11 Comments

  1. Hi Kayse!! My family is in a seriously tough situation right now…. I used to own a boutique in our small-ish town. After 3 years in business, things went south and I couldn’t make it work anymore. So I had to close it down. But of course I was left with a lot of DEBT. And so now I’m having to work a full time job (away from home) to pay off this debt and have income for the family. And then this happens…. my 6 year old daughter has developed an anxiety disorder, which has now also manifested into physical symptoms. What would be best for her would be to stay at home and have me homeschool her for now. But I can’t. I can’t quit my job, because we would go broke. And it breaks me heart. She needs me and I can’t be there for her in the way that she needs me to be. As you can now tell, I’m desperate. Blogging has been on my mind a lot. Kind of weird, I guess God put it on my heart. I couldn’t shake it. So I made the leap and invested a little money and started the blog. I only have one post up right now because I’m not ready to promote it yet. I want to get a bunch of posts written so my readers (if they ever exist) aren’t left waiting for more. I do have quite a lengthy list of blog post ideas, so that’s good! Anyway, any prayers would be helpful. And any advice would be appreciated.

  2. I love seeing what other families are doing and how they order their days. Being able to figure out what is best for your family is a definite perk of homeschooling! I have a bunch of friends who do CC and love it. For us, we have chosen to go a different route for now. My oldest is 5, then my second son is about to be 4. I purchased the kindergarten curriculum from My Father’s World and we have really been enjoying it. My eldest is still learning to read and it’s been a good fit for us. We take Mondays off (my husband is a pastor and often has Mondays off too), so we homeschool 4 days a week. I try to be consistent while still making sure our days are flexible with lots of time to play (we have a 2 year old too). In a month, our co-op will start up again and we will do that on Fridays. It’s been a lot of fun being a part of a like-minded group. All the other families do a Charlotte Mason style homeschool, too, and I thankful to have a community that I can learn from!

    Also, that Berestain Bears book has been on my wishlist for a while. My boys LOVE science and I know they would love that book. Handwriting Without Tears is also on my list of things to invest in soon.

  3. Thanks so much for sharing this Kayse! I plan to use a couple of the things you’ve mentioned.

  4. You mention the two options I’ve been going back and forth on for months: sonlight and cc. My oldest is in TK this year through a charter and starting K in the fall. He’s reading at a 2nd grade level, so I’d thought about doing the K package through sonlight and ordering a separate grade 1 language arts. Since you’re familiar with sonlight, do you think that would be a good option?

    1. I would call Sonlight and speak with them, they will be able to tell you what “grade” to get! I personally think if he is already reading on a second grade leve he is going to be super bored with a kindergarten curriculum from anywhere.

  5. I have never heard of any of these curriculums you have mentioned! So glad you found what works for you-that can be hard to do. After 9 years of homeschooling, I believe I’ve FINALLY found the curriculums that we love and works best for us. I also use a variety, so be prepared for a long answer. lol For preschool I use Rod & Staff. For the other grades I use Teaching Textbook CDs for math (I use Math-U-See through 2nd because TT still has to make the younger grades. When they do, I’ll likely use them for all grades because they ROCK!) 🙂 We use Easy Grammar (Rod & Staff or Queen’s Homeschooling for language arts for younger than 3rd), Sequential Spelling (I start this at 4th grade-seems too hard for younger ones. I use free online spelling for k-3rd), Apologia for science, Queen Homeschool for penmanship, and for history I use Notgrass, The Story of the World, and Mystery of History. History is my very favorite subject so my girls tend to get a lot of history teaching. 🙂 I also love the looks of Veritas Self-Paced history and plan to add that, as well as their Bible self-paced. Homeschooling is so much fun because I learn right along with my 4 girls! 🙂

  6. She is Pre-K and reading??!! Did you use a particular curriculum to teach her? I am currently struggling with what curriculum to choose for my 5 yr old. We tried CC but I didnt really care for our campus/group so we left that. I was looking into Sonlight and My Fathers World as well but haven’t made any decisions yet. Right now we are just focusing on handwriting, math and reading then learning at each opportunity we have (a BUNCH during the day). Her favorite show right now is Octonauts which is pretty educational and all about different sea creatures! So today we watched an episode (14min) and then learned more about the Cuttlefish. She LOVED it and we ended up getting handwriting, geography and spelling out of it!

  7. Peg Flint says:

    Wow….looks like you’ve really figured something that will work for your family. That is awesome.

    We homeschooled our twins for all 12 years – they’re now 31 and I can’t begin to tell you what is out there for curriculum. One of the tips I can impart to you though is this…Much of what is taught in school fits into one of two categories. Either it is a skill – like spelling, writing, reading and math – or it is knowledge – like history and science, etc. We found that much of what was taught in the knowledge areas was repeated from year to year or in alternating years – going into more detail each time the subject was studied. Because of this, we focused more on skills and if a crisis happened, the “knowledge -based” subjects got put aside until life relaxed a bit. After all, we’re picking up knowledge all our lives (I hope).

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