When I first thought about homeschooling my kids a couple years back… I only had two kids then and I currently have four. I had the mindset that homeschool needed to recreate a classroom setting. I bought lots of workbooks and printed a lot of things. I had an entire file system for my 3 and 1 year old at the time.
I browsed Pinterest and printed all the things. All the things I thought would help me best create a brick and mortar public school.
And well that only lasted a couple of months before my stress level to act like a teacher that I never went to school for became to much. I hadn’t started my simple living journey yet and my plate looked more like a buffet table. But there was only me and not to long after I had a couple more kids.
So I dropped the entire idea. I set all the things aside and never touched them for years. Yes I kept them during all my decluttering moments. With the thought process that I may one day want to use them and homeschool again.
When corona hit and my older two kids were forced to distant learn I pulled them out and tried to play teacher. Those stressful feelings came creeping back in. Slowly…. until it was summer break and I was able to pack them back up. I was done with trying to recreate a classroom setting.
Well fast forward to now… which is the same place many parents are at. Do I homeschool. Do I do online school. Do I send my kids back to public school to wear a mask more than I’d like them to. With never seeing their teacher smile at them. So I started to browse the idea of homeschool again. Picturing all the things that stressed me out before. And I didn’t feel content with choosing homeschool or any of my other options.
Well then I started talking to a homeschool and fellow minimalist mom of four about how she did it without stressing over it all the time. And she introduced me to minimalist homeschooling.
You can check out her instagram here where she shares lots of tips for simple living. Or you can check out her blog here where she shares more in depth on all the things she shares on her Instagram.
She opened my eyes to the fact that homeschool isn’t the act of trying to recreate a brick and mortar school setting. She introduced me to Charlotte Mason. Which if your pondering the idea of homeschooling past this corona time. I highly recommend you check out her methods!
Now a lot of what our days will look like will be recreations of how Kelly shared with me about how she does it. So I can’t much credit for the info below. I’ve tweaked things here and there to fit my family but all of this I’ve learned from her.
She answered a ton of questions I had and even did a guest blog post for me to help those who were curious of what homeschool could look like.
All Your Homeschool Questions Answered By Guest Blogger Kelly Briggs
If your wanting to know more about how her daily routine goes. Check out her homeschool routine blog she recently shared… it is so good!
Our Slow and Simple Homeschooling Routine | By Kelly Briggs
Now that you have access to the resource girl That has helped me so much. I want to share what our homeschool days will look like from what she’s taught me.
*Disclaimer to what I’m about to share… this will be based off when we go full swing into homeschool in September (when school starts here).
In the beginning of August we will be doing a “soft start” to work our routine in. This is part of my “de-schooling” process. To take us out of the mindset I mentioned above that stressed me out.
Our Curriculum:
Before I hop into what it will look like. I want to share that our homeschool curriculum (free) will be coming from a Charlotte Mason theory on home school and is AmblesideOnline (AO). Which I’m learning about daily pm her ways to make sure I’m following the methods of the curriculum I was suggested to try out by Kelly (her social links are above)
Our homeschool will be broken up into daily tasks we do each day and then weekly tasks that they get to pick from each day. They will have to pick a certain amount each day and keep the tallies pretty even (Learned that from Kelly)
Daily
Our daily homeschool tasks will include:
- Copy work
- Audio literature twice (taken from our book list provided by (AO) They get to pick from the list what books they would like to listen to that day.
- Foreign Language (we will be doing Spanish on the app duolingo and using YouTube for ASL)
- Reading (my oldest will be reading for 15 minutes a day a book of his choice but at his level)
- Poetry
- Free Draw (my kids love to draw and do artsy things that are hands on… playdoh counts too!)
Weekly
Our weekly tasks will be:
- Timeline (we are doing ours on our family so that it’s something that interests them to start out)
- Handicrafts (this is skill type things. I think we will be doing wood work or something with yarn that allows my three year old to participate also)
- Geography (I’m still learning about the Charlotte Mason way of doing this but will be following the books and lessons found on the AO site)
- Nature study (I’m really excited about this for my kids. It teaches you to pretty much stop and smell the flowers but without touching the flowers)
- Math (we will be doing a mix of online and workbook style of learning. We will use Kahn Academy for the online part)
- Drawing (my kids love to draw. They ask to do it all day long. So we will be using a YouTube channel that walks you through how to draw certain things. And it’s geared for kids. Check them out here.)
- Composer (I’m new to this but for us we will just be listening to the music of the composer for that term while we work. I may ask some questions but I’d like them to just be introduced to it for now.)
- Picture study (we will be studying pictures from famous artists and then discussing the things we see in the pictures. Possibly try and recreate it for fun. The list of artists and pictures is provided by AO via their site)
- Science (for science I’m going to do a mix of what AO recommends and a kids human body encyclopedia I have. So we can learn about our body and the things it’s made of.)
I hope I was able to bring some insight to the things I’ve learned and plan to be doing with my kids this year and hopefully for the years to come if it all goes well.
I’ve connected with some amazing Bloggers to share some Back To School themed blogs with you. Head to each of their blogs to check out what they are sharing.
Cheyenne
Heather
Noemi
https://misssnoemiblogs.wixsite.com/mysite
Shelly
https://www.envision31.com/hope
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Until next time,
Xo Jessica!