Our First Homeschool Year

We are coming to the end of our first official homeschool year. 

I've been "homeschooling" ever since my oldest was born, but I guess what I mean is that this was the first year that I followed a professional curriculum.

My son and I have learned so many new things together this year, but the most important thing I've learned, the one main and crucial lesson, is that 

I don't know what I'm doing!!!

So...this is going to be more of a record of what we did this year, not an authoritative post on homeschooling.

I'm not here to say, "This is what first-grade homeschooling should look like."  (Because I'm not even sure what that is.) We just did our own thing with it and this post is the re-cap.

             

This is my oldest child; Roman. He was six when the school year began:

             

I ordered first-grade curriculum through Abeka. He learned cursive writing:

             

Manuscript writing:

         

            

           

Arithmetic:

           

And reading:

        

Of these basics, reading, writing, and arithmetic, Roman said arithmetic was his favorite. (He thrived at it!)

At the start of the year I wrote out my goal for our daily and weekly lessons. This was sort of my guide in the beginning until it became second nature, and then I found that I never really referred to it.

            

We had a few text books that I would read to him from:

History:

           

Science:

           

And Health:

          

That's everything we did from Abeka, and everything that Roman and I did apart from the other kids. 

We had a mid-morning time where we were all together and we'd say the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag and I'd spend about 20-30 minutes reading to all of the children. If I were to include every book that was a part of our lives this past year, this post would become boringly long. Instead, I'll just list a few of our favorites that played a big part in our daily routine. 

I really love these character books! Aren't they adorable?!

Every page is a different value or character trait.

(Obedience is a very big deal in the Downs' household! For some reason I have a hunch that obedience to authority isn't taught or valued in today's public schools. Is there truth to that or is it just me? Instead, it's the notion of "Do what's best and right for you", and that scares me to death!!!)

We would read and talk about one or two of these traits a day.

This is our other character book:

           

It's a little more "grown up" than the other ones but I would read from this book to all of the children and even the little ones could understand it. I think it's because this one has stories that talk about the character trait. This is the list of all of the character traits included in the book:

         

Another favorite was this book set of words and definitions. It reminds me of a dictionary, but for kids! 

I would read one page's worth to all of the kids almost every day. They enjoyed telling me the new word or words they learned when we were finished.

Another important aspect of our homeschool year was getting out of the house to participate in classes offered through a local community center. I'm very careful to protect my time in the home. It's extremely important to me that I am not busy! I don't want a life spent in my car, constantly running around town! When I signed my kids up for these classes, I did it purposely and carefully. We were only out of the home two days during the school-week. I tried to combine classes and days the best that I could. Our two days were Wednesday's and Thursday's. I don't have pictures of this, but I'll list the classes my kids were involved in outside of the home.

On Wednesday's, Nola took a Ballet/Tap class at our community center, and all of the kids went to Bible Warriors at our church.

On Thursday's, Roman and Nola took piano lessons at a friends house, and Roman took an Art class at our community center. 

We did our best to still complete school work on those days, but unless we had a doctor appointment or something, we could always be home on Monday's, Tuesday's, and Friday's. I really liked this schedule and I'm glad I set it up this way. 

If you're a new-to-homeschooling mom like me, I would encourage you to guard your time in the home! Filling up your schedule with busyness is unnecessary! Kids don't need to be in a hundred activities!!! It's stressful and tiring for you and them! Pick one or two things that they really like, and be faithful to get them there. Other than that, stay home! Kids need to see that home life is rich and wonderful! How will they ever learn contentment and happiness in the home if they're constantly yanked from it?!

A few other elements of our homeschool year that are worth noting are:

Roman's morning run.

Last fall I decided he was old enough and it would be good for him to go on a morning run, alone, each school day before breakfast. I took him outside and let him chart out his course. At first I was encouraged because he seemed to latch on to the idea, and even brought with him a notepad to draw out his route;

A lap around the barn/ ten-seconds spent on top of the hill/ hop along the garden stones...

I told him I wasn't going to send him out to do it, but that he was responsible for his morning run. He had to record his start and end time in a log each day and tell me an observation, like The birds were chirping, or, It looks like it might rain. 

He did really well with this for about a week and then honestly, it became something he hated. When winter set in I told him he didn't have to do it anymore. He was elated, and neither of us brought it up all winter, haha. Well, now that spring is here and our mornings are sunny and warm again, he's back into the routine of his morning run. 

His time log looks like this:

              

You can tell by how quickly he gets it over with that this isn't his favorite thing to do, haha! I'm curious as to what you would tell me if I were to ask for advice on this. Do you think it's ok to make your child continue to do an activity he hates? I really thought it'd be a great start to his day, but it's just not his thing. What do you think?

His observations for Monday and Tuesday were, The grass is stiff and wet, and, The geese are coming back from the south.

The last thing I want to include in this post are Roman's inventions. He loves to create and build things. Even though it's irritating to me sometimes and I hate the messes it makes, I try to back off and let him create. The following pictures are things that he made with no adult help.

This laptop:

           

           

A music machine:

          

A stage set:

          

(The microphone that he made cracks me up! Haha!)

And a plastic cup tower:

          

This was our homeschool year in a nutshell. Of course I didn't include every little detail. There were other other activities, other inventions, other books... two notebook's worth of his hand-written work, flash cards, spelling tests, and arithmetic tests, etc... Of course there were things like, bible memory verses, a musical at church, visits with friends and with grandma, helping with meal preparations, and coming with me to our town hall to vote... If you've been reading my blog since the beginning, you'll know we have our Morning Routine that's a part of our homeschool day. That includes making beds, helping with laundry, tidying their rooms, etc... 

This was just a brief, (hopefully not too boring) record of what our life looks like at home during the week. I really enjoy having my kids all to myself and watching them become each others best friends. Maybe someday they'll go to regular school, but for now while they're young, I get to be the one who teaches, shapes, and influences them.

           

So, this was our first "official" year! Aren't you proud of me, girlfriends?! And I enjoyed it, too! Homeschooling is a very peaceful life.

         

Thanks so much for reading!

I'll be back soon!

~ Courtney