We made some changes to our home schooling this year. Our public charter school offers several types of homeschooling schedules, and we’ve been attending 2 days/week for the last 5 years. We decided we wanted more time at home this year, and I wanted to pick our own curriculum (gulp!/ yahoo!) so we switched to 1 day/week electives (art, speech&debate, choir, world travellers, weird science: classes that are fun to do with a group!) program at a small campus located close to our home. I was initially nervous about the change, but now I couldn’t be happier about our choices. We also attend our homeschool co-op’s weekly classes, which we also love. Josh is learning how to play the guitar, Sarah’s in choir, and Zac always loves his art class. Even Rachel is enjoying pre-school bible study and a dance class.
And I get to chose our curriculum – huge perk!!!
Math: Saxon Math
Language Arts/Literature: Shurley Grammar, IEW (Institute for Excellence in Writing) US History and Bible Heroes, Explode the Code, Daily Grammar, My Father’s World (literature), All About Spelling, Lexia (computer)
History & Geography: My Father’s World (Exploring Countries and Cultures), Classical Conversations Foundations (we’re loving the presidents, prepositions and timeline songs), Greek Mythology (co-op class)
Science: Apologia Zoology 3: Land Animals
Bible: All subjects! + AWANA
PE: Surf club, Running club, karate and basketball
Music: piano, guitar and choir
A homeschool visual tour…
Do not be deceived, it’s not always smiles and giggles at the dining room table / school table. Here, we’re doing “Saturday School” with Daddy. Just makes it so we can have more time on weekdays for fun field trips, often free, with no crowds. Plus the devoted Mr. Garland knows how to rock a math or science lesson. Or any lesson, for that matter.
Awana (sorry if this pic is a repeat):
Lexia (a computer based language arts program): (don’t mind the clutter)
Toothless Zac and All About Spelling:
Rachel’s super sweet pre-school ballet class at co-op:
Although I don’t feel like we’ve had a normal school year yet (thanks to my back injury), it’s wonderful to be at home with the kids. It’s a gift and although I’m not always excited about our school day (hello attitude check?!, teaching discipline is never fun but always necessary), I want to make the most of these years, because I know they’re gonna be gone in a flash. I just wish I was feeling better and could take our kids out on more field trips. Hopefully in the spring. My parents have done a fantastic job keeping the kids busy, out and about with trips to the science museum, the Safari Park, Riley’s Farm, and a recent musical theater performance.
We often do our school work on clipboards in our car as we drive to/from field trips or other activities:
Sarah reads her zoology book while the boys attend karate:
My parents took the kids to the amazing San Diego Botanical Gardens:
Fun Greek Mythology exploding volcano (red glitter in the ‘hot’ lava!) experiment:
One of Zac’s masterpieces:
One thing’s for sure, I want to make sure we have plenty of time for play and exploring. In our albeit small backyard, at the beach, at the duck pond, at the park or on field trips.
The boys are determined to build a tree house someday:
Sarah enjoys sewing:
We all love the waves:
The boys recently entered a Lego contest. Legos are huge in our house.
How fun is this: We were reading a Flat Stanley book recently, and Josh and Zac happened to be wearing the same color shirts as the two brothers in the book, Flat Stanley (yellow shirt) and his younger brother Arthur (red shirt):
My favey favorite thing about homeschooling with our own curriculum?
We now get to “school” together! I am no longer wearing my “5th grade hat”, my “3rd grade hat” and my “Kindergarten hat” for all subjects, full-time. 3 separate curriculums! That was so exhausting.
Of course, some subjects are age-appropriate such as math and writing. I’m not teaching Zac (our Kinder) long division and multiplication… yet. But we complete our science, literature and history together, and then have assignments that are age appropriate. I love reading our Apologia Science lessons aloud and we learn about land animals together (Rachel too!). It’s wonderful!
So that’s our school year line-up in a nutshell… I can’t wait to get back into the normal swing of things. But I’ll enjoy watching my parents form long lasting friendships with their grandkids in the meantime.
Oh! One more thing. Every year when our school has “official school photos”, I always take 15 minutes to snap our kids’ photos in our backyard in the morning before we head out to school:
Aren’t they sweet? If you’d like a copy, just send me an email and I’ll get one out to you!
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