And We’re Off to Another Great Homeschool Year

 A Wrap Up of Our Week

One week down, how many more to go? I have to admit after our third day of school last year, this question was already on my mind. This year is so different and I think that has as much to do with me as it does my kids. Last year, none of us were motivated. We’d kind of hit a wall and stumbled a bit so I backed off, removed a lot of the pressures and looked forward to this year.

Monday we kicked off our 12th year of homeschooling with a fun tradition, a trip out to breakfast followed by an incredibly productive school day at home.  Though I had created a list of curriculum that I wanted to purchase, as I began unpacking boxes when we moved from the RV into the house, I realized how many resources we had. It seemed a waste to make any purchases until we used some of what we already have on hand. 

Our week has been incredible with the kids already making great strides and tackling the lofty goals they’ve created for themselves which; both personal and academic in nature. It’s so much fun to get a glimpse of the adults they are growing into.

This week we’ve played around with our schedule a bit to determine what will work best. We even took a couple afternoons off to meet up with friends- you know it’s important that we keep socializing so the kids know how to converse with other people! OK, maybe I’m just poking fun at those that don’t know homeschoolers.

I had planned on following the suggestions of Ambleside Online this year, so I loosely structured our days around their plan, supplementing with books that we already have on hand. Though I love the Charlotte Mason approach and philosophy, there are a couple things that we don’t follow at all. One of those is the short lessons.

Some lessons are short, but if the kids want to keep working, I’ll allow them to work all day on the same subject. Also, we don’t follow short readings for our books. I really ‘get’ why short readings are practiced, so we can ponder what we’ve read and really comprehend it, but once again when we find a great book we want to read until we’re done.

For our daily Bible lessons the kids are reading a chapter of Psalm’s and Proverbs daily on their own. Together we read and discuss several other resources including Know What You Believe: A Practical Discussion of the Fundamentals of the Christian Faith. We also began our first year of formal Worldview Study using Thinking Like a Christian: Understanding and Living a Biblical Worldview. So far we all find this study fascinating.

We worked on math and language, which consists of independent work using Easy Grammar Plus, Sequential Spelling and Story Starters for creative writing. We’ll add a few more things as we go along.

We added in some fun science experiments since that was hard to do in the camper, along with map drills and economics using Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? which my son LOVES.I’ll definitely be ordering more books in this series. 

I also assigned various biographies of Christian missionaries for the kids to read, which they’ve all enjoyed.  We’re also reading Heroes of the Faith, Fanny Crosby together. This week we studied ‘Blessed Assurance’ by Fanny Crosby for our hymn study so I was thrilled to find the book tucked away in a box.

Finally, my child that has always proclaimed his distaste for reading has had a change of heart. He has read a book a day since the weekend. So far, he’s read six books this week! As a mother who struggled for YEARS to teach her boys to read, this just makes my heart swell…so if you have a child that isn’t reading well, thinks they can’t read or swears they hate to read…just hang in there.  

We’re moving back into school slowly, but we’re off to a great start. I can’t wait to add in more topics next week. You can visit the Weekly Wrap-up hosted at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers to see how the week went for other homeschooling families.  You can even join in on the fun!

Do you homeschool? What have you been up to this week?