Home schooling

When we decided we would live somewhat more like nomads and not just have one place as a home base for the year, our ideas of enrolling the girls in a foriegn school were given up and in thier place home schooling ideas began to grow. At first I thought how difficult could it be? So I started quite confidently looking at the Ontario curriculum guides online. No issues there. Then I started to look for lesson plans. That seemed a little harder. There were so many lesson plans! The free ones seemed like a lot of work to put them into a program that would flow and there were so many choices for the ones that you could purchase. I didn't really know where to start. So I was starting to get a little more nervous about pulling together the program... luckily I spoke with some friends about it and they put me in contact with a mom in the neighbourhood who was homeschooling her children. This was her first year doing it and she was very excited to share a ton of information. She had just finished grade three with one of her daughters so it was good timing.

We sat down and talked for a few hours and I came away with a much better idea of how she had structured her approach to home schooling and once again it didn't seem too bad. She lent me a book "The Well Trained Mind - A Guide to Classical Education at Home" by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise. I flipped through her copy and ended up getting my own copy. It helped me figure out what materials I wanted to purchase and how to structure my home schooling program. After reading it, I was totally pumped up. It's going to be so much fun to teach the girls. It will be hard work too, but I hope it will be very rewarding.

As I was reading I made notes on what workbooks and things I would need and also on how I would do the various subjects. I recently went online and tracked down all the items that I wanted and some of the things have already arrived! Yay.

I think we will be able to manage the various subjects Monday-Thursday mornings and leave Friday for spelling tests and projects. Mostly I am going to focus on English and Math. I've got the Rod & Staff, English 3 Beginning Wisely lesson plans and workbooks and the MCP Spelling workbooks. I have ordered the Saxon Math program, but they haven't come in yet. We will also be doing world history. The Ontario program calls for Ontario history in grade three, but forget that when we will be seeing things like the Great Wall of China! I also thought I would add in a religion class where the girls can study prayers, writings and the history of the Baha'i faith.

I wonder how I'll feel when we come back. Will I be glad to send them back to the public system or will I want to continue home schooling? One thing at a time I guess.