Ready, Steady, Homeschool!

"Sometimes you just gotta find a quite place and pray"~Pumpkin

  After lots of prayer, my husband and I decided to home school our children this coming up fall. Almost immediately, I began looking into curriculum and counted down the days until I could send in my state Letter of Intent to Home school.  It seemed to take for-ev-er but the day finally arrived. I joyfully filled out the form and emailed it in . I also got my credentials together, faxed them in as requested, and within 2 days received our school id and confirmation. It was finally official! Now it was time to get there curriculum and get everything ready.

  I was sold on a boxed, all-in-one style curriculum for Pear and Pumpkin. I just figured, with it being our first year of home school, that a curriculum that was ready to go, straight out-of-the-box, would be the easiest option. (I am a procrastinator by nature. I was sure if I tried to create lesson plans and mix or match curriculum's that I would be pulling it all together last minute. I imagined myself pulling all-nighters the entire week before school started! EEK!) With a curriculum that had already been put together all I had to do was order the curriculum off the website and wait for it to come, Right?

   A few days after we had gotten approval from the state to be a home school, my mom called and wanted to go shopping. She had heard of a home school store in that was going out of business and thought that maybe we could find the boxed curriculum there at a discounted price. So, we went and I was amazed at all the different options there were. Everything was priced for $1, $3, $5, or $8. My mom wanted to buy everything but I was ONLY interested in the box curriculum's I had decided on. My mom decided to buy a few different workbooks, maps, etc. for me to look through in case I changed my mind. I decided to look through them and discovered that I really did like a lot of what she had purchased and felt like my children would really like them too. My dreams of an easy summer,  quickly, began to drift away. 

  I began researching homeschooling blogs, websites, and reviews. And soon found my self with a list of homeschooling must-haves that was "a country mile" long. Excited, I presented my husband with my list (much like an eager child presents his/her Christmas list to their parents). However, reality set in and obviously I could not teach each of our children out of 4 different math (or any other subject for that matter) textbooks, 3 math supplements, a math software and 2 math DVDs. Our children would have disliked me to the point of rebelling or worse...Needless to say, I reluctantly revisited my list. I prayed that God would give me the wisdom as to what we needed for Pear and Pumpkin's first year. Then I condensed my list into a much more reasonable one.

Pear's Curriculum

  I have spent weeks of early mornings and late evenings creating and arranging lesson plans for Pear and Pumpkin. (I created  a whole years worth of plans. Being the procrastinator that I am I knew it was now or never!) Pear and Pumpkin will each be taking the following subjects this year: bible, creative writing, language arts, math, science, history, keyboarding, health/p.e, and Spanish. In addition, Pear will be taking beginning violin and Pumpkin will be taking beginning mandolin. I am still finalizing a few last minute history lessons for Pear. Other than that, we are ready and waiting on the first day of school!

Pumpkin's Curriculum