somehow we are still learning

This is our 3rd year of officially home schooling. As I gain confidence and see how well home schooling is working for us I have been much more relaxed and less worried about sticking to an exact schedule, or even to our curriculum. We are still disciplined in getting work done, but in a much more flexible and fluid way. Especially recently, when I haven't been feeling well and my energy is really low, we have had to prioritize what gets done in a formal, sit-down way and what can be learned in more relaxed and independent ways.

For example, our Sonlight curriculum comes with a Language Arts program for Jeremiah. However, with my energy so low I have chosen for us to not worry about whether or not we complete that program this year. That doesn't mean that we aren't doing Language Arts at all. Jeremiah reads voraciously (about 2hrs a day on average), still does copy work, and is enjoying using the Usborne Write Your Own Story book. After his birthday party I had him work on writing thank you letters.



Nathaniel has an August birthday so he is a strange stage. If we were choosing to send him to public school we would have held him back from Kindergarten until he was 6. So this year I took a very laid back approach to his schooling with the goal of focusing on learning to read and starting handwriting. I also ordered a Kindergarten math workbook from Horizons. At the beginning of this school year he was pretty easily distracted. We alternated math and reading days and even then he was reluctant to do our reading lessons. Recently he has all of the sudden shown more maturity and self-motivation in wanting to do his school work. He really enjoys math and as he progresses and gains more confidence he gets more excited. Reading and writing have continued to be a struggle with me trying various methods of holding his interest. Suddenly this week something is clicking and reading has become more interesting to him. Here is the page he did today - completely independently!






This encourages me that with the right environment kids do in fact learn when they are ready. Even though the past few months our home schooling has be much less structured than usual there is still a whole bunch of learning going on here!