Homeschooling is a lot of work. Really. I didn't realize how much would go into it when I started, but yeah...there is a lot.
Not only am I trying to get our "schedule" finished up, but I'm trying to get everything to correspond, at least slightly. I know throwing too many concepts and the little man at once is going to do nothing but cause confusion.
We got a silly workbook from Sam's awhile ago, but Ian loves those types of things (he found it and wanted to dive in, but I'm making him wait...mean Mommy). It is supposedly "all inclusive" and covers math, science, language, and social studies. I'm trying to organize myself so that he is doing a couple of pages from there with each subject, too, but it needs to "match" what he's working on in his curriculum. Sound confusing? It is.
The manipulatives for our Math U See program came in the mail yesterday. Ian calls them "the super cool blocks"; he loves them! I've been letting him play with them to get familiar with them before we start using them for his math next week. If nothing else, I'll be able to say the manipulatives are "super cool" when I write my Math U See review in a few months.
Today our Handwriting Without Tears is arriving, so I will be able to familiarize myself with that and get our lesson plans written up for next week. At this point it doesn't look like our Hooked on Phonics will be arriving until the 2nd, so next week will be a "review the alphabet" week as opposed to starting on the Phonics. I've learned an important lesson about ordering curriculum at the last minute: don't. Every other homeschooling mom does the same thing and the result is backordered items and long processing times. Oops.
Today we are heading to the library. I found a science book that I want to use for our lesson next week, "Under One Rock: Bugs, Slugs, And Other Ughs" and it's available--yay!
So our tentative schedule is this: Monday through Thursday we will start with a Bible Story (this week we are doing "creation"). Then we do math, handwriting, social studies, and phonics. There will be 45 minutes to an hour in there for snack and "recess", and the hope is to be done by noon for lunch and free time. Fridays are "off" days, but we will be doing science then. The reasoning for that is I really don't see how I can do four days of science with a 5-year-old, and also because a lot of the science activities we are going to do are outside. Since it is STILL 100 every.single.day in Texas, our only chance to get outside is in the morning. So Friday's have it. On the days we have an indoor science project, we will go to the park in the morning. Fridays will also be library day, so we have a chance to pick out some books that will help for the following week's lessons. And the hope is that I will blog about our "adventures" on Friday afternoons...we'll see. It's pretty obvious how disciplined I am when it comes to blogging!
So, this all looks great on paper. And I know it's not going to go as smoothly as I'm hoping. But at least for now, I am very excited and feeling very "yay homeschooling!".
I will try to put up pictures after our HWT stuff arrives today. At the very least, I will take some pictures.
Seriously... A TON OF WORK!!! But so far it's been fun rather than tedious. I hope it never turns tedious. I'm still not sure which phonics curriculum I want to use... for now we're just working on sight-words, reviewing the letter sounds Daniel has trouble with (u, w, y) and discerning a from p from b from d--particularly in my handwriting. He can sound out simple words easily enough (really well, actually! He kind of shocked me by how smoothly he can sound out), but so far he's not retained much phonics that I've already taught him on my own... maybe he's still a bit too young to go at it full-force. We'll see.
ReplyDeleteI'm really pushing the social studies/history and math as our main subjects. Daniel is SO interested in "stuff". Right now we're focusing on ships. He wants to know everything about all the old ships (especially fighting ones... oy!). We're learning about the seasons/autumn for science for the next week or two, and a lot of our social studies curriculum will center around celebrating birthdays and holidays.
I read a zillion websites and blogs and have a zillion ideas... I really need to tone it down, or we'll be homeschooling 24/7--and I don't mean that in a good way! LOL! I'm just SUPER excited about all the possibilities.
I'm so excited you're doing this too. I continue to be amazed by how different our lives have been and are, but yet how alike we are. Love you dear cousin! I wish we lived closer.
I missed this comment some how!
ReplyDeleteYes, I totally understand having to tone it down for the poor kiddos! Sometimes I get so excited for an upcoming lesson, it's hard for me to accept when it doesn't go the way I wanted. I'm trying hard now to focus on what truly interests him. I am so blessed to be in Texas right now; we have NO special requirements for homeschooling. Being a public school student makes it so much harder to slow down and focus on what really excites our children, I think. I am so in-tuned with "this is the benchmark, this is what we need to get done" that I don't appreciate the flexibility we are allowed as a homeschooling family. It's hard!