Week 5 - Tuesday

We are enjoying great weather for the beginning of our school year, so most days you will find us outside in the morning. We are using the Sonlight Curriculum, Core 1 History of the World. I really like how everything is laid out for us. I just open the Instructors Guide (IG) and turn to the corresponding week and it lists everything we are to do daily. You can even choose from a 5-Day or 4-Day week. We are doing the 5-Day as it goes through more information in a quicker time frame. We are using Horizon Math, The Reason For Handwriting and additional reading books from the library, but otherwise everything is Sonlight.


Ava Marie is working on a workbook I picked up from Costco. We use these workbooks over the summer to keep the girls skills up and ready for the next school year. I am thinking we may do homeschool year round. It depends how we will work it out with the other two girls home. I tend to think it would work out well because it would give them some structure during the summer.

Mostly Ava Marie had reading books from Sonlight, not workbooks, but she insisted since her sister was using a workbook to write in.

Katy is usually done with all of her work before lunch. After lunch Ava and Aidan take naps and Katy reads or works on a project like sewing or scrapbooking. I work in my office and try to make phone calls or answer emails. As I said before, we are both really enjoying this, I just hope I am doing everything right. It seems like it is too fun to be school work!

Week 5 - Monday

Our homeschool adventure has started off terrific! Katy and I are both enjoying ourselves, so is Ava Marie. We usually start in the morning and Katy is almost always done by noon. Here is a picture of all of our homeschool curriculum. The bottom shelf has all of Ava Marie's books and my IG (Instructors Guide) Binders and Katy's Binders. The next shelf up is all of Katy's books and her Science Supplies and her Math Manipulatives. The top shelf has some other school supplies I like to keep up high so the other girls don't use them and walk away with them.

To the left of the shelf is our kitchen/dining area and that is where Katy does most of her work.

Summer's Halfway Point

We are actually more than halfway through summer. It has gone by in a flash. I will start to blog more often so that I can organize my thoughts and ideas about our upcoming homeschool year.

Things I need to concentrate on:

1. How we will work our schedule so Katy has time for all of her school work, I have time for my office work, and the little ones are kept busy and stimulated too.

2. Communication between Katy and I. Katy is very easy but tends to not let you know when something is bothering her. I have a tendency to be over dramatic...this can cause Katy to be too timid to tell me something. I need to reasure her that she can tell me things and I will not explode!

3. Accountability to be sure that e verything is being completed in a timely manner.

Okay, that is enough for now.

Welcome

I have set up this blog to record our first year in homeschooling. I have 6 children right now, Randy is 25, Katy is 10, Mackenzie is 7, Madyson Claire is 5, Ava Marie is 2 and Aidan is 5 months. I have been blogging for a couple of years and I am excited to have this new blog along with my regular blog.

My daughter Katy just finished the 4th grade in public school. I am not unhappy about her education, and I really did love the school she was attending. In fact my other 2 school age children are still attending Arbor Creek Elementary and it is a wonderful school. I am going to start with Katy and also Ava Marie though she is only 2, but I have purchased a really good curriculum for her too, it is mostly reading. Mackenzie and Madyson will continue to go to the public school, for now.

The problem is that they have changed the range of grades at the school, it was Kindergarten through 6th Grade and now it will only go to 5th Grade. The 6th graders will go to the Middle School. I am not happy about Middle School. I don't think it is a safe place for my children. It is filled with mean girls, nasty boys and teachers who give them too much freedom and not enough structure.

Originally we were going to wait until Katy was in 6th grade to start our homeschool, but she was very excited and both of us decided we didn't want to wait any longer. So the plan is to homeschool Katy from 5th grade through 8th grade. I am not sure if she will go to a private high school or if I will continue to homeschool her through high school...we have 4 years to figure that out.

I will update this blog over the summer, but probably not on a daily basis. Then I will blog daily when we start school. At this time I have decided to start school on August 23rd. The other girls start school on the 18th and I want to wait until they are in school so I can concentrate on Katy!