Posts Tagged ‘VAHomeschoolers’

Starting my Homeschool Blogging


2011
03.31

Dad and son playing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"Okay, so I have to first show off a photo of my husband and child showing off their talents at the VAHomeschoolers Conference before getting to the business at hand.

Now to why I’m here. After attending the VAHomeschoolers Conference this weekend, I was inspired to get my blog rolling again, but this time to focus on my homeschooling experience and share my curriculum ideas.

I have one son, age 5. I’m finding that boxed curriculum are not the answer for us. We enthusiastically started using Enki Kinder at the beginning of the year. Some great perspectives on what to expect developmentally and how to create a rhythm but I found that I started disagreeing about the claim that Enki can nurture any child/family and I wasn’t impressed with the quality of the stories especially with a great and large local library system, Fairfax County Library. We continue to use the rhythm suggested (well, except when I fall off the bandwagon) and transition songs to help my son transition as needed (but not as much as we use to as it no longer seems as critical for my son). We’ve also incorporated the morning movement for the last 2 or more years. We go for a walk, do races, do movement to song/rhyme and recently enjoyed a few weeks of doing “Yoga for the kid in all of us” DVD by Rough, Chaz.. I find morning movement to be critical to my son being able to focus and be well behaved even if it’s just 10 minutes of active play to start the day. We also have a daily rest time in the afternoon that I find to be important to both of us. I can skip it on occasion just like I can with movement but things run smoothest as long as we do it most days.

As for rhythm, I find it a very important aspect for my son and I to have a good day. However, I find it to be very forgiving. The key is to start our day the same most days. An ideal day starts with waking, eating, dressing then movement. We also try to practice violin right after movement whenever possible as I find the “little man” (LM) is most focused right after movement.

On a “school” day, we will then follow violin practice with our reading lesson, “How to teach your Child to Read in a 100 Easy Lessons,” a story picked by Mom (folk tale, fairy tale, nature story, story related to a holiday to the day or other story Mom finds important), followed by creative time (a time for us to build or craft together). This lasts 1-1.5 hours and then we can do what we want or need to do with the rest of our day. My goal is to do this at least 3x/week. This has been what our ideal “school” day has looked like since January.