We are busy people!
My kids do not lack time with peers in the least! Our main day at home is Mondays. Otherwise, we are going out and doing many things. Tuesdays we have Community Bible Study, where each of my kids have their own classes. Every other Wednesday we have MOPS. On the opposite Wednesdays we have American Heritage Girls. Thursdays I have my beloved women's group meeting, where we are going through a book together. Thursday afternoons Joelle has ballet. Friday mornings we have Friday School with other homeschooling families. Saturday mornings Joelle has swimming lessons.
Whew! That is a lot! I think after babysitting and being at home a lot for the last few years, I was a bit over-eager to sign up for everything and anything, to get us out of the house! Of course, it is actually nice to be out and about a lot because it seems Jaren is at a stage now where he will climb the walls if he can. Having places to go and classes to drop the kids off at is really great right now at the stage of life we are in. Some weeks it seems like a lot!
Most of the time, I am glad for the distraction, and the interaction with other adults. This is the first time that I have had the freedom in our schedule to be a part of so many homeschooling related activities. It has helped me a lot to know that I am not one of a small handful of people in our town who is doing this. There are actually hundreds! Amazing! Its great to not feel alone in our homeschooling journey!
I feel like it has taken me awhile this fall to figure out what works for us. We took a break from the My Father's World kindergarten set for a couple months. Now we have picked it up again and I think it is going better this time around. Our school time takes about one and half to two hours, four days a week. Fridays we don't do any school at home since we are already involved in coop that day.
I have a set routine that we follow on our free mornings, that involves Jaren when he wants to be involved. We start out the day by doing our "Morning Board" which involves all of the following: putting a new number piece on the calendar and counting, singing the days of the week and months of the year, singing an abc sounds song and pointing to the letters, reviewing memory verses, singing a character trait song and talking about it (right now we are doing "self-control"), picking a color, shape, and number of the day, adding or subtracting fish from our little paper fish bowl- based on whatever number was chosen for the day, doing a couple kindergarten standards math task cards, reviewing our address and phone number, and checking the weather. All of this takes maybe ten or fifteen minutes to go through.
I've been very impressed that after singing the abc sounds song together several times a week Joelle now knows all of her letter sounds. Just a month ago, she did not have them all down yet. I have not done much else. But, she has picked it up very well and can now sing through the song by herself with little help from me. She is also starting to learn to add and subtract just by glancing at the number of fish in our bowl and figuring it out before we physically do the problem. This has been such a simple way to work on math, yet she is learning a lot from it!
After the morning board, I have been sitting down with her and doing some kind of reading related work. The My Father's World set actually has what seems to be a very complete reading program. Right now she is starting to learn blends. She is also practicing writing words, and learning some sight words. We are also following a program called Reading the Alphabet that has sight word practice to go along with each letter of the alphabet. Each new week, she learns to read a new book. She is also still getting a lot of letter sound practice, as well as learning things like how many syllables a word has. I'm very impressed with this program, in combination with My Father's World, and I think this will be what we do for Kindergarten. She has gotten over her initial protests of worksheets, and I have broken them up enough by adding in games, that she doesn't seem to mind them too much. Anything that just seems like busywork, we will skip. But, if it is trying to teach a new concept, it is helpful to both of us.
I have also started a reward jar, where she gets to put a new pom pom in it after every couple things that she does with a good attitude. After it fills up, we will do something special. I saw that idea somewhere and thought it might be a great incentive for her when she is not wanting to sit down and do some work.
We usually do some work for fifteen to twenty minutes, then I will let her take a break for awhile and have a snack. Sometimes the kids will play outside for awhile. After a little break, I will have her do a little more work for maybe twenty minutes, followed by maybe a learning game that is a part of the reading curriculum, followed by maybe an art project or some kind of creative project. That is usually it. Then the kids will play while I make lunch.
I like that school does not take over our lives! I like that my children have time to play with each other. I have been nervous about doing Kindergarten because I want to make sure I get it right. I want to make sure I don't have her fall behind because I'm not doing enough with her. It almost seems like the opposite has happened. I am trying to be laid back about it and it is working better than I thought it would. She is picking up things just from songs that we sing, or just from working on it for ten minutes a couple times a week. I'm seeing that in homeschooling, it does not take a lot of time to do enough. And we are all having fun!
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