I continue to be surprised as the year goes on just how much I adore homeschool. I do love the flexibility, but I also love that my kids get to still be active learners in a hands on way. Unfortunately the school system is making our kids become serious academic learners at such an early age, that I think we have lost a bit of our curiosity for learning. Thankfully in a homeschool approach, you get to choose what is best for your kids' education. With Zoe being in pre-school, I'm able to do a combination of pre-school skills and kinder goals.
She is doing really well in school. Of course she will sometimes just want to play rather than buckle down, so I allow her that freedom and then spend more time focusing on Kason. We had Max join us one day when his school was out and Zoe surprised me. She went and picked out books from Max's room and "read" to him :)!
With Kason being in 3rd, hands on learning is a bit more challenging. By now it is a lot of worksheets and while worksheets have their place, I still try to find ways around them.
This is pretty much how he feels about multiplication, worksheets, and practice...haha!
He is really into cursive writing right now. He surprised me by how well he writes in cursive! His print is very hard to read a lot of times.
I have Kason do math with me a lot at the grocery store. He loves to weigh our produce especially when they are having a sale and we want to make sure we get the correct amount. We also look at the price per brand to compare or look at the price per ounce when trying to decide if we should buy in bulk rather than individual. It's been really good for him to see math in a practical way. I also enjoy watching how well Kason and Zoe get along. While they have different approaches to learning...
They both enjoy doing activities and exploring learning together.
Of course one of the kids' favorites about homeschooling is all the field trips we get to take! I'm always on the lookout for homeschool days. We headed to Lockhart State Park one morning for some hiking...
we practiced our map reading skills...
we picnicked, and then watched a presentation on the Buffalo Soldiers...
The Bob Bullock Museum also had a homeschool day, so we snagged a couple of our other homeschool buddies to go with us!
It was another great day of history, but this time we also added in some science!
The day was filled with homeschool classes, presentations, and an imax movie, that we only saw one floor of the museum. We will definitely be back! One of my favorite parts of our day is when we do our writing journal. They have two prompts a week: one is usually fun and silly while the other is more serious. Sometimes the serious ones will be about important obstacles we will face like what to do when we encounter a bully. Sometimes we focus on our feelings and how things affect us.
Two reasons why I love our journal writing. 1) they both will surprise me with their thoughtfulness and approach to different situations. 2) These prompts spur on really good conversation that allow us to flesh out what it means to be a good citizen and a good disciple of Christ. Around Valentine's day I gave them the prompt of what they think love is. Their responses were precious...
If you even have an inkling of interest in homeschool, I say go for it! I think I've always had a negative view of it, thinking schools are a better approach...but now that I've experienced homeschooling for myself, our family has fallen in LOVE with it!!
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