Wednesday, August 17, 2011

2011-2012 Our first year homeschooling!

We will start first grade for Abby on Monday - 8/22/11. The twins, Cooper & Parker, will be in pre-k from 9a-12:30p Monday through Friday. This is when we plan to do all of Abby's first grade book work for: Phonics (Veritas Press), Literature (First Favorites - Veritas Press), English (Shurley) and Math (Saxon). Science, Geography and Bible will all be done in the afternoon with all 3 kiddos. Wish us luck and I hope you enjoy following our journey!

Why home-school??? This is the question I get asked all the time and I loathe. Why not? Why public/government school? First off, these are my children. I love and adore them. I want to spend as much time with them as I possibly can. I am perfectly capable of teaching them. With home-school they get a 1:3 ratio, at worst! We can learn civics by going to the capitol whenever we feel like it. Art, Music, PE, Technology can be taught as often as we want. They aren't a limited resource like with public schools. The library - we can go everyday and spend the entire day if we want. I can also teach {gasp} Bible during school. I have teacher guides just like the public school teachers. The zoo is also a place we can go to learn science on a daily basis, they offer many home-school classes during the week. The sky and my imagination are our only limitations- and with this little thing called "google" my imagination is not very limited. I also have a fantastic resource I will utilize for lesson plans and to "test and evaluate" my kiddos quarterly. And as of now, I plan to stay in line with the state/public school guidelines for standardized testing. Again, why not???

Welcome to our classroom! =))