As promised, I’ll try to tell a little about our kindergarten “curriculum” of sorts. (See my previous post for more about my overall mindset on this.)

First of all, at this age, “schoolwork” does not take precedence over playing outside on a nice day, play dates with friends, visiting with out-of-town family, or the myriad fun and educational opportunities that arise out in the real world. This is just an attempt at a little structure and a way to fill our time with things that are meaningful and beneficial. And it most certainly doesn’t always happen like this; it’s just something to aim for.

Bible (most days): We read a passage from the Bible and memorize a verse a week. We don’t use a curriculum for Bible, although we are trying out Long Story Short to see how we like it. My goal is for her to understand the gospel, not just learn a bunch of “dos and don’ts” and how to be good. The dos and don’ts are important, but they can only be properly understood in the context of the gospel of grace!

Reading (most days): Since she already reads very well, we don’t do any reading instruction; we just read good books—poetry, chapter books, picture books, and “easy readers” (not my choice, but I try to steer her to the better-quality ones). There are lots of great book lists online from people who value high-quality children’s literature and know more about it than I do, and for that I am grateful! It has been fun to discover (and at times re-discover) wonderful children’s books.

Handwriting (most days): She has been doing some pre-writing “stylus skills” worksheets, but now we’re switching to practicing letters. We’re using Joy of Handwriting because I was able to get it free one day, but there are lots of printables out there on the internet, or you can make your own. When she gets better at writing letters and words, we’ll switch to copying poetry, Bible verses, or quotes from good literature—nothing overwhelming, just a few minutes of practice every day. There’s no getting around the fact that some things you just have to practice over and over to master.

Math (most days): This is the only real curriculum I bought. We went with Math Mammoth, which is a downloadable curriculum with a very generous license and very reasonable price, but still a quality product that has earned its place of respect among curriculum reviewers. I think I was attracted to the simplicity of it. Some other curricula have a teacher book, text book, workbook, DVDs, manipulatives, etc. Math Mammoth is just ONE .pdf that you print out. Rather than buying a specialized set of manipulatives, there are suggestions at the beginning of each chapter for games and activities to help teach the concepts using materials you likely already have on hand. We are doing the 1st grade book but moving through it pretty slowly at the moment, so I anticipate it carrying us into her official 1st grade year. We try to do a game and a workbook page each day.

Spanish (a few times a week): There are lots of free websites with video or audio that introduce kids to Spanish vocabulary, so we are just going through those. They will overlap, but that’s ok. I’m just looking for exposure and some basic vocabulary this year, not a systematic teaching of the language. We also know a couple of Spanish-speaking international students that we can converse with as we pick up some more vocabulary.

Bird study (once a week): We are going through the Burgess Bird Book for Children, which is absolutely wonderful and free in the public domain. How have I never heard of this little gem until recently? It is a storybook, but each chapter introduces a different type of American bird and weaves bits of information about the bird into the story. Then we are looking up information, bird calls, videos, etc. on each bird using Cornell University’s All About Birds website (and others if needed). Then she colors a picture of the bird and lists on the back a few things she learned. We will, of course, try to observe some real birds in the great outdoors as well!

Crafts (once or more a week): Like a lot of kids, Anna loves crafts; the problem is that most kids’ crafts are just JUNK and need to be thrown away at the first opportunity! Or, if they are more durable than that, they are just more “stuff” for kids who don’t need more stuff. But there are kids who actually do need more stuff—enter Operation Christmas Child. We’ve been participating in this ministry for years, and now I’m trying to help Anna make some crafts that can be gifts in OCC shoeboxes. Win-win! So far we’ve tried simple bead necklaces and felt pouches sewn with yarn and a plastic needle. As she gets older, I envision no-sew rag dolls, handmade games, more complex jewelry, felt finger puppets, and more. There are so many possibilities!

Outside the home: She takes art, music, and creative writing classes once a week at Blackbird Academy of Arts. They offer all kinds of fine arts classes for all ages, but they offer a block of classes specifically for homeschoolers during the day. She is with other kindergarteners and has a couple of good little friends there. She also takes gymnastics once a week at Sonshine Academy, also with other kindergarteners. And we still make our weekly trip to the Faulkner County Library for story time, crafts, and to check out new books.

So there it is, in a much bigger nutshell than I intended.

I thought I’d also highlight the fact that it doesn’t have to cost much to homeschool a kindergartener. Three assumptions: 1. You have available a computer with internet access (or you wouldn’t be reading this). 2. You have access to a printer. 3. You take advantage of back-to-school sales and get basic school supplies, including reams of copy paper, for next to nothing. I love Staples!

Bible — Materials needed: Bible, index cards and pen. Cost: negligible.

Reading — Materials needed: books. Cost: negligible, if you use the library or public domain e-books. (If you need to include reading instruction, try a copy of Ruth Beechick’s The Three R’s for 10 bucks, and use it along with… you guessed it… books. Or try Starfall.com.)

Handwriting — Materials needed: paper and pencils. Cost: negligible.

Math — Materials needed: curriculum, paper and pencils, manipulatives already on hand. Cost: $51 (on sale) for 3 years’ worth  of curriculum (if we use it for Sarah too, that’s less than $9 per kid per year).

Spanish — Materials needed: free websites. Cost: negligible.

Bird Study — Materials needed: Burgess Bird Book, free websites, coloring sheets & crayons. Cost: negligible.

For us, the bulk of the expense is the outside activities we’ve chosen to pay for. We are extremely blessed to be able to provide these for her, but you can still provide a quality education without them! If you have a computer, there are free/cheap resources for just about everything if you look!

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When I first posted about our decision to homeschool, I confidently asserted that there would be many more posts to come on this topic. Now, a few months later, I’m finally getting around to posting another one. I guess I’ve been busy homeschooling. :)

Actually, I’ve sat down to write something several times, but there are so many muddled thoughts floating around my head all the time that I can’t make much sense of them on paper (errr… computer screen).

A few Mondays ago, when public schools started around here, it really hit me… this is her first day of not going to school. We’re really doing this thing.

I’ve found myself unsure how to answer two very simple questions I’ve been asked often over the late summer: “Have you started homeschooling yet?” and “Is she in kindergarten?” Now, I could answer with a simple “yes” and “yes” and be done with it, and sometimes that’s the right course of action. However, I’m never sure what the other person really has in mind.

Did I buy a boxed kindergarten curriculum consisting of 180 daily lessons that I will systematically work through between August and May? That’s a much easier question to answer—NO.

After much reading and research, I’ve found myself more on the “hold off on formal schooling and let kids have fun being kids” side of the fence. However, I happen to have a kid who already reads fluently and is pretty darn good at math as well. But she is still 5 and acts like a 5-year-old, not a 7-year-old. She can do some work that is more difficult than kindergarten level, but not very much of it, because she’s only 5. (And I wouldn’t want her to, anyway.) We’re just in a different position than many others her age, and no ready-made curriculum would be right for her. So I’m making up my own.

I’m also drawn to the Charlotte Mason approach, which I still have a lot more to learn about. In CM-style learning, formal schoolwork doesn’t start until at least age 6 anyway, so I’ve put together a very simple (but hopefully still high-quality) “kindergarten” plan while I spend this school year learning more about the CM method and reading some of her original works. So far, here’s my understanding of it: the method treats the child as a “whole person” and puts emphasis on the atmosphere in which the child grows up as well as the training of good habits. Academically, it uses “living books” rather than dry, bland textbooks, and uses “narration” (having the child tell or write what she’s learned) rather than fill-in-the-blank type questions. It always uses original, excellent works of art, music, literature, and history rather than “dumbed down” versions for children, and lets children respond directly to these works and make their own connections rather than being told what they should think. Lessons are kept short at the younger ages, and there is LOTS of time for free play, nature exploration, creativity, etc.

So what exactly are we doing these days? Stay tuned… (No, really, I’m going to try to post something in the next few days…)

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We are going to homeschool. This isn’t news to a lot of people, but I thought a “we’re homeschooling” blog post was in order. You know, to make it official and everything. :)

I never thought I would do it. Although I have a great many friends who homeschool, for years I completely closed myself off to the idea, without any good reason. But what I was experiencing was that resistance that builds up more and more the closer you get to surrendering yourself to the very thing that you’ve known all along that you should do. Do you know what I’m talking about? Once I un-dug my heels, I went from “I’m not even going to think about it” to “ok, it’s a viable option that should be considered” to “actually, this looks pretty good” to “it is absolutely crystal clear that this is the right thing for our family.” Now, I can’t imagine doing anything else.

Are we committing to homeschooling both girls from K–12th grade? Not necessarily. Schooling is something that should be re-evaluated as the years go by. We want to make sure we’re doing the right thing for each child each year. But at the moment, I envision homeschooling for at least the younger grades.

Why are we homeschooling?

My initial reason for looking into it was this: I love being with my kids, and I don’t think our 5-year-old needs to be shipped off for seven or eight hours a day, five days a week, to learn what she needs to learn. Five years old is still little. She would be spending more of her waking hours away from her family than with it, and that is not ok with us. And that demanding of a schedule would not be good for her physically or mentally, as she is a child who needs LOTS of rest and lots of quiet time away from overstimulation. Seriously, we would never see her except on weekends. She would have to come home, go straight to her room for some “down time,” emerge for dinner, then take a bath and go to bed so she could get enough sleep to do it all again the next day.

I love being a stay-at-home mom, but I think I was expecting that when it came time for school, I would be more than ready for several hours a day to do what I wanted to do. But do you know what I want to do? Be with my kids! I love reading good books with them, making homemade pizza with them, taking them to the library, watching them learn and grow, helping them discover things. Now don’t get me wrong—I love time by myself and cannot function well without it. But right now, the primary chunk of my day needs to be with them, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Another reason to homeschool is to embrace my child’s individuality and give her the education that is right for her. For some reason, every child in the U.S.A., whether from a penthouse in Manhattan, a ranch in Wyoming, a ghetto in Los Angeles, or a suburban home in Conway, is expected to learn the same things at the same rate at the same time, regardless of ability, interests, learning style, learning rate, cultural background, home environment, or personality. However, some children whiz through a concept while others need several weeks to understand that same concept, after which time something “clicks” and they’re ready to soar ahead. Some kids learn by seeing, some by hearing, some by doing, most by some combination of those. Homeschooling will let my child learn what she needs to learn when and how she needs to learn it. (For instance, she can now read a chapter from a “chapter book” on her own and then tell us what happened. And it’s still 6 months before kindergarten would even start. I just don’t see a kindergarten classroom being the right fit for her.)

At this point I had better address one of the questions homeschooling parents get asked most often—what about socialization? Somewhere along the way, we’ve accepted the idea that the best way to socialize a 5-year-old is to sequester him in a concrete room with 29 other 5-year-olds and one adult for 35 hours a week for nine months out of the year. But do 5-year-olds really learn good social skills from other 5-year-olds? Homeschooling families have the opportunity to help their children develop even better social skills by interacting with people of all ages in the real world. As families get together with other families, kids learn how to relate to older kids, younger kids, and adults. They get to go out into society and watch their parents conduct business in various settings and even take part in those interactions where appropriate. Families can do community service together, learning how to love and serve people who are different than they are. And there is time for these things because children aren’t being pulled out of their families and out of society for such a large chunk of the day.

So there are some of our reasons. There are more, but this post is long enough, and I’m fairly certain it won’t be the last one. I suppose that from the above paragraphs, some of our goals could be summarized as follows: to strengthen the family rather than fragment it, to treat our children as individuals with an education tailored to their needs, and to prepare them for real life by living real life in the real world.

(A number of good books and conversations with friends are helping me to develop my ideas about education and what homeschooling might look like for our family. One book which I have found particularly helpful is Upgrade by Kevin Swanson, in which he discusses 10 principles that make for a successful education, such as individuality, one-on-one instruction, and life integration, to name a few.)

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