Welcome

"Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6

A little background about our family:
My husband Loren and I have three children; Faith (7), Seth (4) and Anna (2). We have a dairy farm on the land that was settled by my great-grandfather back in 1893 after he emigrated from Germany at the age of 15.
Loren is on the Wolf Lake Fire Department and is chairman of Toad Lake Town Board. Currently he is also working part-time at Menards.
I work from home as a free-lance writer for the Frazee-Vergas Forum and am also a certified birth doula.
Faith is in first grade at home, Seth is enrolled in pre-school at Head Start where he receives speech therapy, but we plan to homeschool him for Kindergarten, and Anna is an active and healthy toddler.

Why we started homeschooling:
When Faith was two-years-old I was already feeling anxious about the day she would leave us to attend school; it just didn't feel natural to be away from my child for that many hours a week. We had been attending ECFE classes since she was 6-months-old and continued until she reached pre-school age. Although we enjoyed the classes, I gained much insight into what the future would hold for our children in a public school setting. I began to feel that our values and beliefs would not be upheld in this environment.
I was reminded of this today when I heard Pink Floyd sing on the radio, "We don't need no education, We don't need no thought control, No dark sarcasm in the classroom, Teacher leave them kids alone." That may be a bit extreme, but I was one who said, "I could never homeschool." But God helped me see that it could be done by working through our neighbors, friends and acquaintances that had already started on this journey.
I read and researched, gave it much thought and prayer, and after discussing it with Loren we decided to try teaching Faith pre-school at home with the plan of taking it one year at a time. We continued the following year with Kindergarten, but I can honestly say I questioned our choice on and off the first two years because I was afraid I was making her "miss out" on something or was "holding her back." But my heart and instincts told me to continue. Now, in our third year I can say that I homeschool with confidence. Our plan is to still take it one year at a time, but as long as I feel capable of teaching and our children enjoy it, we plan on continuing.

Curriculum we are currently using:
The past two years I made up most of our own curriculum with somewhat of a "unit studies" approach, but this year I purchased everything through Rainbow Resource Center Inc. In the past I have also purchased teaching materials and arts & crafts supplies from Trend, Discount School Supply, and various local stores. I set a budget for myself, but also take into consideration that we cannot put a price tag on our children's education.
If I had to put a label on what kind of homeschoolers we are I suppose we would best fit under "traditional" because I like routines, a schedule, a curriculum to follow, and an area of the house setup as our "school area" (although we also use other areas of our home too). But I also take into consideration our children's learning styles and interests, so we could also fit a little bit in the "eclectic" category.

This is what Faith has been using this year for first grade:

Reading: Hooked on Phonics program, Book-It program
Writing: Handwriting without Tears, creative writing ideas from superteacherworksheets.com
Math: Alpha Omega Lifepac
Health: Horizons Health
Science: Brown Bag Science books, Science Play
Geography: Beginning Geography books, A Trip around the World (Book 1)
Bible: Daily Devotions, Happy Times magazine, Family Bible Library books
Spelling: School Zone workbook, worksheets from superteacherworksheets.com
Arts & Crafts: The Mailbox Big Book of Monthly Crafts
Music: CDs from the library, percussion instruments, keyboard and guitar
Physical Ed: Lots of outside time, swimming, gymnastics, soccer and trips to the park
We also supplement with reading books, some educational computer games, reusable wipe-off books, and of course a homeschooler's best resource; the library.

Because Seth attends Head Start in the afternoons three days a week I do not have a set curriculum for him at home this year because I feel it would be too much structure and activity for him each day. So, while we are doing school in the mornings he is allowed free choice of sit down activities (like puzzles, coloring sheets, workbook pages, games, etc.) and he participates in all group and hands on activities. Anna usually just goes with the flow and likes to do whatever the rest of us are doing.

Our schedule:
Our school days are Tuesday-Friday. We try to start school around 9:00 in the morning, take a mid-morning break, do another subject and then break for lunch. We finish up the remainder of our work after lunch and are usually done around 2:00 in the afternoon.
We do a daily devotion each morning at breakfast along with a Bible themed activity on Wednesdays and read a Bible story on Sunday evenings.
We begin each school day with the Pledge of Allegiance because I feel it is important to teach our children respect for the flag, our country and its people, especially our veterans, no matter what our personal feelings may be about our government, its laws, war or any other political matters.
We look at our calendar and review the day, month, year, season and look ahead to any special days that are coming up. We also check the weather and discuss the temperature, weather conditions and dress our weather guy for the day.
We have Health on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, a Science experiment is done each Thursday and an Arts & Crafts project is completed each Friday. Reading, Writing, Math and Spelling are done each day.
Our school calendar runs from mid-September until the end of May with a two week Christmas break and a one week spring break sometime in March or April. We also allow days off for other major holidays, birthdays, field trips and sick days. Sometimes we will use a Saturday as a makeup day if needed.
Some subjects, like reading, are continued throughout the summer and this year I plan on doing one unit study in June, July and August to add in some extra fun activities that we didn't have time for during the regular school year.

Purpose of this blog:
My plans for this blog are to update it with our daily activities in each subject as a way to journal it for our own memories, to help keep our friends and family informed as to our homeschooling activities, and also to share some ideas with other homeschooling parents. Well, let's get started.......

Tuesday, March 16 (This week we switched our Health and Bible days because I needed some supplies from the store for an activity. One benefit of homeschooling: a flexible schedule.)

Daily Devotions: Read Mark 12:13-17 Paying Taxes to Caesar
Is it necessary to pay our taxes? Jesus says, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."

Bible: Read a poem about sheep going to their shepherd in the Happy Times magazine and Faith filled in the rhyming number for each verse. We reviewed last week's Bible story about the shepherd and the lost sheep and how it relates to our relationship with Jesus.

Writing: Faith did a journal entry for the capital letter T, which she practiced writing a full line of. She chose the word Tiger and drew a picture of Tigger and Roo.

Math: Started to learn fractions by dividing different objects into one-half and writing 1/2. Completed one worksheet page in the Lifepac workbook.

Geography: Left China and headed to Japan, which we located on the map and globe. Gave a brief overview of the country we will be visiting for the next two weeks.

Spelling: Practiced writing words with the -in, -on, -un endings.

Reading: Read words with the dr- and qu- prefix, did a word search in the workbook and chose one story to read out loud.

Wednesday, March 17

For St. Patrick's day the kids are looking for paper clovers that are hidden throughout the house.

Daily Devotions: Read Mark 12:41-44 The Widow's Offering
Discussed what it means to give with "a joyful heart" and encouraged the children to use some of the money God has blessed them with for the Sunday school offering.

Health: Used our health puppets, Sam and Terry, to discuss healthy snack choices and nutrition. The kids helped make frozen yogurt pops, completed a page for the booklets they are making about taking care of their bodies, talked about why we pray before we eat, and sang a song of thanks to God for our food.

Geography: Learned some simple phrases in Japanese and watched a Little Pim language DVD.

Writing: Did creative writing where Faith made up a story about a leprechaun.

Spelling: Did a St. Patrick's day word search and alphabetized the words she practiced writing yesterday from word list 2 (superteacherworksheets.com)

Math: Continued with fractions by learning to divide a group of objects in half. Did one workbook page from Lifepac.

Reading: Read words with the tr- prefix and the story "Miss Prim's Hat"