Our Homeschool Journey Begins!

We have some big news in our house! Those of you who have spent any time around me at all since December-ish already knew this, but we are going to homeschool Zooey next year. There are a myriad of reasons we've decided this is best - godly education, freedom, more time at home with her, time for her to grow and develop a little more in regards to her speech and SPD - and I am getting so excited! And nervous! Then excited! Then...well, you get the picture. God really confirmed that this was what I was to do through my prayer time, my Bible study and the BSF notes back at the end of December/early January. He continues to confirm it to, and in fact, even today He sent me another confirmation in the form of Zooey's principal at school. He is so good! When I start to get nervous, I've been praying, and He gives me peace, and He usually sends me a confirmation of some sort to show me I'm doing the right thing.

I know there are a million homeschool blogs out there, and I'm not wanting my blog to be that, but as it always has been, I want it to be a memory of all of our journeys, as well as a journal of sorts for myself. This is such a HUGE change for us, and I need to be able to put my thoughts somewhere permanently. It's so exciting to go back later on and see the ways God took a little seed of change in our lives and sprouted it into something wonderful.

I've had homeschooling on the brain lately, especially since school is going to end in about four weeks. I've decided to do year-round school, so that in times of illness, stress, vacation, exhausting days, we have a little freedom during the typical school year to take a break if we need it. I'm probably going to take a couple of weeks off completely from activities, then we'll start up. I purchased all our curriculum and supplies the last two days, and I even got some old stuff organized for Tennyson, so he will have something to do when we're doing school. I've chosen Heart of Dakota Little Hearts for His Glory for our Kindergarten curriculum. I'm using the Reading Made Easy option for reading. I am purchasing the handwriting curriculum separate from Handwriting Without Tears, which is what she did this year at school. Her teacher actually recommended some different manipulatives for the Kinder program, because they include the lower-case letters. I actually found it on Amazon in a package that also includes number-building. It's called Letter Construction from Learning Resources.

I know this is going to be a really big challenge for me, and probably for Zooey too, and I anticipate God's (painful) growth of my heart and character. I tend to be super type A when I'm teaching Zooey, but she's not the kind of kid you can do that with. I am definitely going to have to learn to let go of A LOT! She'll need lots of breaks (and I'm sure I will, too!). I know we're really going to need to incorporate her OT strategies and stick to a good routine for her to thrive. I'm going to need to let go of my own striving toward perfectionism to allow her to make mistakes and grow. And, as her principal pointed out today, I'm going to need to let her learn at her own pace, not compare and not freak out if/WHEN she's not doing "X" that someone else her age is doing. She also said something that anyone who knows Zooey knows to be true - "I have a feeling that Zooey will learn it when she's ready to learn it." Haha! Funny thing is that I'm the same way! I am praying God will help me embrace all the ways she's similar to me and use my knowledge of those similarities to our advantage instead of getting so frustrated about it.

God also bolstered my enthusiasm this week through a wonderful BSF home training lesson about seeing the positive traits in our children. It was called "Your Child's Valuable Traits," and you can read it here. It was seriously so great! Anyway, I feel called by God to cultivate valuable character traits and most of all a love for God, and in our case I feel called to do this partly in the form of homeschool.

Stumbling Into Schooling

At some point, I may make another blog for homeschooling, but at this point, my blog will suffice. I titled this post the way I did, because I do often feel like I am stumbling into schooling! I wasn't homeschooled, and up until the last five years I haven't known many homeschooled people. However, after teaching at BSF for several years and getting to know some smart adults who were homeschooled, I've seen the benefits. Also, Ryan and I feel that "we are to train Zooey up in the way she should go." We both feel that this can best be done when we are the ones educating her as we are the ones who are called by the Lord to teach her to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up" (Deut. 6:5-7). This is our main aim behind homeschooling. There are others, which I am sure we will share at some point, but this is the biggest.

I have been having a lot of fun getting Zooey's cirriculum ready and marking the items I need to get on Amazon. The most helpful resource I have found at this point is this lady Erica's blog: http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/. She has many of the same philosophies about homeschool that I do, and I really like her set up. She uses workboxes for her children's schoolwork, and she has her own preschool cirriculum, Letter of the Week http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/letter-of-the-week, which we will be using, in addition to the SonLight 3/4 cirriculum. For now, my plan is to set up her desk in her room and set up her workboxes out of the way in the hall. This will keep her out of them during roomtime and other times she shouldn't be in them. We will begin school at the end of August (my start date is Aug. 27), and we will do school on Monday, Thursday and Friday mornings from 9:00-12:00. The nice thing about homeschooling is that for now we don't have to go with the traditional M, W, F or T, Th schedule. We will be going to BSF in the fall, and that's on Wednesdays, and I think that is a very beneficial part of her education, as well. It has been a lot of fun getting all the lesson plans and cirriculum ready. Zooey is really into fine-motor activities, so I feel this cirriculum will work well for her. It has coloring, magnet pages, do-a-dot sheets, cutting and gluing. It also has some fun ideas like letter scavenger hunts. The weather is so nice here that I'll be able to schedule in some outside time every day and be able to incorporate that time into doing art projects, alphabet and counting, too. I'm excited but nervous, and we plan to take homeschooling a year at a time. I can't wait to share with you how the process is going!