Posted in Blogger Class Mates

Goodness, when I think about our homeschool plans, I have an ideal, perfect picture in my mind of getting up early every morning, getting into our lessons by 9am and having a full day of perfectly timed, perfectly run, good obedient robotic children who smile and say, "yes Mummy, of course Mummy, three bags full, Mummy" all day long until 3pm when I let them out.

I don't really desire this - well, not anymore that is. I have had a perfectionists mindset in the early days of my homeschooling, but I think I'm starting to get out of that now - more out of necessity than anything else. We've kind of been doing unschooling these past two terms while I got over the morning sickness, and now this term while I try and get my iron levels up to a range where I actually feel like turning the page of a book.

The New Zealand school year has 4 terms in a year. Each one broken into approximately 10 weeks, with 2 weeks of holiday in between. At Christmas time, we have around 6-8 weeks of holiday. This is the peak time of our summer. So our school year generally starts with the new year or shortly thereafter.

I have big plans for 2009. Our baby is due mid January, so we'll all be on holiday which is quite good timing really. I am going to drop most of the children's extra-curricular activities for term one while we settle in with the new baby. This will mean dropping French and Art, but we'll keep up my daughter's ballet lessons on Saturday and my son's tennis coaching - also on Saturday. We'll pick French and Art up again in Term 2.

Meredith (6) has ballet every week and Hugh (8) has tennis coaching. We'll keep these up  next year probably.

Currently, Meredith is doing Abeka Math and Phonics. She is really thriving on this, and I find it easy to run - not too complicated to set this up. She started with 100 Easy Lessons and then graduated to Abeka. I will probably do this with all my other children as well. What I love about Abeka is that it is colourful and attractive, has lots of games, songs and interesting pictorial activities. It really appeals to my 6 year old daughter.

I tried the Sonlight phonics with Hugh at one stage, but I really don't like their books or method. A lot of the readers have American slang and Hugh found it hard to understand.

So Meredith does Abeka for math and reading, and we do Sonlight for Science (I love their Science programme), and history, geography and read-alouds.

Hugh (8), has had a mixed year with his curriculum. We're still finding our feet with him. I made a lot of mistakes with his curriculum in the first years (my first child to homeschool), so I feel as though I'm still catching up. We hope to have a fresh start next year. He does Saxon math. I had my doubts about how well he was doing on this and was considering changing to Abeka, but I had him assessed through an independant teacher, and we found that he is actually has a math level of a 9 or 10 year old, so we will stick with Saxon!

I have tried many different spelling/grammar programmes, but I am finding Easy Grammar the best one so far. 

We love our Sonlight. We ordered it early this year, and I'm having to fight off the children from dragging the books off the shelf. They are keen to get into them. Their science programme is fantastic. My children love it and are learning so much. It's very hands on, lots of experiments for them. We even grew radish seeds this year. We're about to start on corn seeds.

Even though we're going into our fifth year, I still feel as though I'm finding my way with the homeschooling, but I am a lot more relaxed about it and more confident than I was when we first began. My goals for the next school year are to establish firm routines, have good structured learning time and really just put our heads down and have a good year. I know that life happens and unexpected things occur, but I hope we can have a more settled year next year.