Homeschooling

I know it has been forever since I posted anything, but I am going to try and do a bit better. This summer the family was sick a lot, and then I started homeschooling my daughter which takes some adjustment time. Hopefully, I can get back into the swing of writing the blog too.

We started homeschooling at the beginning of September, and we are both getting our feet on the ground with learning to be a teacher and student as well as a mom and daughter. My husband and I decided to homeschool her for a variety of reasons, but most of them have to do with a lack of faith in the public school system. We believe that she deserves the best education possible and we don't believe that she will get that in a public school with all the inherent problems of meeting testing standards and teachers having to do crowd control more than teach. I intend to write a more detailed account of why we homeschool at some point, but for now I will just say we know this is best for our family right now.

We homeschool between 1 and 1/2 to 3 hours a day, 4 days a week as my daughter is not quite 2 yet and any more than that seems to be too much for her. Right now I am trying to establish the basics she will need for PreK. We have six subjects (English, Math, Science, Bible/Character, Art, and Physical Education) that we work on in the week with some having more emphasis than others depending on what needs work.

I will say that there have been some challenges, like trying to keep things interesting and age appropriate for a toddler. She loves art, and is doing really well with her alphabet and pre-reading. Math is hard for her, but the concept of numbers is abstract, so I think that will iron out in time.

I am constantly on the look out of for cirricula and activities that I think she will like, or that can make a tedious subject more fun. There are a lot of great blogs out there, and we are starting to get involved in homeschool groups. In NC you don't have to legally declare that you are homeschooling till your child is 7, but some of the homeschoolers have little brothers and sisters that she is getting a chance to do activities with.

More updates and pictures to come soon!