Am I the ONLY one that gets excited for a new school year??? New curriculum, new supplies, new friends, can we say new situations? Covid-19 has certainly changed a lot of situations, huh?! And this year.... A New blog?!? whaaaa? :)
I am holding myself accountable to a blog in this season. I want to pause and take time to capture the blessings of this year, capture the moments, capture the changes, and capture our homeschool. I want to look back and remember this time! Yes, this year will mean that some of our classes will be virtual. Yes, we will be spending less time with friends or at activities. But, YES we will be spending more time as a family and I'm determined to capture it.
This school year, I will have a 7th grader (HOW did that happen??), 2nd grader, and Pre-K/Kinder. We are a Charlotte Mason/Unit Study/Eclectic/whatever else makes sense at the time family! Haha! We use a variety! I'm a BIG fan of the One Room Schoolhouse idea of learning and that's how we are structuring our year. My goal for our family is to learn alongside each other. I don't want my 7th grader off in his room doing his work, and my 2nd grader doing independent work, and my Pre-K/Kinder playing by himself. We will learn together, they will teach each other, they will hear stories that are "above" their level, they will hear stories "below" their level, we will explore nature together, we will do adventures together, we will be together. Yes, we will have parts of our day where they are working independently or I am working one-on-one with each of them BUT, our learning will be grounded in connecting as a family and exploring together! The number 1 way that this will happen is through Jesus! None of us can do this without Him so we will lean on Him to guide each and every day!
Ways that we will learn, connect, & explore together:
- We will learn, connect, and explore using Gather Round Homeschool for unit studies. These studies literally saved our homeschool last year. I L-O-V-E that we can ALL learn the same topic at the same time. We are planning to do U.S. Government, North America, South America, and Human Body. I'm sure we will get to more units but, these are the ones that are currently on the schedule. I add in TONS of extras (videos, books, field trips, hands on activities, etc) and we always end up on rabbit trails so the units are stretched out and that's okay.
- We will learn, connect, and explore by trying out Experience Curriculum (Mother Goose Time). Can I just say that I absolutely LOVE Preschool!! I have taught the preschool/kinder group at our Co-op for 6 years and literally spend HOURS each week planning, prepping, pinterest-ing (yes, that's a verb), pouring out love and sweat to find HANDS on fun for these kiddos (and mine). This age is my favorite - they are discovering and asking questions and their eyes light up when they learn something new. I absolutely love finding fun hands on activities for them. But, when I stumbled across Mother Goose Time and read "Spend less time on prep, more time on curious discovery with your children", I was convicted. I was convicted that my time was being spent searching and piecing together activities from all over the place. Could there really be a curriculum where the work was already done? I'm IN!! I decided to give it a 3 month try. I will use this with my pre-k/kinder guy but, will pull in my older kids for some of the activities, will add extensions for them, AND gather some of his friends to Learn TOGETHER! I am SO excited!!!! I am hoping to share how I will use this across multiple ages, how I will use some to teach virtually (with co-op friends), and more about how the curriculum works for our family.
- We will learn, connect, and explore by continuing to explore together as a family. We will do this through being outside and hiking, recess, serving as a family, and lots of field trips. As my oldest keeps getting older (time... please stop) and his work load gets more demanding, I panic. I don't want our time together to be taken away. Yes, he has harder classes and more assignments but, he is still a KID! One reason that we homeschool year round is so that we can spread out our schoolwork. We work on a hot day in July so that we can take a gorgeous fall day to be outside and pick apples. We recently stumbled across a Wild + Free local group and when I read "we want our children to not only receive a quality education, but also to experience the adventure, freedom, and wonder of childhood.", it was my AH-HA moment! THIS is a priority to continue to do this and not get overwhelmed with the box checking of book work
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