School Year in Review: 2008-2009

We Finished Our First  Year of Homeschooling!

Wow!  I can’t believe it- we finished! I had expected homeschooling to be much more difficult and time-consuming than it turned out to be- what a pleasant surprise.

Attendance

Since this year “doesn’t count” as far as the state is concerned,  I thought I’d take the year to experiment with the attendance issue.  Technically the state law is that students attend school for 9 consecutive months- the law never mandates 180 days but since that is the norm, I decided to shoot for that number.

The first decision I had to make was whether to do a traditional school year (September-May) or whether to school year round and I had to decide how many days a week I wanted to school.   I really did not like the idea of a traditional school year for two reasons-  students forget so much over the summer that often those first few weeks of school are spent reviewing what was learned last year.  Also, we would be under increased pressure during the school year to complete 180 days- there would be much less flexibility to take breaks when we wanted.

So I decided that we would school year round and that I would NOT mandate schooling a certain number of days per week- we would do school most days  and take breaks whenever I felt we needed one. I am so thrilled with this decision- it has worked out beautifully for us.   We’ve felt very little pressure to hurry and get school done.    We schooled very lightly in June and July (10 days and 11 days respectively), took almost a month off at Christmas and week of Spring Break at the first of April.  And we are still finishing an entire month early!    We are not “due” to be finished until June and we are done as of April 30th!

Schedule

Most days we school in several small chunks throughout the day.    From 9:00am-10:30am we cover reading, math, some science, some Bible and  piano practice, (for Nathan- Mary will start September, 2009).   From 12:30-1:00 we read science and history out loud.  From 7:00-7:30pm we cover Bible via Family Devotions and Kip does handwriting with Mary.   Once or twice a week he also does an art lesson on drawing with her.  That is about 2 1/2 hours of  “seat work” that does not include lunch, pe/recess and art.   If we included that in our count of hours-per-day spent on school (as the public school does!) we’d be at 4-5 hours per day.    Of course it is far more efficient to teach one child than it is to teach 30, thus we finish her school day more quickly than the public school would.

Field Trips and Special Classes

We’ve done quite a few fun extras this year, including:

1. Two weeks of swim lessons (7/28/08-7/31/08 and 8/4/08-8/7/08)

2. Visited the NC Acquarium at Pine Knoll Shores

3. Went to Shackelford Shores (learned about Blackbeard the pirate and went on a treasure hunt, listened to a presentation on the wild ponies of Shackelford Island and saw several of them from Lookout Dune, caught a variety of shells including a live welk and hermit crabs and saw a sea urchin and sting ray, rode the ferry boat and learned some about boats and boat terminology)

4. Took the “Legend of Blackbeard” walking tour through downtown Beaufort- saw Blackbeard’s house and saw both authentic pirate artifacts as well as some replicas.

5. Went to the Greensboro Ballet performance of “Hansel and Gretel”

6. Visited a farm in the fall- had a tour with the farmer where he taught the children a lot about farming, showed them antique and modern farming equipment.

7.  Several trips to the Greensboro Natural Science Center.

8.  Several trips to the Greensboro Children’s Museum.

9. Took them to the circus.

10. They took Nature classes at the Natural Science Center on Sea Creatures,  Winter Animals, the Science of Music, Lizards and Snakes and Dinosaurs.

11. Went to the Rodeo.

12. In January they started taking Tae Kwon Do lessons twice a week.

Curriculum

Bible

We read quite a bit of Egermier’s Bible Story Book and completed Christian Light’s First Grade Bible Course books 1-4.   We’ll finish the last book- book 5, this summer.  We read “Leading Little Ones to God” and really enjoyed it.

We’ve started memorizing the Catechism for Young Children (we’re on question #7) and using using this Scripture Memory System to memorize scripture.  So far the children have memorized Genesis 1:1, Psalm 119:11 and are working on Ephesians 6:1.  (We just started this a few weeks ago.)

Language Arts

We finished Rod and Staff’s ABC Series, books A-G.    We are on Lesson #60 of Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons and are on book two of  Christian Light’s “Learning to Read” course. She is also using the BOB books for beginning readers.

From October 7 2008

Math

We have worked on counting from 1-30.   She can recognize the numbers, write them and count them out loud.  We’ve used a 1-100 chart from Christian Light, Kumon’s Workbook “Numbers 1-30″ .   She has completed 1/3 of  Math-U-See’s “Primer”.   (We’ll continue on with this in the Fall.)  She’s completed several other Math workbooks including “Math Puzzles and Games” and done quite a bit with pattern blocks, math flashcards and math games such as “Pegs in the Park” and “High Ho Cherry O”.

History

We read “The Light and The Glory” out loud this year, finishing in March.   We’ve also been reading William Bennett’s “The Children’s Book of Heroes”, Aesop’s Fables, and books on Ancient Egypt in preparation for beginning Tapestry of Grace in the Fall.

Science

We read several science books this year including “Men of Science, Men of God“,  Usborne’s “Complete First Book of Nature“, “Animal Atlas of the World“.   We read quite a bit of The Burgess Animal Book for Children and charted the weather daily with “My Calendar Book”.    We also cultivated an ant farm and grew onions, radishes and carrots.

Nathan looking at the “Animal Atlas of the World” book.

Handwriting

Mary completed Handwriting Without Tears’ Kindergarten Course and is now working on book 1 of the  Draw, Write, Now curriculum which combines handwriting with art instruction.

Art

Although we haven’t used a formal art curriculum, Mary loves to draw.  She almost never uses coloring books- she prefers a stack of blank paper and crayons, markers or colored pencils.    We provided her with a beautiful set of Faber Castell’s art supplies- water colors and paintbrushes, oil crayons, colored pencils,  etc.   She’s had lots of time with scissors and glue, play-doh and we’ve done the occasional craft activity.  We have several art books that we look through at least once a week- we talk about what they see in the paintings, what they like or don’t like about the painting, etc.    In March I won a Picturing America Grant.  The grant provided us with 40 high quality reproductions of famous pieces of American art- paintings, sculpture, silverwork, baskets, architecture.  GO HERE TO SEE A GALLERY OF THE ARTWORK! We have two pieces at a time hanging in our schoolroom on a rotating basis.

PE/Recess

The children play outside on average 1-2 hours a day, depending on the weather.   They’ve got plenty to keep them busy in the backyard- a swingset, teeter-totter, soccer set and recently Daddy built them a balance beam.  They ride bikes up and down the driveway.   In January they started twice weekly Tae Kwon Do lessons which they are really enjoying.   They have graduated to yellow belts and will continue lessons next fall.  Last summer they took two weeks of swimming lessons.

We also finished our school room this spring.  Pictures below.