Plans for our 2019-2020 Homeschool Year

We started our new school year on July 8th. It's our second week in, and things are going pretty smoothly so far! I'm so glad I went to The Good and The Beautiful Convention this year. It helped me so much to manage the things that I stress about and gave me the encouragement and motivation I needed. The last few years I did a lot of comparing our homeschool to public school or even other homeschoolers, but this year we are going to spend less time trying to keep up with the Jones's and more time enjoying learning together!

Curriculum

We are still using The Good and The Beautiful for Language Arts, Math, Science, and History. This year Kender is staring 2nd grade and Rhett is moving slowly through Kindergarten. He's not even 5 yet, so we are just working when he feels like working. He's already reading, and I'm not in any rush!

Kender loves video games, so I'm going to harness that passion into school by supplementing with some fun apps.

Getting creative with spelling practice.

Supplemental Apps

First, there's Epic! Books for Kids. I mostly use it for their "read to me" books, which are basically audio picture books for kids. It's an $8 monthly subscription, but it's totally worth it. It's really nice for when I need to have one on one time with one kid and I need to keep the other one busy with something educational.

Enjoying their books together ❤

Next we love Prodigy. It's an adaptive math game that is super fun! Your little guy is a wizard, and in order to cast spells, he has to solve math problems. Kender loves it, and I love that he's practicing his math. We just use the free version, but you can purchase a membership if you want access to more goodies.

The last app that we use is called Teach Your Monster to Read. It's the same concept as Prodigy, just with reading. The only challenge we've had with it is the English accent throws Kender off a little, but he still enjoys playing it and I still think it's a great way to practice reading. The computer verson is free, but we bought the app which is just a one time purchase of $5.

Homeschool Changes

I'm so excited for our new school year, and my new outlook on homeschool - Consistency and quality first! No more schooling in our "school room." It's too small for two kids, and too stressful when Mason is crawling around who knows where. We now sit together around the kitchen table and that's been great. Plus, it forces me to keep the table mostly clean. ?

No more starting school precisely at 9 am every day. We need time in the mornings to just chill (especially me). Now we start whenever we are ready to start, and we finish whenever we finish. It's a lot more loosey-goosey than I'm used to... But it feels good to give myself permission to be truly flexible. And it gives me time to nap during Mason's first nap if I need to! YAY FOR NAPS!!! They always make Mason happy too ?