The thought of two kids plus my job was just really making my nerves go crazy. I kept telling myself that other moms have done this plus many more kids. My personality does not deal well at all with any kind of change. And with Koop's personality I knew he was going to take more time and energy than Tenlee did, which was adding to the stress. Our first week started out really rough and just super overwhelming. It took way longer than I had anticipated and my curriculum felt so unorganized compared to the other years for Tenlee. There was just a lot in one day for an 8 year old. I was overwhelmed and she was even more overwhelmed. Which only added to my fears during the week. (more about my curriculum situation in picture below) Friday felt like it would never get here! I am so thankful we had an extra day because of the holiday that weekend. A 3 day weekend has NEVER felt so good!! And typically we do not take off smaller holidays but this year we have def embraced holiday vacations.
For the past 3 years I have used My Father's World for my curriculum. I have loved it and knew I wanted to use it for her third grade year. It's crazy how many different curriculums are out there and honestly it can become so overwhelming at looking at them (which I actually love) and then deciding what will work best for your family. My 2 besties and I all use different curriculum...you find what fits your needs and you just go with it. I fell in love with My Father's World for kindergarten and then kept with it for first and second and sill loved it. This year however I felt like it just didn't fit our family for some reason. It was really choppy and just didn't flow like it usually does. I talked to a few people and looked in to Masterbooks...it was super reasonably priced so I decided to try it out for Tenlee. It seemed to fit our personalities so much better. Tenlee seemed to enjoy it as well. Koop wasn't really grasping the kindergarten curriculum that I used for Tenlee so we made the switch to Masterbooks as well and he LOVES it!! He actually asks to do school and I love it!
A lot of people have asked us questions about how our day goes and what our schedule is like. So I thought it would be fun to do a little photo shoot of our homeschooling day. And a way for us to remember some sweet details of our day! These were taken during our first few weeks of school...back when we had perfectly warm weather:) First is there sweet school pictures that we have done the past 4 years in the same spot and they have loved sending their balloons to Jesus each year with daddy.
I love seeing her grow each year...
One of our biggest things about homeschooling is still carrying the same sort of schedule as any other school system. We want them to still have a pretty strict routine. We try to start school at 8:30 (some days it is a little closer to 9 but they are both great about knowing when to start). We ALWAYS do school in the morning. I never plan appointments or do grocery shopping till the afternoon. School comes first. We are typically done by 12:00-12:30.
Each year I go back and forth on where we should do schooling. In my mind, I want this perfect little area that is separate from everything and we can leave things when we are done and not have a mess in our actually living space. But in all reality it is way easier to have them both do school in the dining room so I can work in the kitchen and still be right there to help.
My bestie made these!
The kids LOVE to read in the morning before we start school.
Right now their favorite books are the Bernstein Bear books.
Golly I love seeing these two together!
Roo joins us for reading and then gives me about 10 minutes. He does the same page as Koop...just way messier. But he has actually started to pick up on his letters and sometimes can say them before Koop does.
She loves reading in Grandmas chair.
He was so ready to be done...he dozes off towards the end:)
Her favorite subject.
LOTS of mapping this year.
This year we added a typing program into our lessons. We don't do it everyday, just three days a week. But so far she loves it. She has gotten to the point of typing without looking at her keys.
We started our nature table a few years ago and we love it...the kids are always adding to it.
Koop has always been into bugs so last year we started his bug collection.
This year the whole family had fun making our new collection. We were literally
packing zip locks when we would go places in case we found some neat bugs:)
Their school pics we took at Co Op
