Happy First Day of School!

Get Ready! Get Set!

This year, we are going to try year-round schooling.  Our plan will be to "do school" for six weeks at a time and then take a week off.  We'll also take three weeks off at Christmas (which works well because Luke and Olivia's birthdays are the week before Christmas).  During each of our breaks, we're hoping to plan some fun activities and trips to take advantage of low off-season crowds.   If we get behind due to illness or unexpected events, we can use the week-long break to catch up.  If everything goes as planned, we'll finish at the same time as the schools in our area and then have 6 weeks off for the summer.  The rough part will be that we start tomorrow!

I spent Saturday morning going school shopping with my mom.  You would've thought it was Christmas morning when I got home!  The kids tore into every bag, holding up every box of crayons, bottle of glue, or ruler up into the air with screams of joy.  Once they were each in bed for nap/rest time, I was able to organize all of our supplies. 

Top Left- Textbooks, Read Alouds for the first couple weeks of school
Bottom Left- Library books, science journal, resource books, math game
Top Right - Basket (pencils, pens, highliters), Each boy has a pencil bag with their daily supplies
Bottom Right - Crafts and Preschool supplies

A peek inside the blue basket

We also checked out the used book store while we were out.  My mom found a really great book for Luke's car unit.  I had planned to just get books from the library, but this one was too good.  It explains all of the different systems in a car using kid-friendly terms.   I think this is exactly what we needed!

The supplies are purchased.  The plans have been made.  We start tomorrow!

Our Curriculum

Choosing a curriculum for our first year of homeschooling was both exciting and overwhelming.  I was completely amazed at the number of options available.  My first instinct was to figure out which option had the best ratings and reviews, but I soon realized that almost every program had both positive and negative reviews.  After a while, I realized the negative reviews had a common thread.  They typically stated the program "didn't work FOR MY CHILD".  I realized I had been forgetting one of the greatest benefits of homeschooling.  I can tailor our curriculum choices to favor our kids' strengths, learning styles, and preferences.  Some children prefer worksheets.  Some prefer hands-on activities.  Luke prefers to listen to good books.

I found a wonderful program called Sonlight that many of our other homeschool friends use (or used at one point in time).  One of them referred to the kindergarten year with this program as "magical."  The history, Bible and literature portions are all read-alouds.  The stories are set in various times and places, so we have blank maps and timelines to fill in throughout the year.  We spent the majority of our summer reading time going through stories that were added to the curriculum after we purchased it (they periodically review their programs) and he loved the selections (Beezus and Ramona, Little House in the Big Woods, and the Complete Adventures of Curious George).   The program also includes Language Arts (including copy work, writing practice and spelling). 

Box Day!  Everyone was excited to see all of our new books!

We're going to continue using Explode the Code for phonics instruction and the Sonlight Grade 1 reader list for reading practice.  We started the readers back in April and have practiced almost everyday, so we'll finish the list early, but I know we'll find lots of other books to read now that Luke's skills are progressing.

We're also going to stick with Singapore Math this year.  Luke will be doing 1A and 1B workbooks and the Intensive Practice book.   I really like the way this program and I've read that if we start with it and stick with it, he'll be really strong in understanding math concepts. 

Luke (and Ben!) learning about the value of money
while finishing Singapore Math K.

One of our many reasons for choosing to homeschool is that we want to encourage our children to research and study on their own.  We want them to know that learning is something that is not just done inside a school building between the hours of 8-3:30.  As a first introduction to this concept, Luke is going to be choosing a topic during each six-week period to research (we're doing year-round school, but that is a different subject for a different post).  He decided that his first topic would be cars.  We plan to go to the library to check out books about how cars are designed, take a trip to get the oil changed (I believe our place will allow him to get out of the car to watch if Aaron holds him), take a trip to the Rouge factory tour, assemble a toy model car, and (just for fun) wash the van.  Cars will not be a staple of our daily curriculum, but I hope having small choices in his learning, he'll realize that he can take ownership of his education.

We won't be completely on our own.  We joined a co-op with about 50 families from our community.  We meet once a week for the kids to go to their classes.  Luke is going to be attending Gym, Engineering (with me!), and Story of the World (History).  Ben will be joining the preschool class and Olivia is taking over the Toddler room.  We've already met a few of the families and I know the boys will make some really good friends.

The boys are also going to enjoy ice skating lessons and after a summer of intro to swimming classes, Luke will be starting Level 1 swim lessons.  Our schedule is really starting to fill up!



  

A Change of Direction

So . . .  I haven't written in quite a long time.  Don't get me wrong, I've had plenty of stories to tell.  The kids give me plenty of material each and every day.  I really could write books.  I've been debating, however, about how to use this blog.  My kids are growing up in uncharted territory where a click of a button releases information to the whole world.  What I write will have the potential to be seen by just about anybody.   I know that at least one of my children has inherited my ability to become embarrassed easily and would be mortified if he knew that goofy things he said or did were on the Internet.  I've even tried to cut back on Facebook posts about the crazy things that they do.  I want to do right by my children and cause as little damage as possible!

Building a log cabin in the backyard while wearing their superhero
costumes.  Like I said, they provide plenty of material.

This predicament means that I am left with far less topics for blogging.  I can write about current events in our lives, or I can just brag on my kids.  Current events are good, but probably not intriguing for people to read.  Bragging on my kids is fun, but paints a very distorted picture of our daily life.  Our lives, however, took an unexpected turn and I suddenly have many topics about which I want to write!

This blog is now going to chronicle the life of our homeschooling family.  (Well, hopefully it will do that . . . . consistency in writing my blog is not necessarily my forte.)  I'm hoping to use the blog as a journal of our first year of homeschooling, so that we can look back and see all of the exciting things we've learned together as a family. 

If someone had told me two or three years ago that we would be considering homeschooling, I would've laughed.  I enjoyed school and I enjoyed teaching, so homeschooling was not even on my radar.  We have several friends who home school, and we had always said that the idea was nice for them, but wouldn't work for us.  We were looking forward to the school experience and going to school concerts, back to school night, and a list of other traditional school activities.
For the past two years, Luke went to a private preschool.  He loved going to see his friends and he loved his teachers.   He was academically ready for kindergarten material at the beginning of his second year of preschool (his birthday is just a few weeks short of the cutoff), so I started working on teaching him to read at home.  I had always thought that teaching him would be awkward and weird, but it felt very comfortable and natural to us both.  I loved cuddling on the couch with him while he learned a new vowel sound, or having him sit across from me at the dining room table working with base ten blocks while I was working on the computer.      

Luke's drawing of arteries and veins


 

Throughout the past year, we've enjoyed observing caterpillars and watching them turn into moths, learning the value of different coins and counting money, and singing songs about the months of the year, days of the week and continents on the globe.  We've trapped, identified and researched bugs from the backyard, discovered that Beverly Cleary is an amazing author, and learned about primary and secondary colors.  Learning has been relaxed and fun.  In the process, Ben and Olivia have learned a great deal, too!  The other day, I overheard Benjamin teaching Olivia about animal sounds and it is not uncommon to hear Benjamin singing Luke's days of the week song. 



Benjamin teaches Olivia about African animals

I'm really excited about the upcoming year.  I know that we are going to have days that are challenging and days that are bliss (and many in between), but I hope this will be an overall positive experience for our family.