Wow! Never in my years did I think I would be homeschooling my daughter and loving it, but here I am! Before you write me off, please hear me out. Here’s the deal. We love teachers. We support teachers. We help teachers. My husband, my child and I all loved our child’s kindergarten and 1st grade teachers more than words. We volunteered our time, resources and money. We just found ourselves in a situation that needed change; therefore, we set out on a new family adventure . . . the ever mysterious HOME SCHOOL! {Dun, Dun, Dun-n-n-n-n-n} It was “ALL NEW STUFF,” as we like to say in our family.
In this section of the blog, I am going to share things that we do in our home school. You do not have to be a home school family to do these things. I will share fun creative ideas that you can do with your kids anytime. If you are thinking about home schooling or you are currently home schooling, let me know. Share with me ideas that you have and activities that you do. We are all in this together. When I first began, I looked for a daily schedule of what to do and how to do it. I found a lot of information. It was overwhelming and confusing. I hope that by publishing my daily journals, it might help simplify the process for some of you. We use the IXL online curriculum for math and language arts. It is an online curriculum that we love. We also use ed-helper for our printed materials, worksheets and activities. I use my own materials for science, history, art, music and cooking class!
What we love about home school is the ability to teach creatively, think outside the box, and go on an educational journey whenever we want. We make everything a learning experience, from cooking, to going on a walk on the beach, to family road trips, to grocery shopping, to watching documentaries. Learning is so much fun, and it should be taught that way. Even if your child is enrolled in school, you can add in some of these activities to support and reiterate what your child is learning in the classroom. We never regret spending time with our children, helping them learn and grow. After all we believe we are the most influential people in their little lives.
Much love!
Corie,
Congrats on the blog! I am excited to read it and follow and share in your journey. I love your comments on the homeschooling blog that you can make every experience a learning one! We have a book of the 50 states that shows pictures of the states and significant aspects about the states. We use our experiences of living in and visiting different places to help teach Caroline about geography and she loves it! She loves telling us that she was born in California, William was born in Alabama and gammy and pops live in Mississippi! It is teaching her so much and we are fortunate to use our experiences to foster that learning.
Thanks for sharing and I look forward to reading more!
Love,
Mary Beth
Thank you so much! This means so much to me coming from you, the daughter of excellent educators! It has been a journey getting to where we are, but we are so excited about the future. I love the book of states and the way you are teaching Caroline geography! Those are the kinds of things that we love to do, and it makes learning so much fun and relative to their little lives. Living in Florida, we can usually find a small map for any area we are touring. We have started getting those maps and allowing Lucy to navigate our way through our adventure. She has gravitated towards this and likes to be called the navigator! Learning is fun! I’m so honored to receive this message from you! Much love!!!
Congrats on the blog I’ve always wanted to do one 😉 but never been brave enough !
Kudos to you both for making the decision to do what’s best for your family I known there are families have great success with that . I only knew you a short time with us just moving here, but I will forever stand by that there is and will be a great loss with not having you as a fellow parent there aren’t many parents willing to give as much time and effort as you were doing . I applaud you for that and everything you stood for . I look forward to watching your blog and I’m a activities junkie I’m always looking and researching fun family education and events I’ll share anything I find looking forward to seeing you around 😉
Jennifer, thank you for sending this. It really does mean so very much to me. I truly appreciated your support this year and your willingness to volunteer and help out. We definitely miss our amazing teachers and great families! Fortunately we can keep in touch on facebook! 🙂 I also love family activities and ideas, and I get many of my ideas from things that you post on your page! You are definitely brave enough to do whatever your heart desires. Go for it, girl!! Much love!!
I love that you are so involved in your children’s learning. I wish more parents would take the time to invest in their children’s lives like this. You definitely are the biggest influences in their lives 🙂 I wanted to tell you that in my classroom we use an online program called MobyMax. It is really good for filling in the gaps of learning that my students may have from previous years. I’ve seen so much growth in them from using this program. It would be another way that you can ensure that they are getting everything they need 🙂 The website is http://www.mobymax.com
Thank you, Kassie! I really appreciate you saying this and also for sending the information! I will definitely check it out! I’m so thankful to have so many teacher friends that I can bounce ideas and information off them! I love finding out about new websites, activities and programs!
Congratulations on the blog Corie!! I’m so excited for you! Your trust in the Lord is beautiful! Love you!
Natalie
Thank you, Natalie! Those words are so encouraging to me! Love and miss you!!
Corie- you are SO brave! I considered it when I had Dale and even when Kaede was young. The education system is so broken- my opinion, not that you asked, is that ANYONE that has ANY say in the education system has to have been a classroom teacher in the past 4 years, much past that they are too far removed from what actually happens in the class. However, math, science and even history I could do with no issues, but I cannot teach a child to read. I was not an Education major and collectively took maybe 5 education courses. My degrees are Bachelors of Science and Masters of Science- I majored in Mathematics. Now, I can teach with gusto, inspiration and excitement and just because I didn’t major in education doesn’t mean that I cannot educate- it just means that I cannot really educate outside of the field of mathematics. My hat is off to you! That is not a career path that I would have chosen.
Thank you, Valerie!! I love to hear from my teacher friends. Luckily I have a lot of teacher friends, so I truly feel supported and feel like I have a lot of people I can go to for encouragement and information. I welcome your opinion any time. Thank you for sharing with me. I do not consider myself brave; however, I am learning to be brave from my daughter. She is 7 years old, smart, courageous, brave, kind, confident and stands tall in her own shoes. I learn from her daily! I found myself several times over the last year saying, “I missed my calling. I should have been a teacher.” My little Lucy would speak up and say, “Mom, that is not true. You were meant to be my mommy. You are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing right here with Jack and me.” She was speaking to me in more ways than one. I am very fortunate that she is so smart and loves learning. My only challenge so far is keeping up with her. She soaks up anything I give her just like a sponge. It takes one time, and she’s got it. She really makes this easy for me so far. Anyway, thank you again for sharing with me and your insight. I truly appreciate it. Much love!