Category Archives: Homeschooling and Home Learning

LDS Gospel Learning in Your Homeschool

lds gospel learning in your homeschoolAnd the Spirit shall be given unto you by the prayer of faith; and if ye receive not the Spirit ye shall not teach.
Doctrine and Covenants 42:14

I do not live in a predominantly LDS community. Before I began homeschooling and associating regularly with families outside of my local church circle, I did not realize the great number of religious people all around me. I know better now.
A number of the homeschoolers I’ve met have chosen to homeschool for religious reasons. Either they are concerned about the non-religious teaching or the environment of public school, or they, like me, have felt called by God to bring their children home so they’ve responded by doing so. Many of them adopt a formal devotional “curriculum” to begin their homeschool days.
I believe the scriptures are the best learning tool. However, as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I’ve also been delighted to find that many of the resources from the Church, for free, are well adapted to daily homeschool devotionals. Some of my favorite homeschool moments have been those first ones in the day when my son and I discuss gospel principles together.
Here are some ideas for how you too may want to incorporate gospel learning in to your homeschooling day. Continue reading →

Next Year’s First Grade Homeschool Curriculum Choices

We are still finishing up some of our school for the year (such as the American history plan that has fizzled). I still want to touch on Lincoln and the Civil War, and maybe some more modern history, but we’ll just take it one subject at a time. In the fall, we’ll move on to something else!
So here’s the first grade homeschool curriculum choices for next year for Raisin.
First grade curriculum choices
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Spring Break or Not?

So many friends are on Spring break this week, both homeschoolers and not. We might make it a lighter week, but I plan on keeping on going with our routine. We’ll probably have devotional, music/piano practice, 1 page of math, and a few spelling words and call it a day. Maybe we’ll watch Liberty’s Kids some more tonight.

I’m so afraid that if we do not do our routine of learning, we’ll get out of the habit again. This happened around Thanksgiving. We pretty much lost the groove of school between  Thanksgiving and Christmas. Which is okay, I suppose, as Raisin was busy making Christmas presents instead. However, I’d like to keep up the rhythm right now.

A few homeschooling mothers mentioned to me that I should school year-round while it lasts. In other words, as Paul gets older, he will realize that other kids are not in school and resent it if I make him do school work. I don’t know about that, but I guess we’ll see. I try to make school fun enough that he doesn’t resent it at all! I believe he likes to learn.

The other good thing about schooling year-round is that I did not need to worry quite so much when we stopped our formal schedule before Christmas. I knew that we’d make it up at some point. It’s not like Paul is “behind” or anything. We just learn at his own pace.

Curriculum and Schedule for a Gifted Five-Year-Old (plus an Infant)

When I decided to homeschool this year, it was about this time last year. My baby was newborn and my son was in a local private preschool. He loved it! But every time I picked him up from his 2 1/2 hour class, he’d be tired. He wanted to learn more and I wanted to encourage his interest, but preschool took him away from me at his peak hours. I knew I could do a better job of taping in to his interests if I had him home for those morning hours.
We informally did school on demand during the summer, and then in September we started more formally with kindergarten. Here’s what we’ve been doing. My daily homeschool schedule and our curriculum choices for my gifted 5 year old (plus infant) are pretty enjoyable.
Our homeschool curriculum and schedules for me and my gifted 5-year-old are pretty enjoyable. The baby tags along too!
 
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If You Aren’t Burned out in February, You’re Doing Something Wrong

burned+out+in+februaryThe title of this post will be my mantra come this time next year. It is what a fellow homeschool parent said in response to my post in a forum saying, essentially, “how do I keep doing this?!” I like it.
It was just an awful week in terms of school. Three different Valentine’s day get-togethers with different friends. More than 50 valentines to color. (I didn’t make him color them all. It just was too much.) And a cranky kid who just wanted to play and whine about every little thing I asked him to do from collecting the laundry to clearing the table, not even to get started on SCHOOL. And the bottom line is we got NO school work done at home all week. Continue reading →

Daily Learning: Why I Started a Homeschool Blog

I started a homeschool blog to keep a record of our daily learning in our homeschool. I hope our journey inspires you on your!

Hello? Anyone there? It feels a bit strange to start out on a new blog. But starting a homeschool blog is exciting! Blogging regularly provides a great reminder of the daily learning we all do, be we young children or homeschooling parents.

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