The Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling Review and Giveaway

As I begin this homeschooling adventure I’ve felt the need at times for someone to take me by the hand and help me along just like I’ve done with all three of my boys when they started walking.  I need a guide.  I need information.  I need to be reminded of why I am doing this.

So I’ve been LOVING this book!  It’s full both information and inspiration for my homeschooling journey.  The Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling by Debra Bell covers ALL of my biggest questions.  From whether homeschooling is for me, to curriculum choices, to computers, and report cards.  It has become my go to book for all things homeschool.

I’d love for you to have a copy to!  So here’s how to win one.

How To Enter: 

Complete as many entries as you like.  Each is worth 1 entry.  Make sure to include a valid email address in your comment if you do not have one available in your profile.  Please write a separate comment for each entry.  The contest will close on Saturday, September 24, 2011 at 11:59 p.m. Open to Continental US residents only.  Winner will be chosen by an online random number generator.  Winner must respond within one week.

Entries:

1. Are you first year homeschooler, veteran, or someone considering homeschool?
2. Follow @apologiaworld on Twitter
3. Follow @devotionmama on Twitter
4. Subscribe to The Sanchez School by email
5.  Tweet this:  @devotionmama is giving away an @apologiaworld book on her NEW #homeschool blog! http://tinyurl.com/6fu778z 

Disclaimer:  Apologia generously provided me this book for review and a copy for winner of this giveaway.  Thanks Apologia!  All opinions are my own.

Make sure to check out the Mabel’s Labels giveaway I have  over at Devotion Mama and visit Devotion Mama again next Saturday because I’ll be giving away a ticket to the Apologia Live Conference of your choice!!!

Scaling Back and Taking It Slow

"Wondering if I'm the only mom who starts 

#homeschool assuming that my son is a genius and a 

week into it I realize he's just a 4 year old"

I tweeted and posted this on Facebook this week and apparently I'm not alone.  Starting homeschool is like getting to know your children all over again.  Before I started I looked at Pre-K curriculums and thought they looked entirely to simple for Grande.  After all, he can name just about any dinosaur you put in front of him, tell me the definition of the name, and whether it ate meat or plants!  He recites 8 Bible verses by memory each night before going to sleep!  Genius right?

I thought he'd catch on to letters, reading, and writing right away.  But after a week of showing him the letter A, tracing the letter A, discussing what words begin with the letter A, etc I showed him the letter A asked what it was and this was his answer.  "S says zzzzzz."

And he cried when he just couldn't write an A on his own.  This is not what I envisioned.  So we're scaling back, and we're going to start taking it slow.  One letter per week has been changed to one letter every two weeks.  We're going to do more of what he loves and sprinkle reading and writing in in short segments.  More science.  More social studies.  More calendar time.  More fun.  Less stress.

It is Pre-K after all.  And as a good friend has said on multiple occasions, I really don't mind if my 4 year old is reading on a 2nd grade level or not.  I'd rather him be a happy 4 year old.

Calendar Time!!!

So what has worked best out of all I've tried doing with my boys in these first weeks of Pre-K homeschool is calendar time.  They LOVE it, and I know I'm teaching them basic skills they need.  We do calendar time first thing every day.  So here it is, our calendar wall!



My husband is very handy and we are planning to homeschool for the long run, so I'm not afraid of putting holes into or sticking velcro to the walls.  If you do shy away from those things however, you could always use a bulletin board, or poster board.  I used a combination of velcro dots, push pins, and hooks.  I downloaded printables, got ideas from, and used resources from several different places for this wall, so I'm going to share one source per day.

My main inspiration for our calendar was the Confessions Of A Homeschooler blog.  You can find her awesome printables here.

The weather is my boys' favorite part of calendar time.  They just love to look out the window and look for rain.  We've recently included praying for rain while we check the weather.  For those of you who don't live in Texas we're in the middle of a big drought and there have been large wildfires that have left many Texans without homes.  Please join us in praying for rain.

This last picture is not of a printable available at Confessions Of A Homeschooler, although it is a resource of hers.  She has a list of Alphabet Bible verses.  I used that list to make these flashcard style cards. 

This week's Lesson Plans

A little late, but here's this week's lesson plans.  We missed a few subjects last week so we'll see how much we can get done this week, but here we go!  We didn't get to Social Studies last week, so we'll do the Week 2 plan.  Come back tomorrow to see our calendar wall!

Week 2 Lesson Plans

Well, after a three day weekend where Grande asked me to do school every day, we're headed into our second week of homeschool.  I'm hoping not only to teach what's on the lesson plans this week, but also to finish our calendar wall and for my husband to finish the boy's desk area.  So here's the plan!

Our First Week In Review.

Our First week (only two days actually) is over and I think it went well.  As you can see from the lesson plans in my previous post we really didn't have much to cover.  Since my boys haven't had any kind of schooling other than Sunday school at church most of the emphasis was placed on introducing a new routine to them.


We took first day pictures.  You can find the printables here.

We used scissors for the first time and I tried not to freak out.

Grande caught on to patterns right away.

And ALL THREE of my boys sat on their mats for story time!

Our First Week!

We start school today! We've got a mostly done, extremely extensive, enormous Calendar wall, a semi done desk area you see pictured above, printables laid out for first day of school pictures, and weekly lesson plans written for the month of September! 

There's only 2 days this week so it'll be a short little intro to homeschooling and we'll get more into it next week.  I'll post my lesson plans and the materials I use each week and then blog about how it goes each day.

I'll start out explaining how everything will go.  I'll go over our calendar wall.  The date, weather, memory verse, etc.  I'll blog about that next week when it's finished.  I've got it 85% done right now.  We'll do some beginning evaluations from schoolsparks.com.  We'll use that to choose some skill worksheets from the same website (this will be the first time any of my children are allowed to use scissors!).

We'll also be using the Answers For Preschoolers curriculum to cover several subjects.  It looks great and I'll be using it mostly with my 2 year old.  My plan is to take advantage of naptime.  My one year old takes a nap in the morning and afternoon.  My two year old takes a nap in the afternoon.  So I'll be working with both my 2 and 4 year old from the Answers For Preschoolers curriculum during the baby's morning nap and I'll work with my 4 year old on more advanced things during his brothers' afternoon nap.

What am I most worried about?  I don't have a globe.

So here's my lesson plans for week #1 (remember it's only for 2 days and doesn't include the testing and other misc. stuff I'll be doing)