Lily reading her new book

More on our first year of homeschooling

Yesterday I attended the Southwest Missouri Home Education Convention. Each hour there were several different workshops to choose from. I attended Three Simple Goals for the First Year and Kindergarten 101: The Three R's and a little bit more. One of the main things that I took from it is that homeschooling the first year really is more about the mom then the child. This first year was really a time for me to test myself and see if homeschooling would really work for us. There were points where I wondered if I would be disciplined or structured enough in the home environment. As this school year is starting to wrap up, I am so proud of Lily's progress and also so proud of myself for really instilling in Lily a love for learning.

Lily was 4 years and 2 months when this school year started. I decided that we would call this year kindergarten even though she was still too young by public school standards. She already was writing her name and all of her letters (although not all of them correctly). She also was counting and knew her letter sounds.

I started the year with a themed unit approach. I wanted to really make sure that learning was fun. We would do a theme each month and bring all of her lessons around that theme. This was a lot of fun. We did an apple theme, a Fall/leaves theme, a pumpkin/Halloween theme, a Valentine's theme, and a St. Patrick's Day theme. We also had some small themes like community helpers and snow. As I started on different curriculum, sometimes we did take breaks from our themes.

At the beginning of the year, I focused on simple sight words and sight word books with Lily. She really picked up on it quickly. Through her reading, she learned about finger spaces and punctuation. This all carried over into her writing.

Starting in Jan. we moved on to doing Hooked on Phonics and it really is a great program. Lily is reading so well and so independently. I can't believe that she is reading at a beginning of first grade level and she isn't even 5 years old yet. That has been our biggest success. Also the fact that Lily begs to read with us and to do school work is a great sign that I am instilling that love for learning in her. :)

Writing is a harder area for Lily. She is left handed and so sometimes I think her brain works backwards in writing, but her print is getting much more clear. She is also writing one to two sentences every time she writes in her journal. She writes independently which is wonderful. However, if I am not right next to her, she will start writing faster and less legibly. She also mastered writing her whole name now. She writes Lily Peters on all of her papers. It is so cute!

In Math, she is counting to 100 and counting by 10's. She also knows her months of the year and days of the week. She mastered that very early in the year. She knows all of the shapes that I have taught her including 3-dimensional shapes such as the cylinder and rectangular prism.

I really am so proud of her. Lily is such a quick learner and really loves it. She is constantly trying to discover knew things! I have already been picking out different curriculum for her first grade year of school. I am also going to continue with some thematic units.

Our first year of homeschooling!

It is the end of April and I am starting to think about my homeschool journey this year. Yes, we do still have a month left. However, we have covered a lot this last year.

I have known for probably the last 6 or more years that I planned to homeschool. I decided that after my own educational experience. My parents had me attend public school, a fundamental school, a Christian school, and homeschool. This allowed me to experience several different theories on education. I then started working at a public school as a teacher's assistant and going to college to gain an education degree. Both of those experiences, just increased my desire to homeschool.

I worked as a teacher for several years while Lily was little and I loved it. However, I knew more than ever that I wanted more time with my kids.

I also found that as I prepared for this, God opened doors for me to meet some other amazing homeschool moms. I love that my friend Kelly is starting homeschooling this year because her daughter Boston is just 6 months younger than Lily and we will be able to do many activities together.

I also learned of an amazing co-op that was only 5 miles from my house. Faith co-op has been such an encouragement for me as I started on this journey. Besides making great friends, I have been able to learn about different curriculum and what other moms have experienced in homeschooling. Also this is a great social activity for my girls. Co-op allows the girls one day a week to be in a classroom. They do all sorts of group activities. Lily's class consisted of one hour of physical education, one hour of science, one hour of art, and one hour of drama/music. She loves it and all of her friends. Her class has seven students in it which also makes for a nice group of friends. Lily also loves any chance she gets to be with the older girls. I really love her having positive influences in her life. I also love that the girls get to go on a field trip every month and they have a Christmas and Spring program. They also have year books. It is a great asset to our homeschooling.

I also joined MOPS which gives me a break and time to spend with other fun moms. Lily and Valerie love their Moppet classes. They use a curriculum there called Bozz the Bear and it is a Christian curriculum.

Since this is getting long, I will probably take a break and continue with more of this later. Before I take a break, I want to share the top 10 reasons that one of my friends homeschools because I love how she wrote this.

Although not everyone is able to homeschool, here are 10 reasons why we do:
1. We feel obedient to the Lord for our family.
2. Education is not limited to a classroom...the community/world becomes a living classroom.
3. Education is not limited to a grade level...the children can advance according to their readiness.
4. Based on research, the smaller the ratio of students/teacher the better the results...especially when the child is greatly loved by the teacher.
5. More time to enjoy our children.
6. More time to influence and train our children.
7. They socialize with all age groups not just their own, including witnessing in a variety of venues.
8. We are in control of our schedule...travel, sleep, field trips, grandparent time ect.
9. The children learn the importance of family and long term relationships.
10. We are in tune with the children and can keep their hearts more effectively.