How We Got Started

I was home schooled for seventh and eighth grade, the two best years of my entire schooling experience. Being a very introspective child, I got lost in the schoolroom, but when my parents brought me home, I flourished, both socially and academically.

Believing that home schooling really was the best possible education, I dreamed of home schooling my own children, but trapped by jobs, my husband and I did not see how it was possible. I worked while TJ was the stay-at-home dad. How would I ever have the time?
The truth is that I was scared of failure. Whenever I would make an education plan, nothing would ever come of it. Considering myself to be disorganized, I believed that I just did not have what it takes. It has taken me five years of child rearing to finally realize that the planning method was at fault rather than that I was incapable.

The year that M turned 5, I was ready to give up, prepared to send my oldest off to school. The very idea of giving up my dream broke my heart. However, then M met her first bully, and it crushed her. We knew she just was not ready.

We determined that kindergarten would be our trial run. If it did not go well, she would only be held back a year; no harm done. This time I refused to be crippled by over planning. We jumped in with both feet, determined that something was better than nothing.

At first, I thought I would just do preschool / kindergarten for both M and R at the same time, thinking that they were at the same level. We sometimes forget that R is almost two years younger. They could both cite the alphabet and count to 10, and they both knew their color and shapes and could recognize the letters.

Not having the money to buy a complete curriculum, I began by making up games, printing coloring pages off the internet, and ordering books from the library. I read many books on “how to home school” and on “home school styles.” I studied activity books, science books, math books, and tried several different reading programs until I found what really works.
I quickly learned that M and R had very different educational needs. R could recite the numbers one to ten, but she did not understand how to use the numbers nor could she recognize the printed number, and where M had the attention span to learn to read, R just needed the opportunity to have someone read to her and discuss the stories at her level.
So I had to tailor the activities for the needs of each child, and thus I ended up doing preschool, kindergarten, and first grade all at the same time. Some activities were meant for R, but M enjoyed the fun too. Other activities were meant for M, and R had the opportunity to glean whatever she could understand.

Being that I was still working, I relaxed my approach, building a framework of learning rather than a strict lesson plan. Using a table with 12 subjects listed across the top, I kept track of what we did for each day of the week, and I kept file folders with lists of possible activities for certain subjects like science and math. When time came for lessons, I would check off an activity from my pre-made lists and mark it on my weekly tracking table.

Over time, I began to find not just good resources, but great resources. This is web site is meant to document what was most helpful for us.