Hello, I'm new to this site as well as Homeschooling. I have 4 and 5 year old girls whom I will be homeschooling as well as a 1 year old who I plan to home school in the future. I'm kind of terrified about this because I have no clue what to do or where to start. If anyone has any advice in that department, I'd love to hear from you. My husband was home schooled all his life, so I have my mother in law for support, but would kinda like to have someone more my age to talk with. Any other young mothers just starting out?? My girls know the basics right now (colors, shapes, numbers, letters). I'm just having difficulty going from there.......Do I need to start some sort of curriculum? Any helpful advice of where to start or go next? Thanks in advance!!
Welcome to Homeschool Spot. I have been homeschooling my now 2 six year old boys for a little over a year using a very eclectic approach. I never found everything I wanted in any one curriculum. My approach has been to keep it simple for the early years to leave lots of time for exploration, field trips, and just good old fashioned imaginations. For Kindergarten, we used Math U See Primer, Hooked on Phonics for reading, and Handwriting With a Purpose which uses Bible verses. The boys had gone to a pre-school at our church and had already learned lots of stuff prior to our homeschooling. Since our first days though, I did find a book that has lots of great stuff in it for Kindergarten that I would have been tempted to use instead of what I did use. That book is Learn at Home by American Education. They have one for various grades including Kindergarten. It seems to have all the things needed and lots of great fun looking activities. Kindergarten has lots of freeby type stuff out there as well such as Kidzone and Hubbards Cupboard. There is loads of free stuff out there for the young ones. My only draw back was that I didn't find out about the free stuff until I was already knee deep in the process. We are still using Math U See for 1st grade math, Christian Light for Language Arts (includes spelling, handwriting, grammar, punctuation, and the like), and soon to go into 2nd grade with it and are about to start Rod and Staff for reading. We'll be using ACSI and God's Wonderful Works for science and History for Little Pilgrims and History Stories for Children beginning in the Fall, which would be their official start time for 1st grade, again trying to give them as much time for just playing and exploration before tacking on too much. Now, I have only described our approach. There are so many out there. The main thing is....congratulations to you for being able to homeschool your children. It is a BLESSING whatever curriculum, approach, teaching style, etc that you choose. Another wonderful homeschool message board has been The Homeschool Lounge. And a great place to buy/sell used books is Homeschool Classifieds. There is a topic heading on this this Homeschool Spot website titled Favorite Websites (at the bottom of the page under "Homeschooling"). In there, the top one is titled Rae's List of Sites that is beyond fabulous for freeby websites and it's all categorized!!! It really helped me in finding fun activities and "mix em up" worksheets to throw in for fun and variety. Ok, that's all my novel. Happy Homeschooling!
Hi! I'm from Michigan too. I've homeschooled for five years and I'm all over the board for curriculum too. For kindergarten we did lots of learning games and I made up lots of "units" from the library and online freebie sites for science and social studies and health. I found phonics and math materials at the homeschool store and made many of my own. And we made great use of the library for lit and reading. I don't know how close you are to Grand Rapids, but they have a very nice Homeschool Building with a bookstore, classes, support, advice. They also have a sidewalk sale for used materials each year, everyone invited to buy or sell. I like to hit their bookstore and SEE curricula before I buy. I have a teaching degree so I made up a lot of curricula on my own. There are very few laws here regarding homeschool, but there is a very helpful state education website where I find grade level content expectations for each grade in each subject. I like to break them down and set content goals for the year. If you buy curriculum, you'll mostly hit those, but if you make up your own curricula, which is very easy at this age, those check sheets are nice to have. They keep me on track and I'm free to go wherever I want with our lessons. If you want me to pass along the K breakdown, give me a holler. Here's the state website: http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,1607,7-140-28753_33232---,00.html
Welcome from Illinois. In the early years we purchased Explode the Code for reading and Math-U-See for math. The rest of the time we were busy with finding answers to questions in books, online or at the library. The great thing about using this method is that they only need one session of answer finding for the information to stick. So glad you found us, by the way.
Hi and welcome. There are a lot of free resources for little ones online. Some sites particularly are devoted to kindergarten and the earlier years. Also if I may plug here..next year we are organizing a homeschool convention in Northern Ontario. Its just the other side of Soo Michigan for those in Michigan who would like to come We hope to have many vendors too showcasing their curriculums. www.northernontariohsconvention.com
Hello, from a fellow Michigander I'm just starting with our second year of homeschooling. My kids will be doing Kindergarten and 1st grade. There are so many options out there for curriculum, or for making your own for almost nothing. It all comes down to how much time and money you want to invest. Obviously it takes more time to compile your own curriculum, but then it is tailor-made for your family. Last year I together a bunch of different resources on my own, which was great (but more time-consuming as far as planning). This year I purchased a curriculum from My Father's World. And, next year, who knows? The nice thing about homeschooling is that you can change curriculum/methods/etc in order to meet the needs of your kids! It is nice that your girls are close in age. You'll find that you can combine a lot of subjects together. I do that with my kids who are 21 months apart. The most important thing you can do for them now though is read, read, read to them. Also, if your five year old is ready you can start a phonics program with her. I'm glad you found the Spot. You'll find a lot of wisdom and encouragement from the people on here. Homeschooling has been such a blessing to our family, and I pray it is the same for yours
Welcome! As the others have stated, there are tons of resources out there online. My kids are 2nd and 4th this year, but I still prefer pulling information together to actual texts (we do use some, but I suppliment like crazy). Check out your local state laws. Another source that helped me to jumpstart was the Worldbook scope and sequence. Don't get bogged down in the expectations for grade level- just take what you feel is valuable and skip the rest. There also are books out there "what your --th grader needs to know" that really helped me keep my material more age appropriate. Again, I think it's best to use as a guide to help ME, not as a specific list.
