Is homeschooling the answer??

I thought I would share something that I feel the Lord has laid on my heart in light of the tragedy in Connecticut Friday.  Since then, I have seen lots of things on Facebook about so many families struggling sending their kids back to school and even a few mention homeschooling as an option. 

Before I get into my thoughts on this, I want to clarify our families reasons for homeschooling our three boys.  First and foremost, we feel that the Lord has called us to this lifestyle as the right path for OUR family.  We know that God has called us to be the ones that teach our children. 

Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.   Deuteronomy 11: 18-21

Do I feel that my children are any safer then children in a private or public school? Honestly...not really!  I know that we live in a fallen world and the closer we come to the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, things are going to get bad.  Something horrible could happen in a store, on the street, or even in our church.  My primary thought with this is that if something were to happen, at least we would be together as a family.  I would want to be the person there to protect my babies. 

Just to clarify... Do I think I am a better parent because I homeschool? NOT ONE BIT! I am probably more impatient and short tempered with my kids BECAUSE I homeschool.  I want to be completely transparent here and share that I am a sinner and I struggle with so many areas of my life.  Being at home 24/7 with my kids is probably the hardest thing I do.  Homeschooling brings out a lot of selfish desires inside of me.  Man, there are so many days I just want to sit in the bath tub and read a book!! I know that I share only the best of the best on my blog and facebook but the boys and I stuggle most days with our attitude.  Now, don't for one minute think that I don't LOVE homeschooling my boys- I do! But I couldn't get through a single day with out help from the Lord.  

So...Do I think that homeschooling is the answer?  That depends on if the Lord was calling you to homeschooling before Friday.  If you were struggling with the decision before and this was just the final straw, then great!!  On the other hand if you are thinking about homeschooling only out of fear, then it might be a mistake.  Don't get me wrong, I know that every parent could homeschool if they wanted to, but it must start with a strong desire and a calling from God.  If it were not for that, I would of quit a LONG time ago.  Just like I don't feel that a Christian family should adopt an orphan ONLY because of the Christian duty to widows and orphans, a Christian family should not homeschool  ONLY out of fear of the public school system.

I pray you understand where my heart is coming from on this.  I am so blessed to be at home with my boys and I try to never take that for granted. I love to help new homeschoolers, so if you have any questions at all please don't hesitate to comment or message me.  

 

Yearly & Weekly Planning- What works for me

It is my favorite time of year.....time to plan for the new homeschool year! That wonderful time where you can sit in a quiet room with all the unopened curriculum and envision the perfect year.  A year where every curriculum, that took forever to pick out, will work perfectly.  A year where you actually finish all of that amazing curriculum.  A year where you add crafts, cooking and a field trip to every unit you cover.  It is the time of year when all the pencils and crayons are sharp and the lids haven't been left off the markers.  It is the time before all your perfect plans have to change or get thrown away completely. 

I try and get the majority of my planning done in the summer so that the rest of the year is "open and go".  I have been using this particular method of planning each year and it continues to work for me. 

I have a bankers box with 36 labeled hanging file folders, one for each week of school.

 

Within the weekly hanging file, are two folders labeled with each boy's name. 

In the folders, I put all of the worksheets the boys will need for that particular week for all subjects. I also include a copy of the weekly schedule from my core curriculum's teacher's manual (My Father's World).

Now, I'm ready to start the year.  Each weekend, I grab that weeks folder and separate out each day's work into my son's independent work folder.  My son knows to go to that day and start to work on math, handwriting, copywork, and any other worksheet he can complete without me.

I fill in my weekly schedule and put it on my clipboard so that I can check off the work once we complete it (yes, I am a proud box checker).  My son leaves all his completed work on his clipboard until I grade it. 

This method works for me because my weekly planning is extremely fast. It can even be pulled together in a few minutes on Monday morning, not that I've EVER done that :-) 

I hope this gives someone a few ideas to try. Have a great year!

 

MFW: ECC ~ Norway (weeks 12-13)

Wow, did I take a LONG bloggy break! Although I haven't been blogging about school, we are still getting school done. The next few posts are going to be pretty boring as I play catch up with my posts (we are currently on week 16). Weeks 12-13 were around Christmas so they were "bare bones" kinds of weeks- we skipped arts & crafts to have Christmas fun.

Math U See: Lessons 25 & 26

All About Spelling Level 3: Steps 3 & 4

BJU English: Finished Chapter 6 and started Chapter 7

Reading: Senior's first assigned book was "Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates". This was not a favorite book at all. Getting him to read was like pulling teeth so I gave up about half way through.
Senior read and LOVED "Snow Treasure"!

The second week, he read "A Gift for Mama"- another winner.

ECC Bible: Senior continues to read through and memorize verses in Matthew.

ECC Geography: We covered Norway before Christmas break so we pretty much only did the reading and worksheets on Norway. Senior also played the Geography Game when scheduled. We skipped the crafts and cooking associated with this unit. I am sad we did not study it as completely as we could have but at least we got it done.

ECC Science: This unit concentrated on Northern Forests and seasonal changes. Senior read textbook and book basket selections on the topic.

Sorry for the boring and fast review! I will try and get our review of France up very soon.

MFW: ECC~ Brazil (weeks 9-11)

Sorry for the little bloggy break. We have still been working away even though I haven't had time to blog about it all. We finished our three week study of Brazil a week ago and have been enjoying a week off. So before I forget even more of what we did, here is a recap...

Math U See: Lessons 22-24

All About Spelling Level 3: Steps 1 & 2

BJU English: Chapter 5 and half of chapter 6. Senior is learning to write poems and that does not seem to be a favorite so far, ha ha!

Reading: Here is where I have forgotten so much! Senior read straight through the book basket over the three weeks (mostly on rain forests). There were not any chapter books to read so I let Senior pick most of his own reading books this unit. He is currently starting to read all of the Hardy Boys series. I can't keep the boy in books! He is very proud of his recent accomplishment of reading over 300 pages in less than 2 days ;-)

ECC Bible: In addition to continuing to read through Matthew and pray for countries/people groups, our focus was on Nate Saint. Our scheduled read aloud was Christian Heros: Then & Now- Nate Saint. Senior actually grabbed the book and read it himself in a few days (should I discourage this?). This was an increadable study!

ECC Geography: Again I did not get very many pictures of our study of Brazil. The geography game is still a favorite and Senior loves to beat his mom.

Our art projects this unit were the carnival costumes with masks (not pictured).


To finish the unit we visited a Brazilian Bakery in the area. We sampled some authentic food. All the boys enjoyed the deserts ;-)



ECC Science: This unit had some fun experiments. While learning about the rain forests, we looked more closely at birds. We studied God's perfect design for eggs. Each boy took a turn trying to break one.

If you exert even pressure then it is very difficult.

Daddy was able to break one but by squeezing unevenly.

Then we experimented to see how much weight the arch of an egg could support.


It supported more than we would have thought. Daddy thinks that if we would have been more careful prepping- it would of held even more.

We also looked at how the oil of a birds feathers keep them dry.

Over the three weeks we watched grass seeds grow. We watered each of the cups only once and only the one covered in plastic wrap grew. A great demonstration of the rain forest.

By far, our favorite activity was making a rain forest terrarium.

After three weeks, it is still alive (a miracle for my black thumb).


The boys also worked on a diorama. I got the idea from COAH.

A study of the rain forest would not be complete without another field trip to the botanical garden.






All the rest: Our homeschool group got together to pack shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child.



Fall would not be complete without a trip to the pumpkin patch.

We had a Star Wars theme to our Halloween ;-)




Our studies the next day included sorting and counting.

The boys finished music for the semester. Senior did an awesome job at his recorder concert.


See you in Norway!

I will be linking up the MFW Highlights @ 2 Ladybugs and a Lizard.

Tot School~ ABCJLM "J", "K", and Fall

Gator-Tot is 3 years 2 months
Freshman is 21 months

"J" Week

Our "J" week, was one of those kind of weeks where you are so happy just to get the basics in. We never even got to our "J" collage :-( This is what it looked like by the end.

Highlights: All of the boys loved learning about our Bible story - The Calling of Samuel. Gator-Tot would just giggle at the "Samuel, Samuel, Samuel" part- I don't why that was so funny to him ;-)

Here are the "J" books from the week.

I didn't get many pictures but here is one I did manage to snap.

This week was one of the first writing practices for G-Tot. He started out with vertical lines and did really well.

"K" Week

We got a little more work done on our "K" week. For our "K" craft, we made rubbings of keys.

We only focused on a few "K" books this week (it may have been due to the fact that mommy forgot to order them from the library).


The Bible story this week was "David and Goliath" so of course the boys watched Dave and the Giant Pickle.

I pulled out some puzzles for G-Tot this week and he is getting better each time.

I think the boys played with homemade pumpkin scented playdough everyday.

Fine motor practice this week was horizontal lines.

"Fall"

Over the past two weeks we have been working on some fall activities. Here are just a few of the fall books we have all over the house.

This is a file folder game a printed off last year from 2 Teaching Mommies.

Here are just a few pictures of Gator-Tot working on the Fall Fun pack from Homeschool Creations.


Of course we had to go out and explore the changes all around us.

Collecting leaves.

Leaf rubbings, an annual tradition.


We also made several crafts that were "tweeked" ideas from Pinterest. This one is traced hand/arms and do-a-dot leaves.



This one is a hand drawn trunk and leaves made with pencil erasers dipped in paint.

This is Freshman's.

I couldn't be left out of all the fun ;-)


I will be linking up to Tot School @ 1+1+1=1.