Homeschool Memoirs: Agendas

Colossians 3:23 is my encouragment to myself this year: "Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord, rather than people." It is so easy to get caught up in the things that I want to do and not really put full effort into the homeschooling or my kids. My attitude is so key in this endeavor - and God has blessed me with four amazing children, their desire to learn, and an opportunity to teach them and pour things into their little lives and help shape them into men and women of God.

This year we've taken a little detour compared to the past two years of homeschooling. Personally, I was getting tired of sooooo many worksheets, and figured if I was bored, then the kids probably were not going to be enjoying things as much either.

Math, Science, Phonice, & Language: There are some curriculum pieces we stayed with: A Beka for math, science, phonics, and language; Positive Action for Bible; and lapbooks from Homeschool Share that tie in with our studies as we go along.

Geography/Social Studies: We've started using Galloping the Globe as one of our primary studies. This is a great geography based curriculum and we've decided to study the countries over a two year span (excluding the US, which we'll study in depth after we finish this). The plan is to study each country for about 3 weeks, tying in lapbooks as we go along (i.e. for China we will do a lapbook on pandas). Any sheets that we work on like maps, flags, etc...will all be put into a binder for us to review. We even have fun little passports that we will "stamp" everytime we enter/leave a country. Essentially, we're doing a LOT more hands on things this year, and the girls are loving that!

Art: I have several of the books from Draw Write Now and we are incorporating those into our studies based on the countries that we are studying. The girls really enjoy drawing and journaling about the pictures that they are drawing.

Reading/Foreign Language: While I don't have a set "reading curriculum" I try to pick books for the girls to read that either tie in with the country we are studying, or that are appropriate for their reading level. The girls and I are studying Spanish and we are using Hooked on Spanish CD's until we get to the point that our Rosetta Stone software is a little more appropriate to use.

Zachary is also going to spend some time at a local preschool on Mondays and Wednesdays (it was an amazing deal that was hard to pass up), and we know he is going to enjoy it also! Those few hours he is gone will allow me to spend a little more hands on time with Kaleb doing "Tot School". On Fridays we all spend the morning participating in a local co-op, so we try to keep our school week to a 4 day schedule as much as possible (that way Mommy has a little free time Friday afternoons to work on the next weeks schedule and putting blog posts together!!).

Here's a look at our "daily schedule" (thanks Carissa for the colorful idea!!).

Kids Daily Schedule - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Kids Daily Schedule

One goal of mine this year is to try to take LOTS of pictures and document each week of school as we go along through blogging. For the three people that might read my blog...but for me mostly to remind myself of all the fun that we are having, the things we have done and the progress that is being made in our family.

Thanks for stopping by!!