One of the great things about our little homeschool is the constant change. Each year I get to evaluate our goals and curriculum choices and makes changes if we need to. Knowing that I'd have a new baby to juggle along with an active two year old, I tried to make this year simple with room to grow. I kept it simple by using curriculum and methods (
Well Trained Mind) I am familiar with and eliminating busy work. My students this year are Fiona in Pre-Kindergarten, Evie in 1st grade, Shane in 3rd/4th grade (summer birthday thing), and Ian in 5th.
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| Fiona joins our school this year! |
In the spirit of keeping things simple, here is a list of what we are using this year:
We will be combining as much of our day as possible, with each kid working at their own level. From Ian all the way down to Fiona, we will be focusing on Ancient history, literature, and culture. Math and Language Arts is done independently at their own level. If needed, a brother will read out loud to a sister while I deal with toddler trouble or infant interruptions.
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| Daniel will be busy with a sibling or me |
One of the biggest changes I've made besides the elimination of busy work is not worrying about whether an item is consumable or not. In our program, consumed items like workbooks don't have to be sent back to the school district when we are finished using them. Any item that can be used again, like an encyclopedia or globe, needs to be returned when we are either finished with the item or leave the program. I never wanted to deal with the hassle of shipping books back, so I tried to only buy workbooks. Well, the clutter of three years worth of used-up workbooks finally got to me. Plus the fact they never really learned anything of value from the workbooks also got to me. The workbooks served one purpose: keep the kids at the table.
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| Baby Lula will just be hanging out. |
Seriously, anytime one of my kids spouts out something intelligent about something they learned, it never comes from a workbook page (you'll never read a post where I'm excited about Shane saying, "Remember the time I did a worksheet about the map of Arkansas?"). Their "homeschool moment" comes from an awesome book they read or an experience they had or linking a reading to a movie they are watching. So I used my school district money to buy books like Aesop's Fables, The Aeneid, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and The Odyssey-all versions for younger children. We also have Bible Stories and ancient stories from Asia, India, and Africa. All of their language arts will come from the books, so the spelling, dictionary skills, etc. will be highlighted in the text. And when we are all done reading, we'll send the books back to the school and keep my school room clean and clutter free. If there is a book we can't live without, we'll buy our own copy-all fresh without spelling and vocabulary words highlighted! And...if the school district considers the highlighted books consumed...well, I guess we have a bunch of new awesome books to add to our library!
