As our second homeschool year is coming to an end I can honestly say that I am really happy with how things went this year! Homeschooling changes all the time here in our home and continues to change almost weekly.
I never in my wildest dreams thought that homeschooling would be right for us. I had never considered the possibility of it when it came time to enroll Austin in Kindergarten, I just enrolled her and went about life. Then in the middle of the year I realized that I was not happy with the school she was in (with no other school options), and after a LOT of reading, decided grade one was the year that we would try homeschooling.
How Homeschooling Changes, and Continues To
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This year most days there were three little learners at my table:
Austin – Grade 2
Brookland – Kindergarten
Gauge – Preschool (He wanted to do school long with his sisters)
Curriculum Choices
This year we used Canadian Curriculum workbooks that I picked up from Costco. We used them as a base and worked on skills where needed.
Kumon was bought in February as a supplement.* Read on for the reasoning.
We also used (and love) Reading Eggs, it makes getting school work done easier when you can bribe them with some fun learning.
Board Games! We had a lot of fun playing board games, and they are such a fun way to practice skills.
How Homeschooling Changes
This biggest change was the Austin, Miss I Don’t Wanna, didn’t fight me on everything! Oh the joy of her just doing it and not breaking done crying. I think the biggest part of this would be that Brookland was always so eager to do school everyday – like she wants to do school 7 days a week.
Without the challenge of getting getting them to the table (or where ever) we flew through our workbooks by February. I ended up buying a couple more workbooks which they were strangely excited about. I got some Kumon math books and they were awesome! They really make them practice the skills, drilling it in their heads, I can’t say anything bad about these books.
What’s Happening Now?
Now here we are the end of April, and we’re finished with their workbooks for the most part. I’m not getting them out everyday, but more once a week to keep everything fresh and hope to prevent the dreaded summer slide. We are as a whole family learning french. Well, Hubby knows french and is helping us out as we get started.
Austin is using Duolingo once a day, for 10 minutes a day. In just a few days I can already see her picking it up. We have some french books, including a picture dictionary, that I see her flipping through and sounding words out.
Bring on Summer!
