Our Homeschool Curriculum

In my opinion, choosing curriculum is one of the most challenging and potentially frustrating parts of homeschooling. I was home-schooled and my mom would get out all of her catalogs and just POUR over them for EVER! She was extremely picky and very good at picking out the best stuff. However, sometimes the curriculum just did not fit. I switched Grammar curriculum 3 times and it was so confusing trying to get the right one that it wasn't until I went to college that I finally grasped the concepts. 

But that was BEFORE! Now us home-school moms are BLESSED! We have so many resources at our fingertips! There are curriculum swaps and homeschooling conferences and FACEBOOK! So that's what I did. I had a shout-out on Facebook and asked if anyone had used the curriculum I was interested in. I had 4 of my friends who had used it and HIGHLY recommended it and now I highly recommend it too! I use My Father's World.

I can only vouch for the Kindergarten curriculum but let me tell you - this is GREAT! It's set up for a six-day week but the sixth day is primarily a book day. Which my kids LOVE! Each week is assigned a letter and each day of the week has different emphasis -- Introducing the letter, Handwriting, Math, reading/phonics, Art. But while having different emphasis, every day works on identifying and understanding the sound the letter makes as well as blending the sound with other letters. 

Not only does each week have a letter but it has a topic for each week. For example O- Octopus. So each day has different lessons relating to the topic. Presenting information about sea creatures, Making a hand octopus, coloring a map of the world and showing the blue ocean, go on an ocean outing or start an aquarium, creating an ocean mural. Then on book day it recommends 3 different books and a guide for each book. 

This works perfectly for me because I struggle with IDEAS! I am not blessed with the gift of teaching but I can use other people's ideas with no problem! 

I painted the letters to further define them! 

The ONE thing I'm not really crazy about is it doesn't follow the alphabet - for example the first week is S. This all works out when it comes to blending letters to make words but kind of different. 

I only bought the curriculum, I did not buy any of their extra things - but you will want something for the textile letters. I had ABC bath toys and they work great! And they are fairly cheap at Wal-Mart. It gives a hands-on experience that I can tell is helpful. 

So there it is - my curriculum for my kiddos! I am using it for both my 4-year-old and my 2-almost-3-year-old. I don't know yet if I will use My Father's World curriculum every year - I'll have to see what people say! 

Why We Homeschool Right Now

I was homeschooled my entire life and my husband went to public and Christian schools growing up. We could have gone either way. We could have made the decision to send our kids to school or homeschool. To be honest, when I was growing up I had made up my mind that I would NEVER homeschool my kids and I would NEVER be a stay-at-home mom. HA HA HA! God has a way of changing your mind and laughing at the words "NEVER" and "WON'T." 

So here we are - I'm a stay-at-home mom and now a homeschooling one at that! But my husband and I came to the decision to homeschool fairly easily. For one thing, I was willing to do it and for another, we were heading into ministry and that can often mean a lot of moving. But those really weren't the REAL reason for choosing this option. 

We chose to homeschool because we feel that is what God led us to do. That's it. I could go on and on about the pros and cons of homeschool or public school or private school. But the truth of the matter is, I believe that God sets us up for a certain path and if we choose to follow God's ways and not our own, He will be glorified in His choice. The issue isn't homeschool versus sending your kids to school, the issue is following God's choice for you. For us, God made it pretty clear we should homeschool. 

It's incredible how God has given me a desire to teach my own kids. From the time that I taught Aimee how to write her first "A" for Aimee, I have gotten a thrill from teaching my kids and watching the light turn on in their eyes when understanding happens. It's fantastic and I wouldn't want it any other way. At least for now, unless God changes the direction of our path! 

Organization: Homeschool Room

Right now, the ONLY clean room in my house is: MY SCHOOLROOM!!! Does this ever happen to you? I worked really hard on my schoolroom last week to get it ready for the first days of school and the rest of the house fell into disrepair. Sigh. 

BUT! I am in love with our room! And I just HAVE to show it off with you and give you my ideas on decorating CHEAPLY but creatively!

I hung twine on the walls and paper-clipped the ABC cards from the curriculum I'm using across the top of the two walls you can see here. The posters were very exciting because on Amazon they cost about $5 a piece and I was NOT excited about that so I contemplated making my own but wasn't really excited about that either but then DOLLAR TREE came to my rescue and they had 2 for $1! They are pretty good except they have a baseball hat for the letter "C" which is a little confusing for little people - but oh well it's fifty cents! I also hung twine across the walls above my kids' desks so they could attach their artwork or other accomplishment papers with clothes pins - they thought these were AWESOME and proceeded to fill them up right away! 

As you can see, my desk and my chair on wheels is in between my kids two desks and it works great going from one desk to the other and back - AND I can do my own thing when they are doing worksheets on their own. I also was able to show them a science Youtube video yesterday which was a really fun addition to the curriculum. 

Emily even has her little nook all figured out by my bookcase which has paper, books, and puzzles - makes it easy to have all of that in here if I decide to use them in my teaching. Oh and have to tell you about the "Tell Me About Today" calendar in the corner - it was FIFTY CENTS!!! Yes, at a thrift shop! I was jumping UP and DOWN about that one! These babies run anywhere from $40 and up!  

What do you think? Do you have any thrifty ideas for decorating a schoolroom? 

I'm linked up with these AMAZING ladies at:

     

Life in Our Fishbowl: School and the Pastor's Kids

Today is our first official day of homeschooling! It's our first year and I'm super excited! So this week's posts will all be about homeschooling! Today I want to talk about Pastor's kids and school. 

It's always interesting to me to see what Pastor's families choose when considering schooling their kids. Sometimes it surprises me, sometimes it doesn't. But what I have noticed among our friends who are pastor's families, it's pretty evenly distributed between homeschooling and sending their kids to school. 

My dad became a pastor when I was 13 years old and he was looking for a church for a little over a year before God called him to a church. But I remember that some of the churches we visited were quite opinionated on whether or not the Pastor's family should homeschool. Sometimes it was a matter of whether or not the other families in the church homeschooled or not. But one particular church was very interested in my dad becoming the pastor there if my dad would change one thing. They wanted him to send his kids to public school even though all of their kids homeschooled. My dad said no to that church because he felt as though God wanted his kids to be taught at home.

When we first moved here and began our ministry, we started to meet people in the town and I will never forget meeting a couple of the school bus drivers. Their first question was "How old are your kids? We drive the in-town school buses." As soon as I told my kids ages which were then 3 and 2 - it was obvious that we would not be sending them to school on the buses. But I chose to not tell them that we were going to homeschool because I did not want the first impression of the Pastor's family to be misunderstood as antagonistic towards our public schools.

A lot of small towns have a wonderful school pride and they can often become offended at homeschoolers because they think we won't support the area schools. It's often misunderstood that ALL homeschoolers have a problem with public schools. That's not entirely true. For us, we are willing to send our kids to school, we just feel that we chose the best choice for OUR family by choosing to homeschool. 

If you've been following me for a while you know that I believe that it's important to hold yourself to the standard of God and not the standard of men or even our own standards. This applies to homeschooling as well. You can only make the decision for your family and you should not force your own opinions of righteousness on others. Homeschooling is not the best choice unless it is also God's choice. 

Back to Seminary

So guess where we are again. Sam is back in school. Last year Sam graduated with a Master's Degree but he also completed his first year towards a M. Div. with the thought that if God wanted Sam to continue, he would. Crazy thing is how it all fell together! Sam had to take one module that he missed last year to complete his degree so he knew this week he was going back. We received the module schedule and were looking at it and I saw that there was a counseling module that same week only in the evenings that he could take at the same time. Since I took every possible counseling class in college that I could, I knew that Sam would eat it up because whether Sam agrees with me or realizes it or not, God has given Sam a counselor's heart. Well guess what, Sam said he did not want to do two classes at the same time so we dropped it. Until Sam received an email with the syllabus for the counseling class saying thank you for signing up for the class. I thought Sam had gone ahead and signed up for the class so I didn't say anything. Sam then asked me if I had signed him up for the class! (Which I would never DREAM of doing that to him!!!!). Needless to say, Sam finished the first night of the class last night and he said that he was LOVING the class and he was really being challenged personally and realizing how important this class was going to be and get this - he wants to take more counseling modules!! Ummm Wow!! As for me, I'm just thankful that we can stay in our house and Sam can attend modules instead of daily classes. Especially since we just learned that the apartment we were living in now has 2 inches of water all over the floor! I know because my brother Paul is living in it! :-/ I am amazed at my God and how He works things out perfectly!

Current Events!

Finally! I'm caught up with the many big events and now onto current news! Sam and I have been amazed to examine the events of our past to see how God has orchestrated events to lead us to where we are now. Sam has been called by God to be a pastor and after the last few years of being in part-time ministry and then Seminary, we are beginning to see the possibilities of being a Pastor's family unfold before us. It is so exciting to see where God will lead us. Do we know yet? Nope, not a clue. But we know that it will happen in God's timing. Sam has preached at several churches and right now we know of two churches that are considering him as a potential candidate. It is so crazy to think that it's almost here. Something that we've been pursuing ever since Sam and I were married is so close we can almost taste it. Which brings me to my dilemma: I am  scared to death! The only thing that keeps me from running the other way is the fact that I know this is what God has for us. Whether Sam becomes a pastor tomorrow or when we're 70! (I really hope we don't have to wait that long!) I'm not only scared to death, I'm also deliriously excited! When our desires match up with God's desires it is an absolutely incredible and powerful thing! I cannot wait to be in ministry alongside my husband. So between being scared to death and being deliriously excited what is my middle ground? I am PRAYING!!!! A LOT!!!! My prayer list is as follows:

1. I am praying first and foremost that God will have His way, not mine. 

2. I am praying that He will shape me and mold me into His image - I definitely need His help!

3. I am praying that I can be the helpmeet and encouragement that I need to be for my gifted husband. 

4. I am praying that I can be the godly mother to my children in amongst the chaos. 

5. I am praying that I will have the patience and the faith for what is coming - whatever that looks like. 

6. I am praying for the unknown things I need to be praying for! 

7. I am praying for the churches that are considering Sam. 

8. I am praying for our present church and the ministry we have there. 

9. I am praying for Sam to have the wisdom that he needs as he leads our family. 

If you could join us in praying for these things, it would be such a joy and encouragement to us! 

Sam's Seminary Graduation

Is this a little belated? Yes, but so important in our lives it cannot be left out of my blogging world! My husband graduated from Seminary! This is no little feat! With a wife and two kids at home, Sam did an amazing job balancing school and family this past year. So when my husband was hooded at his Baccalaureate, it was a day of GREAT rejoicing in our home. 

Not only did Sam graduate but he was also awarded the "Dr. Bob Domokos Excellency in Preaching Scholarship." Now who is oh so proud of her hubbie?? If I was wearing suspenders, they would have popped! (Fortunately, I wasn't because that would have been really odd!!)

So to my wonderful husband Sam, I am so proud of you with your accomplishments this past year. With all of the ups, downs, tears, and pains I would not trade them for the lessons of love we have learned. For all of you who have walked this path of seminary or college with spouse and kids, you will understand what I mean when I say I never want to go through that again but I would never trade those lessons for the world. 

I love you darling!