This will be my second year homeschooling. Last year I did K and PreK with my two children. I did not follow my curriculums very well and I would say it was a bit of a flop. Handwriting went OK - my 4 year old daughter learned how to print upper and lower case and copied sentences fairly well. My 6 year old son learned cursive and copied sentences very well. I would say I pushed them too hard in writing and I know that is not wise for many reasons down the road.... Reading also went well - I used Abeka with my daughter and she got up to reading simple words with long vowel sounds. My son was on the 3rd reading book of Abeka1 readers when we finished. Reading was the best 'subject' because we timed it and I didn't pressure them. We also did Math-U-See - primer with my daughter and Alpha with my son- that didn't go quite as well because I lingered too long after they learned a concept and didn't move through in a timely manner. I just kind of did my own thing and that didn't work like I thought it would - so I am ready to have the accountability that goes with FOLLOWING the program.
Just to give a brief history of why we are homeschooling - it was my idea after meeting several women who homeschooled and my desire to keep my children home with me so I could continue to be the predominant influence in their lives. I am in Christ but struggle with consistency in terms of my relationship with Him. My husband was 100% AGAINST homeschooling when I first brought it up. He told me that although he was not complaining, I had a hard enough time keeping our home 'together' and such. Well, I took that as a challenge and worked for months on keeping up with homemaking. I have a hard time keeping stuff put away. I get it out and don't put it up! Anyway - I'm happy to say that the house started staying tidy and I continued to desire to homeschool and it just so happened that because of my husband working out of town when school started last year that we decided to homeschool so we could all be together. He doesn't see everything I see in terms of my failures. He just sees our daughter reading and writing and our son reading independently. He is satisfied but I was not, so I started researching curriculum and here I am!
I decided on LHFHG for my daughter and Beyond for my son. I could have done LHFHG with both of them, but I decided they each need their own thing. They are together all the time and I wanted to work with each of them alone, right where they place in terms of the charts.
I'm hoping to start at 8:30am and finish with both by lunch time so we can have time for fun and chores in the afternoons.
I don't have any questions right now - but I have not received my shipment yet.
I am looking forward to getting to know some of you and learning from you and your experiences with the program.
I hope you'll find this year to be a such a blessing to your family.
My focus last year was on consistently getting school finished...HOD was a huge help with that! This year it's going to be consistently getting chores and laundry done (without letting school slide). It's definitely a challenge to HS, but one that I've found to be very rewarding. 