Our Decision to Homeschool Part 2 "The First Year"

In my first post "Our decision to Home school Part 1" I left off with my husband and I deciding to give home schooling a try.

So I thought I would write today about our first year home schooling our children.

At this time of my life I had been blessed with three children. Our oldest daughter was ready to enter 2nd grade and my second child our son was ready for Kindergarten. We also had a 3 year old son.


We decided to stick with the curriculum that Rebecca had used in school for the first two years which was the Abeka curriculum. I ordered all of the work books and teacher books and test books and quiz books, teacher keys and the readers. It was a bit overwhelming but I just figured I would need all of this right?

I went straight to work and set up a little spare room that we had at the time on the first floor.

Our Christian school just happen to be getting rid of some desks and chairs for school and I thought this is exactly what I needed so I was so happy to be able to get these and to place them in our little school room.

I bought our little flags , the Christian flag and the American flag, to make sure that we started our day just like they did in school with our pledges.

We posted our Large letter cards at the top of the wall along the room and I even made some adorable curtains with a school print for the two windows that were in our new school room!

Every thing looked great and we soon received our books.

I even had purchased our teachers lesson planner I was well on my way to a great year!

We started our school year at the same time as our Christian school did. I just figured we would follow their schedule and all would be great!

The first day came and we started out on this new journey. By Gods grace second grade was basically a review of everything Rebecca had learned in 1tst grade so this was a great blessing.

I did not learn reading with the Phonics approach so this was really new to me.

As I began teaching my second child I discovered very quickly that this was not going to go as smoothly as I thought it would.

He seemed to struggle with remembering what he had learned and I did not know how I was going to help him through this.

The other challenge would be to keep my three year old busy while the other two where doing school.

By Gods Grace slowly we began to work out the problems and things began to fall into place.

I discovered that I did not have to keep up with our Christian school and that one of the greatest blessings of homeschooling was being able to work at my children's own pace .

We are not entering into our 13th year of homeschooling and a lot has changed. The room with the desks are gone and the kitchen table is where we do most of our school work. The curriculum has changed some and by Gods grace I have one graduated!

If you are thinking about homeschooling and you feel the Lord leading you to do this then I would encourage you to take that step of faith and by Gods Grace he will help you to accomplish something for His Glory!

I hope to continue this series to share with you some of the bumps in the road and some of the many blessings!

God Bless, Kathy

(repost from 8/8/08)

Photos by J's Magic