Homeschooling Chit Chat

I love homeschooling, it has it's moments, but I still love it. We're in our third year and no one has been injured yet, so I say it's going well.

As I said, we are in our third year and I still feel rather green about the whole homeschooling thing. We made the decision to homeschool before we were married. It was one of those things that we discussed before hand so that we would know where the other stood. Let me say parenthically, that if you are engaged, and reading this blog, education should be something you discuss before marrying--it is just that big a deal, okay. So when Makiah reached the ripe old age of 5 and Kindergarten was looming ahead, I went to the guru of homeschooling--Sis. Pastor's Wife located somewhere in Missouri. She is awesome folks, just awesome. I knew about School of Tomorrow and PACE's, because I used them at various points on my education pathway. I went with what I knew. Until recently, I was thoroughly in the dark about how much info, support and curricula is out there. I do mean so much curricula. It's mind boggling. I knew of two when we started: School of Tomorrow and www.abeka.com. That was it. I am still in my curriculum discovery journey and interested in learning about more options.

While researching online (another reasons those big projects aren't getting done) I have come across some very helpful online sites that I would like to pass along. Now, if you are a veteran homeschool parent and you are reading this, please be patient, for you probably know all these already.

I stumbled upon this site and Makiah LOVES it, she actually asked if she could get online and do some more. It's math drills. It's free. Perfect. Click here to check it out. This is the drill page, but Math U See is also a curriculum. She did drills for a whole hour and was upset with me for making her stop to do book work.

Heart of the Matter is another site, a blog, I recently came upon and it is full of helpful information and encouragement. I could spend all kinds of time over there reading and reading, but I do have to feed the kiddos occasionally. And Hubs likes clean clothes. I know they are very unreasonable.

About.com has a really good site dedicated to homeschooling and it has a lot of good info if you are just trying to decide whether or not to homeschool. They also have a lot of links to sites about legal issues, record keeping, special needs and much more. They also have a tab on unit studies complete with printables.

Also, when we moved to Indiana I really wanted to find more homeschooling families and see what all was out there. There is so much!! We found a homeschool field trip group which is great. I encourage all homeschool families to seek out a field trip group or start one of your own! Also, talk to your local library and see what they have going on for homeschool families. One local library here has a program once a month specifically for homeschool kids. If they don't have a program, it's possible they know of a local group or at the very least other families that you could connect with.

So in my quest to always be bettering my "school" I will be posting about things or sites I find, ideas for crafts/teaching techniques/organization and of course about the zany, crazy Lovelock home. I would also love feedback. If you have suggestions, ideas or questions--live me a comment and tell me about it. I am an information hound and I always want/need to know more. I would love to hear what curriculum any of you use and how you incorporate your preschoolers without taking away from your older child/children.

Now that I have a novel, I am done for now. Makiah is begging to do more math drills. ~~Smile~~