Finding our homeschooling groove

I have a good many friends in the area who are fellow home educators ... mostly thanks to the lovely group of women in my Tulsa Charlotte Mason group. I also have, however, many friends and family who have little to no experience with home-educating. Some have expressed interest in what exactly what we're doing for our Kindergarten year. So I'm just going to throw this post out there...

First of all, I started off last spring with plans to do the curriculum Five In A Row beginning this summer and ending in October when baby #5 is expected. Well, we started with what I had planned for the summer, only to find the girls asking for more. So, I decided rather than include some of the teaching suggestions for older kiddos that were offered in the FIAR volumes, I started would implement some of the ideas for what I wanted to begin next spring. So this is what we're currently doing:

Bible: Daily readings for the NKJ and The Child's Story Bible along with corresponding worksheets from Calvary Chapel's Children's Curriculum.

Hymn Study: We read one chapter (each week) from Hymns for a Kid's Heart Vol 1 and listen to the accompanying cd daily while we finish up with breakfast and clean up. The goal is to learn the beautiful hymns by the end of the term.

Reading/Phonics/Copywork: Since Ainsley is reading proficiently well beyond grade level, she is required to read aloud 10 minutes a day to either Eric or me. She spends plenty of time reading on her own, of course. She does daily copywork that I make up for her using the StartWrite program. I find children have a much longer attention span for doing their "best work" when it's not boring repetition. So instead of making endless "o's" and "a's", I have Ainsley working on hymns and poems for copywork. This week, for example, she's writing the words to "Holy, Holy, Holy" which is also the hymn we're working on in Hymn study.

Emmalyn has also taken to reading this summer. She's been working through Explode the Code bk 1 steadily (almost moving to book 1.5) and loves reading Animal Antics, Bob Books, Step into Reading, and Abeka early readers. We're just discovering the world of "silent e" :)

American History: We use the D'Aulaire books. Narration is only required of Ainsley, but Emmalyn is right there retelling the day's episode from the book.

For those of you who are new to the concept of narration here' s something I found that simplifies this key component in the Charlotte Mason style of homeschooling. We use a "narration jar" (an idea provided by a fellow home educator in our group) that is filled with such questions as, " Tell me what happened in order." or "Tell me 5 things you learned about ____." or "Set up a scene from the story with your blocks and dolls." or "Draw a picture of something we read today and explain it to me." Ainsley enjoys picking her own question and so narration isn't something dreadful, but something fun. This method gives a far more accurate representation of what the child has understood of the material over more common ways of testing such as fill-in-the-blank and true false questions. It also helps the child commit the material to memory. He/she decides, on their own, which pieces of information were most interesting to him/her as displayed in what she recalls. This hereby makes the lesson her own, instead of relying on a textbook author or teacher, with use of corresponding worksheets and end of chapter questions, to tell what is most important and worth remembering.

Math: I can't say enough great things about math games. Eric and I really wanted to be certain the kids gained a solid foundation in the concepts of math over rote memorization of facts as is characteristic of most American schools both public and private. So we've opted to play a lot of games from the book, Bringing Math Home: A Parent's Guide to Elementary School Math. We also use Math U See (Primer: complete set) to help teach the concepts such as time and place value. To round out our math, and mostly to keep me on track with the games and teaching, we've recently included Horizons Math K bk1 for Emmalyn and bk2 for Ainsley. I feel we have really covered the basics and established a solid foundation in math concepts using all of these things. We primarily play a game or two, do some mommy-made word problems, and a page in the workbook each day. My kiddos love, love, love math - esp my homemade word problems following math games. ;)

Science: We will begin nature study with our CM group beginning September 7th. We also plan to work on our nature journals and study at home. This year, not only will the girls draw in nature journals, but will be honing researching skills using field guides, nature study hand books and the Internet to find out more information about the subject and will work on labeling parts of their drawings. We also do experiments a couple times each month. We also really enjoy reading from the Tom Burgess books for children: namely the Animal book and the Bird book.

Art: We will be beginning Drawing with Children sometime this term. I'm really excited about this book. I know the girls will really enjoy this each week. So will I!!!

World History (Biblical history): Our plan is to begin Mystery of History in the spring with the girls. We already have vol 1 on cd in our car and enjoy listening to so many details in a Biblical timeline. I'm really excited to integrate this into our home educating!


We also include Artist/Composer study, poetry, Literature, and geography each week. This may or may not seem like a lot of material for a 5 year old Kindergardener/1st grader and her little sis. I assure you we work only on that which the girls express interest in and can handle without any frustration. Emmalyn is free to come and go as she pleases, but she has always wanted to stay. They love to tell Daddy all the things they did "in school" each day. The can't wait to finish breakfast and do their morning chores so that they can "do school". My goal is to continue to foster this love for learning and offer a broad smorgasbord of topics and subjects without hampering their natural creativity and curiosity.

Most of our days school lasts about 1.5-2 hours. If the girls wish to go longer or come back to something we were working on earlier, we go ahead and do that later in our day. We spend a lot of time playing and being outside or with friends. In the late afternoons, we gather everybody up on someone's bed for family reading time. Sometimes we each find our own nook in the room to do our own reading, but most often I find myself reading to the children from a literary classic. They constantly beg for more. It's a great way to end the day after working hard in school and playing just as hard.

I am soooo blessed to be really starting this journey with my kiddos. I pray that this leads us to establishing very close ties as a family. I pray we help build and encourage each other in our faith and educational journey. It's really been fun the last few weeks. It is an adjustment as I have had to plan a great deal more... and finding things for a 2 year old and an eighteen month old is a bit of a challenge. There is definitely a learning curve to getting it all in each day - and some days we don't. I consider a day where we learn about God throughout our day, strengthen family bonds, and have a lot of fun together is a very, very successful day.


To God be all the glory!