School Days

We have officially started our school year!

We are doing a hybrid of schooling this year. The big kids (Russell and Meredith) are going to a Christian preschool on Thursdays. We are also still doing the homeschool co-op we did last year with our friends; this year, it will be on Tuesdays. And the rest of the week, we are using a homeschool curriculum to learn at home.

(Walking into their first day of preschool!)

Russell’s curriculum is the K4 curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler. It includes calendar time, writing, reading and phonics, and math. It also includes a few things we’re not doing.

My goals for Russell this year include: beginning to read CVC words and sight words; rudimentary addition and subtraction; counting beyond 20; writing all the letters of the alphabet and all numbers; continuing to develop scissor skills and self-help skills like buttoning, zipping, helping around the house.

Meredith’s curriculum is a light version of COAH’s Letter of the Week curriculum. My goals for Meredith this year include recognizing all letters of the alphabet (and possibly learning their sounds – I’ll evaluate whether she’s ready for that) and recognizing  numbers 0-10. (She already knows probably half of the letters of the alphabet but I don’t think she knows any numbers.)

For both kids, we are also doing Bible time together. This is kind of a hodge-podge of things they are doing elsewhere. One day per week, we’ll be reading their Bible story from Sunday school and doing an activity to go with it. Another day, we’ll be reading Russell’s story from Awana and reviewing his verse for the week. And we’ll add in other things as I see fit.

We are also doing character education as a family. So far, we’ve only worked on the character trait of persistence, which they totally understand, so it’s time to move on to trustworthiness! (I’m making up this curriculum from a variety of sources – if you’re interested I can tell you more about it!)

(First day of homeschool – reviewing matching capital and lowercase letters.)

Our homeschool schedule looks like this:

9 am: start with calendar time (day, date, weather, “days of the week” song)

9:15 ish: Bible time

9:30 ish: Each child does their learning activities for the day – 2 activities for Meredith, 3 for Russell

That’s it – plus a read-aloud time for at least 20 minutes in the afternoon! One of the many perks of homeschooling is that school doesn’t take very long!

Looking forward to a wonderful year of growth!