The start of Homeschooling

J has finished kindy and now it is school holidays. For the past term we have been practicing homeschooling at home on the two days J has not been at kindy. It has gone really well, Praise God.

The first couple of weeks were really hard as we both found a rhythym and routine, i think i was expecting a bit too much of him initially and wanted him to concentrate much longer than he was able. When i set time limits to the activities, he responded much better.

WE have been using LEM phonics and have nearly completed the first work book with the single phonograms. He knows all the sounds of them and how to write them. Along the way he has learnt to do some simple reading, which he absolutely loves. I am really pleased he likes reading as i think that will make learning much easier for him. He especially loves non fiction texts.

Although it is school holidays we are still using the homeschool room as an office and i am drawn to teaching him whilst i am in there working on the computer etc. So today i asked him to write a story while i was doing some lesson prep for next term. This is the first free writing that he has done ever, all other writing he's done has been copying words. This is what he wrote:

I am really proud of his reading and writing, i helped him to spell work and computer but the rest he did himself. As you can see, he is a bit of a perfectionist like his father and as soon as he learnt that he had done something wrong, he crossed it out and started again. I am going to have to learn not to correct him too much along the way so that he is confident about what he is doing.

We have been using a maths curriculum called mathematics for Christian living but i am finding it dry and repetitive and so have begun to combine it with another called mathletics. This is keeping the repetitive practice of writing of the MCL aswell as some interesting pics and concepts with Mathletics.

I have just been looking at a science curriculum by Sonlight which i think we will use, we do have one by BEKA books but i find the Sonlight one more structured and the year and lessons are already planned in an easy to use format.

At this stage i am planning to invent my own curriculum for the other subjects, or at least until i find something i am happy with.
I am very excited about starting full time next term and almost wish it would hurry up! But then i think that it will be hard work when the time arrives and that i should enjoy the holidays and the preparation for now.