5 Reasons Why We Homeschool Year Round

I homeschool my children year round. Our schedule and the type of things we do during the summer is different than what we do during the traditional school year. In the summer we do more nature studies, poetry, art, and whatever else might interest my kids at the time.

Here are my 5 reasons why I homeschool all year!


1
I don't want my kids to forget all the things they learned at the end of the school year when we get back into school after summer. I like to make sure they stick to their math lessons and reading. This is especially important to me for my younger ones who are just learning to read.

2
We get to do a lot of outside learning. We live in Michigan where winter can be long. (It's April 13th and we have snow storms coming)
Summer allows us to get outside and explore science through nature. We do a lot of our nature studies in the summer. I even have some fun poetry teatimes planned for this summer!

3
We are always ahead.
Because we school through the summer, we can take longer breaks during the traditional school year. For Christmas break, we can take 3 weeks off. If the weather is nice in the fall we can take a "sun day" and enjoy the weather before it gets cold.

4
During the traditional school year, I can slow down lessons that the kids who might need a bit more time understanding it. I don't feel rushed or a time pressure to get things completed. The kids don't feel that either so it helps them perform better.

5
Because of all these reasons we can gently homeschool year long. We have no need to "hit things hard" or rush to finish anything. All of this makes homeschooling more enjoyable for the kids and less stressful for me.

Homeschool Q&A

I asked my facebook friends to share some questions they had about homeschooling. Here are some of those questions.

What is the process to start homeschooling your children 
This depends on the state you live in. If you are interested in homeschooling your child you should look up your state laws. HSLDA is a great resource for state laws about homeschooling.

 Do you ever fear they will have social anxiety from homeschooling and not being in a school environment?
 I personally do not worry that my kids will have social anxiety because we homeschool. In fact, our kids are more socially engaged in healthy environments and with people of all ages. My 13yr old can talk to a 30yr old just as confidently as she can talk with someone her own age.
My kids are involved in activities with kids of their own ages like church clubs, co-op classes, sports, and library functions.

How long per day do you have to spend on each lesson and are they homeschooled approximately the same hours that they would be in school?
Some states require that you count hours of school instead of days. We are in a state that counts the days.
The second part of this question will be different depending on the family. For our family, no, my kids are not schooled the same hours as they would be in public school.
There are many different reasons for this. In a school setting, you usually have one teacher in a class teaching 25 or more students. I am able to give my children one on one attention during a lesson and this makes it go by faster. Once they understand a concept, we move on to the next lesson.
We start school at 9am. My 2nd grader and preschooler are done with school by 12. My 6th and 8th grader is done around 1 or 2. (This includes breaks)

How do you keep the kids socialized and are there still after school type of activities they can do? Band? Dances?I keep my kids socialized just like any other kid. They go to birthday parties, have friends over or go to a friend's home, and make new friends at a number of different outings. My kids go to church kid group and Sunday school, dance classes, library activities, or other homeschool related outings with other families. There are so many ways to socialize a child without having them go to public school.

In my state homeschool kids can still participate in activities at their local public school. They can join sports teams, take classes, and even do band or choir. I'm not sure if this is an opportunity in all states so you will have to look up that information for your state.


How do you teach all of them at once if they're in different grades?I spend most of my time teaching my 2nd grader and preschooler. My 8th and 6th grader are excellent readers and can do 90% of their work without me. I am available to answer questions or help them but I want them to be independent learners because I believe this will help them in the future.
I can also group them all together on different subjects. We all do Bible work together, poetry, nature study, and are currently learning about all of the US Presidents.
It's all about balance and time management. It took me some time to learn how to do this, but we made it work.

How do you go about starting homeschool? Where do you get the curriculum?
To start homeschooling you should first look into your state laws. I would also find some local homeschool moms that you can talk with. You can learn a lot from other homeschool families. I will expand more on this question in another blog.
You can get curriculum anywhere. There are many different companies to purchase from and you can also buy materials from Amazon. It all depends on what kind of curriculum you are looking for. I like to purchase from Amazon, Timberdoodle, Rainbow Resources and Christian Books websites. You can also find things on Pinterest and your local library.

What do you do when you reach a subject that you yourself are not very good at?
Thankfully there are a number of wonderful curriculum that will do all the teaching for you.
I am not the best at math so my kids use Teaching Textbooks. It's a computer-based program that teaches my kid's math and keeps track of their progress and scores. You can find similar curriculum for just about any subject.

How do you know if your child is where they should be?
Some states will require that homeschool children take tests. We are in a state that does not require this of us, but we can still have them tested. Testing can be done online or through a local school, or other private testing agencies.
Some curriculum will compare their levels to public school grade levels. I find that most homeschool materials are ahead of public school standards with their grade levels.
 
What does a normal day consist of?
This is a great question and I will have to write a separate blog on it, otherwise, this blog post will be too long.

Do you follow a schedule?
I like to start our homeschool days at 9. We have a little routine we follow to help us keep on track. I like to keep it simple here.

What kind of outside of home activities do you do?
Church, dance, drawing class, piano, library events, and community functions. I do my best to not over schedule our family so we can focus on our work at home during the traditional school months.

I hope you found this helpful and if you have any more questions, feel free to let me know!

Homeschooling a Struggling Learner

Homeschooling can be very rewarding for both the kids and myself. I get to see all those "aha" moments and share in their amazement when they learn new things. We get to spend some great time together and I would never trade it in for anything in the world.

But, homeschooling can also be hard, especially if you have a child who struggles. My son is my struggling learner. He struggles with reading and math. Often times he gets frustrated during his lessons and cry. He gets very discouraged and second guesses himself making his lessons drag on for longer than they need to.

As his Mother and teacher, I feel discouraged as well and second guess myself. Am I doing enough for him? Am I giving him a good education? What am I doing wrong? How can I do better? Having my son and myself being discouraged is a recipe for disaster.

I have found a few things that work for us and I would like to share those things with you. I hope that you find my tips to be encouraging and helpful

1.   Stay calm. Staying calm during those frustrating times will make things go much smoother for you and your child. I have made the mistake many times of not staying calm and that always makes the situation worse. I also feel terrible about myself afterward. So try taking a short break if you need it and go back to the lesson when you are calm. Your child may also need to take a break as well. 
   
2. Try new things.
   If something seems to not be working or things just aren't "clicking" with your child, you may want to try something new. For my son, that was changing math curriculum. I also needed to add a few things into his lesson to assist him in understanding his work. 
   
3. Take time off.
   Sometimes my son and I just needed a break. Instead of doing our usual lessons I would just read to him instead or let him go play outside. Skipping a day of lessons isn't going to ruin your child. I found it refreshing to take a day off. When we got back into his lessons the next day, he was more confident in himself.
    
   
4.  Offer words of encouragement.
   This can go a long way. When my son is reading I say things like "good job, you got this, wow that was a hard word." My son smiles at me and finishes off his reading strong.
   
5. All kids are different.
   Always remember that kids will learn at different paces. What works for one child will not always work for the other and that's okay! One reason I homeschool my son is that I know he doesn't fit in the typical box of learning. It takes him longer to learn things and he learns things in different ways. 
   
6. Give grace.
   Give your child grace and yourself grace. If you have a bad day and end up losing your cool, give yourself some grace.
   
   
   

   

   
   

September Homeschool Favorites

If you are a homeschooling parent you know that there are some items we couldn't live without. Things that make our children's lessons go over more smoothly, or our day run better.
Today I am going to share with you what my current homeschool favorites are.
I will leave links down below to each item. (There might be one item I can't find since I bought it at a rummage sale.)

To show off these things better I made a YouTube video. I hope you enjoy it!

This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive payment if you make a purchase using this link.

First Day of Fall Poetry Tea Time

Today is the first day of fall. Here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, it doesn't feel like fall. Usually, we have fall weather early but today it was hot, humid, and we had thunderstorms. This didn't stop us from enjoying our weekly poetry tea time, though.

Every Friday we finish up any school work that needed to get done and later we do a nature study and poetry tea time. My kids love our Fridays here and look forward to it all week. I'm happy they are so excited for it, we have so much fun together.

This week we read a few poems from Robert Frost and Where The Sidewalk Ends poetry books. This week I also added in 2 fall time books I picked up at the library, Bella's Fall Coat and Plumply, Dumply, Pumpkin.

The Robert Frost book we use is called Poetry for Young People: Robert Frost. I love the illustrations in this book and the explanations of the poems on the bottom of each poem. It makes discussions of the poems a lot easier. I highly recommend this book if you are looking for a poetry book for middle school aged children and up. You can find the book here...Poetry for Young People: Robert Frost

Where The Sidewalk Ends is an excellent book for children of all ages. The poems in here are short and silly. We all enjoy reading these and the kids don't ever want me to stop reading. You can find the book here....Where the Sidewalk Ends: Poems and Drawings

We read poems from each of the poetry books each week. Once we finish Robert Frost poems we will start on a new Poet. I will sometimes include books or poems I find online. Before we start reading the poems we make a special treat to eat. Today that treat was chocolate chip cookies. The kids all helped to make the cookies. Brayden and Haddy were very excited for the cookies and could hardly wait for them to be done.

After the cookies were done we all sat down at the table to eat and read. I love doing this with the kids each week. It's a special time we get to spend together and their lives are enriched with poetry.

Do you do poetry tea time? What is your favorite thing about it? Leave a comment below because I would love to hear from you.

 This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive payment if you make a purchase using this link.

BookShark Level 7

It's so hard to believe that this is Aaliyah's last year of middle school. When did she grow up so fast? I know as parents we say that a lot but it seems so unreal that she is 13yrs old.

We pulled Aaliyah from public school last year in November. She didn't want to be pulled but I missed not having her home and felt she was missing out on so much. After a few weeks of being homeschooled and meeting new homeschool friends, she has come to love homeschool.

Last year I used a mix of different curriculum for her. This year I am using the BookShark level 7 for her. BookShark is the perfect fit for her. She loves to read and will read just about anything. We are in week 3 of BookShark and I find that I have to slow her down in her reading because she is enjoying the book selections so much.

Here is a look at all the things we have for her this year. The only thing I didn't show is her math. We use Teaching Textbooks.
Click HERE to go directly to the YouTube video. Click HERE to go directly to BookShark level 7 curriculum.

BookShark Level 2

This is our 2nd year with BookShark. Last year we used level K and level 1. It was so easy to use different levels for 1 child based on that child's needs.
So this year we are using level 2 and finishing up language arts level 1. I posted a YouTube video with a fast look at everything we received for our level 2 BookShark curriculum. You can view that video HERE or just view it on the top of this blog post.

We are a Christian family using a secular curriculum. We enjoy BookShark because they stay neutral on religious ideas and beliefs. This makes it easy for me to add in our beliefs and any Biblical curriculum I would like my kids to use. If you have not checked out BookShark I recommend you do. BookShark does all the work for you laying out each weeks lessons plans. With homeschooling 4 kids this year I need things to be as simple as possible.
You can get a full look at BookShark Level 2 by clicking HERE.

Why We Homeschool

Every family chooses to homeschool for a wide range of reasons. I believe those reasons can change and differ between each child. I made a short YouTube video of why we homeschool that you can find right HERE or watch below.
Enjoy!!!!