Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Homeschooling is STILL fun!

I am sorry that I haven't updated this. I guess you could say that we have been having too much fun homeschooling and when we aren't being busy with that, there is my normal family responsibilities, church and me time. Doesn't seem to be alot of extra time.But anyhow, I love homeschooling! It is fun. I have learned alot about my children and how they learn etc. Noah is excited to do his few worksheets a day and then read, read and more reading. He is quite the reader. I have to ask him to stop reading sometimes to help me with something. He is also having fun learning about time and money. Oh yeah, he started to pick up a book about fractions and has been working on that as well. He gets frustrated it seems with adding and subtracting but I am trying to find ways that would make it more enjoyable. Since he likes to read I thought of approaching it with story problems. He is the one that wants to do worksheets but he chooses how many he does. He really tries to figure things out on his own and does pretty well. He also said that he wanted to learn about the 50 states. We do alot with this and it is alot of fun. We have learned about Ohio, New York, Alabama and now we are learning about Texas. Just things like the state capitol, state birds,animals, motto, flag etc. Again we do alot of reading to learn these things. My kids just LOVE to be read to and Noah reads to us as well. This is really a joy!
Although Kaleb is not school age he still does what he wants to with us. It is really what I have always done. I feel that I really have homeschooled my children for many years. I guess I got alittle more formal about it (although I feel that I follow more unschooling than formal homeschooling) when I had to actually send the letter in that stated my decision to homeschool Noah. Anyhow, Kaleb is having fun too. He reads with us and has been working on his letters and sounds. He says he wants to read so that he can read the books on how to be a horse trainer. He also has a little book that he does some worksheets in also. He likes being like his bog brother Noah. We only do a few though because he then just wants to go play and that is fine with me. It seems like we are doing something all day that I would consider school.
We have CILC (the independent learning co-op (see link) that we are a part of, H2H is another homeschool group we get together with, we are going to start going to the horse and pony club to do some things. We signed the Noah up for homeschool swimming and Kaleb in gymnastics at the Y so we are plenty busy and the kids are learning LOTS of stuff along the way. It just is alot of fun. The kids love being at home. Especially Noah that had one year of public school. He says all the time (along with Kaleb) that he loves learning at home. It is just fun to have them be excited to learn and let them be an active participant in what they learn. Well, that was a novel but I just wanted to say that we love homeschool.

Oh btw, I am returning my Kimber Curriculum. It is just too much. We were just using it as a guide and I didn't feel like we were using it to it's potential and I didn't like several parts of it. I may get something more for math and language and phonics. I really just love using classic books and books about what they want to learn about as the basis or what we do. We just finished Charolette's web and we will start a new book soon. I figure while my kids LOVE books, I will use that however I can. It is a great thing to love!! Ok, I am being called to help my kids. They are ready to play. They brought up all the dress ups. We do alot of things when Jessica is napping. We play alot or run errands etc in the am. It is great! I love it!


Hope to be back soon and let you know what we are up to!

Saturday, September 10, 2005

So I started! Homeschooling is fun! Imagine that! LOL

Well we officially started on September 6th, 2005. I have struggled for many months about how we should go about this thing called homeschool. I would say that I have always really "homeschooled" my children- just unofficially. Now that I had to write a letter to the super about excusing Noah from 1st grade, I guess I figure now it is official really. I decided that we would "loosely" follow a curriculum (more for me to try to get organized and have some ideas). I am sure that we will change day to day and year to year. I ordered Kimber Academy (www.kimberacademy.net) but it hasn't come yet. Like I said, I will loosely use this as I really like the theory behind unschooling. I just like the fact that this curriculum is based on the gospel of Jesus Christ. Since we didn't have the curriculum yet we just have been doing lots and lots of reading, playing games, going outside, going to the library and doing some worksheets that they really like. Both of my kids say that they LOVE it. My 6 yr old says he likes it way better than Kindergarten at public school. I even think I see the twinkle I used to see in his eyes when he learned something before he attended public school. I also think that homeschool is going to be so perfect for my very busy, high spirited second son. I really want to tell about the first few days but I will do that tommorow. I hope to keep this homeschool blog updated so everyone can see how FUN homeschooling is. This will let you see cute pictures of the kids, their work, field trips, many science experiments for my lil scientists and everything that we can learn about horses and dinosaurs and much much more!

Enjoy!

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

HEART: Home Education and Righteous Training

This will be the official website for HEART : Home Education and Righteous Training an LDS family homeschool program.