Organized Homeschooling

I know that homeschooling doesn't really fall under the umbrella of homemaking, but it is one of the things that I am passionate about and takes up my day. I thought that I would do a post about how I homeschool (organized, of course).

Luke is almost 5 years old. I have been officially homeschooling (as in using worksheets) since he was about 4 years old. Before that he learned through living. This year (his last year before starting kindergarten) we are following Sonlight curriculum. We do the CORE P4/5 which covers history, science, language arts, social studies, and learning skills. We read a ton of books including the Bible everyday. It's awesome curriculum. I love it because it is all set up and organized for 36 weeks of curriculum which is what is required down the road. We also do Handwriting Without Tears K, Horizons Math K, and Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading.

Since I am the type of person who has to have everything organized, I sit down for a few hours and put all of my curriculum together and make a nice chart to follow. I find that if I do it all at once I get through the stress and then I just pull what I need each day. I know when it becomes more intense, I will probably have to do my lesson planning by quarter or month or week even, but for now, I just do it once for the year.

Here is our homeschool spot in the bonus room:

My awesome mother-in-law gave us this great table and chairs to use. It's perfect because the table has a leaf to make it bigger or smaller and 4 chairs. Right now it is pushed against the wall to give the kids more play room, but down the road we might pull it out as God-willing we have more kids to homeschool. That is my precious son, Luke.

This is our bulletin board:

We use this to post what we are working on for the week. The top left is our number of the week (eventually that will be our letter of the week). The top right is where we put Luke's picture of the day's Bible story. That was the Tower of Babel. The bottom right is where our Bible verse for the week as well as Luke's picture of it goes. In the middle we have a compilation sheet (we just finished our short vowel sounds so he made a nice picture of them). In the bottom left is our basic schedule. Above that is the letter of the day (we are reviewing sounds letters make to prep for reading). I can't possibly put all of his work up there, so we pick the main stuff. His math and learning skills worksheets go in a pile on the shelf.

This is one of my shelves for homeschool materials (this holds our current curriculum):

It has all the books from Sonlight as well as our Horizons, HWT, and OPGTTR stuff. The shelf below it holds our daily folders and Sonlight binder.

Here are our daily folders:

We have five folders (one for each day of the week). On each folder I have a rundown of what we do on that designated day (ie Monday is CORE P4/5 and Reading, Tuesday is CORE P4/5, Handwriting, and Math). In the folders I have all the worksheets (math, handwriting, and learning skills) we will use on that day for the whole year (I paperclip them by category so they are easy to pull from).

Here is what the table looks like before we start:

I lay out the Sonlight binder, our daily folder (today we are doing two days since I have a medical test tomorrow), blank paper for drawing, markers and crayons, and our Sonlight books.

Here is my Sonlight binder:

It tells us what books (stories) we are reading, what learning worksheets we are doing, as well as our Bible verse and song for the week. It also has creative ideas to expand our learning.

Here is Luke coloring a picture of the Bible story we just read (Abraham):

Here is Luke doing a learning skills worksheet (coloring in the lines):

Here is Luke doing a math worksheet:

The reason I am a homemaker isn't to keep my house clean or meals on the table every night. The real reason is so I can be with my children everyday raising them to be Godly people who have strong morals and teach them as well. I love homeschooling. I hope you have enjoyed a peek into how we homeschool.