Our Homeschooling Journey

Update - 08-02-11  When I wrote this we were using Sonlight for our homeschooling.  I still love Sonlight and am grateful for the wonderful library we've built up, but this year  we decided it was time for a change.  We are now using My Father's World, and so far we love it!  I'll leave the rest of this post up, until I have a chance to do a full edit and give more of my reasons for switching.  But for now, I'll just leave this edit here.

When I was pregnant with our first daughter, my husband and I knew we wanted to home school. We had both gone through the public school system and turned out alright (smile), but we knew we wanted our children to have the opportunity to learn what we believed (and still do!) was most important, our faith in Jesus.

In the beginning, I knew next to nothing about homeschooling. I had a few friends who had been home schooled, and from what I could tell it seemed like a pretty simple concept. When our daughter started reading at a very early age, we decided we'd go ahead and start preschool early. When she was three I did some research, and decided it should be fairly easy to come up with my own curriculum. I know for some families this works wonderfully. However, ours wasn't one of them. :-)

I also tried a couple of curricula that utilize the library for your main resources. After a few weeks of this, I decided that wasn't going to work for us, either. I needed something simpler, something all laid out for me.

I had heard of Sonlight, but by this point I'd forgotten about it. My Mom-in-law somehow knew of Sonlight, and suggested we take a look at it, again. (Thanks Mom! :-) When our daughter was 5 we ordered the Kindergarten Core, and have not looked back. It's worked wonderfully for us!

The main thing I like about Sonlight is the fact that everything is planned out for me. And you also order all the books, so there's no running to the library only to find out the book you need is unavailable. It is a literature based program, which means lots of reading for my girls. Being as how they both love to read, this works well for us. I don't think it would work quite as well for a child who doesn't enjoy reading.

This year we're starting 4th Grade for my oldest (American History part 2), and First Grade for my youngest (World History part 1). My first grader is very excited to start school! My 4th grader wouldn't mind waiting a few more months. :-) In any case, we plan to start next month. It's not quite soon enough for my youngest daughter, and a bit too soon for my oldest. But it's just about right for me. We always seem to get behind during the school year (last year our water heater broke and flooded our bedroom, so all of our bedroom furniture was in the dining room [aka the school room] and living room for a couple of weeks; later we moved, so there were another couple of weeks without school...), so this year I'm hoping that by starting early we can prevent falling behind too badly. But we'll see how it goes. I guess that's part of the beauty of home schooling... it's so easy to make school revolve around your life, rather than life revolving around school.

One of my goals for this blog is to keep a running list of our favorite books we read in school this year. I don't know if I'll succeed at being faithful to that, but I'll try. Hopefully that can also help me to keep motivated to keep Grandparents updated in what we're studying throughout the year. It's one of my goals, anyway. Usually my goals last a few weeks (or a few days! :-), so we'll see how this one goes.

And that, in a nutshell, is our homeschooling journey! If anyone who reads this has any questions about homeschooling in general, or Sonlight in particular, feel free to ask me any questions!

Read more...

I've got it!

I've been thinking quite a bit over the past few days about this blog, and what I want to convey in the title. I don't know why it's been such a big deal to me, sometimes I can tend to obsess over the little things. :-) But I wanted the title to reflect what's important in my life. And I wanted it to be able to go with any picture, in case I later decide to change the picture in my header. Finally I decided the title should come from Psalm 139, my favorite chapter of the Bible. You can't go wrong with that chapter. :-) So my new title is taken from Psalm 139:22. Now that I've got the redesign and title completed, I can get back to blogging. Well, unless life interferes with computer time. :-)

Read more...

Under construction

Right now my blog is under construction... I'm on the search for a new background design, as well as a new title. I can't really say I'm Dreaming... I realized recently, I'm Living the life God has given me! God has so richly blessed my life, and I want this blog to reflect that. Hopefully it won't take me too long to figure out what I want to do here. :-)

Read more...

long time no see

Wow, so much has happened since I posted, back in February. I'd like to start posting on my blog again, but it's hard to get started after a long break. :-)

I guess the biggest thing that's happened to us is we moved in February! We've moved into a beautiful house! (No more apartment life for us, at least for a while!) We have a back yard with room for the girls to run around, a playhouse, swings and a slide, and room for a future garden. I'm hoping to be able to start the garden next spring. The girls each have their own room, we have a play room, and even a school room! God has blessed us so much with this house!

Along with moving, we are now enjoying small town life. I've missed living in a small town, and now this town is just perfect for raising our girls! We're closer to our church, and we love it! We really feel at home here. Also, there is a nearby church where the girls will attend AWANA in the Fall, and that's a blessing, as well! We no longer need to drive into down town in the early evening amidst all the traffic getting off work... now we can walk! God has really blessed us with this move, in so many ways.

We are excited to start our next school year. In fact, the girls are so excited they wanted to start early! So last night we dove into our handwriting curriculum. This year we will be studying our second year of American History for Fourth Grade, and our first year of World History for First Grade. The girls are so anxious to start (especially our First Grader!) that we will probably go ahead and officially start the year next month. And hopefully with starting in August we'll do better at not falling behind this year. Every year we seem to fall a bit behind during the year, then rush to catch up in May and June. :-) Hopefully this year we can avoid that, but we'll see.

I've got one or two recipes I'd like to post, and a few fun stories about family life. But I'll leave those for another day. Hopefully that will motivate me to update this blog more than every 5 months. :-)

Read more...

A couple of great finds

I've recently found a couple of stores that have special offers for home schoolers. I love a good bargain, so I was excited to learn about these! Jo-Ann Fabrics has a rewards program for home educators. It's for any teacher, but the cool thing is they include home school teachers. You just need proof that you are a home school teacher (a PEAH or HSLDA member number) and you'll receive a card for 15% off your purchases! Teacher Reward Page

Then today I was in Car Toys, and the manager gave me a discount for being a homeschool teacher. He told me if I let other home school teachers know and to ask for him, he will give them a discount, as well. I don't know if this is at all Car Toys locations, or if it is specific to our local store. In any case, it can't hurt to ask! :-)

It makes me wonder what other stores offer discounts for home school teachers. I think I'll just have to start asking! :-)

Read more...

Granola Revisited

My family loves our granola recipe. We usually eat it for breakfast every morning. Recently I decided to try to come up with a way to make it in the oven, so it wouldn't take so long. I really like the ease of making granola in the crock pot, but there are days I don't have several hours available to watch it. My husband and children all agree they prefer baked granola to crock pot granola, as it is crunchier and also has sweet clusters of granola that stick together. I like the fact that it bakes so quickly. Here's what I've come up with.

6 cups old fashioned oats
1 1/2 - 2 teaspoons cinnamon (we like extra cinnamon)
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Pour the oats and cinnamon into a non-stick baking pan. Mix the cinnamon into the oats. Next, pour oil and honey into a 1-cup measuring cup, followed by the vanilla. (By pouring the olive oil in first, the honey slides right out of the cup, rather than clinging to the glass sides.) Pour this mixture into the pan and mix well. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. Be sure to stir the granola at the sides of the pan, so it doesn't burn.

Once the 30 minutes are up, I usually give it one last stir, turn off the oven, and put the granola back in the oven to cool overnight. It doesn't need to cool that long, but I find leaving it in the oven gives it a little extra baking time and helps it dry out so it's ready to eat by morning. If you have a well insulated oven, I'd probably let the granola cool on the counter, but our oven is pretty old and cools off quickly.

One batch of granola usually lasts us about a week. We each eat 1/4 cup in milk for breakfast. Sometimes my kids like to eat it as a snack, as well. One fun way we've found is making "healthy donuts." I slice an apple into 3 rings, spread peanut butter over the tops like frosting, and let the kids top it off with granola "sprinkles." Granny Smiths are what we had on hand tonight, but it's even better with sweeter apples. The girls like to do this with bananas, as well.

Read more...

Doll Clothes

Last week I bought a sewing machine! I've been saving up for a while, so I was so excited when I was finally able to order it. My first project was to sew night gowns for the girls' dolls. They're a bit tight to get on or off, but once they're on, they fit well. These are very simple night gowns that I made from old t-shirts that no longer fit my youngest. I've discovered 3T or 4T short sleeved shirts work perfect for 18- inch dolls. The length of the shirt goes down to the doll's ankles, and the short sleeves go almost to the doll's wrists, so no hemming is required! I followed the basic instructions from this blog. She has several other helpful tutorials listed on her blog, as well. I'm so glad to have these night gowns finished for the girls' Christmas presents! And I look forward to learning how to do more projects, as well. I'm very much a beginner, but I'm having fun! :-)

Read more...