Our Home School Year

Today we officially started our second year of home schooling! It actually went really well, although I didn't even attempt to try and make a schedule for this week. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll have a better idea about what will work for us, and then maybe I can make a more specific schedule for school time.

Last year was really busy, and I spent most of it stressed out and just plain overwhelmed. There is a ton of information out there when it comes to homeschooling, and since it was all foreign territory to me I didn't really enjoy my first year of home schooling like I had hoped. I was pretty lost about what I was suppose to be doing.

So after many conversations between Erik and I, and much prayer, we decided that for this year we wouldn't be doing classical conversations. I really love the program, but just felt like we needed a break. Also having two kids in the program as opposed to one, plus paying for childcare really wasn't in our budget, so we are going to just focus on being home.

This year we are using My Fathers World kindergarten for Miss Anna(but we plan on taking it really slow with her, since she just turned 5 a few days ago) And My Father's World first grade for Jack.  I really wanted a curriculum that would tell me what to do every day, and I'm so thankful that's what My Father's World does. I will also be using Story of the World for history a couple times a week mainly for Jack, but I'm hoping to have Anna sit in on it too. In the mornings after breakfast and chores, we will have a circle time where we go over the calendar, ABC's, and  the memory verse we are working on. I will also use this time to read aloud to everyone from the same book. I'm hoping to read some about different missionaries(from this series), some of James Mayhew's books about different artists, and hopefully some chapter books like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Charlotte's Web. Everyone seemed to really enjoy circle time last year, so I hope to be able to keep that up this year.

I also plan on having the kids listen to the classical conversations cycle 2 cd at different times during the week(along with Steve Green and songs for saplings!) And I plan on doing different projects that correlate with classical conversations(I LOVE using this blog for ideas!)

I still feel very strongly that kids learn best through playing and reading, so I plan on giving them plenty of time during the day to do both of those things. One of the beauties of home schooling is that formal school can be done in just a few hours.

This year school and our daily schedule will look a little different than it has before, but I'm really looking forward to this new season of life.