Why we homeschool

During my last seven years of homeschooling I have been fortunate enough not to encounter any major discouragement from non-homeschoolers. Most people are interested when they find out, and many ask questions out of genuine curiosity. I always enjoy talking about homeschooling, and it doesn't at all offend me when people want to know why or how we do it.

Ninjaschool homeschool

Our first week of school in photographs

We had an amazing first week of 4th grade and preschool. Here's a little bit of what we did!

Preparing for another school year

We're all geared up to begin our 7th year of homeschool next week! I know it's early by most public school standards, but we like to start early in order to have more flexibility to take time off throughout the school year without falling behind in our schedule. It's important to me that we completely finish our grade level by the time we take a summer break.

So I've finished my planning and organizing in preparation for school on Monday. We will again employ a 6 week on/ 1 week off schedule this year after having great success with it last year. So, the first thing I did before I even started my subject planning was print out a 2015-2016 school calendar and figure out, roughly, when we would take our breaks over the course of the next 10 months.

Parking lot counting activity

Okay, so this was not my own idea, but it's so brilliant and simple that I wish I had thought of it. A friend posted it on facebook, and it looked really easy to make, especially considering we have two little boys (we have lots of toy cars) and we do a lot of online shopping (we have lots of delivery boxes).

This week in toddler art...

Asa and I enjoyed our art projects this week. In fact, they were so fun that the big 3rd-grader wanted to take part as well :)

First, Asa colored on sand paper. He enjoyed the rough texture and the way coloring on it wore down the crayons (I bought a pack of Target-brand crayons for 39 cents specifically for this activity.)

Halloween

A few things we've been doing for activities leading up to Halloween...



Here is a Halloween chain I made after being asked several times a day how many days there were until Halloween. We counted on the calendar how many "sleeps" (nights) there were until Halloween, and then made that same number of links to form a chain. Every morning we remove one link from the chain. Asher then counts how many links are left, and he knows that that's how many sleeps he has left until Halloween. This has been working great, and I think I will be implementing this same idea to countdown to anything he's looking forward to, such as trips to Grandma and Grandpa's house and Christmas.






Here is some play-dough I made for Halloween. I used red and yellow food coloring to make it orange, and then added some glitter.














I gave Asher some cookie cutters (in this case, a pumpkin and a ghost) and some beads and pipe cleaners and let him go to town. Here's what we made!

And my favorite, a spider (idea from Counting Coconuts)

He thinks he's having fun!

One thing I love about some activities is that Asher has no idea he's learning; he thinks he's having fun! (Muah ha ha ha ha!) Here are a few things we've been doing that he's especially enjoyed:



I bought a bunch of wooden beads, and Asher enjoys threading them on pipe cleaners. I encourage him to put them on in patterns (i.e. red, blue, yellow, red, blue, yellow, etc.)
























I also collected a bunch of buttons and spools in different colors and shapes. (There's just something really appealing about a big box full of buttons!) I give Asher some plates (cheap plastic ones I picked up at a home store, the kind that have separated spaces for food) so that he can sort them. Also sometimes I give him tweezers that he uses to pick up the buttons, which works on his fine motor skills.
















Asher decided to sort the buttons according to their shape, not color.

Starting preschool

Viewing last year as a sort of test-run, I'm starting homeschool again in full-force now that Asher has had his 4th birthday. We're in preschool now! That means a few changes. Last year was extremely casual. We had no set schedule (other than simply getting everything done) and read when Asher wanted to.

This year, however, we've got a schedule. I decided to use Sonlight's preschool program, so I have a set, organized curriculum. I love it. I ordered most of the books used from Amazon to save money, and I added in some things myself. For instance, Asher is interested in letters and sounds, so we're doing phonics this year even though Sonlight does not include it in their set curriculum. I also am incorporating some great activity books to get ideas for things we can do (crafts, rhymes, songs, etc.) that go along with things we are reading about.

I also try to plan field trips according to what we're reading about each week. For example, this week we are reading about fish and oceans, so I've made that our specific theme this week. We will visit the Aquarium and the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute. Also in social studies we read about fishermen, so we visited some friends of mine who are fishermen. They showed us the fish and lobsters they had caught.

I will go into more detail about what we're doing and how we're doing it as we go along. I'm still learning myself! In the meantime, here are a few pictures.




We don't have any extra space in our little 2-bedroom apartment, so I've had to be creative. We have a homeschool hallway as a result :) It's literally a hallway (and the only space we have that's not being used!) that I've put 2 bookshelves in to hold all the homeschool books and supplies. My husband has also kindly put up some magnetic dry-erase boards for us.


This is the view of the hallway facing the living room.








And here's the view going in the other direction, toward the back of the apartment.









Here's one shelf. On top of the shelf I keep my binder with the weekly curriculum guide on top. Notice my American flag because, just as if we were in regular American public school, we say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning.

I keep a folder beside the current week's planner. Inside I keep all the papers and worksheets we're doing that week. Once a paper is complete, I three-hole punch it and file it behind that week's schedule.


Here are the magnetic dry-erase boards. I keep the Bible verses we're learning up there as well as cards showing the letters we're focusing on. Asher also enjoys putting some of his worksheets and coloring pages on display there after he completes them. I also have letter and number magnets that Asher can play with. He can also practice writing his letters on here, but I keep the marker put away so that he never uses it unsupervised (I could imagine the effect that might have on our white walls!)




This is a trick I learned. I use a square of discarded carpet (thanks to my friend Kristina for donating it!) as a fun learning board. Velcro sticks to it beautifully! So I found a set of alphabet flashcards in the $1 bins at Target and bought two of them. On one set I put velcro (the peel-and-stick kind available at craft stores) on the letter side, and on the other set I put velcro on the picture side. Now we are able to play games. I put several pictures and letters up and then allow Asher to match them correctly. He enjoys that they stick up there like magic!









This is what we call our ABC Jar. I borrowed this idea (and others you'll find in my homeschool activities) from Counting Coconuts (a local Bermuda blog done by a homeschooling mom who is totally brilliant). I found lots of small toys and placed them in a jar. I tell Asher a letter, and he is to find a toy that begins with that letter (he might bring me a zebra toy if I tell him "Z", etc.). Or we'll dump all the toys out, and as he places them back in one-by-one, he must tell me the letter that each toy begins with. He loves this game!




This is the "creative area" of Asher's room. We've got the Lego table in the middle, flanked by a box of play food and a bin of dress-up clothes. He has alone-time almost every day in which he must play by himself in his room for a set amount of time.








Here is one of the windchimes we made from seashells we have collected around Bermuda. We strung them together with fishing line and a napkin ring at the top. We used this as a special activity to go along with the week we read about fish and oceans.
Here's the other windchime. They sound so pretty and islandy!