Hands on Homeschooling

So this week has been nothing but getting ready for our next year homeschooling the kids. As I mentioned in a previous post I've been getting ready to order the girls school books for the year and not until the day that I was going to place the order did I finally give in to the doubts in the back of my mind. For the past several months the thought of continuing on with the current curriculum was pretty worry some with Emma. Here are a few thoughts I had written out about it in an email to a fellow homeschooling friend. "I'm not sure if you know but we've done Abeka with Maddelyn for the past 2 years and really liked it for it's organized lessons ( I know she's learning everything needed) and for how well she's done with it. However we now have Emma entering kindergarten who is a total hands on learner and I'm realizing Abeka is just not the best for her. I've been researching lots of different hands on styles of homeschooling for her and possibly even Maddelyn. I'm REALLY interested in lapbooking and had remembered you were working on some of that stuff in TN in March. Nathan and I love to read and I want to share that passion with the girls as well, Lapbooking seems to really focus their lapbooks around children's literature as well. I have realized that it is time to leave Abeka for something more hands on for Emma's sake and I think Maddelyn would really enjoy it as well." So needless to say as much as we have enjoyed using Abeka these past 2 years I believe that for the sake of my hands on learner coming up, we are going to be leaving a traditional program for a more hands on "unit/theme" approach. The lapbooking that I mentioned above is basically a theme unit based on either a theme (oceans) or a children's literature book ( Little House in the Big Woods.) This theme is then carried out in each subject (language arts/math/science/history/etc.) For example our first lapbook we will make will be on Johnny Appleseed so we will be doing early fractions by cutting apples in halves, thirds and such for math. We will also be doing her history but learning about how this area of Ohio was visited on John Chapman on his apple planting trips. We will include cooking with apple recipes, cutting apples in half to dip and paint and stamp on paper for art and such. Basically we will be weaving that theme through out our lessons. The whole time we are working our way through this unit the girls will be also making lapbooks (kinda like a mini scrapbook made of file folders) showing each of the new concepts they have learned. It is a great way to both connect all the items learned and for them to look back through later to refresh the lessons learned. I really think this will be a much better way to teach Em than a strict curriculum filled with worksheets. So, with like less than 2 weeks until school should start I decided to not only ditch our old curriculum to write my own but to switch our playroom out with our homeschool room to give us more room. I'm pretty excited at how nice the new school room is coming along. I decided to do a aqua and lime green color theme to go with my brown walls. I had to spruce it up a bit making it more kid friendly but seeing how we just painted, Nathan said no to a new paint color. I found the cutest containers and buckets at the Dollar Tree of all places and then more matching milk crates, lime green folding chairs, and an adorable monkey prize jar from Target. It's amazing how much fun and cute homeschool stuff I had in storage that I've picked up here and there but never really found a way to include it into Maddelyn's previous curriculum. Well now I've got it all pulled out and am so excited about how nice the room is turning out. It actually is starting to look like an actual elementary school room with the chalk board, alphabet train across the top of the walls, calendars, posters, and such. My parents have even offer their goldfish as class pets...not too sure about that. I have visions of me walking into the room to see Caroline letting her Barbie "swim" in the fish bowl and the poor fish flopping around on the floor. We'll have to see about that.