Homeschooling: The Early Years

Okay. So now I've pulled my kids out one week after second grade has started. What that means is that I didn't have the previous couple of months to research how I was going to do this! I am such a planner, but I hadn't planned for this. I had practiced and played with the idea of homeschooling, but when my husband wanted to wait another year, that put me into the position of not to 'plan'.

So, how to start. Well, the library became a good place for us to be. And I had the used curriculum that I had bought over the summer to 'play' with. And I joined a support group. In hindsight, it was a beautiful way to begin. Since I am a planner, I would have probably over planned... which I eventually did! But these first few months, sans curriculum, were wonderful. As I look back, our limited curriculum actually allowed us to de-school. The formula for de-schooling is one month per years of institutional schooling. My daughters had attended pre-k, kindergarten and first grade, so three months of de-schooling was appropriate and we had that and more.

I did begin to research curriculum, but was greatly influenced by our success at just living the homeschooling lifestyle as we leaped in. I became an eclectic homeschooler; picking and choosing what seemed fun and interesting. Child led learning was my philosophy, as that's where my daughters led me. Their love of life and learning really chose our path. I used to begin a day asking my daughters "What do you want school to be today?" and they would verbalize a list that was so long, well there wasn't enough hours in a day! How wonderful is that? Can you tell that I LOVED this homeschooling journey?!

I was mostly concerned about teaching math and after much research I chose the Math-u-See program. The program is manipulative based and has videos to teach the concepts. The videos are intended to be watched by the parent and then taught by the parent, but we ended up watching the videos together. This worked well for us through about fifth grade and then, as my daughters began to take over their education, they started to watch the videos on their own and progress at their own individual levels with one more interested in moving through the program than the other. By 9th grade, they were about a year apart in math. You might think that would be significant, but it was the right place for them and I wasn't worried about it. Now that they are in college, it's obvious that those details were not significant. Education is not a race. We all get to where we need to be in our own time.

For other subjects, as I said, I was very eclectic. For reading, writing and english based curriculums, I mostly just read. I read aloud to my girls until there were about 12 years old. I think the last book that I read aloud was the fifth Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix). I was soooo lucky to have the Harry Potter book series out during our homeschooling life. What fun that was, to anxiously await each new book. Anyway, since we all enjoyed reading the series, when the fifth book came out in 2004, my daughters were 12. We bought the books at midnight, rushed home and I read the first chapter aloud. Then we all rushed to our respective bedrooms to continue reading on our own. What fun memories! Now, I don't want you to think that the only reading we did was aloud. My daughters are voracious readers, so they devoured books on their own, as well as the books we shared aloud.

Our eclectic style brought me to the Charlotte Mason method of educating. My daughters had copy books, nature books, and a book of centuries. I practiced narration and read living books for history and applied short lessons when it seemed necessary. This is a good explanation of Charlotte Mason's methods: Charlotte Mason Methodology

Although I would say that we homeschooled year-round, our life was different according to the seasons. In the fall, we would make an annual trek to our local, large teacher supply store. I would have my daughters wander around and pick out things that interested them, while I looked around for ways to apply what my daughters had led me to teach. It was always a fun trip that we all looked forward to. Did we always use everything we bought? No way! But it was a great start to the fall season.

We tended to stop our routine schooling between Thanksgiving and Christmas, because there were always so many other things to keep us busy during that month: making holiday gifts, cooking and baking, service projects and social gatherings with family and friends.

We started back with our winter routine of schooling in January and kept with that into spring. We didn't just school at home, though. We belonged to an active support group which had many opportunities available, from classes to one-day projects. My daughters are Girl Scouts, and we often incorporated scouting activities into our homeschool life. We also took advantage of our city's parks and recreation department. And we are avid campers, so we usually began camping in the spring, as well.

Summer was more for outside activities, trips, crafts and art, sports, and more camping, of course! I believe that with math and music, if you don't do it, you lose it, so those subjects were pretty much kept up year-round. And of course reading!

Now, if you read my earlier post, you might wonder how we could live such an eclectic lifestyle while working with a charter. I have to say it was because of our E.S. She was true to wanting the most for her students and through our monthly meetings she could see that my girls were always progressing and learning. And I was good at the 'educationese' needed to turn our educational style into the language that the charter needed to record our progress, so it worked for us. I kept a journal next to my bed and I would write in it at night, right before I went to sleep. I would put in it everything we did that day. When it was time for me to fill out my report for the charter, I would refer back to my journal and I always had so much to put in the report! Our life was full of learning in a myriad of ways.

~Debbie in So. Cal.