Homeschooling:Year 1

I'm Back!

2009-02-23T17:03:00.000-08:00

I'm back and I promise not to stay gone so long again! I've been trying to adjust to life as a year-round homeschooling family. It's been a good year, we've been super busy...but we are so much happier than we used to be. The stress, strain, and disconnect we were experiencing as a family has been replaced with quality time, meaningful conversations and real learning...in the real world! I believe that we should all be lifelong learners and I am excited to share with you in the coming months what I have learned and am continuing to learn! I'll be sharing links to great sites on homeschooling and family topics such as organization, being frugal, meal planning, and many others as I come across them! I am a self-titled "nerd" when it comes to researching topics on the internet.

If you are new to homeschooling or not, check out this site if you have not already found it:

www.thehomeschoollounge.com

Have a great week!

Kim

Our monthly staycation

2008-08-28T18:27:00.000-07:00

We are homeschooling on a year round schedule. We started in July and we take a week off just about every month. We have been off this week. The girls discovered PlayStation2 this week. These frequent extended breaks during the year give me a chance to reflect on, tweak, or trash certain elements of our homeschool program. This week I have been researching fourth grade writing. Trying to find interesting ways to teach the writing process.

Our curriculum:
We are using Horizons Math for both girls and it is working really well. Next year I would like to switch our oldest to The Teaching Textbooks new fifth grade set.
For English Language Arts we are using Learning Language Arts through Literature. I like this, though the jury is still out on whether it is the best for our girls.
Spectrum Spelling for our youngest-Spelling Power for our oldest.
Time4Learning and unit studies for Science and Social Studies.
We do a bible devotion every morning using a children's devotional book from the christian bookstore.

I think I will need to supplement our 4th graders ELA time with some dedicated writing process work.

I've noticed our 1st grader's reading fluency really coming along lately. It's exciting to watch someone start to read independently and see them getting excited about it!

Yeahh! We have a blog!

2008-08-24T13:49:00.000-07:00

Okay, I am going to try this blogging thing again. I am painfully new to this form of communication. Hopefully this will be easier than some others I've tried. We are going to be blogging about our first year of homeschooling! We have a 1st and 4th grader and so far have 6 weeks down. 3 weeks till report cards! We'll see how it goes!