Homeschooling Adventure!
We are in our second school year of homeschooling, and it has been an incredible experience for our family! Home education was not a foreign idea to me, as I was the only one of five siblings to not be homeschooled! For the 2019-2020 school year, our oldest two children attended an amazing school in our hometown. When our school moved to remote learning, we fell into a routine and also in love with learning together at home. Our decision to transition into homeschooling for the following school year was not an easy one. Our entire family loved the teachers and staff at our school and all the wonderful opportunities they provided for our children. During the spring and summer, we would all talk about the plans we had for the fall and none of us were ready to go back to the routines of years past. We decided to jump into planning our future lessons together and with four children, there were LOTS of ideas! It became something we talked about all day and even as we tucked them into bed at night. Their excitement was contagious and I didn't want to let them down!
I had been researching different styles and curriculum for homeschooling, but couldn't settle on one. We have been fortunate to have children that are eager to learn and excited to dig deeper into a topic. Unit studies were the most appealing and allowed me to cover all the requirements of our state and tailor each lesson to three different grade levels. For example, geology was a topic my oldest wanted to learn more about. She wanted to get outside, research, draw diagrams, and write a report. My son was more interested in finding different types of rocks, looking at them with a pocket microscope, sorting, researching, and making a poster of his findings. My son in kindergarten thought the pocket microscope was the best thing he had ever seen! He couldn't believe it even had a little light! He spent time collecting all sorts of things around our yard. What started as rocks, turned into dirt, which led him to leaves and a massive pile of treasures. He sorted and examined each one with care. We looked up his questions in books and online. We spent days on this one little part of our unit, but each child was excited and proud of what they learned and could teach each other! They couldn't wait to tell their grandparents and great-grandmother all these new facts! The joy it brought us all was exactly what I needed to know we made the right choice.
We will share more in the future, but my favorite part of homeschooling is one that surprised me the most. When we finish our lessons for the day, their desire to learn doesn't slow. They have more ideas, more questions and they are already thinking of the next lessons we should plan. I love their enthusiasm! Our children are learning alongside us to build our website, take and edit photos, make the recipes, and organize the resources we share! We hope everyone can find something beneficial to take away from our site!
Tapping our maple trees! Here is a book we read each season!
Using the Nature Anatomy book to examine a piece of wood from our land.
A big hit was the Blubber Experiment we followed in, A Child's Introduction to Natural History!
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