First Days of School

One of the few "down" sides to homeschooling is that there is no official start date. We can start whenever we want. We tend to ease back into school by starting with one or two subjects and then adding more each week until we are up to the full load. This makes the official first day of school a little fuzzy.

All last year Griffin begged to do school. He wasn't satisfied with those little preschool workbooks. He wanted real school. So at barely 4 he's doing Kindergarten. We may have to repeat part of it next year (he's doing beginning phonics) but he is so happy to be doing school. I'm trying a new curriculum this year called My Father's World. Griffin is using the kindergarten program and 4 weeks in we really like it. It's just enough hands on to make him happy and enough structure to make me happy. :) My Father's World is a combination of classical eduction and Charlotte Mason philosophy, with a Biblical Worldview.

We do the main part of My Father's World Adventure together. It's an overview of American History for 2nd or 3rd graders who are the oldest in the family. Once two children can read well they share the same curriculum so mom doesn't have to teach on multiple levels. Right now, I do kindy with Griffin, the reading, writing, Bible and math portion of My Father's World First Grade with Ty, and Adventures with everyone for more Bible, History, Art, Read Alouds and Science. If we could do school uninterrupted (what's that- with a 2 yo and a baby HAHAHA) I could be done in less than 3 hours. Considering I have children on three different levels and music instruction, I think that's pretty good. :)

We have used Saxon Phonics in the past and while I think it's an excellent program that works well, we're trying MFW for Phonics. It seems to have a more "fun" approach that Ty really likes. There also seems to be less review in the beginning which I was a little concerned about but Ty hasn't missed a lick.

In addition to MFW, Madisyn is using Saxon Math 3, and First Language Lessons Level 3(grammar) and Writing with Ease Level 2 (we didn't do a formal writing program last year and year 3 isn't out yet so we started with level 2) from The Well Trained Mind. We used their grammar program last year and I really enjoyed the literature selections used for copywork and dictation. My Father's World takes the parts of The Well Trained Mind philosophy on education that I like and implements them in the curriculum. Plus what's not to like about the Bible being woven into all of your studies. :)