Yesterday we had our back to homeschool party! Keeping with our tradition, we celebrated our first day back on labour day so that Spencer could be part of it. The kids walked up the driveway with their backpacks on, we ate a crêpe breakfast, they had their meeting with principal Dadda, and I showed them what our homeschool routine would entail this year. We were all so excited to get started. Our girls had a hard time going to sleep on Sunday night because they were "just so excited for tomorrow!!"
I spent a lot of time this summer praying, reading, and thinking about why our family home schools, and how our upcoming year would look. I actually had a whole plan laid out and completely scrapped it because it was too complicated and the reality is that we have 5 kids 7 and under. Sometimes when I am planning I tend to forget that ;)
In all my planning I set out to answer the question of what our goal is in homeschooling our children. Our ultimate goal is to make disciples of our children. Our hope and prayer is for all 5 of our littles to love and serve Him. We want to order their affections to love what they ought and hate what they ought.
During our homeschool days I want to nourish them in truth, beauty and goodness. I want to put living ideas in front of them like a feast.
This year we are doing less and striving to do it well. Our plan is to keep it simple. We will read daily, write daily, do math daily, and live our lives full of wonder and beauty (look at art, listen to great music, explore, read poetry and memorize some, go to the library, bake, create traditions, go on nature walks).
I often get asked what a typical day looks like. So here is how it goes:
Breakfast and morning devotional at the table before Dadda goes to work. Dadda leaves at 7:15, so we get started early. While the kids are still eating I read from our read aloud. (I have a beautiful list of read alouds for our year. I have pulled these book titles from Ambleside Online and Sonlight. I am way too excited about these books). Our focus for read alouds will be history (creation to the fall of Rome), studying heroes, and reading beautiful literature. The kids often ask for "one more chapter, please" so this morning read aloud takes awhile. And I never regret reading one more chapter. I love it when they say "1 more chapter please", and they know this. The kids often color in art books while I am reading.
After read aloud, we do morning chores and then I read some books to Peter and Silas and make sure their love tanks are filled up. Then it is time for dictation. Dictation is a special 1 on 1 time that I love having at the start of the day. I go from youngest to oldest and we work on their writing skills.
After dictation we eat a snack and then head down to our learning room for "morning time". Morning time is so much fun. I got the idea from a book I read this summer by Cindy Rollins. The book is called "Mere Motherhood" - it was a game changer for me.
Morning time is basically like circle time. We sing a hymn (we are going to learn 1 hymn each month), we pray for an item on our prayer list, we do verse memory, we read something in our reading loop (nature, geography, composer, art book), we recite our memorized poems, and we sing our timeline song. Morning time is cozy and fun. I have a big basket with all of our books in it and we sit in front of our large map during this time. And sometimes it is a complete disaster ;)
We then do math. Each girl has their own math book.
After this is done we either call it a day, or do some more table work. We rotate between nature journal, mapping, art. This just depends on how everybody is doing.
We then go outside and play. We are done by noon at the latest.
At lunch we continue from our read aloud. We don't really consider this part of homeschooling though. Actually, the only thing that our girls think is "school" is math.
After lunch it is nap time or rest and read time. For everybody, me included!
Some special activities we will be doing this year are: French with our friends the Werdals, piano lessons, nature club with our friends the Loewens, and we are also hosting a family friendly community group.
Thanks to those who read this very long post!! Here are some pictures, unfortunately some of them didn't turn out very well.
Grade 2
Grade 1
Preschool
Our crew (except for baby Silas who is in the photographers arms).
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