And How Is Homeschooling Going?

I'm glad you asked! But first...

I'm snuggled in a blanket, enjoying the relaxed pace of a snow day--our first measurable snowfall of the winter (although it was only a few inches). Besides the beauty of the snow, I'm also thankful that Josiah's choir class was cancelled so we can sit tight at home, that Jeff is coming home early from work, and that the boys will be able to go outside after a while and play in this much-awaited snow!

But I don't feel completely peaceful; in fact, a general sense of unease has set in and threatens to disrupt the serenity of this day. I suppose it's mostly related to the appointment I have scheduled tomorrow morning with the midwives. I don't even know if I'll be able to go to the appointment, since there's a chance we'll be iced in by morning; but oh, how I long to hear my baby's heartbeat and receive that dose of reassurance that all is well! It's not as if I have any specific cause for concern or any danger sign, but I am aware that a low level of anxiety is running through my body nevertheless. I'm eager for it to be gone.

I was planning a different post for today; but after reading something from the new blog Chasing the Kids by an old acquaintance Valerie, I decided to write instead about homeschooling "stuff." I've been wanting to synthesize some of my thoughts about the current state of our homeschool, so this gave me a good excuse to take the time to do this today.

First, though, a few pictures from about a week and a half ago. Frost on the porch windows can be so beautiful, and I love to look closely at the intricacies of the designs God leaves for us!

As I've written before, we have been using Sonlight curriculum this year for Josiah's first grade year. I've had somewhat of a pendulum swing concerning Sonlight during the past 18 months or so. When I first considered using it and found a great deal on it on Ebay, I was thrilled with how it appeared to me and was completely enthusiastic about using it. I just knew I would love it!

I'm sure it's obvious what's coming; but after beginning to use it, I realized that I really didn't love all of it and there were some things in it that I was going to change (which I did) and that maybe I wasn't so gung-ho about Sonlight after all.

Not surprisingly, the pendulum swung again, except maybe now it's actually reached the happy medium and has stopped swinging. At this point, I see that Sonlight has some really great aspects and some that didn't work so well for Josiah and for me...and that's OK.

Obviously, with homeschooling, we as parents have the opportunity of evaluating how things are going with our children and making the needed changes to best serve them. Not only is this a privilege, but also a responsibility, one that I used to think would weigh heavily on me: "Am I really qualified to best assess what will be most effective for my child? How often do I have to do that? How many times will we have to change boats mid-stream? How expensive will this become to keep trying different curriculums? Why can't I just follow the outline somebody else makes so I can stop thinking so much???" :)

As I've discovered, it's not that difficult. Because I'm with Josiah so much, I quite naturally evaluate how things are going for him as we go through our days. Of course, there are some times of more specific thought and planning; but I've found that it's easier than I thought to tweak my homeschool plans to fit my student. And I'm particularly aware of God's leading in this area since He knows Josiah far better than I ever will and has the ability to quietly drop ideas into my mind when I least expect them.

To get to specifics about Sonlight, here is what I currently love about their first-grade curriculum: the history and the read-alouds. Reading aloud is such a part of our life that we wouldn't have to be nudged by Sonlight to do it, but I certainly benefit from having a plan for it written out on paper; and even more significantly, out of all the read-alouds they've included for first grade, we haven't found a dud in the bunch. Josiah has liked ALL the books, and most of them have been interesting for David as well (although, since he's only three, I've always given him the privilege of wandering off when we're reading). I've enjoyed them, too. ;)

But the history is where I feel like Sonlight really shines! I know that I would not have done nearly as good of a job with history without their plan. They have done an exceptional job of choosing materials and then, even better, integrating those materials so that when we read a chapter in one book about the beginning of Greek history, we also read related pages in an Usborne history book (with such great visuals!) and a book of Greek myths as a read-aloud, etc. As a result of this careful and appealing presentation, history is a winner with Josiah. He and David both often ask me to read more from the history books, and I'm glad to oblige! Nobody ever told my boys that history is supposed to be boring so they're loving it, and they often--completely without prompting from me--later draw a scene from what they know about the Vikings or act out one of the Greek myths. I can't help but smile when I hear Josiah saying, in the midst of play, "I'll be Jason," and then later to David, "Odysseus, come help me fight this dragon!" :)

On a less positive note, here is what I don't love about the Sonlight first-grade curriculum: Bible and language arts. Obviously, this is a personal opinion and should be taken as such; in other words, I'm not saying, "Here's what is not good," simply "Here's what I don't love." Early on in the school year, I simply switched their Bible curriculum for The Children's Bible; and I am pleased with how both last year (when we read through Read-n-Grow Picture Bible) and this year, we have comprehensively worked our way through the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, and have gotten an overall view of God's story and plan. The editors of both of these Bibles were sensitive enough to children's issues to not include such "adult" stories as the Levite and his concubine, but they also didn't dance around some of the hard truths of God's righteous nature and His judgment on sin. I liked the balance they achieved, and I can't count the profitable discussions that have been spawned by us reading these two books last year and this year.

For next year, by the way, I plan to use Character Sketches by the Institute in Basic Life Principles as a starting point for our Bible curriculum, augmented with stories from The Book of Virtues, as well as Scriptural texts which Josiah himself will read. I cut my spiritual teeth on Character Sketches (among other books), and can hardly wait to dive into them with Josiah!

About Sonlight's language arts...I found the material they included for first grade to be, quite honestly, boring. Josiah is still at the age where the appearance of something matters; and Sonlight, with its lack of color and graphics, wasn't enticing at all. (I realize at times you just do what you have to do, regardless of whether it's enticing or not; but hey, if we have a choice, why not have a little fun with it, right?) And I found the simple drudgery of flipping through an enormous notebook to get to the right pages a little bothersome. (I realize, too, that I could have gone through the enormous notebook and taken out the language arts papers to put them in a smaller notebook which would have been more manageable; but I didn't do that, so I'm just tellin' it like it is!) For this year, we have used various language arts workbooks that I've picked up here and there; but for next year, I definitely plan to put more emphasis on this and get better prepared with resources that (hopefully) both Josiah and I will enjoy! I guess every homeschooling mom gets a little nervous, thinking about the gaps they might have left--or caused--in their child's education; and I think language arts is a gap for us at this point, but one which I hope to fill next year.

As far as math and science and other topics, they weren't included in the Sonlight curriculum guide I got so I can't venture an opinion on how a truly complete Sonlight system works. But I found it no problem at all to incorporate the math and science we've been doing with the other components of Sonlight. It's quite straightforward, after all, to figure out how many pages of a math book need to be completed each week to stay on track!

Speaking of math, one of the decisions I need to make soon is to figure out which curriculum to get for Josiah for second grade. He's been done with his first grade math for quite a while, and we're eager to jump into second grade to get a head start on that since he really "gets" math concepts very well and is more than ready to move ahead. Now I'm considering Horizons (which I'm familiar with and we've had success with since it worked well for kindergarten) or Singapore Math (which a friend of ours, a math professor at EMU, recommended to us, but which I'm completely unfamiliar with) or to a lesser extent, one of the other common math curriculums (Saxon, Math-U-See, etc.). I guess I need to spend some time on the Internet doing a little research and then make my choice--very soon, I hope.

I'd like to write more, especially about plans for next year; but dinner needs making, the dishwasher needs unloading, the table needs setting...and my best little helpers are currently frolicking outside in the snow, so I'm on my own. :) I'm off to get my hands dirty making Bonnie's Swiss Meat Loaf for the first time. With the cold outside, it's a good night for meatloaf!