A Glimpse of our Homeschooling

Things have been more "normalized" here, and getting back into more of a schedule. School is going pretty well. I am working more with Melody (just turned 6) in reading. I use the AlphaPhonics reading program (have with all my children) and she is doing pretty well. I really love this grammar reading program. I started out with it with our oldest, and just used the book and it has worked wonderfully. It is very basic - just black and white - no pictures to distract. We cuddle on the couch as we do this. With our third child we also got this book on CD. He was not catching on with the book and his learning to read time was when Jessica was born, and dealing with all her doctor visits and surgeries. We got this CD and he really did well with it. He needed more "hands on" and reinforcement which this program does. Jessica then pretty much learned from both AlphaPhonics on CD + the book AND . . . since she is one that seems to like the hands on work . . .doing workbooks, we used Explode the Code. This has been great reinforcement for learning to read, and learning grammar. She is still doing some of the upper grades of Explode the Code.

Since I am on a roll with homeschooling, I will share a little more what we use. We mainly use A Beka for science and history - but add in a lot of additional outside reading - books from the library to fill in or go on a rabbit trail with something the children have an interest in (such as I shared before, one of our daughters researching on herbs). We also use A Beka math for grades K-3 and then we switch to Saxon Math. Sometimes we have to supplement here too, if they are not grasping something (such as division) and then get a book just on division or as I also mentioned before, we found an old antique book at Good Will, and this is working great for one of our girls in helping her. This is what we find as such an advantage with homeschooling, is working WITH the child, instead of a child "trying" to stay with the class and getting lost, or not being able to excel where they can go on ahead. We use various things for

My very favorite program for those just starting out with homeschooling is Learning at Home: Preschool & Kindergarten by Ann Ward. I did this mainly with our oldest two, and have such wonderful memories with it. It's a LOT of hands on work for the mom - lots of crafts - lots of trips to the library - and lots of fun too. I am going to have my older girls do some of the things in it with two of our younger girls to help me out, and they love doing crafts - so it will benefit both! For someone starting out though, it gives a day-by-day schedule (though it can be long, and we learned to skip some things).

Some other things we use are Easy Grammar & Daily Grams, Learning Language Arts through Literature, ACSI Spelling, and the LIBRARY (lots of reading - writing about what we read, etc.) And, we are still learning a lot!