What would have been...

Originally posted on August 19, 2009

Today was the first day of school in our county. This morning, I would have set an alarm to wake us all up early, gotten Rachael dressed and fed and driven her a couple of miles to the absurdly large elementary school - the same building where I attended middle school and my mom graduated from high school. I would have dropped her off at the door of a kindergarten classroom and (undoubtedly) cried like a big ol' baby all the way back to the van. Then I would have had a fun day playing one-on-one with Milly, who would probably have adored having the spotlight solely on herself. All day long, I would wonder...what is Rachael doing now? And eventually, I would cut Milly's nap short to jump back in the van and go retrieve my *sniffle* big kindergartener from her first day of school.

Instead, we all slept until about 8:00. We didn't rush through breakfast. We started school in our pajamas. We even went outside in them. We did our schoolwork at the kitchen table, drew pictures, played Math Bingo, and stopped for hugs and tickles as needed. She learned new things, and she had fun doing it. Rather than being her first day of kindergarten, it was her third day of first grade - because that is the level where she belongs, where is competent yet challenged. We had a great day of school together.

However, knowing what would have happened today has made me remember the discussion that first slung us haphazardly onto the road to homeschooling. Gene and I were sitting at the kitchen table one Sunday afternoon when Rachael was about a year - maybe a year and a half old, reading the newspaper. There was a feature story that week about an area homeschooling family, but I hadn't seen it yet. So I was caught completely off-guard when he told me, "I think you should homeschool Rachael." I was speechless. Homeschool? Homeschool?! But but but...homeschooling was for hippies and zealots and weirdos, and *gasp* what about socialization?! I told him that I would think about it.

And I did think about it. Every time I read about the merger of the county schools that was happening then, and wondered what the more crowded conditions would mean for my child, I thought about it. When I read about the below average test scores in our area schools, I thought about it. When I read about a little guy being caught in one of our schools with a knife in kindergarten - kindergarten! - oh yes, I thought about it.

Eventually I started thinking...I could do better than that. I could keep her safe, give her one-on-one attention, customize her curriculum to her needs, abilities and interests, and very likely provide better socialization than she would receive in a classroom anyway. I started thinking that, no matter what we taught her about God at home and at church, she wouldn't be hearing about Him at school. And as she got a little older, I realized what a bright little girl she was, and thought that just maybe, she would be bored to tears in elementary school the way that I was as a child.

While I was thinking and reading and researching, I was also praying. Was homeschooling really right for us? Was it consistent with God's plan for our family? I had always assumed that, once my children were in school, I would go back to work to help supplement the family income. Children are, after all, expensive little things. It didn't take long to find peace in the conclusion that one can't put a price on the well-being of her family. This time spent with my children is costing us a bundle in terms of lost income, but the benefits are priceless. The more I learned, the more I prayed, the more confident I became in the decision to educate my children at home.

In June 2007, we attended the Home Educators of Virginia (HEAV) conference in Richmond. I was amazed and inspired by the speakers at the workshops (especially Joy from Daughters 4 God - I want to be like her!) and could hardly wait to "do school" with my own daughter. We started exploring curriculums and quickly settled on a few things for preschool. We started that fall, when she was about 3 1/2, and preschool was lax at best - as it should be, I think, for such a little one. "School" was largely interrupted in December anyway, with the arrival of her baby sister, and then Christmas. Still, she read her first words on her own in January 2008, just before her fourth birthday. She progressed so well and loved learning so much that we made the decision to go ahead with a kindergarten curriculum in fall of 2008. And that is how we've come to be starting first grade at the same time that she would have been put into kindergarten in our county school system.

I started school last year with the affirmation that it would be a "year-to-year basis", that we would reassess at the end of each school year to see if it was working out well for all of us. By the end of kindergarten...well, I honestly don't recall pausing to reflect on whether or not it was working. I was already too busy deciding which curriculum to use for first grade. :)

With each passing year since that initial, shocking suggestion, I've learned more about homeschooling and become more comfortable with the idea - not just of homeschooling for the first few years, but indefinitely. Of course, if circumstances arose that would mean her learning better in a different environment...well, we won't muddle through just on principle. We'll do what's best for our children. Right now, homeschooling is undoubtedly what is best for them. I've also met more homeschooling families...and found that they're not hippies or zealots (or just plain weird) at all. What they are is dedicated and helpful. Their children are sociable, friendly, and smart. And I love being one of them.

First Grade - Day One: SUCCESS!

 

Originally posted on August 17, 2009

 

Rachael officially started first grade on August 17! Even though I thought I had planned too much for our first day...it was an absolute success.

We started out with a breakfast of blueberry waffles. Absolutely essential to the learning process, you know. Then she decorated her "first day" sign and posed for a picture before getting down to business.

I'm organizing our daily lessons with "workboxes" - an idea stolen borrowed from a homeschooling mommy friend's blog. Someday, I'll actually read the book on how workboxes are supposed to work...but for now, a very simple version worked out quite well today.
 

Ignore the junk in the background. That room is a work in progress, after all. Anyway...each box has a permanent number (on the left) and a removable number, stuck on with velcro. Inside each drawer is one subject that we'll cover that day - everything that we need for that lesson is inside the drawer, down to pencils, crayons, etc.
 

As we finish the lesson in a drawer, she removes the velcro number and sticks it to these handy little holders. There are actually ten spots, so she gets two "extra" activities thrown into the mix. Computer time is shown here - she also has the option to watch one show on TV. I need to come up with more ideas. Want to see what was inside the drawers today?
 

Drawer #1 will always be her devotional Bible, along with the day's memory verse and words to whatever song she's learning that week. (Yes, she already knows "Jesus Loves Me", but this week she's learning the second verse. I'm also hoping Milly will pick it up from hearing her sister sing - goodness knows she's picked up every song that Dora sings quite well, so I'm sure she's capable.)

Drawer #2 held our math book today - only the teacher's manual, as we only did review of place values and addition. She did a full worksheet of addition problems and had no trouble with the adding - only remembering which direction to write her 2s, 5s and 9s. She thinks it's absolutely hilarious to write her 9 backward - making it look like a P - and then informing me that "OOPS, she just P'ed in her book again!" We'll be doing more adding tomorrow, only in columns instead of horizontally. And of course, more working on that pesky skip counting by fives.

Drawer #3 was Language Arts. LLATL is awesome in that it's broken down into daily lessons already - no planning needed. Today's lesson consisted of reading a poem, talking about it, underlining the nouns in the poem, deciding which sentence went with a picture, reading several short words, writing a sentence, etc. It didn't take long at all, and I'm really looking forward to doing more tomorrow!

Drawer #4 is a great example of what workboxes can be for bigger kids - a completely "do it yourself" drawer! Love this little lined white board we found in the $1 bin at Target. Stuck to it are a list of her eight spelling words for this week, with instructions to write them on the board. I'm loving the things she can do by herself and have me look at later!

Drawer #5 contains another stolen borrowed idea - the Nature Journal. The first item of business was decorating the cover. Then, she took her binder and colored pencils outside with instructions to "find something in nature and draw it." She chose to draw her pet box turtles, Ruby and Felicity. Wonder what she'll choose tomorrow?
 

Hmm, this drawer looks suspiciously like the last one. This binder, however, is for her unit study on The Book of Virtues. Once again, she decorated the cover first, and reviewed the vocabulary words (philosophy, development, disciple, passion, appetite and reason) that we started on last week.

Believe it or not, I was trying to start slow today...so drawer #7 was kind of filler. I finally printed out the information for her Girl Scout Shape Up! patch and started documenting her physical activity time. We got off to a good start by having a big ol' dance party in the living room for half an hour this afternoon. Gotta love the 90s music channel!
 

Finally, drawer #8 - which will always be the last drawer of the day and will always contain this little black and white journal. This is Rachael's "end of the day" journal. I'll start a few questions in it for her each day, and it will be up to her to finish them. Unlike in her workbooks, I won't be offering spelling help in her journal - I want her to write her answers the way she thinks they should be. Mostly, I just want to have these years from now to go back and see how cute her answers were. :)  Today's entry was as follows (my words beginning, the bolded words at the end are hers, spelling errors included):

"My first day of first grade was FUN.My favorite part of the day was drawing in my journal.
Tomorrow, I hope we do ART.
I am proud of myself for doeng it."

Okay, okay, I did help her with the word journal. She asked and said she really wanted it to be right. Besides, it was written right on the cover if she had thought to look. ;)

Once school was over for the day, us girls headed off to let my mom thoroughly spoil the grandbabies. Rachael got her choice of restaurants for dinner (pizza buffet at Cici's) and Gramma picked up all of the still needed school supplies from Target - down to a pink baseball and pink tennis balls to use as part of upcoming science projects. She also got a new movie (Barbie and the Diamond Castle) and book (Fancy Nancy - The Show Must Go On) from Gramma, who tends to go a little overboard but mostly justified it this time. In the interest of fairness, Milly also came home with a new book (DORA) and coloring pad (DORA) to help keep her busy during school time. :)

All in all, we had a great first day. We got so much work done in so little time, and Rachael absolutely loved the freedom of deciding which box/drawer would be opened next. The only big kink I still need to work out is finding more things for Milly to do during school time - sure, I could print out DORA coloring pages all day long, but come on. Even that will get old eventually. I assume. I recently exhumed Rachael's old PowerTouch Baby (the Fisher-Price version of the LeapPad) with all its books and cartridges from a tub of outgrown baby toys, and have it ready to go for tomorrow - maybe that will keep her entertained for a while. If anyone has ideas on how to keep a 1-1/2-year-old happy during school time, please share your insight with me

'Twas the Night Before First Grade...

Originally posted on August 16, 2009

...and I'm still putting the finishing touches on everything we'll need for tomorrow. My lesson plan is done, now it's all organizational. Pictures will be forthcoming. :)

I'm so excited to start school with Rachael tomorrow - and she's excited too. She watched me getting everything together tonight and asked to do some right then and there, but I told her to wait till morning. How I hope she'll always love learning this much! Maybe if I play my cards right...

For my fellow homeschoolers, homeschool-curious and interested friends and family, I thought I'd recap our final curriculum choices for the 2009-10 school year.

BIBLE: Rachael absolutely adores her God's Little Princess Devotional Bible, so we'll be reading it for our daily devotions. She's outgrown our old devotion book, God and Me, but I may let her read a daily devotion to Milly from that. We'll be going back through the A Beka Bible curriculum from last year, to brush up on our memory verses and the doctrinal drills. We'll need something else later in the school year, and I'm open to suggestions.

MATH: Doing a bit of review and the last few lessons in Math-U-See Primer before moving on to Alpha. Must find a way to make skip counting by fives make sense to her...

LANGUAGE ARTS: I read so many awesome things about Learning Language Arts Through Literature that I just had to go with it this year, and I can't wait to dig in. We went with the red books this year, which is geared toward second grade, but I think it'll be just right for Rachael. I also have a reading list for the year typed up and ready to go, and I'll probably add to it - as will she. She's moving steadily through the American Girl books, and loves several other "chapter book" series as well (Judy Moody, Junie B. Jones, Amber Brown, etc.) so there will be some solo reading time each afternoon during which she can read whatever she wants (and give me a break - hopefully during Milly's naptime!) But I digress. LLATL covers reading, grammar, spelling, handwriting, phonics...it's pretty all-inclusive, but we're adding to it anyway. We'll be learning spelling words from The Natural Speller (this little book has spelling lessons for kindergarten through high school - check it out, homeschooling moms!) and I'm hoping that Handwriting Without Tears will live up to its name...whenever it shows up. Not terribly impressed with shipping time from the company, but I've heard good things about the curriculum

SCIENCE: We'll be learning all about the planets, sun, moon and stars using Apologia's Exploring Creation Through Astronomy. This one is going to be fun! Our weekly homeschool co-op is also using an Apologia book, Exploring Creation Through Botany - which we will likely use full-time and explore more deeply next school year. I'm also borrowing an idea from another homeschool mom and having her make a nature journal - she'll have to go outside and find something to draw in it every day. Or most every day. We'll see how it goes.

HEALTH: I may have underestimated her by ordering the first grade book from Horizons Health. But it'll be a quick, easy once a week (or so) lesson for her.

HISTORY: Brushing off The Story of the World: Ancient Times. This will most likely be another once a week topic, as I'll be teaching from this book in our co-op. We may expand on it at home, though, as there are so many wonderful activities that go along with each chapter.

THE BOOK OF VIRTUES: This is a free (although thorough!) unit study available online at Shiver Academy. It is a 20-week unit study on the book by the same name, focusing on self-discipline, compassion, responsibility, friendship, work, courage, perseverance, honesty, loyalty and faith. I have a feeling we're going to be going through a loooooooot of printer ink with all the great pages included in this study, but it will be well worth it.

OTHER: Rachael is a little fascinated by all things French (thanks, Fancy Nancy!) so we'll be dabbling in Muzzy French this year. Obviously, not pushing the foreign language at age 5 1/2! Art will be covered at our co-op, although she'll have plenty of opportunity to create her own masterpieces at home. The kids will be doing P.E. at co-op as well - the older girls especially are aiming toward next spring's Presidential Fitness Challenge, and we'll be working toward the Shape Up! Girl Scout patch as well. I'm still not sure what we'll do about music - Kindermusik is just SO expensive, as are piano lessons and, well, nearly everything musical. Worst case scenario, I guess we'll just listen to the radio and dance, a lot.  ;)

Needless to say, we won't be doing ALL of that EVERY day.

Wish us luck tomorrow as we dive into the new school year...and check back for an update soon!