Gigglesandgumballs: The start of a new school year!

**Disclaimer--every child learns at their own pace...and each homeschool or child's education is VERY different! Just because my kids are doing something does not mean your kids should be doing the same. A few friends have asked what we do in our homeschool...so here it is.**

I love summer! Love it! But all good things must come to an end....just kidding! I also love teaching and I love being able to homeschool our kiddos! Do not get me wrong...our kids sometimes drive me nuts. A little extra free time for just me would be nice. Our house is a bit messier on days that we school. I am pretty much always with our kids. I don't get to take the going off to school pictures with me jumping up leaping for excitement that my kids are out of my hair and my sanity can return.

We are on day two of our official homeschool year. Granted, it seems like we are always learning something new, but I like to have an official start and end date. I am now teaching a 6th grader, 4th grader, 2nd grader, and a kindergartener. I also have a little tike running around and getting into everything...thank goodness for naps in the morning and afternoon!

My two oldest girls do the exact same thing as each other everyday. You can call it sixth grade you can call it preschool. Haha. We keep grades for activity purposes, but we just go with the flow at their learning abilitiies. Thank gooness we do not have to teach towards a test. I am sure our kids would be ahead in some areas and behind in others as I tend to stagger some subjects on a yearly basis.

I decided over the summer that we needed to have a more relaxed schedule and get out more. I don't want to stress about getting thru a book, but dive deeper into the books that we do use. What is the point at skimming the surface if they aren't retaining it?

I am using a rotating type schedule where we do some of the same subjects everyday and then others we do every 4th day of school. No days are attached as we do take a lot of time off for other things such as field trips, co-ops, and various other classes and activities.

My girls have the same schedule. Easton our 2nd grader and Weston our Kindergartner, do a few things with us like Bible time, prayer, working out, some Science, and writing. Easton is doing cursive with the girls and Weston is just continuing to practice his writing of letters and words from his reading.

What curriculum do I use?

For the girls' Science we use 6th Grade Abeka. Math we use 6th grade Bob Jones. The girls have no Spelling curriculum as we are pulling words from their writing. For writing we are using Write Source. We are using Story of the World 2 for History.

For the girls Math, I plan on teaching them one lesson on Monday and have them write their weekly assignments down. They will have to pace themselves to get their assignments completed by a deadline.

For Easton, I use 3rd grade Math from Bob Jones, Geography from Evan Moore, and the Bible reader from Abeka.

Weston's reading and spelling comes from Hooked on Phonics and he does the same Geography as Easton. I do my own math and he is just adding, subtracting, and doing easy things.

My goal this year is to go outside for school more and get out of the house more. So we shall see!

We are reading more as a group. I am going through the book "Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends." Sometimes my kids fight like cats and dogs...so maybe this will help as it is given from a Biblical perspective. We are also reading in the afternoon together.

Some fun things planned for this week such as doing Science in the woods and heading to the lake one afternoon for school...and to Omaha to see my parents!!

Here are a few pics from our first two days!