As I am looking forward to the future of our homeschool, I couldn’t help but take a look back through where we have been.
Our first year, I pulled the oldest two out of public school in October. They went for about 6 weeks of public school that school year. My oldest was in 5th grade and my next was in 3rd. I had my 4 year who I had in a preschool program (with many problems, and much of my homeschooling her has stemmed from that.) She was pulled from preschool to do homeschool preschool in October as well. I later found out that her preschool teacher had been fired in December for not treating the children properly after many complaints from parents. This was also the year I had a baby. He was just 3 months when I began homeschooling. CRAZY, I know!
During that first year I was able to teach my then 3rd grader cursive, all by myself. We did many fun unit studies, including this one on architecture. My 3rd grader was an avid reader and I just had to take her to the library often enough to keep a fresh book in her hands. My then 5th grader was/is more of a hands on learner. He was able to do so many projects that year and earned many scouting badges.
The main subjects we did and what we used:
Handwriting: We used Handwriting Without Tears. This was actually the first piece of curriculum that I purchased.
Math: We used Math U See. Beta for my then 3rd grader and Epsilon for my then 5th grader.
Reading: We did fun reading unit studies that went along with the books we read. I remember doing Charlotte’s Web and The Secret Garden. I know we did more than that. We just did fun activities that went along with the books we read out of. I just found the activities around the internet or made them up.
History: We used History Odyssey. We loved this program. I don’t know why I ever went away from it. I often themed our food around what we were studying.
Unit Studies: We did some fun Unit Studies this year. The 4th curriculum I purchased was a Valentine Unit Study. We learned about Idioms and the heart. This and history were all of our favorite subjects. I also got my lesson plan organization under way.
I still had overwhelming moments when I thought I couldn’t handle everything.
We made some more fun memories while doing History Odyssey… I still can’t think of why we quit using that. I am thinking I am going to have to pull it back out.
Over the summer we worked through Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Botany. We dissected a flower!
Other highlights from our first year were the fact that we reached out and joined our local homeschool co-op group. We were also able to travel and take school with us. We really incorporated real life learning into our children’s lives.
I’ve had a lot of fun looking back at the year we started.
Stay tuned to see our highlights from year two.
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