Homeschooling–one month in (part 1)

The number one question I get these days is: “How is homeschooling going?”  (Either that or “Mom, can I have more milk?”-seriously, they drink a lot of milk these days…what is it going to be like when they are teenagers?  Maybe it would be less expensive to buy a cow!)

But back to the real topic – I am enjoying homeschooling. 

There are challenges I wasn’t totally prepared for, and it does make some things in my life more complicated, but I truly am enjoying homeschooling Aaron. 

Let me walk you through a typical week.  Mondays and Tuesday we do Grammar, History, Spelling and Handwriting.  Wednesday is our Unit Studies. Thursday and Friday we do Science and Math.  Every day he is expected to do a typing lesson on the computer, practice the piano, read something I’ve assigned him (usually corresponding to what we are learning in history or his unit studies), read his scriptures, and read for fun.  Things like art and PE are kinda hit and miss.

For Grammar we are using First Language Lessons which has an instructor book and a student book.  It completely walks us through what the instructor needs to say, what the student should say, etc.  We do 4 lessons a week, 2 on Monday and 2 on Tuesday. So far we have been studying what the different parts of speech are and have started diagraming sentences.  It also has dictation exercises and poem memorization and I’m having him memorize scriptures too.  So far in this first month he’s memorized 2 scripture verses and one poem.  This is one of the things I’m enjoying teaching him.  We laugh together at me having to repeat the definition 3 times then him saying it with me 3 times.  I think it’s great and I’m having a good time teaching him this stuff.

In History we are using The Story of the World and are reading it out loud to each other.  Again, we do 4 chapters a week, 2 on Monday and 2 on Tuesday.  After reading each section we talk about it and then after we finish the reading I ask him to write down in his notebook at least 4 sentences about what he learned that day.  Again, the one on one of reading with him is a lot of fun.  I really like spending time with him and talking about history.  His grandfather in Utah loves history and has been sending him e-mails asking him about what he’s learning, so I usually ask him to type a few sentences each each day to Grandpa Thomas telling him what he liked learning about history that day.  More typing practice!

Both Spelling and Handwriting are workbooks therefore I feel he should be able to do this independently and this is where I get frustrated sometimes.  He gets distracted.  I find myself nagging. This part of homeschooling is not so much fun. But it’s necessary because I can’t sit and give him my undivided attention all day every day. 

The daily typing lesson is a free 12 stage program on the computer he’s done several times already, but both he and Brian are still really slow and I’m hoping to get them faster, so I keep asking them to do the lessons over again.  We’ll see. 

I’m teaching him piano lessons and while I bet another teacher would get him farther, we get along and he is getting better, so we’re going to keep doing it.  He’s expected to work on it for 30-45 min a day.

Now I gotta get more stuff done, so I’ll type about Wednesday, Thursday and Friday later.