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I have a confession to make. Here I am on the eve of my 9th year of homeschooling and I still have no idea what I am doing. 9 years of doing this thing. My son, is going in the 8th grade this year and I've been homeschooling him since he was in Kindergarten and I still don't have a clue.... Whew right? I hope that makes you feel better.
I am so not like those big name blogs you read that have it all figured out. Nope, and I probably never will be. So, if you want all sorts of answers, you probably won't find it here. What you will find is me trying to find my way in this big, crazy, wonderful thing we call homeschooling. You'll find understanding and some advice that works for us... at least for a couple of months. And you'll find all my weird ideas that I just want to share.
Also, I have another confession to make. I have tried this blogging thing before, and maybe it was because what I was posting wasn't that fun. Or maybe, I'm just not cool enough to make it in the fashion blogging world (OK, that is probably completely true.) And I'm probably not cool enough to make it in the homeschooling blogging world either. Like I mentioned - I am new and trying to go up against big name bloggers that have hundreds of thousands of followers. Sigh. Yeah, most likely not going to happen. Oh, well, here I am giving it a try, folks.
So, if you've stuck around long enough to read all that... and you've decided to share this homeschooling journey with me - I say, "WELCOME!" I hope you have fun on the ride.
(Here I am - ready to give you advice on all things homeschool. Be afraid. Be very afraid.)
First order of business of the year... new curriculum. (HIT THE PANIC BUTTON!!) Do any of you second guess yourself at all? I sure do. ALL THE TIME. It's July 2018. It's time, people. Time to figure out what in the world you are going to teach your children in the upcoming school year.
This is the scary part. I still don't know what I'm going to do. Honestly, I'm easily distracted and I see something new and shiny and think... oooh! That is going to be so much better than what I have planned / am doing. (It's drives my hubby insane, and isn't very friendly on his pocketbook! Eep! Sorry, dear!)
We've tried lots and lots of curricula. For the first couple of years (5 YEARS!!!) we tried K12. In fact, I was a huge advocate of K12. But then it became public school at home and I rebelled. Really rebelled. I'll try and share our experience with K12 in a later post, but not today. Next, we tried piecing together our own curriculum. I collected Story of the World, Apologia Science, K12 Phonics and Literature, etc. While it went well, I still felt like something was missing.
Then I stumbled upon BookShark. BookShark was like a reader's dream. My dream! Tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of books? (Did I mention, ton's of books?) Yes, ton's of books! It was like heaven! Right? Wrong! We barely got through 1/2 of the books during the year. History became just books. I was supposed to read 4 different read-alouds since my kids were in 4 different levels? Forget about it! HISTORY ALONE was taking up 2 to 3 hours everyday. Science was pretty much non-existent. Plus, they have lessons scheduled every single day for every single subject. That was something that we just couldn't do and we found ourselves falling further and further behind. Plus, I do not like skipping about so frequently during the day.
After that we even tried a couple months of self-directed learning or unschooling. And do you know what? My kids did ok. But mostly all they wanted to do was play video games. Talk about video games. Watch videos about video games. Yes, it was that bad. (I really did try to LET THEM DO WHAT THEY WANT WHEN THEY WANT! For us, that was a bad idea.)
This year we went back to our original pieced together curriculum. Again, it has been fine. Four different kids in four different levels? It's worked, but it hasn't worked well. And I don't want "just fine." I want something better!
At the end of the year I was introduced to a curriculum called The Good and The Beautiful. I've really looked into them and I am really hopeful they will be a good fit for us. I've also looked more into the Charlotte Mason method, self-directed learning, and unit studies.
So here it is... my tentative plan for the upcoming school year... drum role, please...
I am going to combine several different methods into my very own method. We'll call it the Sugar Method! (hehe)
I want to try and combine the kids together as much as I can. I am planning on making unit studies of different subjects and studying them more in depth. I want to use living books as much as possible for that touch of Charlotte Mason. I also want to try and be done in a good amount of time so that my kids can have time to partake in their own interests.
My one rule for the year is going to be: no screen time AT ALL until 7:00 p.m. Then they can choose to watch a movie, or play a video game. But with that rule comes another rule... during the day, they can't do anything that has a video game, movie, or TV show at its core. For instance: NO, you may not make pictures of all the characters in a TV show. NO, you may not pretend you are in a video game. NO, you may not look up how to program your video game. NOPE, they have to FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO!!
So, that's about it! 1.) Unit Studies 2.) Charlotte Mason 3.) The Good and the Beautiful 4.) with a touch of Self-Directed Learning. I'm crossing my fingers that I've found the right fit for us! (Finally?)
I'd go into more depth for each subject, but this blog is getting awfully long, so that'll be a post for another day. For now, have a beautiful Tuesday, July 10, 2018! Happy planning and have a Hats and Chickadees day!
(A Slavery / Civil War Era Unit in the works? Maybe... stay tuned!)
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