Our Homeschool Journey

When Olivia was about 3 and a half she started really showing an interest in reading. By the time she was four she was reading(we're talking READING), so I decided to try out homeschooling. It was never something we'd wanted to for sure do, but because she was a few months from the birthday cut-off for public school I thought I could get something for her to do with her free time and keep her busy instead of letting her get bored. We would try it this first year with Olivia to see how it went. If it was terrible we'd just put her in school the next year when she was supposed to be in K5 anyway.

Olivia on her first day of kindergarten

When we decided to go ahead and get a curriculum I knew I needed LOTS of structure. I picked A beka, and it did not let me down. I loved that the teacher's books told me EXACTLY what to say in bold print and the worksheets were a great way for her to spend her free time because she LOVES having something like that to do. Olivia did well with their stellar phonics program and within a few weeks of school the girl was reading whole chapter books at nap time. My girl LOVES to read!

About half way through our year I started hearing more and more about the "classical" approach to school, but three words would come to my mind every time. Not For Me! I LOVED the idea of everything and every moment being a teaching moment. I'd always done that with Olivia anyway, but to have it as our only form of school, in my mind, put a lot of pressure on me as a parent with LOTS of littles. I decided that it might be something we could do when all the little kids were older if we were still homeschooling at that point.

As the year drew to a close and it'd gone really amazingly, we decided we'd go ahead and try it again the next year, but this year I was going to pick and choose my own curriculum. Our family went to our first homeschool convention and used book sale and I pieced together a pretty good set of books for us. We decided to go ahead with first grade materials since she'd done so great. Having lots of different books was fine because it was still very structured, but it was fun having new different ways of looking at things. The one thing that didn't turn out was our Math curriculum. I'd chosen one that I'd heard LOTS of great things about, but for whatever reason Olivia just did not do well with Math-u-see. I'd heard at one of the conventions I'd gone to that if something was working to stop using it and try something else, so about half way through the year I cut out all math and for a few weeks. It allowed me to figure out what would work better for Olivia. That ended up being Saxon. Olivia now LOVES math and just eats up the little workbook pages. She's still doing Saxon this year and it's still been a great choice. If you are homeschooling and something just isn't working don't keep trying to make it work! One of our precious privileges as homeschool parents is to be able to make our own decisions about our kids education.

Olivia on her first day of first grade. Love that long pretty hair!

All year I kept hearing about My Father's World. Several people had told me to look into it for our family because we have so many kids so close together. It's a more family approach to education, which is a nice approach when you're trying to teach a lot of kids at a time. I FINALLY looked into it and LOVED it. The curriculum is, as I call it an "organized classical approach." It uses what Michelle Duggar calls the bus stop method. Where all the kids learn the same thing, but get off at their own "bus stop" or level. For instance, if we were talking about the eye, Olivia might label or dissect the eye, while Emma Claire would simply color a picture of the parts of the eye. There is also a LOT of reading on the current subject, and they push library books so that it cuts the cost of the program significantly. The part that sold me, IT HAS A TEACHER'S MANUAL! I still have the structure that I really need, but I get to give the kids the education that I really want them to have. It doesn't drain me of a lot of time as far as the planning goes, which is really nice. I did still need a language and math curriculum, so I just picked A Beka back up and like I mentioned, we are using Saxon Math. Scotty also does a beginning Spanish program that he basically created on his own from a workbook we found at a used book sale.

Olivia on her first day of Second Grade

So far it's been our best year yet as far as the excitement of school and such. I won't lie, it's HARD teaching Olivia while I have four other kids that also need my attention, but I've been able to plan our days so that it's not been too bad. I usually get the other big girls(EmC and Addi) in on most of the day, and I've been using a playpen for Isaiah full of race cars and other fun toys that he only plays with while we're doing school. (This idea was from one of my more experienced mom friends and I'd like to take a moment to give a much needed thank you to Susan Baker! You've made my life a LOT easier, friend!) I'm planning to blanket train Mia, which is another Michelle Duggar tip I found in her book "20 and Counting". This is a GREAT book with LOTS of little tools and some good recipes(including her homemade laundry soap recipe). A must read for larger families for sure. For now Mia is usually sleeping while we do school.

I don't know what our future holds as far as homechooling. We've always said we'd take it year by year and child by child. I don't want to be closed minded now that we've homeschooled for the last three years. I want to be open to whatever plan the Lord has for us. For now, I'd better get off of here and get ready to go to Mexico tomorrow. The plan is to "be there" for two weeks. Adios.