HOMESCHOOLING

I must confess, many years ago, I had judgmental thoughts about homeschooling, due to some misconceptions about what homeschooling was really about. And now -here we are..homeschooling our daughter!! You know the saying "what goes around come around!"

To be honest- we are really enjoying our time with Kayla at home..spending some one on one time with her...investing in her future. Home schooling isn't an inadequate way to educate a child like I had always labelled it to be. It actually can be a very sufficient and competent way to teach a child.

GRANTED there is lots of preparation that goes into homeschooling a child. Knowing your childs needs, selecting curriculum, implementing a scheduled school system that works for everyone, connecting with other homeschoolers....and so on and so forth!

So here we are- WEEK 2 of homeschooling and it hasn't been too bad. We have lots of resources and tools to work with, newly reorganized schedules which have made educating our child at home a reality, a school system that really works, met up with several homeschool girls and joined the local homeschool association.

Let me show you all a glimpse of what this looks like at the Strickland home.

Here is her desk... this actually was Joel's desk when he was a little boy..we repainted it purple..the top still needs to be replaced- but it works for now. (The gum ball machine is her reward system. Every subject she completes cheerfully and completely she is awarded a gum ball. When a certain amount of gum balls have been awarded- she gets to go on a fun outing of her choosing.



Here is Kayla's math teacher! haha, seriously though, Joel teaches Kayla all her math. They have alot of fun together learning and exercising their math skills!











Here is her daily planner. The public school provided and uses these with the 3rd graders and we decided to keep using it at home. Its been a great resource. I just write out in each subject what her work is, and we check it off as its completed throughout the day.









SUBJECTS we are covering:

MATH: We are focusing alot on math right now. We have a great "HOOKED ON MATH" (by the makers of Hooked On Phonics) program we are using. It has games, songs, flashcards, dry erase sheets, posters, and lots more to work with. There are four levels to this curriculum, and we are on level one. It says level four is a fourth grade level.

This is Kayla going to bed with her tape player, she is wanting to fall asleep to her math songs. She is truly enjoying math these days!












Other subjects we are covering weekly are COMPOSITION & GRAMMAR, SPELLING & VOCABULARY, HANDWRITING, READING, some HISTORY & SCIENCE, and MUSIC & PIANO W/ Ms. Sara.

I love writing lesson plans, and have done so for many years in many different teaching fields. So its been fun to pull together custom-tailored work for Kayla to strengthen her during her time at home.

We also did a fun science project on Monday where we asked the question "How does Popcorn POP?" Kayla wrote out her hypothesis and her procedures. We popped the corn in a frying pan and made some observations. She wrote out her conclusion that popcorn has moisture within, when heated up, it explodes- basically turning the popcorn inside out!
It was lots of fun..and very delicious.





If you asked Kayla what she misses the most about school- she'd tell you that she misses the PEOPLE. She is truly a people person. We are doing things daily that involve interaction with people. (piano w/ Ms. Sara, Kids Kingdom, other homeschooling girls, lifegroup, church, outreaches, and starting in January-she will be enrolling into some co-op classes and/or playing some sports-possibly gymnastics.)

NEEDLESS TO SAY....we are excited about this rich time with Kayla. Not only is it helping her...she is helping me with the boys during the day. Having all Kayla's work done by the afternoon allows us to focus more on Emily when she gets home from school. This decision to homeschool Kayla has benefited everyone..but maybe not the laundry!