General homeschooling….

I’ve been writing here about the 5 in a Row books that we’re using to do unit studies, but I haven’t talked about the other things that we’re doing in homeschool.

Each morning, we start our school time after Ben goes down for his morning nap. I start the day with us singing, “Good morning, God. This is your day. I am your child. Show me your way.” Then we start our Morning Time.

We do devotions together. Right now, we’re reading the Jesus Storybook Bible every day. We’re also memorizing Bible verses. It took about 3 weeks, but they can now both say Ephesians 2:8- “For it is by grace you have been saved, and this is not from yourselves- it is the gift of God. And this is not by works, so that no one can boast.” I was surprised that Evan learned it just as quickly as Seth did, and he’s only 3 1/2. I wasn’t giving him enough credit…

We’ve now moved on to “A soft answer turns away wrath, but harsh words stir up anger.” It seems relevant. =)

Then we read a short poem, sing our song for the week (sometimes a hymn, and sometimes related to the book we’re rowing), put a star on the calendar for the day, and color in the space on our weather chart. We also sing the days of the week and months of the year, though not every day.

After that I get into the 5 in a Row book. Seth’s math, reading, and handwriting come after that while Evan plays or does some preschool work. Sometimes we run out of time for that before Ben wakes up, and he does those in the afternoon after his nap. I also might have him do a few extra printables or activities that Evan wouldn’t be interested in in the afternoon as well.

We also don’t do 5 in a Row every day. For instance, I decided that I didn’t want to start our next book right away, and so tomorrow we’re going to have an insect day. I got some books on insects, and we’re going to do an insect identification experiment that I got from the Janice Van Cleeve Experiment Book on Bugs that we have. We’ll resume “rowing” next week. I like having the flexibility to take a day off in between longer unit studies to pursue other interests or take a field trip. Math, reading, and handwriting are every day activities, though.