Learning to relax...just hopefully not too much

When I started home school, I envisioned school at home. I had every intention of making a schedule like the kids were used to and follow it! But the wheels of decision started rolling fast and I found myself at home with four kids, who are used to a school routine, with no schedule and no curriculum.

I had an idea of what I wanted to "teach" but wasn't sure if I wanted to use a school based curriculum or one from the Internet or piece one together myself. Before I jumped into purchasing a lot of books and material, I decided to start the kids out on a review of the basics, reading, handwriting and math.

For reading, I decided to use My Book of Bible Stories (published by the Watchtower and Tract Society). It is a very easy read but I thought it would be a good book to start with since we all were familiar with it. We each take turns reading the paragraphs for each story. My hope is that by hearing the stronger readers read out loud it will the not so strong readers. This book also had comprehension questions for each story. After we finish this book, we will go up to the Learn from the Great Teacher, which is more on the grade level of the triplets. It has the same format as the Bible story book, so the comprehension questions are already included.

The kids' handwriting is so bad. Come to find out, that is not unusually with kids today. Handwriting is not emphasized like it was years ago. From what I have read, it is in part to due to technology. There is no longer a need to have handwriting that others can read because we can just text or type what others need to know. I can see the logic in that but at the same time, we have not completely given up writing all together as a society. We still write a quick reminder note every now and then. I still hear people as for a pen or pencil. So as the teacher, I decided we would work on our handwriting. I have been using the Handwriting for Kids website to print out worksheets.

I printed math worksheets starting with addition with the intention of working our way up until someone needed help. At that point, we would work on the problem area. So far, we have held true to this routine and it has been working great.

In my last post, I mentioned the book by Linda Dobson, The First Year of Homeschooling Your Child. I am glad I found this book. I was getting anxious about my plan and whether or not I could teach the kids or if I was teaching them enough or if I was teaching them the right things. After reading this book and getting encouragement from other home schoolers, I figured out that I could teach and what I was doing so far was ok.