Category: Homeschool: Planning and Preparation

Our Homeschool Curriculum (Grades 2 and 4) 6

Our Homeschool Curriculum (Grades 2 and 4)

Lots of people have shared their school plans for this next year in the not-back-to-school blog hop: curriculum week.  In fact, I shared our preschool curriculum plans several weeks ago. Now finally, here are our basic plans for DD and LD this next year.  While they work on their own levels for math and language arts, we do most of our other units together. As you’ll see, much of our day...

Organizing Our Homeschool Room 6

Organizing Our Homeschool Room

I’ve spent a lot of time reorganizing our homeschool room this year.  I know lots of other homeschoolers are sharing pictures of their learning spaces in the not-back-to-school blog hop.  I thought I’d share some photos of our homeschool room as well. In the picture below you see our 3-ring notebooks, the craft table, LD’s writing desk, a bookshelf and DD’s desk (back by the window). A lot of our...

Short-Term Goals and Planning: Our Upcoming Homeschool Units 6

Short-Term Goals and Planning: Our Upcoming Homeschool Units

This is the fifth post in a series about planning for the new school year. Here are the previous posts in this series: Here are the questions I consider. This post looks a back at our school year. I talk about what went well and what could use some improvement. I talked about how I  assess our homeschooling philosophy: Am I happy with *how* we are homeschooling? I talked a lot about...

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Long Term Homeschooling Goals

This is the fourth post helping describe how I go about planning for the new school year. Here are the previous posts in this series: Here are the questions I consider. This post looks a back at our school year. I talk about what went well and what could use some improvement. Yesterday’s post talked about how I  assess our homeschooling philosophy: Am I happy with *how* we are homeschooling? I...

Homeschool Workboxes 8

Assess Your Homeschool Philosophy: Are you happy with *how* you are homeschooling?

There are so many different styles of homeschooling and each family will pick and choose the elements that suits their homeschool style. If your homeschooling is anything like ours it evolves continually as you find what suits each child. Some of the homeschool styles you may have heard about include: Classical education Charlotte Mason Montessori Unschooling Unit Studies Virtual Homeschooling Waldorf Eclectic Living Books — Well, I’ve never heard anything...

American West Activities 2

Looking Back at our Homeschool Year

I started a series of posts to help explain how we plan for the next year.  In yesterday’s post,  I listed out the questions I ask myself as I plunge into the planning process. The next few posts I’ll tell you my answers to these questions. I’ll also tell you some of the books, websites and other resources I use in the planning process. Today, I’m going to look over...

Planning for the New Homeschool Year 8

Planning for the New Homeschool Year

Someone recently asked me, “How do you plan for your school year?” I thought this would be an easy answer, but the more I thought about it, the more complicated my answer became. There are so many things I do as I plan. I thought I would answer this in a series of posts. Today I’ll share the general questions I ask myself. In the coming days, I’ll share the...

Read Aloud Time 0

Read Aloud Time

Sometimes it’s a bit hard to describe how homeschooling works.  Lots of things happen simultaneously and our read aloud time is the best example of this.  This semester our read aloud time has been mostly centered around American history (though we also read a book about Isaac Newton). We were studying the American West and so we read the  Sign of the Beaver, Little House in the Big Woods, and The...

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The Realities of Homeschooling

I’ve been posting a lot lately.  Now it’s time to step back and remind you that this is definitely only a glimpse of what we do or what life is really like for us.  You are seeing only a five to fifteen minute snippet of our day or perhaps you’re seeing snippets of several days all organized nicely into one post.  And while I love, love coming up and planning ...

Our General Homeschooling 4

Our General Homeschooling

I’ve been itching to do a posting about our general homeschool schedule/day. What things we cover aside from the units I so often post about. Reading: Both DD and LD are good readers now.  DD is reading easier chapter books while LD is on longer chapter books now. They both get up in the morning and read while eating breakfast. I always sprinkle our dining room room table with books...

Starting Our New Routine 5

Starting Our New Routine

Sorry about the endless postings about our ocean unit… just a couple more and that’s that!  Blogs are funny because they sure don’t show the whole picture. From looking at our blog our days are consumed by oceans!!  Heh heh! Well, that’s not at all accurate.  I read and read, planned and planned and finally the older kids started back to school last week. As you’ve seen, ED has been...

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Preschool Routine, Tuesdays

ED’s Tuesday Routine: So you heard yesterday that I’m planning to use biome/habitat themes with ED this fall. This is what I have planned in a general way for Tuesdays: Arts and Crafts (based on the theme) Montessori Math Beads; Math Activities Science Sorts (Long post and link to my 30-pages of notes, etc.!) Arts and Crafts The girls painted boxes to make a diorama. Now all this needs is...

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Preschool Routine, Mondays

ED’s Monday Routine: The idea of planning all this is so that I can change up ED’s activities, keep them fresh, interesting with the minimum of thought on my part.  I expect to skip days, but then I’ll just pick up on the appropriate day and continue on.  The routine is (hopefully) to make it easier on me to keep things engaging for ED. Mailbox Letters and Scavenger Hunt Montessori...

Our Homeschool Room Setup 0

Our Homeschool Room Setup

I often enjoy having a glimpse at other people’s homeschool setups.  We had quite a small house over in Australia, but we are now blessed with this amazingly large, airy homeschool room. We have bright colorful workboxes. Each kid has their own row, but I do not fill them every day with new things. Instead their basic subjects get stored here (including the manipulatives, new games, activities and printouts).  It...