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Thank you for letting me join. I have a son and he will be 6 next month. I have only been homeschooling a little over a month. I put my son in public school for 4 weeks and It was not what God wanted for us. As far as anything else im learning as we go.

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Hi there. My name is Frances I just started this home school journey. I Have 1 K level daughter and another on the way. We made the decision because my D is a wiggle worm and struggles with taking her time to get things done right. With home school I can give her the time and attention she needs to slow down and do her work well instead of just getting frustrated with herself. I enjoy a traditional method with bits of fun thrown in for good measure.

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Hi Erica, Iā€™m Allison. My husband and I have 4 beautiful children. Our one and only daughter just turned 21 and is in her 3rd year of college. We have a 9 yr old boy in 4th grade and 7yr old twin boys in 2nd grade. Iā€™m not a homeschool momā€¦yet. We have felt for the past several years the Lord is leading us to homeschool our boys. Iā€™m terrified! I have visited a local homeschool academy and feel this is the best way for me to get started. I read your conversation with God and have experienced all the questions you asked Him. I am so overwhelmed with emotions about all that is expected of me and filled with fear of failing. I know the Lord will be right there with me, but the little voice in my head keeps trying to figure out how to get it all done. I have visited with a couple homeschool moms and they assure me I wonā€™t be left to fend for myself. Iā€™ve read several blogs and see so many with school rooms. Iā€™m wondering how much I need to turn our dining room into a school atmosphere? Do I need to be prepared with lots of shelves for their ā€œstuffā€ to go on? Do I need a big calendar? Do I need maps, and all the other classroomy stuff? The homeschool academy is through our public school system and they have free curriculums for us to use. I think this is best for a start. Iā€™m planning on choosing other curriculums that incorporates our faith as we go. Any advice before I get started would be greatly appreciated!

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Hi Allison,

I have boys - two, ages 7 and nine (in tow weeks). I am a former public school substitute teacher and now a four year homeschool mom. For my boys, trying to make things like a public school didnā€™t work. Yes, we have desks and books and I have a loosely written lesson plan for the year. Some days the outdoors calls, leaf piles this time of year, snow fall soon. But no, we havenā€™t turned our home into a ā€œschool atmosphereā€. We have a school corner that is shared with the toy box. Hopefully, everything is in the proper place . . . .
We cover academics at THEIR speed. Progress is good and retention of material, great when we work that way.
Stuff - manila envelopes for art that isnā€™t up on the wall that they want to keep. A book shelf, yes, but shared with adults. My calendar is simply a free printable month by month off the web, kept for each son in a plastic sleeve protector.
Last year I bought a globe and over time, have snagged several free state and national maps that fold and can be put away. I also have some National Geographic maps that are from my childhood - which I treasured and they are being brought out as needed.
Faith - we are fortunate to have the Book of Common Prayer -Morning and Evening Prayer to listen to on the web through ā€œCradle of Prayerā€ and a Sunday Morning live stream Mass from St. Lukeā€™s Sedona, AZ and I have the Sunday School curriculum to teach at home as we live 70 miles, one way from our parish church. Reading is to the point now that we can start using Rod and Staff which has lots of Bible stories.
My best advise - enjoy learning with your sons, how they learn, what they like and above all, HAVE FUN.

Kris

Kris,

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts! Iā€™m happy to hear I donā€™t necessarily have to have my dining room turned into an official classroom. :slight_smile: I still have so many unanswered questions rolling around in my mind about this endeavor. I think Iā€™m in almost constant prayer over it, which is a good thing! I was even dreaming about it the other night. Complete chaos in my dream, lol! I know Jesus will help me sort it all out and He has placed this blog and all of you before me as a means of helping me organize and prepare. Wow, do I need a lot of help organizing and preparing! My progress is slow, but sure!

Thanks again for your kind words!

@mrsfyreman Hi Allison and welcome to our group! The most important piece of advice (for me) would be to learn how your children learn. Being aware of learning styles is very important - including knowing your own. It helps you weed out the curriculum that wonā€™t work for your children.

As far as the space where you will homeschool, you arenā€™t trying to recreate school at home, so do whatever feels right for you. We have a dedicated area in the basement that works for us. Of course, in winter time, we are on the main level so I just bring up the material we are working on.

You CAN do this. The most important thing you can do is help your children love learning. Use your library! Go out into the community and see whatā€™s available. A trip to the grocery store can become a field trip. :smile:

Hi! Iā€™m Tristan and as Iā€™m new to this forum Iā€™ll go ahead and introduce myself. I live in Ohio with my family. We have always homeschooled our children so weā€™ve been at this for more than 10 years and are a relaxed Charlotte Mason style.

I have 9 children ages 14, 11, 9, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2, newborn (two girls and seven boys). That means this year I have children in the following grades: 9th, 5th, 4th, 2nd, 1st, PreK4, PreK3, Toddler, and the new baby. One son has major medical needs that give us many appointments and surgeries (heā€™s 3, he had his first 14 surgeries by age 2). Life is always interesting around here!

Iā€™m looking forward to having a community to ā€˜talk shopā€™ in, as I donā€™t have many homeschoolers in my area to chat with in person.

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hi i am Ilene i am from Canada, i am a mom to twin boys who are 11. we started homeschooling almost a year ago in December, because our children were falling further and further behind the school system and not getting any extra help!i tend to steer towards the traditional side of schooling

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Hi, Iā€™m Kimberlina, new to homeschooling.
1.How long have you been homeschooling? I havenā€™t actually started homeschooling yet, but am looking into it seriously.
2.How many children do you have? I have 3 little girls, ages 6, 4, and 20 months.
3.What teaching style do you like best? Charlotte Mason, Traditional, Eclectic, etc. I havenā€™t figured that out yet. :slight_smile:
4.Why did you start homeschooling? I want to start homeschooling because I want my children to be home and be able to learn from ME. I want to be able to be there for them. My oldest is struggling with a bully in first grade public school, and I want to avoid that type of stress. I want learning to be fun and engaging. Also, I think they will learn better being taught one-on-one instead of one-on-twenty plus!

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Hi, My name is Jenn and I have three kiddos (9,8 & 5). Iā€™m really not sure what kind of teaching style we will end up doing, for now the two younger kiddos will be doing more traditional homeschooling and the oldest will be starting an online program since that will suit her learning style a little better. My husband and I have been talking about homeschooling on and off since our oldest started school but never felt like we had the opportunity or time. Some of these feelings, I am sure, were because we both grew up in public school and had no real exposure to know what homeschooling meant. Over the last year I kept having a persistent feeling that this is what we were supposed to be doing and that coinciding with my job shutting down just seemed like the window we were looking for. God definitely answered our prayers on this! We decided as a family that after Christmas Break we would make the leap. I have been following COAH for several years (I previously ran a non profit daycare) and absolutely love it!

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Hi, my name is Silmara, I have 47 years old, this is my first experience in the homeschool, Iā€™m Brazilian, my husband is American, he was missionary in my country 25 years, we have a beautiful girl, she have 03 years old, Iā€™m sorry my English, I need training more write in English.

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Welcome Silmara! @Mara1968

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This is my first Post so hopefully I am doing it right! Iā€™m Kelsie, housewife and mother of 3 littles! Homeschool has always been a deep down dream of mine I never thought would come to fruition until my best friend helped me realize it wasnā€™t out of reach. I can honestly say I owe her more than I could ever repay now that my husband and I have decided to give it a shot! My oldest will be in kindergarten in the upcoming school year. He and I are both so excited! This blog has pull me through a lot of the initial anxiety, and I feel so blessed to have found this forum to take us on this journey!(also it will maybe help me be more tech savvy and up with the times=P)

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I am Jackie. I have four kids. two boys and two girls. ages 10 3 2 and 9 months. In the past I was always against homeschooling because I thought that homeschool children were socially challenged and I also need the break from my kids. But after developing many friendships with multiple moms who homeschool my opinion started to change. My ten year old son has ADHD and he is extremely hyper and him and I are kind of like oil and water so I have never dreamed of homeschooling. But after the last couple of years of fighting with the schools and teachers about how they teach and do things and knowing that my child is extremely smart, he is testing one to two years ahead of everyone else in his class in reading and math, I started talking to my husband about the idea but our son made it clear he likes school and doesnā€™t want to homeschool. So my husband and I talked and decided to spend a year working with Taylor and John (the three and two year olds) first. So I have never homeschooled before and quite frankly we have no money to spend to go jumping in to expensive curriculums or programs (our 9 month old was born with a spinal defect so with medical expenses and travel expenses for her have eaten up all our money and I quite my job to stay home once she was born). So any advice to what I need to purchase or how to go about this would be wonderful.

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Hi everyone!
My name is Judy and I have one 14 year old daughter. I have been homeschooling off and on for the last 6 years. Definitely the eclectic style if you had to give a name to ours. I really believe that kids can and will learn so much on their own if given the right environment to do so. I had educated myself about homeschooling years before my daughter was born. However when the time came I just put her in kindergarten at the local public school because thatā€™s what you do. It went well until 2nd grade, then it seemed like all the learning came to a standstill so we began to homeschool. It worked well until our family dynamic changed She has since gone to two different Christian schools and now we are back to homeschooling. She really wants to be in school, but it just doesnā€™t work for her so we recently decided to go back to homeschooling. She does love many aspects of homeschooling too and knows she learns better in that environment.

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Hi my name is Ana and I have 2 boys (6 and almost 4 yo). I have been homeschooling for 2 years now and never thought I would homeschool my children until my older son went to Preschool - PreK. We were fortunate enough to put him in a private school as the public schools where we live are not very good (and very crowded). Unfortunately, after his second year of schooling I realized that the homework was outrageous, the teaching was very strict and developing stress related mannerisms. During this time I expressed to my husband the idea of homeschooling, but he was strongly against. What broke the camels back was when his teacher told me that she didnā€™t let him have his nap time b/c he needed to complete his school work. I gave the teacher a piece of my mind (politely of course :grin:). I spoke to my husband again and we decided to homeschool.
I donā€™t know what style we are as of yet as we have been using an online schooling (k12). I realized this program although great, doesnā€™t work for us. Thus, we will be deciding on curriculum for 2nd grade. My son is a child who needs more hands-on projects and loves for me to read him books (of his interest). So that is a starting point for us. As for my little one, we have been doing a combination of COAH and others that we have found online. We keep it short and simple on a daily basis.
It has been great hearing all your stories!

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Hello! Iā€™m Amanda, and have two kids 11 & 7. We just started homeschooling in August, and love it! I read Ericaā€™s book: Homeschooling 101 and it has helped me so much with getting started! I would have loved to started homeschooling 5 years ago when my oldest stated school, but my hubby wasnā€™t on board. It took me 5 years to convince him homeschooling was what was best for our family. After two weeks he agrees we should have started this sooner!

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Hello! Iā€™m Chrissy. I have 3 children, 5, 2, and 8 mos. I just started homeschooling my oldest son for K this year and it has been going very well! We chose to homeschool primarily because of common core as well as, being able to give our kids a Christian education without paying an arm and a leg at the local Christian school. I love the Charlotte Mason method and that is the primary teaching method, but weā€™re a little eclectic as well!

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Hi yaā€™ll :slight_smile: We are headed into our 3rd year of homes educating our 3 kiddos, ages 14(dd1), 12(ds) and 10.5(dd2). I am not sure what our style isā€¦I started out in competition with the public system (insanity at itā€™s finest!) but do to unforeseen life restructuring ā€¦weā€™ve taken a more laid back approach. We are not so dedicated to sitting down all day and working through every bookā€¦every single day except weekends. We study year round, with breaks as we see fit (not scheduled and usually not when everyone is taking it lol) we have lite days with a rotating block schedule for the full daysā€¦and the only day they are guaranteed not to do class work is Sunday! We started home educating our children for many different reasonsā€¦we are military and there really is no continuity from state to state. They would be ahead in one place and suddenly behind in another in less than a year!! I felt like we were losing little pieces of them every time we moved and it was scary. When we moved here God just opened my eyes to the another possibility of successfully educating themā€¦while also developing other life skills as well as more family time! It was a no brainer for us :grin:

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My name is Tina. I am a grandmother with custody of my 2 grandsons. Dā€™Andre is 8. I started homeschooling him when he was 4. I love homeschooling for the flexible schedule and the time we spend together. I believe we lean towards traditional. Silas is 2 and will be homeschooled also. Thank you for starting this page. Sometimes I feel alone because of my age.

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