Homeschooling: Wrapping Up Our First Year

Science Experiments in the Backyard: Discussing Air

We've wrapped up our first official year of homeschooling. It was an interesting year, to be sure.  I found that the curriculum for my daughters target age group was much too easy for her, and I spent the whole year supplementing so that she wouldn't become bored.  While we did read the books for her age group (they were more fitting for her little sister), we also added extra read-alouds, Kindergarten Math pages I printed from the internet, and a Kindergarten Language Arts workbook that I purchased at the store.   I also invented crafts, projects, and activities that supported the books we were reading. It was very busy, but rewarding because she enjoyed it so much. 

 In fact, she enjoyed it so much that I was not planning on stopping for the summer. I ordered the Kindergarten Level program back in April with our Tax return money and waited impatiently for it to come in the mail.  Don't judge; box day is awesome.   Anyway, I also ordered up a Letter of the Week Preschool program that you print off at home for the little one.   Once the boxes finally came  (yay!!!!!) I got right to work unpacking all the beautiful books, pouring over the contents, and formulating a plan for the summer session.  I started working on the little one's Letter of the Week preschool stuff, too.  Wow, is that a lot of stuff!

This is the Sonlight Kindergarten IG for this year. That is one BIG book :)

We started both programs at the beginning of this month.  OH. MY. WORD.  You know what? Schooling two children is a completely different animal.  It really is. I realized, suddenly, that I need to rethink my whole plan of attack here.  For one thing, I am starting to see that, although my kiddos might run the risk of boredom during the summer, I am tired! I worked hard on schooling this year, and I need a little bit of a break. Secondly, while my eldest is way ahead in Math and Language Arts for her age, she is still very much 4 in her emotions and behavior. She is having a hard time sitting for all the reading in the curriculum.  She wants to dance and twirl and sing and is not getting all she could from all those beautiful books. So now I am going to have to come up with a very light summer school program that will lead the kids up to being ready for fall, will make sure the math and Language Arts skills already learned aren't forgotten, but that will still give me plenty of rest and time to prep for fall.

Working on her Kindergarten "A Reason For Handwriting" page

That's where we are in a nutshell. There's a lot of learning involved in the teaching, and it's important for me to make sure I do it right. I tell my girls all the time, "Anything worth doing is worth doing well."  Let's apply the same to their childhood, their schooling, and everything else.