Revamping the Homeschooling Plans

When we originally decided to homeschool this year, we had big plans. Last year we had done some kindergarten for SpiderBoy, primarily just to keep him busy and out of trouble, since he was not old enough for public school. This year we were going to homeschool SpiderBoy officially. We also were starting TikiPrincess in homeschool kindergarten, although she is not old enough for public school yet.

We chose some A Beka books to get a basic foundation of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Adding to that, we bought a bunch of reading books, a children's illustrated encyclopedia, a history book from the people who wrote “The Well-Trained Mind,” and membership in a library with more books than our local library. We also had plans to do play groups, roller skating, and gymnastics.

With the extensive amount of time taken for foster parenting, most of that fell by the wayside. Workbooks are easy to use, so both of our kids have made huge progress through their A Beka books, which have laid a great ground work. Both children have math and English skills beyond their peers, even if we ignore age and just focus on grade level. TikiPrincess has finished her kindergarten books and has now started on her first grade books. SpiderBoy is nearing the end of all of his first grade books.

The science, history and geography have been extremely spotty. Our biggest progress has been that SpiderBoy knows how to look up a topic in the table of contents or index, and can then turn to the appropriate page to find what he is looking for.

We dropped the library membership because we rarely made it out there. Our local library was used quite a bit, but they are now closed due to computer problems. They have been closed for weeks, and may take several more weeks to reopen. However, our home library is fairly decently sized, and SpiderBoy often reads those books to his sisters.

We have kept up with some of the play groups, roller skating and gymnastics, but scheduling and childhood illnesses have made us miss a decent amount of that.

Now The Wifey has started reading a book called, "A Thomas Jefferson Education." The central theme seems to be studying the classics with a mentor. The Wifey wants to drop our workbooks in favor of this approach. I look at the progress we have made using the workbooks, and I want to stay with it. I am willing to add this method to the repertoire.

What we have chosen to do is to cease insisting on workbooks being done. There are rewards for doing workbooks, but no punishments, per se. Admittedly, some of the rewards, such as being able to watch TV or play on the computer, seem like a punishment when they are withheld, but it is their choice whether to do the necessary work to get that reward or not.

We the parents are focusing our time and efforts on the science, history, geography, and now literature. For our first classic, The Wifey has been reading one of the "Little House on the Prairie" books with our children. SpiderBoy will sometimes read aloud from it for up to fifteen minutes at a time. The Wifey also wants to spend more time with TikiPrincess, just having her read from simple books such as Dr. Seuss.

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