Homeschool Year One-In the BAG!

As I sit and think about the past nine months I am in awe...in awe of myself, in awe of my children and in awe of having our first year of homeschooling under our belt. I cannot believe we, together, have made it through lessons, assessments, spelling, handwriting, reading, reading and more reading. Math was a breeze for both children, especially Small One; she had her entire year of math completed in January. Yep, January! First Born struggled with time management, his mother did too. But we finished the year, maybe not as strongly as we would have liked, maybe not as early as we would have liked, but we did it. And for that I am grateful to God for the patience, mercy and grace that got us through.

We are beginning our summer with First Born already off to camp. Small One and I are having a quite week playing with a touch more Language Arts...AND new curriculum is arriving! See, we spent the year in an all in one online schooling program. K12 has an AMAZING curriculum. The lessons are great, the teacher guides are great, the extra assignments are great, the book selections are great, the online teaching is great...so why are we getting new curriculum?

 I have learned so much about us that I'm am not confident the K12 program is the right fit for our family. For the first year it gave me the courage to take the leap into homeschool. Without it my children would have likely been moved to a different public school and I would have totally missed the blessing of my kids. It gave me knowledge and bought me time to really delve into the options available to homeschooling families...and I totally took advantage of this time to figure out what might work better for us.

My children actually love learning together. So I am gathering programs that would enable me to teach them both the same material and give skill appropriate assignments. Reading together all the outloud books we can find, digging through maps together, creating science projects together, and for the really hard stuff bouncing ideas off of each other until they find a good solution. Yes, this is what I think will be the best fit for my family. It will cut school time in half and significantly help with the time management issues. And it will get my children learning together...which is one of the primary goals of this entire process for us.

As the books continue to arrive I will continue to pray. I am asking God for guidance because truly what this is most about is Him and what will enable me to help guide my children in their walk with Him. It is a lot to ask I know, but He is a big God and I know He cares so much for them (more than I can even imagine) He will put the light to the path He would have me follow as we walk with Him through the next homeschool year.