Home School

I have been planning to start doing school this fall with Joel. Not very much school, just a kindergarten sort of amount of school. September was my estimated time of beginning school ... and now that that time is next month, I am really trying to get my act together. I decided that for kindergarten (or Year 0), we would do reading/writing, math, art, and science/nature study. Reading we will do every day, maybe math every day, and the others will be more project based. We have a little desk that Joel will use and he is very excited about it. He has always been more interested in going somewhere to school instead of having school at home. But since we haven't really done any school work, I can see how going somewhere else would be more interesting. Anyway, since the desk is for "his home schooling" he has been rather pumped.

I have been interested in the book, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, as I have heard many people using it and giving it stellar reviews. Last week I decided that I wanted to go ahead and get the book because I haven't really found something that has helped Joel progress very well with his reading. I really think the Lord was in the matter of me deciding to get this book. I didn't have the funds to purchase it and was moping about that a little when I realized that the Library might have it. Now, I was also thinking that it would be a stretch for the Dripping Springs Community Library to have this book since the only grocery store in town only recently started carrying baby diapers (you know, like Pampers???!!!). But I looked anyway; I pulled up their website and nearly hit the ceiling when the search engine said that they had a copy and it was not checked out! YES! Let me just tell you, I love this book. Today Joel and I worked through Lesson 1, and he enjoyed it so, so much. That makes me love the book even more. To top it all off, a great home schooling website that I had perused over earlier this summer has free printable downloads of the writing portion of each of the lessons (all 100!!!) on manuscript paper. If you're interested, go here.

For math I am planning to use RightStart Mathematics. And art, science/nature study will all be fun stuff I find to do from the Internet, books from the Library, and Joel's Pop Bottle Science kit he got for his birthday. Aunt Mimi's gift subscription to Enchanted Learning is really going to be nice when it comes to doing these subjects.

So begins this chapter of our lives....