Homeschooling 2021 - How's It Going?

“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.”

— Abraham Lincoln

We had a bright start to the new year a week ago at River Lake Sunshine School ~ a 1st grader showing up in sparkly tattoos and a fancy red dress 💃🏻, a little art therapy for mama, and a kitty who wanted to join us. 😻 Care to learn about Abraham Lincoln today, Ginger?

When January rolls around, it’s time to re-evaluate how things are going in our homeschool and see if we need to make any adjustments. I thought I’d reflect back on what I originally planned for the 2020-2021 school year in this post and share some updates!

Reminder that I have two daughters - a 10-year-old in 5th grade and a 6-year-old (almost 7) in 1st grade.

The first day of school

Biggest Challenges

First, the challenges, because we all have them. Here a few of my biggest ones…

• Juggling school with all the other jobs I have (farming, writing a book, helping Steven with his chef business) can sometimes cause chaos, if I allow it. Everything always seems like it’s urgent, so it takes careful planning and keeping things in perspective so I don’t go insane. Allowing chaos into the environment steals joy from all these good things.

• “Is all of this enough?” I can easily get too caught up in all the things we could be doing instead of seeing the beauty right before me. If we spend all morning on a single history lesson, but my children are moved to empathy and have space to ask questions, that’s a great school morning. LESS curriculum, and MORE connection, seems to always be the answer.

Free Thinking & Open-Ended Questions

Before I dive in to the subjects, I wanted to share what I’m learning about providing my children space to form their own opinions and observations. You might have heard the quote, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” by William Butler Yeats. I think it’s important for us to remember we’re not here to force-feed our children information just to check off boxes and lists and move on to the next lesson. As Sarah Mackenzie says, “Education is for LOVE.” Love of the Creator and appreciation for His creation - themselves, other people, and the world.

So, we put excellent materials before them, and then we allow space for them to learn and grow.

I’ve been trying to incorporate discussion time for my girls to state their own thoughts and opinions on a story we’ve read or a subject. In their notebook pages, I’ve asked them to start adding one sentence with a personal observation.

For example, the other day, we learned that if we stretched out all the DNA in our body, it would reach to the moon and back, 150,000 times. Which is pretty shocking, right? Instead of having my girls just copy that fact into their notebooks, I asked for how it made them feel or what they thought about it. My first grader said, “I usually think I’m pretty small. But when I hear that, I feel like I’m actually pretty big.” This stuff is GOLD, because it’s what their brains are actually thinking, and it makes a connection to knowledge.

Asking open-ended questions after we read a chapter in a book also helps:

What did you think about ______?

What do you think about what happened to ______?

How did reading that make you feel?

What would you have done if you were ______?

Tutorial

My girls have loved going to a new drop-off tutorial at an arts academy once a week, and it’s been a nice break for me. I’m not sure if we’ll do it forever, but it’s just a reminder that it’s great to change things up and also let them have more responsibility and freedom. They love making new friends, learning new skills.

Bible/Devotional

We’re still liking Indescribable: 100 Devotions for Kids About God and Science by Louie Giglio. Sometimes the girls copy the Scripture verses that go with each devotional and add them to a notebook page. Also looking forward to trying The Good Gospel by The Peaceful Press.

Math

This has been the biggest and most refreshing change for us. I’m so thankful we made the leap to choose different math curricula that works better for our family.

I can’t say enough about how much I love Math Mammoth for my first grader. She loves doing it - the workbook is so simple and sets up the concepts so well. There are also tons of math games they suggest with common things you’d have around the house, like playing cards, dominoes, or dice.

Singapore Dimensions Math is also working great for my older daughter. It’s VERY intense though. I’m so glad we started on level 4, because honestly, there are a lot of concepts I have to refresh myself on before I can teach them to her! Hmmm, probably shoulda ordered the teacher’s guide. I wish I’d learned math this way - it makes it so much easier to do mental math, which we do most everyday here with farm work, cooking, etc.

To mix it up, we also made some of these Waldorf multiplication flowers. I drew them with Sharpie on card stock. Then I had my oldest fill in the answers in pencil, color, and laminate them. It’s nice to have these on hand to keep enforcing multiplication facts as we review/learn new concepts.

We’ve done nothing with Life of Fred (Apples) - ha!

History

We are learning SO much cycling back through U.S. History this year, using The Playful Pioneers 2.0 as a loose guide. Like I said before, I’m concentrating this year on adding in even more living books for read-alouds and getting to really dive deeper into topics like native peoples, racism, and people who persevered throughout history.

The Native American cards from The Peaceful Press have been a great resource for learning about different tribes each week. We usually look up real photos of the tribes online and child-appropriate videos of them on YouTube if possible.

One major change we’ve made is deciding not to continue with the Little Britches book series. It was drudgery for me to read them aloud, and my girls just weren’t super absorbed in them. We’ve decided instead to read aloud The Birchbark House series by Louise Erdrich, who is of Chippewa descent. We’re loving the stories so far!

This book list for Inclusive American History has been super helpful for finding books.

Check my Books Highlight on Instagram where I feature books we’re enjoying throughout the year, including lots of picture books and activity books.

I love the variety of things we’ll learn in one week. One day in September, we experimented all day with dyeing fabric with natural materials. We found a few old white tablecloths and started with beets, which were a total flop, unless, of course, we wanted a tablecloth the color of cardboard. Purple cabbage was great at first but quickly turned from dark blue to black.

Finally, we used turmeric and were SUPER excited about the results of our bright yellow tie-dye tablecloth!

One week this past October, we learned that the first apples were brought to the state of Oregon by a pioneer who carried the plants in his wagon. We learned that Benjamin Franklin invented lightning rods and bifocals (among a lot of other common items), was the first to say “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” and started the first lending library and post office that delivered to houses.

We made construction paper kites with strings and keys attached. ⚡️ We learned about the Mohican tribe and played the soundtrack to The Last of the Mohicans. We jumped off the beds in the guest bedroom and shouted our state capitals. We learned that the Hourglass Nebula looks like a giant eyeball.

We also learned that women - and women of color - can become who they dream to be. We keep moving forward with hope, spending our days learning about people groups and periods of history - so we can let it touch our lives and be inspired to live well OR differently. 

It’s important for me remember that ✨connection (to history, people, learning, each other) ✨is most important above all and to adjust things that aren’t working towards that goal.

We’re holding on to things that are good and beautiful while also learning the truth about history.

Lately, we’ve been absorbed in a study about The Civil War, Frederick Douglass, the Trail of Tears, and Abraham Lincoln. Living in Tennessee, a state where the Trail of Tears passed through, and was also part of the confederacy, we pass Civil War battlefields, old plantations, and former quarters of enslaved peoples everyday. It’s so important for us to not just see these sights as tourist attractions but to understand what really happened there.

May knowledge move us to empathy, and empathy to action.

“Everything I do is for my people.”

— Sacagawea

Rare photo in the school room actually WITH my girls. 💛

Language Arts

The Good And The Beautiful has been wonderful for us. I LOVE the new format where spelling words and sight word ladders are woven into the curriculum. It’s helped my 5th grader so much with spelling and writing beginner essays.

Brave Writer - we are just now starting to dive into the Arrow resources with The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street. I’ll let you know how it goes! I’m glad we didn’t start this back in the fall - it would have been too much to add at the beginning, but I think it’ll be a good supplement now that we’ve laid more of a foundation in language arts during the first half of the year.

Handwriting/Typing

The Good and The Beautiful Level 5 handwriting (cursive) has been a hit with my 5th grader. My 1st grader finished My Printing Book from Handwriting Without Tears already and declared it boring. So we’ve moved on to The Good and The Beautiful Level 1 handwriting for her.

Science

Besides the science real-life learning we have on the farm and what they’re doing in their weekly tutorial, we’ve learned a lot so far from The Good and The Beautiful Human Body unit. I don’t do it every week because it does require quite a few materials, but the hands-on activities are great.

Making this spinal cord model (string for the spinal cord, rotelle pasta for the vertebrae, gummy Life Savers for cartilage) was a highlight…

We also have a few National Geographic science kits and might be blowing a volcano off the front porch for science soon - I dunno, we’ll see how it goes. 🌋😬

Other Fun Things

My oldest loves the DuoLingo app and learning Spanish independently. My youngest wasn’t really enjoying the Khan Academy Kids app, so we changed over to ABC Mouse. We haven’t done much with typing - going to add that in for this semester.

Schoolroom/School Supplies

Check back on this post for my favorite school supplies, how we set up our schoolroom, and more.

This is seriously SUCH a privilege, so many of my favorite memories with my children, a gift of time that I don’t take for granted. 🙏🏼

But I also have the days when I haven’t looked at myself in the mirror at all before noon, my child’s math is so hard that I have to check it with a calculator (😬), and everything feels like chaos. It’s so important to keep the visions God has given us for our families at the forefront for both the smooth and hard days.

Know that I’m with you, cheers’ing you with another cup of warmish coffee and always glad to answer any questions/share what I’ve learned along the way. 💛

How’s your school year going?

How about my friends out there who are homeschooling for the first time this year?