So in the last post I shared Why I Started Homeschooling from the beginning…well kind of.
Once I made the decision to homeschool I eventually got married and had my first child. I went head first into everything homeschool. I was determined to be the best and I mean the BEST homeschool mom EVER. I mean, I am a teacher by profession so I have to be the BEST teacher for my kids. I remember going to the Southeast Homeschool Expo’s Homeschooling for Excellence 101 course when my first kid was only 3 years old! I was determined to get a head start and start right. We started homeschooling the very next year.
My advice to anyone who is interested in homeschooling is to take a simple course on how to homeschool to get a good foundation! There are great online options like the Homeschool Wholeheartedly course which is currently on sale.
I was so geeked up about our first day of homeschooling that I wrote a blog post about our first day of school, August 13, 2012:
Praise God we made it! My daughter Avionne had her first day of homeschool pre-school and we survived. Between balancing work obligations and her learning we made it through.
Using the www.starfall.com curriculum and Backpack Bear, she learned about the letter Bb and the number 0 as well as two high frequency words see and me. We will be doing this all week! I learned a lot today after doing an entry assessment of her learning. She knows more than I thought and yet there are things that I never knew confused her. It’s amazing and it was fun!
Oh the beginning years. It was so nice.
Then it went from laughing while doing the alphabet walk to crying and gnashing of teeth while writing letters. To this day my oldest had better handwriting when she was three years old.
Let’s just say, it’s been a roller coaster ride. I will spare you the gory details but we have survived! Now fast forward 7 years later and here I am still homeschooling my three kiddos now 6, 8 and 11 years old.
They told me that time would fly by quickly. I didn’t believe them. It did.
So what have we done in our homeschool since its inception? Well, let me tell you…
Chapter 1 (2012-2014)
During my first year of homeschooling I started a tradition of making the first day of school really special. I would decorate the house (or in this case the hallway) or wherever we would use as our main school room. I used a lot of Starfall.com for our writing and reading. I focused on different letters every week, counting aloud and singing songs. We did the alphabet walk which consists of writing the letters on the driveway or using the cushion letters and I would have Avi jump to the letter I called out.
This was also the year I started a homeshool group South Cobb Homeschoolers (I would have joined one but there were not many in my area at the time) but since then we grew and became Epic Homeschool Network, Inc. This group has been instrumental in helping me be accountable in my homeschool and providing my children with enriching activities and field trips. We did a field trip every month! If you are not plugged in with a group as a newbie homeschooler, I would strongly encourage it.
Chapter 2 (2014-2016)
As Avi got older we started using Spectrum Workbooks and I started teaching her how to read using How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We kept at that pace for sometime.
Chapter 3 (2016-2018)
I was always a busy, working, homeschool mom but work started taking on a life of its own and my kids were getting older so I found myself wanting more structure for Avi and instruction for when I could not be there. This was when we started using Time4Learning.com. The content was fun and Avi enjoyed the videos. The problem was that when it came time for the tests and quizzes, Avi could not remember what she learned. Then I would tell her the order in which I wanted her to do things but she would skip around anyway. There were no controls on Time4Learning.com to effectively control her movements so we went back to Spectrum Workbooks.
In 2017 I started learning about the Ten Principles of True Education and was enlightened by the Moore’s philosophy of education Better Late than Early and decided to look into it more and took and online class. While I love the philosophy, the teacher in me and all the years in school rebelled. There was just so much that I needed to change. I started making small changes in my home such as integrating the Scripture Memory Box but I just wasn’t ready to fully execute.
Chapter 4 (2018-2019)
I decided to try to integrate the subjects and some of the Moore Forumla principles into my own online school – The Study Hall Homeschool Online Academy using Monarch.com as the base curriculum and supplementing with Outschool.com (an online live small group platform)
We just finished out the year of The Study Hall Homeschoool Online Academy. What I learned was that while the online academy gave us structure (and I did see marked improvement in the ITBS scores), it still required hands-on from the parent and it still meant that I had to reteach a lot of the concepts. It was a lot of double duty.
My kids loved Outschool.com which provided supplemental and fun subjects like art, etc. so we will keep that.
Chapter 5 (Upcoming Plans for the 2019-2020 Homeschool Year)
What I learned through all of this is that there is still no substitute for the time and attention of the teacher. While I love my online academy and teaching online with Outschool and will still do some of these things, I need to have a different foundation or structure for my homeschool. I need hands on! I need sensory and I need to be able to teach to three different grade levels AT THE SAME TIME!
So for this upcoming school year we will be using Weaver and SonLight Education Ministries as our base and supplementing math with Spectrum Workbooks.
I was drawn to Weaver because it was a unit-based curriculum and it allowed me to teach to multiple grade levels at the same time. Since everyone is officially school aged, I needed that. I also did not want something that was too burdensome for my 6 and 8 year old and I think this curriculum will do the trick.
I am using the SonLight Education Ministries curriculum for our Bible focus. I believe in the principles that it teaches and I love the supplemental worksheets, plus it’s free.
Neither curriculum includes math so I will be supplementing with my go to resource, Spectrum Workbooks… I might even schedule an Outschool class for them or two so they can have some buddies.
So this is how I started in homeschooling and these are my plans for the upcoming homeschool year. What are you plans for the upcoming homeschool year?