Written May 2010. Posting now, as I am in the middle of planning and organizing our school days for the fall.
I always knew I would homeschool my children. I was homeschooled for one year and got a taste for it; I loved being homeschooled. Thinking back, my mom did a great job! I was only in second grade and I’d wished she’d continued. When I got married, I was so very glad that my new husband was very supportive of homeschooling as well. I thought I’d be a “school-at-home” type homeschooler, but as it turns out I’m very much an unschooler (not a radical unschooler though, we still have a lot of rules!). We let life teach our children. We offer tonnes of opportunities for learning and developing and reading and interacting. And, get this, MY KIDS ARE LEARNING!!! I love it.
So why am I changing things up this year? Never before in my three years of homeschooling have a bought a curriculum. That’s the plan for this coming year though. As my children get a little older, I see that they are craving a little more structure and direction in their learning. I want to offer new and different things. I do not feel that I am allowing for that; we are doing a lot of the same things over and over again and I feel that the children are getting bored.
I didn’t search very hard for curriculum. Curriculum is everywhere in the homeschool world. This curriculum kind of fell into my lap. I did research this one and many others to make sure this is what I really really wanted. I compared this one with that one. I wanted something that I could be hands-off and let them do their own exploring and reading. I wanted something that provided direction. I wanted something that taught me too! And you know what, I’m pretty sure I found it!
This coming year we are going to start with Year 1 Unit 1 of Tapestry of Grace. We have already started through the first three weeks of this program and really enjoyed it. The reason we didn’t continue this year was because this curriculum requires a lot of reading. I wanted the children to be able to read the material for themselves. Like I said earlier, I want my children do discover things on their own with little direct instruction from me. So I decided to hold off on exploring deeper into the curriculum with the kids until they could read better. Over the summer we will be working more on reading and writing so come late fall they will be ready to go full force.
Tapestry of Grace is a four year program; each year contains 4 units. I am combining this curriculum with other workbooks (and such things) and making it work for our unschooling / eclectic mindset. We are going to work through the material slowly. My plan at this point is to take Y1U1 and double the time to go through it. So a 9 week course is going to take 18 weeks or so. I don’t want to feel like I have to cram all the information into one week. I know we don’t have to do all the material listed; I know that I’m supposed to pick and choose from the activities provided in the material. I know we won’t do all of it; I don’t even want to, but I want to allow my children to dig in and dig deeper if they want. I want the freedom to allow them this time. I also want to allow them to say, “Mom, this is boring. Can we move on?’ And we can do that. We’ll start Y1U2 when we get there. I love the flexibility of Tapestry of Grace!
I think that’s what I love about homeschooling the most. I can pick and choose what we want to do and when and where. We can let life happen and not worry about “keeping up” to grade level. We can work at our own pace. We have a baby coming this fall and so I’m not even planning to start serious “sit-down” school until mid-October. We school through the whole summer. I believe that if I don’t continue with engaging my children in learning all year round that they will get bored. The fact is they do get bored.
ETA: I even purchased a prek workbox curriculum for my preschooler and kindergartener.
Striving to learn and live God's purposes,
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