Friday, August 29, 2014

And we're homeschooling... I guess

 So a couple of Mondays ago we officially started pre-schooling at home. I guess it's considered Pre-K3 or is it 4? I have no idea. Hudson is 3.5 and Hampton will be doing "tot " school since he just turned 2.


I never planned to homeschool it just sort of happened, and so far we all are enjoying it. I love seeing my kids learn, I love learning how they learn, I love being the one to first see it "click." Some days I'm pulling my hair out but most days, like all other aspects of parenting, I love being their mommy and their teacher. So here I am, getting my feet wet in the unknown adventure of homeschooling, I have no distant goals, only short term. Most of our days are centered around simply just playing with a purpose, learning how to finish a task and to make learning fun & interesting.

I wasn't going to really blog about our homeschooling days, but a lot of people are always asking me about ideas, curriculums and activities so I figured I could slowly get those questions answered all in place. It is a bit scary to blog about what were doing, in fear of what others may think or that we just aren't doing something "politically" correct so to speak. But it is all just another adventure, it may just last a few months or end up being a few years. Only time will tell. =) 

The curriculums we use are all bible based, and I don't use them all at the same time, I just sort of pick and choose what I like about them. For instance, we aren't doing our ABC's in alphabetical order, we are starting with the easiest ones to write, mainly because Hudson knows his ABC's he just has a hard time writing them. Here are the links to the curriculums:


I then of course am always pulling ideas from pinterests and other mom blogs! 

We do school on Monday, Wednesdays and Saturday. Why Saturday you ask? well because my husband works and Saturday is our Friday. Tuesday is family day, Sunday is Church, Friday we have bible study and Thursday is our off/free day! Our lesson plans revolve around the Letter of the Day, a bible verse, a number, a shape and a sight word.  We start school at 8:30 and end at 10:30 or 11:00. Our break is usually at 9:45/10:00. Sometimes this schedule has to be altered if Palmer's sleep schedule is off and I'm nursing for 15-20 minutes. But the boys just read books or have snack time then. 

The first day of school I did an assessment test with Hudson to see what he knew and what we really needed to work on. This was really neat to do with him. A lot of it was being able to trace lines, cut straight lines, identify all the letters upper and lower case, how high he count, patterns, shapes etc. This pretty much took up our entire first day, him doing each test. The boys each have their own sets of storage containers that I organize the night before. They start at the top and will do whatever is in that box, and once they have completed that box they take it back and pull out the next one. They both love it. They never know whats going to be in the next box! might be a craft, might be a book for story time, might be an adventure walk...who knows ;) Before they start their boxes we pray, sing a song, go over the bible verse and talk about what the day of the week is, the weather etc. 

Here are a few pics of our first day:





this is one of Hampton's favorite activities! A little bag filled with random things to match up his colors. 




Hudson is my littler learner. He is definitely a Montessori kid, will sit and work on anything as long as its planned out well and expected. He knows when I'm not prepared ;) Our first day was a little different then our rest, as it was all testing and a lot of worksheets and things we don't do too much of on a regular basis. I was worried he wouldn't last very long, but to my surprise he did awesome. 
Hampton is mainly working on colors, shapes and matching. He struggles with his colors but is learning letters because of Hudson. He knows the songs we sing and his bible verses. So sweet but a full blown two year old ;)
So the rule is: Whenever you get off task you must either role around on the carpet or jump on the trampoline for 10 times. ;) Hampton jumps a lot. 

My next school post will be over our first real week of school over the letter "L!" So stay tuned ;)


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