Homeschool Prep!

It's back to school time! The commercials are out there, kids are shopping for clothes and shoes and school supplies, teachers are sitting in in-service meetings and preparing their classrooms (at least, my husband is!), and this mama is getting ready for our first real homeschool year. Last year we did some light homeschooling for preschool. Savannah actually still learned a lot over the course of the year, but we had no set curriculum or schedule.Sometimes we did a lot of school stuff and some weeks we did nothing at all. I never wrote lesson plans. Now, this type of very informal approach might work just fine for someone who is not Type A, like me, but it drove me nuts. I so wanted to be more organized, but it was a very tough year. Going from one child to two was harder than I thought it would be, and I was so exhausted because my baby didn't sleep through the night for nine long months. I was kind of flying by the seat of my pants, and I didn't want to do that this coming year. So I got organized!

The first order of business was curriculum shopping. I chose this one: ABC Jesus Loves Me. I wanted a Bible-based curriculum with a Christian worldview, which this one had. I also wanted a free curriculum (many homeschooling moms told me to find something free at the preschool level!).  We are doing the four year old Pre-K curriculum, as Savannah already has mastered the learning objectives covered in the three year curriculum. All of the lesson plans, worksheets, and print outs are available for free. I did purchase the "My First Steps to Reading" books by Jane Belk Moncure that go with the curriculum, but I bought a used set for only $45 total. I also ordered this book: Big Thoughts for Little People: ABC's to Help You Grow to go along with our lessons. All of the other types of materials that I needed I purchased at Dollar Tree or Target (most were found at Dollar Tree). We will borrow the books of the week at the library (we have a few, but most we will borrow). The one other thing that I am adding to our curriculum is this: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. This book was highly recommended to me by other homeschoolers, and it seems perfect for us. Savannah has been begging to learn how to read. She is very quickly learning her phonics. This program seems like a perfect guide for me to use to help her put it all together!

After choosing our curriculum and ordering books, I needed to organize our materials. Our home is small, so space is at a premium around here. I managed to clean out the bottom half of our linen closet, which is in a hallway off of the loft upstairs.

I bought the two organizer caddies at Big Lots on special. Some of the plastic tubs are from the dollar tree. In all of the plastic drawers I have tons of materials for our fine motor centers like dry beans, beads, pipe cleaners, lacing cards, tweezers and tongs, straws, small glass vases for pouring, pencils and pencil grips, crayons, markers, colored pencils, et cetera. We also have drawing paper, construction paper, and lined paper to practice letter formations. We have many workbooks that I picked up at Costco or Target in the dollar section. There are large plastic tubs that contain painting supplies and play-doh. On the wire shelf above the manipulatives I have our books that we will use. It may not look like much, but I am pretty proud of our school closet!

The next thing I wanted to do was get a small table for Savannah to use for writing and crafting. Up until now she has sat at our dining room table, but in order to reach the table she is strapped into a booster seat, which doesn't work well for practicing writing her letters, because she doesn't have the freedom to angle her body the way she needs to and hold her arm in a comfortable position. I found this adorable wooden table set on sale at Target. It was $25 off and then I had a code for an additional $15 off plus free shipping! We are keeping the table downstairs, as this is where we will do school. (A lot of school will happen during Hailey's nap time, so I wanted to be downstairs away from her bedroom door.)

I'm so excited to begin our school year, which starts next week! We will be doing school on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On Monday morning Savannah will have dance class and Thursday morning she has AWANA Cubbies while I go to MOPS/Bible Study. I have a schedule written up for us, which involves us doing Bible time, songs, memory verse, and character education in the eight o'clock hour before Hailey goes down for her nap. While Hailey is napping we will do phonics and reading first, and then the other lessons will follow. Hailey will most likely wake up and join us again for the end of school time. Our school day should wrap up by 11ish each day. When Hailey drops her morning nap and gets a bit older I will need to incorporate some busy box type of ideas for toddlers to keep her occupied. Next year she can start some tot school with us, because ABC Jesus Loves Me has a curriculum for two-year-olds, too!

If you are wondering how long we plan to homeschool......well, that is a question I don't have an answer to quite yet. God has been pulling on my heart about this issue, and I would love to homeschool both girls for as long as possible, until they are done with schooling. However, I just don't know if it will be possible for me to commit to being home for that long without going back to full-time work (although I can continue to do my part-time transcription work while homeschooling). For now, I need to be home at least until Hailey would be in school full-time, so I think we will be homeschooling for the foreseeable future. For as long as I can, I would like to give our girls a strong Biblical foundation and a Christian worldview. I'm so thankful that I can do that right now!