Until midway through our first child’s kindergarten year, we never imagined we’d be a homeschool family. The thought of it was overwhelming at first. Even with six years of classroom teaching experience, I knew teaching my own kids would be different, and I had to juggle more in my already limited time as a mom and business owner. However, it’s much more simple than what I was picturing at the time. Homeschooling does not need to involve a six-hour time commitment everyday, and it doesn’t need to be completed on a strict schedule. We certainly do have a learning routine, but it’s a flexible one. Rather than start activities at a set time, we have a flow of subjects that we work through each day. We start when we start, we take play breaks, and we come back to learning after a break for appointments or a mental stretch. It really can be so flexible, if you just get into a learning routine that’s easy to plan for and follow.

Language Arts

We begin our day with with handwriting. Both kiddos have a Handwriting Without Tears workbook for their level. We spend about five minutes on handwriting right after breakfast. Evangeline, our preschooler, is working in My First School Book, which includes fine motor building activities, coloring, and beginner penmanship skills. She has been practicing pencil grip with her twistable crayons, chanting “pinch and flip” as she prepares for her practice activity. Everett, is using the My Printing Book for first grade handwriting practice.

The next activity in our day is word study. The Words Their Way word study program is a conceptual way of teaching children phonics and spelling. Instead of memorizing spelling lists or rules, they are asked to sort pictures and words by their sounds and spelling patterns. Our preschooler is working in the Words Their Way Level A Student Workbook, and our first grader is beginning the Level B Workbook. Each week we start a new sort, and complete a similar learning routine over the course of the week.

• Monday: Cut, sort, & discuss the pattern
• Tuesday: Memory Game
• Wednesday: Speed Sort (beat your own time)
• Thursday: Glue Sort / Silly Sentences (big kid)
• Friday: Spelling Check Up or Quiz

I do supplement this routine for my preschooler, to make learning more appropriate for her level. She really is just beginning to learn her letters and sounds. She loves sorting tangible objects. Since Everett was little, I’ve been collecting mini-figurines of various objects that the kids may sort by sound. We’ve recently purchased salad containers to store these in, so that I can readily grab letter tubs to go with her sound sorts. If you’d like something similar for your young learner, but want to skip the collecting process, these Alphabet Soup Sorters are made ready to go.

Reading instruction is often done snuggled up together in one of the kids’ rooms. I’ve compiled a book bin for each of my kids filled with books at their independent level. While I work on skill building with one child, their sibling is reading from their “just right” bin. Evangeline’s bin is filled with board books, and Everett’s contains books that aren’t too easy, but ones that he can read independently. When it’s my first grader’s turn to work with me, he read’s from text that offers a little more challenge. As he read’s I guide him to use strategies to decode tricky words and to understand what he’s reading. I will get into more specifics on strategy-based reading instruction in a future post. Evangeline and I work on her letter identification for her one-on one time. We’ve found this Letter Recognition Curriculum helpful and engaging for her.

Our first grader will continue to build his sight word vocabulary this year. He’s mastered the pre-primer and primer sight word lists, and has quite a few first grade sight words as well, so we will pick up right where we left off. I began the year with a sight word inventory, simply asking him to read words from the dolche sight word lists, and marking down which he knows and doesn’t know. What really helped Everett take off last year with his fluency and emergent reader skills, is a sight word activity I found on Teachers Pay Teachers. These Pyramid Sentences by The Moffatt Girls introduce sight words along with a decodable word and a sentence pyramid. The sentence pyramid allowed Everett to practice the sight word in context, and set up a habit of rereading phrases of text so that they sound smooth. He does this in his guided and independent reading now when he meets a word that he’s got to stretch out. As a former teacher, I know it’s a really good reader habit for building fluency. This year, I’ll give him five words per week, attached to a ring. On Mondays I’ll have him read the words and fluency pyramid. For the remaining days of the week, he will practice the words with one of four word study activities. Each week he builds the words with cubes, stamps the words, beads the words, and rainbow writes. We use the following tools for these activities:

• CVC Letter Cubes
• Melissa and Doug Letter Stamps
• Letter Beads
• Scrabble Tiles

We use the same sight word practice activities each week and just switch out the sight words on his practice ring. This makes our routine run smoothly, and takes very little planning time on my part.

Writing time is one of those flexible parts of our day. Some days I model write, before having my first grader write on a topic. Other days, I ask him to write a brief journal entry. The neat thing about only having two students, is that I can teach them exactly what they need to improve upon their writing skills. Right now with my first grader, we’re working on writing opinions and supporting them with detail sentences and a closing. My preschooler is still tracing and printing letters. Writing instruction is a guided process.

Math

This year, I selected Mammoth Math for our first grade math curriculum. It’s a very affordable math curriculum that is align with core standards, and is quite simple to follow. Each day we work through one or two pages of his work text, and then play one of the listed online games or a tangible game that reinforces the learned skill. I have a few different number workbooks, preschool busy bags, and math puzzles that our preschooler can do for math time. We spend no more than 30 minutes on math each day. It seems to be enough time for them to master the focus skill.

Science, Social Studies, & Life Experiences

The cool part about keeping our learning routine simple, flexible, and short, is that it allows us to take learning outside of our home classroom. We visit museums, parks, hiking trails, and more. Experience learning is so important for growing a child’s background knowledge and building a foundation for learning. These kids have so much time to play and explore, because we can complete our day of formal schooling in a few hours. Sometimes we take more play breaks in the middle, and sometimes we knock it out in a morning and go do something with our afternoon time. They learn so much from our family outings, and from everyday play.

Homeschooling children does not have to be a complicated thing. Sure, choosing curriculum and getting organized can be a bit overwhelming at first, but once you find what’s right for you and your kids, the everyday routine of school is pretty simple. We have a routine that we can repeat each week, and adapt to various family or social activities that come up. My kids are thriving with me as their teacher. They are getting a completely customized education, and we’re able to give them rich life experiences as well.

Disclaimer: As a homeschooling parent, I purchase a lot of our homeschool materials from Amazon. Because I’m using Amazon so much to gather learning materials, I became an amazon associate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases linked from my blog.

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave