I am just about finished organizing our first term of our first year of homeschooling. A lot of our homeschooling will be based on the Charlotte Mason method, so we are breaking up the year into three terms. I have an outline for the whole year, but I've only figured out the specifics for the first term. Hopefully I won't be overwhelmed when it comes to preparing for the second and third term. Being that this is my first year doing this, I imagine I'll learn a lot about the best ways to schedule and prepare for the upcoming year.
My son James will be starting "Kindergarten". Our focus this year will be on reading, writing and math, but we have many other interesting topics we'll be covering as well. Our goal for this year is just to enjoy learning, not to necessarily master any specific skills. I want my son's first "official" homeschooling year to be a good experience, not an overwhelmingly rigid and stressful one. I did purchase some curriculum, but most things I put together on my own using various books and internet resources. The phonics curriculum we'll be using is Frontline Phonics. This is not the phonics program I really wanted to use, but I had purchased this years ago on a whim, before I really did much research on curriculum, and I feel I have to try it, after investing the money in it. If it works, great, if not, we'll try something different next year. I also purchased the Math-U-See Primer for math. This I actually researched so am very comfortable with my choice and hopefully my son will enjoy it. We will also be using Muzzy for Spanish, another product I purchased on a whim some time ago. I've heard some bad things about it, but we'll see how it works for us. At least I've learned a valuable lesson: don't buy on a whim, research your options as thoroughly as possible!
My son Ryan will be 4 in a couple of months. He loves to "do school" and will probably sit in on a lot of our learning time. I have also put together some "preschool" stuff for him. He has had a fascination with dinosaurs since he was 2 years old. Even at that tender age he knew the names and complicated pronunciations of dozens of dinosaurs. He has learned so much since that time, all from reading (well, from ME reading) book after book after book on dinosaurs. I learned a lot as well. I knew next to nothing about dinsoaurs before, now I' m an old pro! I have a lot of exciting dinosaur projects lined up for him this coming school year. James says he hates dinosaurs so probably will not be joining in. He feels dinosaurs are Ryan's thing and feels intimidated by the amount of information his little brother knows on the subject. I suppose he feels that since he is older he should know more about everything. This bothers me as a mother, though perhaps to some degree it is normal. Both my sons are smart and good at different things. I don't like to see them comparing themselves to the other. I would never want either of them to feel "inferior" to anyone, especially not eachother. I try to encourage them to be proud of eachother and support eachother in their interests. It worries me that my son feels this way at such a young age.
Paul will be 14 months old at the beginning of our school year. I hope I will be good at managing our time to provide all three of my sons with the attention they need. So many families homeschool with so many more children than I have, and they manage somehow. This thought encourages me and gives me hope that everyone will flourish in our homeschooling environment.
17 days until our first day!
