The Basics of our Homeschool

I think I may finally be getting my head wrapped around this huge undertaking. I need to find some time this weekend to finish setting up our homeschool room, again, and then I do believe we will be hitting the books beginning this Monday.

For now I wanted to share with you my goals for our first year of preschool and our general schedule that we will be attempting to follow. All so that this girl can get her learning on.

I had a moment of clarification a couple of weeks ago and it took so much stress off of me in just a matter of seconds. I was knee deep in opened tabs on my browser, trying to jam entirely too much information into my brain when it hit me, I have a goal. A real true goal. A goal that we can so meet. We do not need to build the house this first year, we only need to set the foundation. With that said, our main goal this year is to get the girl used to homeschool, oh and this mom too. Do-a-ble! The other goals will be to teach her to recognize and write her letters and numbers, memorize some Scriptures, learn some sight words, and learn to enjoy learning. Our goals will most likely change and be added to as we progress, which is okay.

Once I figured out what my big goal was, I was able to decide on some curriculum I found online from three different sources and I will be piecing those together to make it into what I believe the girl will respond to. It will take a little extra planning and time each week than what I had hoped, but I think this will work best for us at this time.

With a curriculum in mind, I was able to write out a daily schedule. Currently, it is the plan to homeschool Monday through Thursday and then go to co-op on Friday. If we are not feeling it any specific day, then we just won't do school, no biggie. Flexibility is key. Also, this is absolutely not going to be an all day thing, we'll work on it when we can through out the day and keep the activities short and simple.

The schedule, so far, will begin with a prayer and we will move on from there. I hope to make a cute little schedule I can post on the wall with graphics that she will be able to follow. When I get that done, I will be sure to share it with you. But here is what I have so far:

• Prayer
• Pledge
• Calendar work
• Bible class
• Alphabet work
• Reading
• Sight word work
• Snack break
• Number work
• Shapes and colors work
• Games or Art
• Clean up

I guess we will see if all of this planning works out or if it just goes by the wayside in a couple of days. Either way, it has been a learning process for me and I feel just a little bit better about what we are about to do. Now I still have my moments where I don't think we will be able to do this, but I am trying to push through those.

Hope everyone's school year has started out as you hoped, whether you are homeschooling or not. I would love to hear how you prepare things from year to year!

~Lisa