Our First Week: A Review

 We successfully made it through our first week of school! Hurray!

First Day of Kindergarten

First Day of Preschool

We got off to a rough start on Tuesday.  A combination of a new schedule, tired little girls from a Labor Day celebration on Monday and just doing something we have never done before made everyone a little edgy.  Numerous times Banana Bear said, "That's not how we did it in 4K."  Thankfully, God gave me the grace and patience to make our school day and the rest of our week successful. 

We are starting each day with calendar time.  We review the date, the day of the week, we discuss yesterday, today and tomorrow, and also discuss the weather.  The girls each have a "Daily Learning Notebook." We use these to solidify what we discussed while at the calendar and work on some math skills.

Working on Daily Learning Notebook

 Our first ten days in school are a lot of review for Banana Bear.  We are reviewing the seven days of creation, our letters and numbers. 

Banana Bear reviewing her letters.

 To reduce the boredom factor, I reduced the time we spent reviewing letters and numbers since Banana Bear has known her letters and numbers for several years now.  Our review has consisted of playing memory and practicing writing.

Each day we have focused on a different day of creation.  Each day Banana Bear made a new page for her creation book. 

Making her First Day of Creation page.  She can't imagine light without the sunshine.

Every day we also made a creation number.  This seems to have really helped Banana Bear grasp what God created each day. 

 

Creation numbers

Since I have reduced the amount of time we are spending reviewing letters and numbers, we have been spending a lot of time working on crafts that focus on creation.  Crafts to Celebrate God's Creation is a great book that I got from the library, and Banana Bear and Princess have really enjoyed making crafts from it. 

Making a grass hat complete with bugs.

Princess's grass hat.

 Some of our time was spent just playing!  The kids have so much fun playing with blocks and puzzles, and it's a great way to practice colors and shapes without the kids really noticing that we are working on learning.

Lil' Man playing with puzzles. Or just working on making a mess!

Princess working on her manual dexterity and copying skills while playing with stringing beads.

The girls playing with blocks.

All in all, we had a really good week. Hopefully, this coming week is just as great! 

First Day Jitters

Tonight, I was sitting in the basement making sure everything was ready for our first day of school tomorrow, and I was hit with this immense sense of nervousness.  My stomach knotted up and I thought to myself, "What in the world am I doing?!" 

Thankfully, that question was answered with this small voice in my heart that said, "If God has lead you to it, he will lead you through it."  Immediately, the knot in my stomach started to subside. And while I am still nervous about the task we have undertaken it is good to know that God is here to lead our family through our homeschool adventure.  And while I'm sure that every day isn't going to be sunshine and roses, I am sure that He will guide us through. 

There will be learning and growing on this adventure, and not just by the kids.  I honestly think that part of the reason God called us to homeschooling is because he wants Cory and I to learn something about ourselves and parenting.  So, let the adventure begin...TOMORROW! :)

Did We Make "The Right" Decision?

With summer winding down, everyone is getting ready for back to school.  We have many friends with children starting kindergarten.  I keep seeing Facebook posts from friends saying things like "It's official, Jane is all registered for kindergarten! Where did time go?"  Or even another friend posting a picture of her daughter's first day of kindergarten. 

And these things make me wonder: Did we make the right decision?  Banana Bear is going to "miss out" on a big milestone, her first 1st Day. Will she resent missing that milestone when she's older?  Will I completely mess up her education?  What if she doesn't learn anything? What if our relationship suffers because of home education?

I think as parents we always second guess the decisions we make for our kids, especially the important ones.  We often wonder if we are doing a good enough job feeding our kids healthy food, if they are getting enough physical activity and if we are providing them with enough of the love they need. Isn't our job as parents to worry about our kids?

Really, though, what does our worrying get us?  Lost sleep and wasted time.  While Cory and I made the decision to homeschool, we didn't do it alone.  It was something God called us to do. And while we are responsible for Banana Bear's education, it's just not worth it to worry. It's in God's hands and he will lead us.

What if Banana Bear treasures her kindergarten year?  What if I provide her with the best education she could ever get?  What if she learns the best way for her learn? What if we grow closer as a family than we could have ever imagined because we homeschooled? However our homeschool experience turns out, it will have turned out just the way God planned!

Welcome to Our Class

When we first considered homeschooling, one of the first questions I asked myself was where would we learn.  What space would we use?

There are a lot of families out there who use the kitchen table as their "base."  And I realized that just wouldn't work for us, or at least for me!  It is so easy to distract me.  If we were to have school at the kitchen table, I can guarantee that you would find me cooking or doing dishes ninety percent of the time.

And so, I came to realize that our basement would make an excellent classroom, after I removed the hundreds of toys...Yes, toys are great for learning, but not in the quantity that bombarded our basement!

I used printables from the Letter of the Week Curriculum to "decorate" our classroom with letters, numbers, colors and shapes.

Our classroom as you enter 

Storage area and small desk for working independently

Our calendar area also includes printables from our Letter of the Week curriculum.  The Season Chart, Weather Chart, and Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow Chart were in the Letter of the Week curriculum.

This is our reading area.  We get to curl up on those cozy chairs and read.  My Father's World Kindergarten is really heavy on story reading (a great thing!), so we will get great use out of this area!

And finally, our play area.  I'm a big believer in learning through play. So I believe that we will be using this area a lot!  Whether we are building with block or playing make believe, a lot of learning will be taking place right here.  (You can see in the picture that there aren't a lot of toys.  Princess gets really distracted from playing when too many toys are present, so I limited the amount of toys available and will bring in toys as needed.)

2013-2014 Curriculum Choices

As this is our first year homeschooling, I have been really worried about what we will be using for learning.  How should I teach my kids?  Use a curriculum?  Do unit studies in things that interested us? Use a hodge-podge of materials from the internet and library?

I had done a lot of reading on kindergarten curriculum options.  I think that the overwhelming opinion out there is that kindergarten doesn't need a curriculum and that you should let your child learn from playing at this age.  And while I do think a lot of learning happens in play, I also know that Banana Bear really thrives on a more structured learning format.

Originally, I thought it would be best for us to try and do most of our schooling from materials I had put together from the internet and library to create a sort of curriculum of unit studies.  However, I quickly realized that I didn't have the time to put effort into that kind of task. And since this was our first year of homeschooling, I wanted to make sure I was teaching the "right" things.

Eventually, we settled on My Father's World Kindergarten.  We haven't used this curriculum yet, but as I am starting to get lesson plans together I think we are going to really like it!  It is really heavy in story book reading and also very hands on.  I think it is the perfect balance of structured learning and learning through play.

Princess will be able to follow along with a lot of My Father's World curriculum, if she is interested.  I also purchased the Letter of the Week curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler for her.  Princess likes to be like her big sister, and so I thought this curriculum would allow her to do "big kid school" at an appropriate level.

I can't wait to start school and see how well these curricula work for us!  Just one and a half weeks till we "start" school!