Homeschooling: Part One

We are lucky enough to be able to homeschool (I’m still praying for your husband to see the light Ashleigh.)  It’s the end of the school year for us and I’ve just finished buying the curriculum for next year so we have it when we start in August.

We have most subjects together, I believe learning as a family helps everyone learn.  We do however have Penmanship, Math and reading/English apart, other than that we generally learn together.

Penmanship: we don’t use an actual curriculum or boughten package, each day I have them copy part of a scripture or I tell them to write their testimony of the Lord Jesus in their best handwriting.  They have gotten much better when doing this after learning how to write properly when doing this.

We use Rod and Staff for English, just with different grade levels.  Rod and Staff uses Mennonite grade levels which are a little different than non Mennonite grade levels.  Non Mennonite grade levels are a little ahead until about 3-4th grade, then both even out before the Mennonite grade levels jump ahead at about the 5th grade, so even though Joshua and Jacob are in 1st and 5th grade right now, they do use different books because of this.

Joshua is about 3/4ths of the way through the 5th grade book, but I’m not pressuring him to hurry through it because of the grade differences between us and the Mennonite book.  If he starts the 6th grade still using the 5th grade book I’m fine with that and so is Mark.

Jacob uses the 2nd grade book, he’s currently just starting it, and will only be a few lessons in when we break for summer.  I just didn't want to have him go 3 months without any English/reading work.

In Math they are in different curriculum, Joshua uses Teaching textbooks, which isn’t a christian curriculum but it works best for him.  He’s a very independent learner and this way I can concentrate on Jacob.

Jacob uses Minquon Math and has just finished the Red Book.  We also use living math with Jacob, he helps me add prices at the grocery store.

The rest of the subjects we have, we do together, they are: History, Science, Geography, Bible, Art, Music, Poetry and Physical Education.

I'll post about our other curriculum sometime next week, stay tuned!