Our homeschool curriculum – The Fitnessista

Sharing extra about P’s homeschool curriculum and the way we construction our days. For extra about why we decided to homeschool, check out this post.

Hello pals! How are you? I hope that you simply’re having an exquisite morning. I’ve a few consumer calls as we speak, homeschool enjoyable, and we’re going to take a day hike. What are you as much as?

For as we speak’s publish, I needed to speak extra about how we construction our days now that we’re in week 3 of homeschooling. It’s price mentioning right here that day by day is completely different and these are simply packing containers we examine every day. The great thing about homeschool is that it’s versatile. It takes far much less time than conventional college, and you’ve got the liberty to pause, change issues, or transfer issues round, relying on what’s occurring.

It’s additionally price mentioning right here that I’m NOT an knowledgeable and have minimal expertise on this space. I’m the newb of the newbies and am severely figuring this out as we go. I’m so so grateful that there are homeschool consultants on the market and pals who’ve provided with assist and recommendation; I’ll take all the guidelines I can get!

I’m additionally SO grateful to Brittany from A Healthy Slice of Life who jumped in, hopped on the cellphone with me once I despatched her a brilliant lengthy voice message, talked me off the ledge, and helped me determine a gameplan. Take a look at her weblog for homeschool information, recipes, journey, and life-style – she is wonderful.

Though I’m nonetheless figuring this out, I needed to share this publish for my pals on the market who’re contemplating homeschool, however are tremendous intimidated, simply as I used to be. I assumed I’d need to be a *trainer* to be good at this. You don’t have to have a educating background. You simply want to seek out the fitting curriculum match (and know you possibly can change at any time), have somewhat persistence and adaptability, and proceed to indicate love and persistence to your kiddo. <3

Our homeschool curriculum and the way we construction our days

For probably the most half, right here’s how the day goes:

We get up and take Liv to highschool. We come residence, P has breakfast, I give her somewhat little bit of chill time the place she will play with toys, puzzles, construct issues, and so on. (that is the place I’ll compensate for just a few emails or put out work fires) and we begin *college* at 9. I sit on the desk along with her and eat my breakfast as we work collectively.

Nearly all the curriculum we’re utilizing is plug and play, which suggests you open the guide, learn the lesson, reply the questions, and transfer on. (Nearly every little thing under was really useful by Brittany)

Math- 20-Half-hour

We’re utilizing Nicole the Math Lady and Saxon Math. We used to make use of Saxon math on the ladies’ college (they’d switched to Math in Focus) and I knew I needed to return to Saxon. Nicole the Math Girl teaches every lesson (a couple of 10 minute video with a corny mind break, which P loves) after which you may have observe questions and 1-2 worksheets to finish. You enter the youngsters’ solutions into the pc and it tracks their grades. Every lesson takes us about 2 days to finish.

Grammar -20-Half-hour

For grammar, we’re utilizing Masterbooks, which is a faith-based curriculum. It consists of image examine, memorization, punctuation, spelling, vocabulary, statement, poems, psalms, letters, and sensible software by means of inventive writing. We simply began however I really feel like she’s already discovered quite a bit from this textbook. She discovered cursive this 12 months, so she’s engaged on answering the questions in cursive.

Writing – 20-Half-hour

For writing, we’re doing the Fables, Myths and Fairy Tales writing lessons from IEW. It focuses on their Construction and Model technique. Proper now, she’s engaged on studying fables, making key outlines, and narration (with the ability to retell the story utilizing her notes).

Studying – 20 minutes

I simply need her to get pleasure from studying for now, so we’re studying one thing super lighthearted and fun together. This guide has held the take a look at of time and he or she LOVES it. We’re each usually cracking up sooner or later whereas studying about Fudge and his antics.

Science + Social Research / Geography – about 2x per week every

I’m nonetheless attempting to determine a plan for this, however not so nervous about it since we’re near summer season. For now, she’s engaged on memorizing the states, capitals, and with the ability to find them on a map.

For science, we do one mission every week. The primary week, we dissected owl pellets, matched the bones on the bone sorting charts, and talked about what we discovered. Week 2, she constructed an egg drop that we might drop from the balcony to the yard whereas preserving the egg intact. We talked about velocity, gravity, momentum, motion and response. This week, she’s engaged on constructing a roller coaster.

Since we’re simply planning on homeschooling till fifth grade, I’m going to succeed in out to Liv’s college to see what the expectations are for rising fifth graders for science and social research/geography so I can make sure that we cowl the bases.

Mid-day:

We take Maisey for a stroll and have lunch collectively, compensate for a few chores, and determine a plan for the afternoon.

Afternoon:

After we made this determination, I informed P that I cherished hanging out along with her however couldn’t be her cruise director all day. Within the afternoon earlier than we decide up Liv, I’ll have teaching calls, content material creation, enhancing, podcast interviews, no matter I have to do work-wise for a few hours. I’ve additionally shifted my work schedule so I’m working extra on the weekends or when the Pilot is residence from airline coaching. (We began all of this when he left, so I’ve been solo parenting and figuring all of this out alongside the way in which.) Saturday is a piece blitz day now, and most of Sunday. In addition to P’s basketball sport, I’ll write/work/edit just about all day till dinner.

Within the afternoon, she’ll play with toys, work on one thing she enjoys (music, crocheting, taking pictures hoops, and so on), and if I’m caught up with work, I’ll take her to an indoor play place, to run errands, and typically I’ll give her some display time. Since she has basketball at night time and we’re chasing round with Liv to bounce lessons, she normally doesn’t get display time within the evenings.

The times shuffle round. Generally I’ll have an appointment within the morning, or educate a barre class, so we do college within the afternoon, and we’re additionally exploring a few of the Tucson homeschool actions. There are such a lot of nice ones right here: parkour, gymnastics, artwork, co-ops, horse classes, music — I’m excited to examine them out!

In order that’s the way it’s going for now! I’m positive it is going to change over time and my plan is to get her caught up with math (she’s ending the third grade guide now and I”m hoping to get 4th grade and most of fifth performed subsequent 12 months whereas she’s in 4th grade). The opposite books are 4th grade books, so we’ll simply transfer as much as fifth when she completes them.

Homeschool means that you can meet the child the place they’re. In the event that they’re progressing shortly in a topic, you possibly can progress together with them, or take extra time on sure topics in the event that they want it.

When you have any concepts for enjoyable science tasks or any social research and geography sources, I’d respect it a lot! Additionally, if there are any questions I can reply in future posts, please lmk!

xoxo

Gina