Homeschooling.....

I get asked often how we homeschool.  What curriculum we use, what books, what style... and on.  Another common question is posed to us when we are out grocery shopping during the day.  "oh do you have the day off of school?"  The boys always smile and respond with "no, we are homeschooled".  Love it!

I thought I would take a minute and give a rundown of how we homeschool.  A little taste of what we do in our home to teach our boys.  It's a mix somewhat, but it works, for us!

After trying various styles, workbooks and curriculum for two years we discovered Charlotte Mason.  It's a philosophy of teaching your child from classic living books, teaching your child as a whole person.  Not just educating them from textbooks.  Learning from literature and nature. That is the very basics of Charlotte Mason, there is a whole lot more to it.  I loved it from the start.  A friend showed me the Simply Charlotte Mason website.  http://www.simplycharlottemason.com/  which is just fantastic.  So we scrapped all our workbooks and dived right in. 

I read aloud to the boys every day, good classic living books.  We've read many books already this year.  Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web, The Trumpet of the Swan, Farmer Boy to name a few.  Currently we are reading Treasure Island and The Tale of Desperaux.  We also study poetry.  We've been concentrating on Robert Louis Stevenson so far this year.  The boys love his poems in A Child's Garden of Verses.   Another favorite author of the boys for literature is Thorton Burgess.  They love any of his animal stories books and we've read most of them.  It's wonderful what children learn just from hearing good literature. 

With a Charlotte Mason education we won't start formal grammar really until the boys are 9 years old or so.  Depending on their own personal abilities.  We also do not really do much with formal spelling yet either.  We read lots and lots of good living books!  We use Pathway Readers  for their own reading, when they each read aloud to me.  Plus Rylee reads from the Boxcar Children series.  Rylee is doing great with reading.  Danny is still learning.  That is the best part about homeschooling, being able to work within your own child's abilities.  No labeling in our school!
The boys also do copywork a few days a week.  Where they work on their writing skills.  This also helps them with spelling and grammar (although they do not realize that is what they are learning!).

To continue... for math we use MEP maths.  It's a program that was developed in the UK.  This is also a new program to us this year.  We just began it in October, but love it so far.  The boys really enjoy their math time every day.  It is a spiral based math program.  So different math concepts are continually introduced and reviewed.  There is very little workbook exercies and much more living math or manipulatives.  We also use our dry erase board a lot for math time.  This program is great for us, especially with two active boys who like to move!  They love to pull out their army men for math time. 

Our science program is a mix of Apologia's Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day, currently we are almost done with our bat study.   We also just go outdoors, nature study is wonderful.  There is so much to learn right in our own backyard.  Rylee and Danny love to follow animal tracks and poo.  LOL  Such boys!  We watch all the little animals that play in our yard and learn about their habitats and what they eat.  Weather cycles, what happens to the trees and plants during the different seasons.  See where I'm going?  Science is all around us, in God's wonderful world that He created for us.

Music is another area we study.  We honestly tried a composer study, which is something Charlotte Mason recommended, but did not work so well with the boys.  They just had no interest.  So for now I've let that go.  We instead study hymns.  They love to sing, well Rylee loves to sing and Danny will if he must!  Rylee also is learning  how to play the recorder and read sheet music. 

Art, here we have fun.  Again we tried to do artist study.  But it was also not something the boys really enjoyed.  YET.  I"m going to keep trying.  I know there is an artist out there that they will enjoy learning about!  I'm determined.  For now though, they both draw (for nature studies and on their own). 

P.E., obviously that isn't a problem with my two!  They get plenty of exercise.  They also do some formal sports though.  Currently both are in wrestling, which goes from January through April.  Then Rylee starts baseball.  Danny thinks he wants to try baseball again this year, we'll see. 

So there is a just a little bit of what we use and do for homeschooling.  The boys also learn life skills... doing dishes, how to clean the toilet, laundry, washing mirrors/windows ect.  And of course they get plenty of play time every day!  Which I think is very important in a young boys life.

I love to hear about others homeschooling days/journeys.  Please share yours, or your blog here too!

Blessings in Christ,