REFLECTIONS ON OUR FIRST YEAR OF HOMESCHOOLING

Ahhh...that wonderful word homeschooling. As this post will mostly reflect on the academic slice of homeschooling, I do realize that there is so much more to homeschooling than academics... it's all a part of the training that God has called us to give our children. We chose to homeschool for many reasons, one of which we believe that character development, a firm knowledge of Jesus Christ, and a desire to live out his Word every day are key things we want our children to learn on a daily basis. We want to have control over the people who influence our children at this tender age. We want to know exactly what they are being taught as truth really is TRUTH and based on God's Word. Children are so easily influenced, and they need a good foundation before they can stand up to the world. Yes, we want our children to make a difference for Jesus, but we feel the best way to help them know how to do this is to give them a good, godly foundation here at home first. Remember, too, this is OUR family's calling. Not everyone may be called to homeschool.

When I look at homeschooling from this big perspective, it encompasses every area of their lives. Daily living, chores, how to get along with others, what it means to obey God and His Word, in addition to the academic part of homeschooling. Academics are really such a small percentage of what I see our task of homeschooling to be, and yet, it's the easiest to get caught up in because the world says that's the main part we should worry about.

Keep in mind, kids who are in school for academics, can still be "homeschooled" in all these other areas. Our family has just chosen to intertwine them all, at least for this season of our lives.

Having said all that, my reflections from this point on will be in regards to the academics of our first year. As students all around us are counting down till the day they get out of school, I am trying to determine what is best for our family this summer in regards to this area of academics. I have already packed some of our stuff away, but we are still plugging along with our Math & Phonics, which I think I'm going to try to keep up with on a somewhat regular basis this summer. Maintenance is the word I have in mind.

We definitely had our ups and downs this first year, but looking back, it was a great experience. We had lots of fun together, and made it through the days of frustration. Some weeks we just had to set things aside and "take a break", while other weeks, we chugged on.

At the beginning of the year, my first frustration was with our curriculum, which now, by the way, I have really grown to like! :) I just had to learn how to adapt it to Myah's learning style. We use Horizons Phonics and Math, which was very overwhelming at first. Her Phonics lessons could be up to 6 pages long! Once I got past the whole mindset of having to finish every blank on every page & finish 5 lessons per week, we learned to really enjoy this curriculum. I just had to loosen up! There are so many ways to adapt the lessons provided in this curriculum. We would make games out of it, change a particular section and do it on the whiteboard, and always try to bring in real life examples on it. We did a lot of things orally that would have taken 10 times as long to have her sit and write down all the answers. We are now to the point, where we can fly through a lesson together where she gets practice on all the concepts, but maybe not in the "sit and finish the worksheet" kind of way, as that is NOT her learning style. Horizons makes it easy to adapt their lessons in this way because they offer such a variety of things to do.

The following resources are a sampling of things that were fun and helpful to us this year:

* Horizons Mathematics
* Horizons Phonics and Reading
* A Reason for Handwriting
* The World God Made (Christian Liberty Press - Science)
* Brain Quest
* Disney Animal & Nature Discovery Cards
* 100 Words Kids Need to Read by 1st Grade (Scholastic) -- we used these for our sight words
* What Shall I Do Today? (Usborne books - Art)
* Christian Liberty Readers
* The Little Kids Adventure Bible
* Jesus Wants All of Me (My Utmost For His Highest for Children)

Another thing we really enjoyed doing was bringing school into our daily living. Evan had Myah doing subtraction by figuring out distances from one location to another -- and this at 9:00 at night! They would check the mileage on the van when we left a certain location and then again when we got home -- a great way to live out a story problem! Nature walks are another thing we really enjoy doing as a family, and are a great way to learn more about God's beautiful creation. Myah has also enjoyed doing nature sketches. She'll go outside, pick a bug or a flower and draw it on paper.

One of my favorite parts of teaching her this year was to pick certain things from the Bible and study it. We studied the Fruits of the Spirit, the Lord's Prayer, the 10 Commandments as well as the NT commandments that Jesus gave us. Not only did we try to memorize all these things, but we also tried to really learn what they mean and how they impact our lives as followers of Jesus. Not only did we spend time learning how to pray, but also how to "listen" to Jesus. We learned Scripture verses for each letter of the alphabet up to "W", I think, and now she has these all hung up around her bedroom. My only regret here is that I didn't make her learn the references at this point. I think we'll go back and do that next year, though. Wish I would have done it all at once! Don't get me wrong, we don't have these concepts down, but she was at least introduced to them on her level, which was my goal.

So...changes for next year. I want to try to be even more diligent about incorporating school into every day living. I want to have more of a system set up for household chores. I want to be more willing to set "my" work aside and how I think things should be done in order to provide more learning opportunities for my kids to learn how to do things. I want to find that balance between challenging her and pushing her too hard. Most of all, I want to be even more consistent on teaching all my children about Jesus, to have a love for God's Word as well as what it means to have a relationship with Him. I want them to have such a love for prayer and God's Word above all else in this world. My prayer is that God will give me wisdom to know how to accomplish HIS will for my children...not my own will. One step at a time....