The Start of our Homeschool Journey!

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Hello Friends, 

We are “officially” homeschoolers in the state of Pennsylvania! Woohoo! Pennsylvania is a high regulation homeschool state, so I was a little nervous about all the paperwork needed to register for homeschooling… but honestly, it wasn’t that bad. We registered in July, and we officially started our first year of homeschool three weeks ago. 

Today, I would like to share a little bit about our homeschool journey leading up to this point. We have jumped ahead into first grade, so I want to share what we’re using for this year, as well as all the things we used and loved for both Preschool and Kindergarten.

Disclaimer: This post may contain  affiliate links. This means if you click on a link and make a purchase I will receive a very small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog in this way!

Preschool

Last Fall, I started doing the Playing Preschool Curriculum with Daniel. It was a lot of fun, but I quickly realized that he was ready for SO MUCH MORE. He was begging me to “do preschool” every single day… and he was just soaking it all up.

To add to our preschool lessons, I printed off letter worksheets and put them into these restaurant menus so he had a little dry-erase workbook to do with each Playing Preschool theme. He loved it. (My favorite letter printables came from The Hollydog Blog). We also read a bunch of books together everyday. We would go to the library and pick up books that went with the Playing Preschool themes, as well as some “fun” books that Daniel chose on his own. 

We really enjoyed the Playing Preschool Curriculum and I will likely use again when my second son is ready to start school (although I may begin working through it when he is a little younger).

Kindergarten

Once my husband and I realized how much Daniel was soaking up in preschool, we decided to jump into Kindergarten level workbooks at the beginning of this year. So, in January, we started Math Lessons for a Living Education: Level K and Adventures in the World Around Me (both from Masterbooks). He flew through both of these as well. For letters and copy work, I really liked the Alphabet Books from Memoria Press which we worked on throughout the summer. We also continued working throughout the Playing Preschool Curriculum at our own pace and finished that up during the summer months. 

First Grade

Phew. And now… we are doing first grade! We’ve been doing school for a few weeks now and things are going so well. We are finding a groove and settling into a good homeschool routine. We have chosen to go with MasterBooks Curriculum for our core subjects (for now). The biggest “complaint” I’ve heard about MasterBooks is that their curriculum is “too easy.” Which is partly why we are starting first grade with Daniel a little early. He is ready for their level one curriculum now. 

Here are some things that led us to choose MasterBooks:

  • They are written with a Biblical worldview
  • They are strong on Biblical creation/science and apologetics (two things that are very important to us based on the society we live in) 
  • They’re extremely affordable
  • Their workbooks are colorful, up-to date, and not overwhelming
  • They loosely follow a Charlotte Mason philosophy of education 

My biggest complaint about MasterBooks so far, is that they do not use the King James Version in their curriculum. However, since I am reading through everything with my son, I just read any passages straight out of my Bible instead. As he gets older and moves towards independent learning, we may decide to switch curriculums or go through and write in the verses with the King James. We’re still undecided on that. But for now, we’re happy with the curriculum.

Here is everything we’re using for first grade this year:

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We are also using the Manner of the Week wall charts from Memoria Press which I will soon be incorporating into our Morning Time.

Our Homeschool Routine

We typically start working on school between 9:30 and 10:00am. Our start time depends on what time everyone wakes up and how quickly we eat breakfast and get our morning chores done (like making beds, getting dressed, washing dishes, starting laundry, etc.).

We start with our “morning time” which is one of our favorites parts of the school day. We sing 2-3 hymns together, work on our Bible memory verses (we love these KJV Bible Verse Cards) and then read some books together. I typically let Daniel choose the books we read. 

After Morning Time is over, we move on to our workbooks. We don’t work in every single book every day… instead I choose 3 subjects to work on in a given day based on what needs to be done for the week and rotate through them. So, on Mondays, we typically do Math, Phonics, and Bible. On Tuesdays, we might do Science, History and a Phonics review and so on.

I’ve been keeping track of everything we do on a simple little homeschool log I created… this way I have a record of our school year, the days we’re done school, and what we’ve accomplished!

Homeschool Books I’ve Enjoyed

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 Over the past couple years, I have devoured several books on the topic of homeschooling. There are several that have been a help to me as a new homeschool mom so I want to share some of those titles with you:

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about the start of our homeschool journey! As someone who was homeschooled, I am so exciting to start this journey with my own children… I know I will be learning right alongside them. 

If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them in comments! 

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