Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for the opportunity I have to home school my children. This is the end of our first full year with our little RainDrops at home. It was a year of adjusting and decompression from school. But all in all we are enjoying our time together.

If the day goes awry we just take stock, either change attitudes or start over tomorrow. With a year of surgeries and doctor appointments I have not worried about missing to much school. School either goes with us or we make it up tomorrow.

I have to the time to work on character and spiritual development. Public school introduces our children to situations and topics they are not spiritually ready to handle. And many times we do not know that the situations have occurred until it is too late. Homeschooling we have the ability to to guide our children through these situations as they are happening.

And of course there are the days that if you want to you can do school in your PJs and no body really knows or cares!

Handwriting

Snoopy has some of the worst handwriting. We have been working really hard to improve it. When he did his spelling words yesterday I ask him to write with his best handwriting. He was so proud of how well he did. He showed everyone in the house. Then wanted me to take a picture and send it to Daddy. I am super proud of him!

Changing Gears

After a solid year of homeschooling, all three RainDrops, we have finally hit somewhat of a stride. There has been a huge learning curve for us all. But we are beginning to see the light on how to run our days.

We have had many changes in our family besides homeschooling, including surgeries, illness,doctor appointments, new helpers for Ashlyn and Aaron, and OF COURSE our family grew with the addition of two teenage exchange students. With all of this comes a family with growing pains.

We are not taking an official summer break this year. We will be swimming, playing and resting. However school will continue in full force. We will continue with the "3 Rs." The major change will come by what curriculum we use. We have used LifePac from AlphaOmega this year for Jessie and Aaron and Ashlyn has used Bob Jones. I have learned I and my kids are not fans of LifePac. I am finding that we are not reading enough literature with them.

There for we will be switching homeschool philosophies. We will use Bob Jones for math, language, and reading. However we will be using a Charlotte Mason approach for history, science, literature, and the arts.

Top 10 Reason's We Homeschool

10. Family time
9. My kids have different learning styles
8. There are no minimum or maxim number of hours or days we must or must not have school
7. There is more to learning than just textbooks
6. If we do not understand a topic we keep working on it until we do
5. If we find a topic is too hard we can put it off for awhile until we have learned other lessons
that will make that topic easier to understand
4. Life is learning experience
3. The spirit must also be taught
2. As parents we choose the lesson and they way they are taught
1. We can teach character and spiritual lessons at any time during the day