home schooling

it's sunny and friday. couldn't ask for much more! still in coffee mode and it tastes quite nice.  we start our 3rd year inn homeschooling this year and i feel feeling more than ready. the kids and i are so excited!

i have done traditional homeschooling, an online school, 1 year of public school and this year, in my ongoing experiment we will continue with a traditional homeschooling experience with a few variances.  this year, instead of ordering the costly curriculum that can be mundane and not always what the kids are interested in, i am doing things a bit different. we do not do "school" at home. what i mean by that is we do not try to make our home look like what a bricks and mortar school looks like! we don't start with everyone at their desks with pencils sharpened and mouths sealed and do a worksheet then take a break. we used to, kind of. but more and more i see the natural desire of wanting to learn dwindling in them with this learning style. instead, we plan together, learn while we eat get lost in an unplanned project etc. we are free. there are a few things i like to see accomplished each week, but nothing so uptight that we all hate it. home education is fun. it's unique. and no two families do it the same!

over the summer we took advantage of free learning. by this i mean, the science experiments we see in a magazine that we never get to because we have too rigid of a curriculum that there is no time or energy to do anything extra. this year, as we find ourselves interested in topics, we will elaborate on them.  utilize the library for crying out loud! hoping to do at least one library day for research.

i asked the kids what they would like to learn this year.  have your public school teachers ever sent you a letter in the middle of the summer and simply ask what your child's interests are, and then acted on that by teaching them more about those topics?  just curious. anyway, the kids made lists and their lists are growing and growing every day!  everything from learning how to make a TV commercial to sound waves and sign language.  they are equally interested in other cultures so we will continue our unit study around the world incorporating food from other cultures, clothes from other cultures and information on other cultures around the world.

i am considering subscribing to our local newspaper for just 2 or 3 months and we will do a current events course. it is important to me for my kids to know that there are other ways to find information than just google. but, we do love google!

one of my husband and i's favorite songs is "we didn't start the fire" by billy joel.  you may have heard of this.  as we have listened to it over the years, our kids too have grown to love rocking out to this song. it's catchy and talks of so much history in the lyrics. i am working on writing an age apprpriate curriculum to this family favorite song, so that should be a fun study!  here are the lyrics:


"We Didn't Start The Fire"

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnny Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenberg's H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, The King And I, and The Catcher In The Rye
Eisenhower, Vaccine, England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron
Dien Bien Phu Falls, Rock Around the Clock
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev
Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, Bridge On The River Kwai
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather Homicide, Children of Thalidomide...

Buddy Holly, Ben-Hur, Space Monkey, Mafia
Hula Hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go
U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion
Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson

Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British Politician sex
J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airline
Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan
Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide
Foreign debts, homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shore, China's under martial law
Rock and Roll, cola wars, I can't take it anymore

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone
It will still burn on and on and on and on
And on and on and on and on...

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

i am sure we will continue with learning to make more casseroles, how to be polite, loving, caring and all of the great, wonderful things. we will interact with our neighbors, lend a helping hand, and pray together. we will visit our grandparents and learn about them.  we will continue to learn how to maintain a car and a home. we will learn about life.

as cool, interesting topics and studies come up, i will gather facts and worksheets and games on them, plan field trips and really just learn all that we can about it!

i am writing my own lesson plans, and my own curriculum!  there is so much to learn and i will not buy into to the expensive curriculum! i found a free math course online, too!  i am pumped about that!  our little writers will continue to write and illustrate books and read novels at the book club my daughter started with her friends. we will continue to have play dates with our favorite homeschooling familes and attend field trips with the local home school group when we want :)

my dear friend told us about zoo school at the local zoo so we will be attending zoo school as well!

and this doesn't include our extra curricula and music!

see, there is so much to do and learn! this is just a fraction of what we will touch on this year.

if you are a first time homeschooler, an online school or curriculum can be helpful to get you started. but when you are ready to evolve, spread your wings and fly!  include the kids in planning their education; it only makes sense!