July 1.  We’re already out of the box by not participating in a traditional school, so why not jump completely out of the box and start at a non-traditional time?  :)  Where we live, it is hot.  And this year, it is very, very hot.  If we are going to be indoors anyhow avoiding the heat (even pool water is hot – ick!), why not get started and when the weather is beautiful for the few weeks of the year known as spring and fall, we can take a break and enjoy the gorgeous weather outside – while everyone else is in school!  Jackpot!

By choosing to use Sonlight curriculum, I was thankful that the lesson plans for History, Bible, Science, and Language Arts were already laid out for me.  This took off a significant amount of stress!  Of course, seeing the giant sized binder that contains lessons plans for 36 weeks of school is enough to cause an ulcer but there are ways to handle this.

Meet the giant binder:

The *gulp* Instructor's Guide

Meet the handy binder:

The Mini-Binder

For the latter binder, I have merely taken seasoned Sonlight moms’ suggestions and removed approximately four weeks’ worth of lessons and put them into a smaller binder that is easier to tote and flip through.  Genius.  A significant amount of note-taking and checking-marking and date-marking occurs during the school day by mommy/teacher so this was a handy piece of advice.

One week's schedule

I also loved how empty rows were provided for extra subjects – such as the Math-U-See that I pulled in.  I merely hand-wrote it on the chart and away we go!  What I have learned so far is to follow Sonlight’s advice and advice mom friends who also homeschool (whether they use Sonlight or other methods or curriculums).  They are gold mines of advice!

• Do not let the Instructor Guide rule our day, merely use it as a guide.  We do not have to do everything in it.  It is merely a suggestion.
• G is really just in kindergarten and our state only requires math and language arts.  Perspective is king.  I know where to place emphasis and what to let go when needed.
• I can take each subject at G’s pace  - often he moves quickly ahead in one subject and we may stay in one place in other subjects until he is ready to move on.  And that’s perfectly great and exactly why we homeschool.

Since July 1, we have tackled and completed:

• Handwriting Without Tears, Letters and Numbers For Me
• Math-U-See, Primer
• The Boxcar Children, No. 1, by Gertrude Chandler Warner
• Kumon’s My First Book of Money:  Counting Coins

We are currently in the midst of:

• Explode the Code, Book A (Language Arts)
• Handwriting Without Tears, My Printing Book
• Math-U-See, Alpha
• The Jesus Storybook Bible (replaced Egermeier’s Bible Story Book – seemed to far above his level at this stage)
• Memorizing one scripture for each letter of the alphabet, currently up to letter D.

History, Geography and a large part of language arts are done through read-alouds and discussion.  Currently, we are reading:

• Living Long Ago (history and geography)
• The Usborne Children’s Encyclopedia (for science, history and geography)
• I Heard Good News Today (missionary stories, history and geography)
• The Llama Who Had No Pajamas
• The Arnold Lobel Book of Mother Goose
• The James Herriott Treasury for Children
• My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett

We use word lists and reader books provided by the authors of the Sonlight curriculum, also well-done.  The huge list of books that we haven’t even touched yet continues.  I’ll do pictures of the room and bookshelves another day.  Spelling is incorporated as well.  G is not as fond of this part of homeschooling and would prefer to do math and science all day, but we get through it with motivators.  Namely, more math.  Strange, I know.  ”Hey, G, if we complete these spelling/reading/word lists, we can do another chapter of math!”  Strange child.  He IS his father’s son.

Science uses a combination of read-alouds from Usborne books to cover so many areas of science, then you complete various experiments.  G and S both thoroughly enjoy the experiments and G so quickly grasps the science concepts that it stuns me.  This is Chris’s area and I enjoy watching them all interact at science experiment time one or two evenings a week.  I even caught S trying to replicate an experiment about wind and air the next day on her own.  It was SO cute.

I know.  It seems like A LOT, but when you look at the list, we read from some of these books only once a week, only a few pages or only one page at a time.  We do math every day (of course, G would expect no less) and learning how to read every day, as is handwriting practice.  Science so far is about once or twice a week.  The rest I remain flexible on as it fits our family schedule with a goal to complete all the week’s activities by the end of the week.  We incorporate games as well as weekly speech therapy.  (I can play Chutes and Ladders in my sleep.)

And the best part?  On a good day, we are done in a couple of hours.

I love homeschooling.  I really, really do.