How we homeschool

I wanted to write to tell you girls how we are homeschooling now and how our homeschool might look down the road. I say "might" because I am open to allowing you girls to learn in whatever way works best for you. I do, however, have some ideas as to how to guide your learning.

First, we are doing a lot of learning already, even though punkin is 3 and the babies are, well, babies. Punkin is learning  as we do science, math, geography, reading, writing, and art. So, we study nature in our back yard (or house, if the bees come inside and we can catch them in plastic bags, like we did the other day!), count beans or pennies or rice or leaves or... anything! Se look at the map of the United States and see where Colorado, Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida and New Mexico are, so that we have an idea of where all of our family lives. We read bob books, although I'm not pushing reading very much. You are super interested in reading and writing and I let you take the lead. You write your letters, as you please. And you color, paint, write on the sidewalk, play with playdough, and anything else. Basically, you learn while playing. Maria Montessori said that a child's job is to learn as much as they can about the world around them and that they do this through play. So, I provide as many oppurtunities as I can for learning through play, and you do your job!

Apple and Blueberry are learning a lot, too. They're learning to talk by babbling. They're getting around by rolling around to where they want to go. They're smiling or crying to get attention. They're exploring things around them (which we make sure is okay for them to explore!)

My tenative plan at this point is to use the original Konos curriculum. It is a unit study curriculum, where we can study something interesting to you in depth, doing every subject from that topic. For example, if you like tomatoes (which you do), we can grow tomatoes from seeds; learn to take care of them; count, add, and subtract them (as you get older); read about them; draw and color them; learn about the history and geography of tomatoes, etc. The thing I like about Konos is that it uses unit topics related to Godly character traits, such as kindness or compassion. I also like the original Konos because it is basically a big book of activities to do broken up into the units. It doesn't offer workbooks or anything extremely put together (although Konos does offer this, just not in the basic model), which is good for me because I'm not the type to follow a curriculum very well, anyways. In fact, we probably won't even use the Konos until Punkin is at a third grade level. Eventually, you will also learn to copy writings of great people, dictation and report writing, which I'm hoping you don't hate. However, I do think that is one of the "regular school" things we will do because it will teach you reading comprehension and how to write well. Until then, we'll just keep doing what we're doing ;o) !

Another huge part of our homeschooling will be helping others. I'm planning to go regularly to visit nursing homes, soup kitchens and The Children's Hospital. I think that the development of your character is just as important as your education. We will also be starting a family business at some point, probably when Punkin is around 6. Your dad is great at running a business and I think he should teach you how to, as well. This will benefit you in your personal and business life, even if you never open your own business. My parents have a business and I learned a great deal from them. I would like you to have this oppurtunity, as well. Your dad would like to help you become real estate agents and buy a house before you go to college so that you can do that on the side to support yourself.

Well, I think that's about it for our plans for how to homeschool you. Like I said earlier, my plans are based more on you individually. These are very fluid plans. It'll be interesting to see how they evolve!