Adventures in Home Schooling : Part One

I have two daughters, Amelia and Olivia. At 5 and 3, these kids are a handful. So it has become glaringly apparent to me that I’ve lost my mind since I decided to homeschool them. Together. At the same time. In addition to working part-time early mornings and taking online and late night college classes. Ok, so all “what the heck were you thinking?!” comments aside, I am fully confident in my ability to not screw this up. Over the coming months, I’ll be keeping you up to date on the exciting life of my crazy family and our journey.

And it Begins…

So the very first thing I did was research. I’ll spare you the details of how many different curriculums I previewed, how many meetings I had with schools and how many calls I made to my mother (who home schooled my sister and I) before finally deciding how to go about this. Given that I have zero experience and wanted a foolproof way to enter the world of homeschooling, I went with K12 Virtual Academy for Amelia’s kindergarten curriculum. K12 is not a “home school” in the strictest sense of the word, but is officially recognized and funded as an “online public school.” While parents can supplement their children’s learning with whatever they’d like, families are given guidelines and lesson plans to make sure they stay in accordance with state laws and educational expectations. So with our giant boxes of preselected curriculum, teacher’s handbooks and supplies, plus the extra goodies we picked out for Olivia, we prepared ourselves for The Big Day.

Gathering the Tools

While K12 provides nearly everything you need (texts, workbooks, art supplies and more) we still needed to get some essentials and set up a Classroom Corner. Given that we live in an apartment and space is at a premium, we did some clever maneuvering to set up a dedicated area for Amelia’s desk and the girls’ supplies. After a trip to IKEA for organizational helpers (like a towel rod with hanging cups to use for pencils, crayons and scissors) and an expedition to Staples to hit up their back-to-school sale, we were good to go!

The Big Day

Monday was our first day. To say it went smoothly would be a big fat lie. While it wasn’t an epic fail, we definitely have some kinks to work out. For example, trying to figure out the best time to cover certain subjects has been a bit of a mystery. Is math best for early morning? Language arts before bed? Music… in the car?! Most importantly, when the heck can we get them both to sit still at the same time? ;)

Are any of you home schooling or were homeschooled? Do you have any valuable tips or tricks? Let us know! We can use all the help we can get!

Check back next time for an update and wish us luck!