Our homeschool curriculum

Sharing more about P’s homeschool curriculum and how we structure our days. For more about why we decided to homeschool, check out this post.

Hi friends! How are you? I hope that you’re having a wonderful morning. I have a couple of client calls today, homeschool fun, and we’re going to take an afternoon hike. What are you up to?

For today’s post, I wanted to chat more about how we structure our days now that we’re in week 3 of homeschooling. It’s worth mentioning here that every day is different and these are just boxes we check each day. The beauty of homeschool is that it’s flexible. It takes far less time than traditional school, and you have the freedom to pause, change things, or move things around, depending on what’s going on.

It’s also worth mentioning here that I’m NOT an expert and have minimal experience in this area. I’m the newb of the newbies and am seriously figuring this out as we go. I’m so so thankful that there are homeschool experts out there and friends who have offered with help and advice; I’ll take all the tips I can get!

I’m also SO thankful to Brittany from A Healthy Slice of Life who jumped in, hopped on the phone with me when I sent her a super long voice message, talked me off the ledge, and helped me figure out a gameplan. Check out her blog for homeschool info, recipes, travel, and lifestyle – she is amazing.

Even though I’m still figuring this out, I wanted to share this post for my friends out there who are considering homeschool, but are super intimidated, just as I was. I thought I’d have to be a *teacher* to be good at this. You don’t need to have a teaching background. You just need to find the right curriculum fit (and know you can change at any time), have a little patience and flexibility, and continue to show love and patience to your kiddo. <3

Our homeschool curriculum and how we structure our days

For the most part, here’s how the day goes:

We wake up and take Liv to school. We come home, P has breakfast, I give her a little bit of chill time where she can play with toys, puzzles, build things, etc. (this is where I’ll catch up on a few emails or put out work fires) and we start *school* at 9. I sit at the table with her and eat my breakfast as we work together.

Almost all of the curriculum we’re using is plug and play, which means you open the book, read the lesson, answer the questions, and move on. (Almost everything below was recommended by Brittany)

Math- 20-30 minutes

We’re using Nicole the Math Lady and Saxon Math. We used to use Saxon math at the girls’ school (they had switched to Math in Focus) and I knew I wanted to go back to Saxon. Nicole the Math Lady teaches each lesson (about a 10 minute video with a corny brain break, which P loves) and then you have practice questions and 1-2 worksheets to complete. You input the kids’ answers into the computer and it tracks their grades. Each lesson takes us about 2 days to complete.

Grammar -20-30 minutes

For grammar, we’re using Masterbooks, which is a faith-based curriculum. It includes picture study, memorization, punctuation, spelling, vocabulary, observation, poems, psalms, letters, and practical application through creative writing. We just started but I feel like she’s already learned a lot from this textbook. She learned cursive this year, so she’s working on answering the questions in cursive.

Writing – 20-30 minutes

For writing, we’re doing the Fables, Myths and Fairy Tales writing lessons from IEW. It focuses on their Structure and Style method. Right now, she’s working on reading fables, making key outlines, and narration (being able to retell the story using her notes).

Reading – 20 minutes

I just want her to enjoy reading for now, so we’re reading something super lighthearted and fun together. This book has held the test of time and she LOVES it. We’re both often cracking up at some point while reading about Fudge and his antics.

Science + Social Studies / Geography – about 2x per week each

I’m still trying to figure out a plan for this, but not so worried about it since we’re close to summer. For now, she’s working on memorizing the states, capitals, and being able to locate them on a map.

For science, we do one project each week. The first week, we dissected owl pellets, matched the bones on the bone sorting charts, and talked about what we found. Week 2, she constructed an egg drop that we could drop from the balcony to the yard while keeping the egg intact. We talked about velocity, gravity, momentum, action and reaction. This week, she’s working on constructing a roller coaster.

Since we’re just planning on homeschooling until 5th grade, I’m going to reach out to Liv’s school to see what the expectations are for rising 5th graders for science and social studies/geography so I can make sure we cover the bases.

Mid-day:

We take Maisey for a walk and have lunch together, catch up on a couple of chores, and figure out a plan for the afternoon.

Afternoon:

When we made this decision, I told P that I loved hanging out with her but couldn’t be her cruise director all day. In the afternoon before we pick up Liv, I’ll have coaching calls, content creation, editing, podcast interviews, whatever I need to do work-wise for a couple of hours. I’ve also shifted my work schedule so I’m working more on the weekends or when the Pilot is home from airline training. (We started all of this when he left, so I’ve been solo parenting and figuring all of this out along the way.) Saturday is a work blitz day now, and most of Sunday. Besides P’s basketball game, I’ll write/work/edit pretty much all day until dinner.

In the afternoon, she’ll play with toys, work on something she enjoys (music, crocheting, shooting hoops, etc), and if I’m caught up with work, I’ll take her to an indoor play place, to run errands, and sometimes I’ll give her some screen time. Since she has basketball at night and we’re chasing around with Liv to dance classes, she usually doesn’t get screen time in the evenings.

The days shuffle around. Sometimes I’ll have an appointment in the morning, or teach a barre class, so we do school in the afternoon, and we’re also exploring some of the Tucson homeschool activities. There are so many great ones here: parkour, gymnastics, art, co-ops, horse lessons, music — I’m excited to check them out!

So that’s how it’s going for now! I’m sure it will change over time and my plan is to get her caught up with math (she’s finishing the third grade book now and I”m hoping to get 4th grade and most of 5th done next year while she’s in 4th grade). The other books are 4th grade books, so we’ll just move up to 5th when she completes them.

Homeschool allows you to meet the kid where they are. If they’re progressing quickly in a subject, you can progress along with them, or take more time on certain subjects if they need it.

If you have any ideas for fun science projects or any social studies and geography resources, I’d appreciate it so much! Also, if there are any questions I can answer in future posts, please lmk!

xoxo

Gina