Thursday, August 11, 2011

Home Schooling Musings

School is back in session, and its almost beginning to feel like the end of summer. Almost.
Our weather has thankfully taken a dip into cooler temperatures, at least for a few days and I am so incredibly thankful! It's in the upper 80's and low 90's instead of hundred- plus degrees!
Things have been a little crazy this week, thus the lack of writing here.


This has mostly been due to a lack of planning on my part, I feel like I just can't get done what I should be doing. Do you ever feel like that? Even doing laundry this week has been a challenge, and that is usually the one thing that I can keep under control.


The sight of laundry swinging in the breeze is to me, one of the most relaxing things ever. Makes me happy.



I decided to start homeschooling Ethan this year; he's four now, if you remember. He already recognizes the alphabet and is interested in beginning to read, so I figured we could begin Pre-K at home so maybe next year we can be ahead a little bit when we start doing Kindergarten.

Hubby and I are still figuring out what to do as far as schooling goes for the kiddos.
Where we live, the public schools are terrible and the private schools are super pricey. (No, wait. That's all private schools! Or at least most of them.)  We really want him to have a holistic education, not just 'study so you can pass the test' learning, which is how it is in public school. I'm kind of freaked out by the responsibility of homeschooling though. We've looked into Montessori schooling and it seems really neat but again; we are just not able to pay for it at this point.





So far, we're going with homeschooling, at least for a few years.
I am a homeschool graduate, ( The oldest of 5! My mom is so awesome!) so I feel like I kind of know what to do. Right now we're not using a curriculum since Ethan is pre-K. At this point, we're just using flashcards to practice recognizing letters and numbers, counting using beads or beans, doing art with watercolors, learning how things work for science, reading Bible stories and talking about them and memorizing Scripture.


So here's a question for you: if you're a homeschooling mama, what curricula  do you use/like/not like?
If you aren't a homeschooling mama, what do you think about the subject?
I'd love to hear your thoughts, ideas, etc.

1 comment:

Jennifer said...

Homeschooling mama of five here. Four graduates and one tenth grader. No curriculum is the best curriculum to start with! I didn't use any until fifth grade or so. I love Apologia for science, and didn't discover them until my oldest were in high school. They have some cool elementary level stuff too. It is based on creation science but it isn't polyana or boring. Best advice I can think of is to find a homeschool co-op that you like. They can be a great support network, and lots of times they have lending libraries so you can check out curriculum without buying it. Praying for you in this new chapter of your grand adventure!