. I taught him to read, and was thrilled at having done so. It seemed a remarkable thing to be able to do.There are many advantages to homeschooling, but when I mentioned it to a few people, they all had the same objection: 'How will he get socialized?' I thought this was one of the most banal questions I'd ever heard.Here people are always complaining about the abhorrent behavior of other kids, the bad influences, the lack of discipline in public schools, the incompetency of many teachers, or the No Child Left Behind Act, that kept everyone at the level of the children who needed extra help.And I was supposed to take this objection seriously?When he did finally start in a public middle school, it was overcrowded, and even though he was in Gifted and Talented, he was bored. There was trouble with another group of boys, and the school seemed unable or unwilling to do anything about it.Up through the tenth or eleventh grade in high school, he sat in classes in which the teachers either did nothing, or were still explaining to students where the commas went in a sentence.When we were homeschooling, we reported to a public school with public teachers.The school was dedicated just to homeschooling. We submitted his work to a teacher, who looked it over, gave suggestions for a curriculum to follow, and entered grades for him in different subjects. These teachers also tested him in reading and other subjects.The school offered classes and tutoring help, had field trips, and organized recitals.We went on field trips with astronomers, to a guitar manufacturer, to assisted living facilities so the kids could read to seniors, and we went to a lot of live events, like Shakespearean plays.The kids who came to the school were the ones who dressed like Puritans along with their parents, turned off lights at dusk, and experimented with living like the first settlers during the Thanksgiving holiday. The kids garnered admiration from other adults for being the best behaved, and the most interested during field trips, which were destinations they'd chosen.My son met lots of other kids at these schools, so that took care of some 'socializing.'It sounds like you live in a place with public schools, which you consider unacceptable. I don't know where that is, but it's likely there's a school like the two we attended when I taught my son, with lots of homeschooling parents.Another option is enrolling in virtual schools that are tuition free. Nevada has that option, as do many other states. Kids take classes online, send their work to teachers, and are essentially enrolled in a public school. They just happen to be at home.The school, or state, provides the teaching materials, and possibly the computer.What we especially liked about traditional homeschooling was that while we studied the required subjects, we could pick and choose what we wanted to do within each discipline. We chose the books we wanted to read for English, the subjects to study in science, history, etc.So, my son didn't have to wait until high school to study World War II, or to read Shakespeare, The Scarlet Pimpernel, or The Count of Monte Cristo. Which aren't on any reading list.I bought a lot of materials and workbooks in 'school' stores. The internet wasn't as commonly used then, nor did it have the help that it now does. There are hundreds of websites now, for grammar help, ideas, suggestions, research, study guides, feedback, lesson plans.My son and I had a lot of fights though, so nothing is perfect. You'll be with him all day, which may good or bad. Some parents love that middle part of the day between breakfast and when school lets out, when the house is quiet.Parents who are employed outside the home will find it almost impossible to homeschool unless their kids are in a virtual school, and then the child has to be old enough to be trusted to do their work, and to be left alone.Go for it, if you think it's for you! I'd do it all again.Edit: My son was in 'virtual school' for just a short time. Through the fifth grade, we were traditional homeschoolers, and chose the curriculum, the materials, pace, and everything else.This edit is directed at the person who commented on my lack of 'comprehension' as to what constitutes homeschooling. I state how long I taught my son in the VERY FIRST EIGHT WORDS. Thank you.

Oh boy. I'll try to keep calm while answering, I promise.I just moved to my current home when I entered first grade. It makes me angry just thinking about what happened.I had this overweight, incredibly jolly lady teaching me named Mrs. W (not going to include full name). Mrs. W was on her second year of teaching first graders; she had taught fifth and sixth grade for years prior.Mrs. W was supposedly the fun teacher. She'd throw paper footballs for the kids, let them run around and joke with her, and overall encouraged imagination and playfulness.Except when it came to me.Perhaps she was frustrated with how disruptive I could be. Admittedly, I wasn't a perfect student, but it was because I was extremely naive. My family is Christian, and my parents were appalled at some of the things other kids said and did. But this teacher treated me like I was the devil incarnate.I have an entire list of incidents that I went through with this woman. I could fill up a whole book of short stories about this teacher. I'll choose three, and I'll try to keep them short.One day, we were having story time. She asked us to guess the ending of the book, and I raised my hand, gladly announcing the ending and added, "I know, because I read this before!"I thought I'd finally done something right. She fell totally silent, her smile gone. Instead of calmly explaining to me that I should not have "spoiled" the ending, she angrily boomed in a tone that was also somehow cold as ice: "Now you ruined it, since you told us the ending." If looks could kill... She flipped the page, read the ending in a dull tone, then set the book aside. I don't even remember what the book was about.I know this seems small when read at face value, but I had never felt more ashamed in my entire life. I don't know why I was so hurt, but I didn't speak for the rest of the day.But then, the next day, things escalated. She had previously been reading to us because we were going over to the other first grade room and were having a large group story time. It was right before lunch. The story went by without incident, and I believed that I could get out of there without causing any problems like yesterday, but I was wrong.To tell you what happened next, I first need to explain the "friend system." Mrs. W had systematically deprived me of all but one of my friends at that point, and he was in the other class. She trained the class to hate me because I was "weird and uncool."So, my unsuspecting school counselor made her create a system where she would choose my friends for me, and I was required to play with those specific kids during recess (or be reprimanded). The other kids hated me for this. They weren't allowed to play with their own friends if they were picked to be my "pals of the day", and I hated all of the games we were forced to select from.I was the only kid who was forced to do certain activities during recess. I and only I had to do this, but I was dragging other kids into it by existing. I essentially didn't have a recess anymore, and neither did those kids, who bullied me endlessly. I lost that one friend that actually did like me, so I was left completely alone in the next grade.Back to the incident, at end of story time, Mrs. W loudly announced who I was going to play with, who all audibly groaned. But then, another kid from the other class curiously asked what was happening. She explained to the entire grade how I couldn't make friends, and how she chose kids to forcibly be my friends for a day.I was so humiliated that I burst into tears right there. The other class all excitedly asked their teacher if they could do an activity like that for fun, but my peers, who knew the troubles they had with me, were all uncomfortably silent. I stayed in that class for the longest time after everyone left. I hugged my knees as I put my head down and rocked back and forth. I remember staring at the puzzle-piece foam mats, my face red-hot, and tears dripping everywhere. The other teacher had to come up to me and comfort me when she realized how distraught I was.The final, and worst incident, happened at lunch. To make it short, as this has already gotten long, another girl tricked me into holding up a middle finger and then tattled on me. I panicked and started crying as she went for the adults. With what happened next, I had every right to be afraid.Mrs. W took me to her room, locked me in, and railed on me for over an hour on how I would fill out a form which I would give to my parents about how I was a terrible, bad child. She boomed at me and screamed, switching between scarily calm and irate in an instant. It was like being interrogated by a corrupt police officer - all for one little signature. I told her time and time again that I didn't know what it meant, and my parents were shocked that other kids did when they read the paper.I just used over 5 paragraphs to describe how terribly this woman treated me. My parents didn't realize any of this had happened between her and me until I was at least in middle school. They didn't know about my meltdowns, or the bullying, or how she called me "MISS PORTNER" at the top of her lungs when addressing me. I still have to ask people to not call me by my last name.I tried to tell my parents once. At the end of the year, Mrs. W demanded that we would always hug her in the hallway if we ever saw her. I knew she was serious, because I remembered her chasing down an uncomfortable ex-student of hers to hug her in the hall.That night I crawled into bed with my mom and started sobbing. I don't know if it was because her relationship with my dad was struggling at the time or if she was stressed from her high-level business job, but she never questioned why I was so upset about it.I was so scared of this woman that I didn't want to touch her.I know it wasn't as bad as it could've been, but it really hurt me psychologically in the long-term.Please, please listen to your daughter. She might normally seem cheerful and happy, as I usually did at home, but something serious could be going on and she doesn't have the vocabulary/state of mind to tell you about it. I sure didn't when I was little, and now my parents regret not looking into what happened.

Living in the shadow of my overachieving sister was awesome.My sister is four years older than me, and she was always really successful and well-liked by teachers and adults. She was very diligent in elementary school and was also quite good at piano, Chinese calligraphy, and Chinese speech contests. Because she was four years older than me, and neither of us skipped grades, the only time we went to school together was in elementary school. However, we attended the same junior high school, same high school, and then college. Throughout my academic and non-academic life, I have followed my sister's footsteps, and everyone always told me how great my sister was before me. I didn't intentionally set out to do that, and I didn't feel dependent on doing what she did, but I certainly believe that her trailblazing heavily influenced my own decisions.Starting from fifth grade, my teachers generally had also taught my sister four years before (we moved once before I entered first grade, and sometimes teachers retired, but this was the general rule). They always knew she was a top student and worked hard and that my parents would want to know of any problems. I generally did well in those classes too, but I was much less well-behaved in class. I generally received poor citizenship grades and sometimes was called disruptive. But the fact that she did so well in school impacted me in two important ways: (1) people had a pre-conceived positive impression of me because I was my sister's brother and (2) she helped me to succeed in those classes.First, my parents would almost always introduce me as "Carolyn's little brother" when they first met my teacher (generally on Open School Night). The teacher would then say how wonderful my sister had been. They then thought of me as a smart kid too and gave me the benefit of the doubt. They kept an extra eye on me to see if the homework was too easy and I could use more advanced material. They looked to me as a child that would probably be able to handle more difficult tasks. They also knew my parents would be very involved in my education, and made sure to talk to them in detail about my progress in school. All of these things were really helpful to me. I also did really well in school, and it felt like I had been pre-validated. She was a member of our school newspaper in high school and was really well respected and became the copy editor who gave final approval to all the stories. Her experience and advice allowed me to focus on how to become a better writer and how to demonstrate my abilities in high school. I joined the school newspaper when I entered high school, and some of the newspaper staff members that were underclassmen when she was a senior were still on the staff. This was another example of the pre-validation. I felt they expected I would know more about their journalism class and styles, which I did, through my sister. My life was a little easier and my mistakes were more easily forgotten because I was "Carolyn's little brother."Second, my sister still had all her materials (my parents made sure she kept them) from those classes. Old tests, old essays, the books we needed to read. Most material does not change much year to year for experienced teachers. This was immensely helpful as I could look to her stuff for ideas (though I never plagiarized her materials). She also tutored me. She taught me things that had been difficult for her and she read and edited my essays. Four years is a big age difference when the ages are 10 and 14, and it was really helpful. She also knew a lot about the schools I attended and told me things like which teachers were good to have in high school, who wrote good recommendations, which clubs were helpful to join, and how to plan my extracurricular schedule. I became the editor-in-chief of our school newspaper in large part because I could learn from my sister's experiences when she was on the school paper. She was also a member of our high school's chapter of the Junior Statesmen of America and served as the vice-president in her senior year; later I served as the club's president during my senior year. She told me it was a great club to join, I followed her advice and my fear of public speaking was considerably reduced through my experiences.She went to Stanford for undergrad, and when I was in high school I visited her quite often. I met her friends, played on her team during "the game" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(treasure_hunt), attended some of her classes, and saw how happy she was there. I knew that was where I wanted to go to college. I saw the positive reactions everyone had to her going to Stanford and her positive attitude about it, and she also kept telling me "You can go to Stanford too! Just keep working hard." It definitely focused my efforts. It was a great experience attending her Stanford graduation during my senior year of high school after I had received my admission letter just a few months earlier. Of course, she had edited all my essays and worked with me on my entire application.When I got to Stanford, Carolyn gave me great advice on how to plan my schedule, how to navigate Axess (Stanford's online class registration system), where to eat, how to get off campus, and she also referred me for a great research job at Stanford Law School. She had gotten this job somehow and when she was graduating she told her boss that, if he needed a replacement, her brother would be a freshman next fall. After an interview, I got the job, and it was a really great job. Her boss loved her because she was really smart and very diligent. Her referral carried a lot of weight with him.After college, my sister went to law school at Boston College. She had over a 3.8 GPA, but her LSAT score was not high enough to get into the very top law schools, and she told me that it would be harder for her to succeed in her legal career because of it. So she graduated from Boston College cum laude and as an editor on their law review by working really hard. After that experience, she constantly told me that law school admissions is a numbers game based on your GPA and LSAT, so I should make sure I had a high GPA and a great LSAT score if I wanted to maximize my chances of getting into a good law school. This really kept me focused during my freshman year of college when many advisers were telling students to explore classes and take whatever interested them. I already had an inkling that I potentially wanted to go to law school, so I chose classes accordingly based on my sister's sound advice. I also started studying early for my LSAT because of my sister's experience. And then I followed her to the greater Boston area for law school when I went to Harvard. Her husband (my brother in-law) was also getting a Ph.D from Harvard at the time, and they lived in Harvard-owned housing. I saw them a few times a week when I first moved to Cambridge, which was fantastic. They picked me up from the airport when I first arrived for orientation.When it came time to interview for jobs, my sister was already a third year associate at a BigLaw firm, and she gave me a great deal of insight into the process based on her experiences as an interviewer and candidate. She also connected me with people she knew who were at the firms I was interviewing with.Overall, having my overachieving sister was simply amazing. She made my life much easier and increased the probability of my own academic success substantially. She figured out lots of the things you can only find out through experience and gave me a sneak preview, allowing me to avoid pitfalls and make easy transitions. I have always lived in her shadow, in the sense that I followed her footsteps since I was 9 years old, from elementary school, to middle school, to high school, to Stanford, to law school in Boston. I'm extremely grateful that I had her overachieving-ness as a role model.One last side note -- the most significant area where I felt I couldn't live up to my sister's accomplishments was piano. She was pretty good at piano. She liked it, she practiced, and she still plays for fun sometimes now. My parents made me play piano when I was old enough too -- and I hated it. I was bad at it, I didn't like the sound, and I didn't like practicing when I could be playing video games or watching cartoons instead. My piano teachers were always very disappointed that I was not like my sisters, and my mother took me to various different teachers as well. I never resented that she was good at it; I was only jealous that no one bugged her all the time about piano and that she was fortunate enough to have both interest and aptitude in something that my parents and other parents in the Asian-American community cared about. (She was also way better at drawing and art than me, but no one really harassed me about it.)