The Stuff

For our school day

I thought I might write a bit about what curriculum and extras we use and how we use it.

To begin with we use Abeka for reading/writing and math. It is an older version and it teaches the kids cursive handwriting, mind you, I only have the cirriculum/lesson plan books, I use the cirriculum as a guide for daily lessons.

Along with the curriculum books I received a few of the extras. I have several of the "learning to read" books, and flash cards for learning how to blend letters to form words.

I purchased this little book at Staples, it features each letter of the alphabet in uppercase and lower case as well as words. I like to rip apart work books and make copies, for reuse, because I am sure I will be using these again next year for the younger two, who don't start Pre-K until next year.

I picked this up when I picked up the curriculum (at a local used curriculum sale). This is really geared toward much older children, but we still sing the songs, tell the stories and participate in the discussion, this usually blends with our culture education (which is not as fancy as it sounds). I appreciate this book because it really does attempt to create wonderful humans.

Everything is color coded. My son (youngest), loves blue, my middle loves pink and green and my oldest loves purple. This is my son's box, and that little folder is his work for the week, separated by paper protectors, typically I try to put the days work in the front left pocket so as soon as they open their folders their work is right there.

These are the station regulators, if you will.

They're attached by Velcro so I can change things up, on Friday's there are no stations in their folders (Friday's are dedicated to review and crafts).

3 is science station

2 is math

1 is reading/writing

6 is the TV (culture class usually)

4 is their easel

and 5 is the reading station.

Eventually I will share the station set ups (and school room) you can get a small glimpse of the stations from this blog post I made. Station 5 also acts as a calm down corner, it has a lot of windows and there are calm down bottles (water bottles with glitter in them).

Thanks for taking a peak and tell me, how do you home school?

The Homeschool Journey

I was a horrible student. 

Not in the sense that I acted out, didn't study or talked too much. I was a horrible student because I didn't learn in the manner that public school educates. I excelled in classes that made me use my hands and did terrible in the normal classes, with the exception of "Language Arts", I have a knack for that. I thought I would never excel at anything. Turns out, I just learn differently. 

I watched my sister, 7 years younger than myself, experience an even lesser education than I had. They watched sponge-bob regularly, who knew that show was even remotely educational. 

When I became a mother I started the search for education options for my teeny tiny human, no seriously, I was pregnant when I began the hunt. As my oldest grew closer and closer to school age and my financial situation becoming worse and worse, I began to settle with the idea that she would go into the public education system. Oh the disappointment I felt; my life was a mess therefore giving my child the best was not an option, so much disappointment. One day, I sat in my awful job loathing every passing second and I had a customer who offered me a job as his office manager working from my home. I would be lying if I told you I hesitated, I jumped all over that chance to be home! I began researching like a crazy person for home schooling options, laws, material...etc. I began buying resources and slowly implementing educational pieces to our normal day. I've tried the structured method, where everything happens at a specific time. Let me be frank, I have a job that requires me to be on the phone, with as little distraction or noise as possible, that time specific schedule went out the door within two weeks, it was completely impractical and even more impossible to fully implement into our routine because I am constantly leaving the room.

I do take a Montessori approach to education and we learn everything through play. There is, really, not a moment of the day that I am not educating my children on something. With that being said I take a much more lackadaisical approach to education than I thought I would. (I promise to have another post with our routine) There have been many tears shed throughout this journey, it has been hard on me, some times I feel like a failure, I feel like it is way too hard, I have no idea what I am doing. Yet, every day I wake up and educate my children on something. My youngest is really into the Egyptian Pyramids and the ocean. My middle child is into artistic things and astronomy. My oldest child is into all things earth, science completely fascinates her. My children are 4, 3 and 3 years old (we're in birthday season, so everyone is slightly overlapping) "What about the 3 R's?" you may be wondering. Well, we work on those things daily, my kids love learning the sounds of letters, they hate writing, they love counting as high as they can (we practice counting by playing hide and seek), they hate counting objects. I don't have a fancy degree, I'm not always available, but my children are learning (about things I never imagined a tot to learn about) and thriving and enjoying life. Homeschooling to me is about obtaining the best education possible while spending time as a family, it's not about tests and homework. It's open, honest communication, it's about building excellent character and being awesome every day at everything we try and trying everything!

Thanks for reading, see ya next time.