Homeschooling
So I’ve been back on the home-schooling wagon for two days. I think it helps to have my car in the shop and not to be able to go anywhere. It’s like the old days when we had just one car and I had to plan ahead, and it had to really be worth it, and I’d take Jon to work if I wanted to go anywhere that day or I’d just stayed home and do things in the neighborhood or at the house.
I’ve decided that the afternoon, right after lunch, is the best time for me to home-school. I’ve done my chores and other thingsรย that distract me in the morning while the girls play, then I have them clean up while I make lunch, then after lunch we clear the table off and bring the work there. I stay at the table writing down what we’ve done and what I want to do, partially in effort to show what we’ve done and partially to work on my penmanship, something I want to improve. I give the girls different tasks to do and modify when needed. At the end of our work day we read, do a fun activity, play a learning game, or all three. I don’t say I need to fill two or three hours with work, I just work with them a little and as time progresses I’ll add more where I see they need it.
Eden’s work ends much sooner than Lilah’s so she usually draws and does what she wants until we’re ready to do our group activity. Lilah works quickly and mostly happily. I’m hoping we can introduce things that she wants to know more about and have a library day where we go and check out books on the topic of her choice. This is something I’ll add as we get more into our routine and one of the reasons we homeschool, so they can learn about what they want to learn, when they want to.
My goals for them at this time are the following:
Eden (four years old): Teach to read with Bob books. She’s really very good at sounding out words and recognizes some. It’s sounding it out and then remembering it for the next time. I think she’s ready to learn to read because I’ve caught her trying to sound out words when she’s trying to read books. I don’t expect a lot from her but since it seems like she wants to read I figure I’ll teach her to read. I’ll also be working on simple math with her and working on her writing her name more clearly.
Lilah (six years old): Math, penmanship, spelling, geography, and history. I have a lot of things for Lilah this year. I’m not yet set on a curriculum, but we do have work books, flash cards, and other learning materials to learn with. Lilah reads very well so I’ll think I’ll be reading chapter books with her, where she reads them to me and I help her slow down and sound out words she reads incorrectly. She has a tendency to read quickly and thus read some words incorrectly.
We’re also in a co-op starting in September where the girls will be taking different classes and I’ll be helping and teaching some classes too. My sister Kristi is home-schooling her children but using K-12 where they provide the lessons and many cool things to teach with. We’ll be sitting in on some of their science lessons on Mondays or Fridays.
I’ve decided that Mondays are co-op and science days, Wednesdays are park, library, or errand running days and Tuesday, Thursday and Friday are school days. Most things that I do are in the morning, so as long as I’m home by the afternoon we should be fine if something does happen to come up.
I’m hoping this works well for us as I try to be a little more concrete in my home-schooling schedule.
It’s been fun to sit down and see how much the girls know already. They’re amazingly smart and really want to learn. I’m hoping as we do work I can find interesting things to introduce, like sign language or Spanish, though I don’t know if I’d be the best Spanish teacher.