Our homeschool curriculum – The Fitnessista

Sharing extra about P’s homeschool curriculum and the way we construction our days. For extra about why we decided to homeschool, check out this post.

Hello buddies! How are you? I hope that you simply’re having a beautiful morning. I’ve a few shopper calls right now, homeschool enjoyable, and we’re going to take a day hike. What are you as much as?

For right now’s publish, I wished to talk extra about how we construction our days now that we’re in week 3 of homeschooling. It’s value mentioning right here that each day is totally different and these are simply bins we test every day. The great thing about homeschool is that it’s versatile. It takes far much less time than conventional faculty, and you’ve got the liberty to pause, change issues, or transfer issues round, relying on what’s happening.

It’s additionally value mentioning right here that I’m NOT an skilled and have minimal expertise on this space. I’m the newb of the newbies and am significantly figuring this out as we go. I’m so so grateful that there are homeschool consultants on the market and buddies who’ve provided with assist and recommendation; I’ll take all the ideas I can get!

I’m additionally SO grateful to Brittany from A Healthy Slice of Life who jumped in, hopped on the telephone with me after I despatched her an excellent lengthy voice message, talked me off the ledge, and helped me determine a gameplan. Take a look at her weblog for homeschool data, recipes, journey, and way of life – she is superb.

Although I’m nonetheless figuring this out, I wished to share this publish for my buddies on the market who’re contemplating homeschool, however are tremendous intimidated, simply as I used to be. I assumed I’d must be a *instructor* to be good at this. You don’t have to have a instructing background. You simply want to seek out the appropriate curriculum match (and know you’ll be able to change at any time), have a little bit persistence and adaptability, and proceed to indicate love and persistence to your kiddo. <3

Our homeschool curriculum and the way we construction our days

For probably the most half, right here’s how the day goes:

We get up and take Liv to high school. We come dwelling, P has breakfast, I give her a little bit little bit of chill time the place she will be able to play with toys, puzzles, construct issues, and so on. (that is the place I’ll atone for a couple of emails or put out work fires) and we begin *faculty* at 9. I sit on the desk together with her and eat my breakfast as we work collectively.

Nearly all the curriculum we’re utilizing is plug and play, which suggests you open the ebook, learn the lesson, reply the questions, and transfer on. (Nearly every part beneath was really helpful by Brittany)

Math- 20-Half-hour

We’re utilizing Nicole the Math Lady and Saxon Math. We used to make use of Saxon math on the women’ faculty (that they had switched to Math in Focus) and I knew I wished to return to Saxon. Nicole the Math Woman teaches every lesson (a few 10 minute video with a corny mind break, which P loves) after which you could have follow questions and 1-2 worksheets to finish. You enter the children’ solutions into the pc and it tracks their grades. Every lesson takes us about 2 days to finish.

Grammar -20-Half-hour

For grammar, we’re utilizing Masterbooks, which is a faith-based curriculum. It consists of image research, memorization, punctuation, spelling, vocabulary, remark, poems, psalms, letters, and sensible software via inventive writing. We simply began however I really feel like she’s already realized so much from this textbook. She realized cursive this yr, so she’s engaged on answering the questions in cursive.

Writing – 20-Half-hour

For writing, we’re doing the Fables, Myths and Fairy Tales writing lessons from IEW. It focuses on their Construction and Model technique. Proper now, she’s engaged on studying fables, making key outlines, and narration (with the ability to retell the story utilizing her notes).

Studying – 20 minutes

I simply need her to take pleasure in studying for now, so we’re studying one thing super lighthearted and fun together. This ebook has held the take a look at of time and he or she LOVES it. We’re each usually cracking up in some unspecified time in the future whereas studying about Fudge and his antics.

Science + Social Research / Geography – about 2x per week every

I’m nonetheless attempting to determine a plan for this, however not so anxious about it since we’re near summer time. For now, she’s engaged on memorizing the states, capitals, and with the ability to find them on a map.

For science, we do one challenge every week. The primary week, we dissected owl pellets, matched the bones on the bone sorting charts, and talked about what we discovered. Week 2, she constructed an egg drop that we may drop from the balcony to the yard whereas maintaining the egg intact. We talked about velocity, gravity, momentum, motion and response. This week, she’s engaged on constructing a roller coaster.

Since we’re simply planning on homeschooling till fifth grade, I’m going to succeed in out to Liv’s faculty to see what the expectations are for rising fifth graders for science and social research/geography so I can ensure we cowl the bases.

Mid-day:

We take Maisey for a stroll and have lunch collectively, atone for a few chores, and determine a plan for the afternoon.

Afternoon:

Once we made this resolution, I advised P that I liked hanging out together with her however couldn’t be her cruise director all day. Within the afternoon earlier than we decide up Liv, I’ll have teaching calls, content material creation, enhancing, podcast interviews, no matter I have to do work-wise for a few hours. I’ve additionally shifted my work schedule so I’m working extra on the weekends or when the Pilot is dwelling from airline coaching. (We began all of this when he left, so I’ve been solo parenting and figuring all of this out alongside the best way.) Saturday is a piece blitz day now, and most of Sunday. In addition to P’s basketball sport, I’ll write/work/edit just about all day till dinner.

Within the afternoon, she’ll play with toys, work on one thing she enjoys (music, crocheting, capturing hoops, and so on), and if I’m caught up with work, I’ll take her to an indoor play place, to run errands, and typically I’ll give her some display screen time. Since she has basketball at evening and we’re chasing round with Liv to bop lessons, she normally doesn’t get display screen time within the evenings.

The times shuffle round. Generally I’ll have an appointment within the morning, or train a barre class, so we do faculty within the afternoon, and we’re additionally exploring among the Tucson homeschool actions. There are such a lot of nice ones right here: parkour, gymnastics, artwork, co-ops, horse classes, music — I’m excited to test them out!

In order that’s the way it’s going for now! I’m certain it would change over time and my plan is to get her caught up with math (she’s ending the third grade ebook now and I”m hoping to get 4th grade and most of fifth performed subsequent yr whereas she’s in 4th grade). The opposite books are 4th grade books, so we’ll simply transfer as much as fifth when she completes them.

Homeschool lets you meet the child the place they’re. In the event that they’re progressing rapidly in a topic, you’ll be able to progress together with them, or take extra time on sure topics in the event that they want it.

When you’ve got any concepts for enjoyable science initiatives or any social research and geography assets, I’d respect it a lot! Additionally, if there are any questions I can reply in future posts, please lmk!

xoxo

Gina