This year I took the leap. A huge leap of faith. HOMESCHOOLING. I've toyed with the idea for about 3 years now - felt lots of promptings to look into it more - studied it out - talked to others about it - but always figured it wouldn't work for our family. See, we're not the traditional makeup of having all the kids all the time - we split time with other households and parents. But you know what? When you trust in some ONE bigger than yourself, things begin to fall into place when they are right - even when they once seemed impossible. I'm so glad that I get this time with Casey and Tommy (and Liam). We are having a lot of fun figuring out this whole "schooling at home" thing. I'm grateful for their patience, excitement and exuberance. I'm grateful that I've been blessed with added patience too :)
So here's how our days have been shaping up:
We start the day with a family devotional - family prayer, scripture study and practicing our scripture memorization for the week. We recite the pledge of allegiance and one of the boys dutifully leads us. We've been doing this outside in front of the house for the last couple weeks, because in Idaho, we won't have this nice weather for much longer.
After outside chores are done (feeding goats, chickens, and the, sometimes smart dog, Duncan) the boys find their way up to the "Learning Room." This was originally planned as a playroom in our new house, but quickly became known as the "Learning Room" when books, school supplies and other stuff started getting stored here last year. Now it's a fun spot where most of our structured lessons take place.
We do these lessons together since there is a lot of reading involved - it's also led to some amazing faith promoting discussions with the boys.
After that we do about an hour of Math. Yes, a full hour. Crazy huh?! Both boys LOVE Math, so this is a really fun hour. We're using a combination of workbooks by Kumon and Saxon Math.
After Math we do Language Arts. Casey does copywork from his reader and Tommy works on his phonics. Both the boys have a spelling lesson. Casey works on his cursive workbook for about 20 minutes and Tommy does his handwriting practice at the same time. Tommy is making a lot of progress on his reading already this year - a huge confidence builder for him. He reads out loud to Casey and I for about 20 minutes a day - followed by silent reading time for another 20 minutes.
Casey loves to read, too. As part of school this year he joined a Book Club with some other 3rd and 4th graders in the area. They read one book a month and then meet to discuss it. In August he read "How to Eat Fried Worms" and this month it's the first book in "A Series of Unfortunate Events." He's also read three other books already as part of the Language Arts curriculum we are using from Sonlight. Sonlight is really literature heavy - he has LOVED every single book and when it's reading time he says "YAY! I LOVE these books Mom!" That's makes my heart so happy - I want the boys to be voracious readers. Honestly, I am NOT a voracious reader, never have been, but I've gotten better over the last few years.
I want to instill a love of reading in the boys while they are young and having a good experience with reading is essential to that. So it's great that the books in our curriculum are interesting to them.
The boys (and our whole family) are memorizing one scripture per week as part of our homeschooling. This has been such a wonderful experience already for all of us - I love starting our day with the scriptures and I LOVE getting to know the scriptures better right along side the boys. The first passage they are memorizing is Psalms chapter 1.
Our school day ends with read alouds and history. The boys are super motivated to get through their lessons so we can get to the read alouds - their favorite time of the school day. Right now we are reading
Charlotte's Webb together. It's been so great to revisit this classic with the boys - they have seen the movie (cartoon), but hearing the story is different - they have each said so. We are also reading
Homer Price together. It's a clever little book about a little boys adventures in detective work - the stories are really funny. We're also listening to a book on tape -
The Search for Wondla. It's a science fiction story about a young girl in the future - there are several books in the series and I'm sure we'll be listening to all of them! They're very exciting!
So far this year we have taken one fieldtrip to the Museum of Idaho to see the King Tut Mummy Exhibit. That was really interesting and the boys did some free-writing work about that the following school day. They can tell you all about the King's gold chariot and how they "processed" his organs and put them in tiny jars to travel with him to the afterlife......hmmmm. Really cool exhibit. Lots to see and lots of fun conversations have come from our visit there.
We also try to do Science 2 times a week - we're working from the Sonlight Science curriculum with that subject too. We studies magnets last week. This week we took a trip to DI and Casey got an old clock radio that he could take a part and check out. He was so funny - he kept asking me if he could unscrew this or that - I kept telling him that he could do whatever he wanted - there was nothing holding him back from tearing the whole thing a part. He had the whole thing in pieces on the kitchen table within about 20 minutes......then he put it back together and it worked! He's great at models and small pieces - serious eye hand coordination and he thinks like an architect or engineer. It's so fun to hear the stuff he comes up with. :) He's such a smartie.
So that's how our home school day usually goes. We get finished up with lessons around noon - so we have the rest of the day for chores, projects, errands, karate lessons, cub scouts, snuggling on the couch watching a movie, or playing video games, too. :) I love having the boys at home. So far it's been soooo good! :)
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