Our two child things (5 and 2) are currently in Hawaii, but we are a military family, and we live where the Army tells us. This blog is designed to keep us in touch with our family and the friends we have made along the way, to offer insight into our turbulent military lifestyle, and to share our experiences as we try out "homing school." So glad you stopped by!

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Our Homing School Schedule

When we started off this homeschooling experiment, it was not totally structured or planned out, but we have fallen into a routine that's working for us. Our focus is on phonics/reading, but our schedule allows us to touch on lots of other school subjects, too. Here's a little taste of how we do pre-school at home week by week.

Mondays: phonics (We use the Abeka curriculum, and we are seeing good results), handwriting (using a workbook published by Zaner-Bloser), art project (from the Art Projects K4 published by Abeka. Here's my opinion on it).

Tuesdays: phonics, science lesson (we read and discuss a chapter from What Your Preschooler Needs to Know).

Wednesdays: phonics, handwriting, science project (something that relates to what we read in our science lesson the previous day)

Thursdays: phonics, library trip, math lesson (We do a chapter from the math section of What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know. These are really more like math activities. They are very hands-on and lots of fun for the child things.).

Fridays: phonics, handwriting, picture study or additional art project

This schedule certainly isn't set it stone; we are very flexible and love adding on to this basic schedule, but it helps me to have a guideline. We also read lots of books, inspect the calendar every day, memorize a Bible verse every two weeks, etc.

I still am not 100% sure about what we're going to do about school next year, but I'm leaning towards homeschool right now, so I'm trying to be prepared for that if that's the route we go. So...any suggestions for next year? Do you see any glaring holes or have any advice on what we should include next year? I'm always open for ideas from those who have been there/done that! Thanks.

4 comments:

Amber said...

Remind me, is she going to be Kinder next year, or still preschool/Pre-K? At this point, I think the most important thing is to get a good foundation in reading (phonics), writing (which at this age is mostly handwriting), and math. And it looks like you are doing all that. All the rest is bonus IMO.

Amanda said...

Yes, she starts Kindergarten next year. I tend to agree with you...working on those basics takes priority for now. Thanks.

Bag Blog said...

My DIL checked out some homeschool curriculum last week in OKC. She wanted to check out the language arts for different curriculums. One thing she shared was that she used Singapore math and really liked it.

Amanda said...

Thanks for the tip, Lou. I'll keep Singapore Math in mind.