Homeschool Round-up Week 1

For those of you who have been reading about this blog regularly, you’d know that we have decided to homeschool Ziya, my middle child, for the first time. She’s already in third grade this year. If she’s a first time homeschooler, I’m also a first time homeschool mom. I am starting a weekly round-up of our homeschool journey mainly because I want to remember the challenges, achievements and adventures that Ziya and I will be sure to encounter throughout the whole year. Aside from that, since we are the guinea pig homeschoolers from Ziya’s school, I’d like to be able to tell the school by the end of the year how successful or unsuccessful we’ve been so that they can decide whether to formally introduce their homeschool curriculum to others next school year.

Let me start by explaining our set up. After looking for the best homeschool curriculum, we decided to avail the homeschool option offered to us by the girls’ school, which is still my eldest, Zoe’s present school. Their homeschool program is on an experimental stage this year since it’s the first time that they are offering it. For this year, they are only offering it for students who are in need of it. We decided to homeschool Ziya because we feel that it is better for her healthwise. This way, she doesn’t have to wake up at 4:30 am just to catch the bus at 5:30 am. Should she have taken regular school she’d be home by 6:00 pm already after having traveled more than an hour to and from school. Also, she was really more interested to stay home and be taught by mommy instead.

In this program, the school gives us the lesson plans, the books and the school schedules. The only tests Ziya will have to take are the quarterly final exams. She can also still join the various school programs so that there will still be some socialization with her former classmates and friends from school. Aside, from that though, I have decided to supplement that by enrolling her in a class of her choice (probably cooking lessons), so that she can learn other skills and be able to interact with other people. I also plan to supplement her learning by organizing field trips for us to take.

We have started with our lessons last Monday and I could say that it has been quite nice. We follow a schedule that Ziya and I came up with together. Basically, we study two subjects in the morning and another two to three in the afternoon. As much as possible, we will follow this but I found that we may have to be flexible on some days especially when there are other things going on in the house,  like the repairs being done on the roof last Thursday. It was noisy and so we decided to forego lessons in the afternoon and instead squeezed them in the next day. Here’s our schedule for now:

Monday & Wednesday – Penmanship, English (A.M.) and Spelling, Math (P.M.)

Tuesday & Thursday – Penmanship, Science (A.M.) and Filipino, Civics (P.M.)

Friday – Arts, Christian Living (A.M.) and Music/Physical Education, Computer (P.M.)

We’re pretty much on lesson 2 already for each subject except for Christian Living, which is okay since I think we’d still be able to finish all the lessons in the textbook in time . We weren’t able to take up anything yet for Music, P.E. and Computer yet. There aren’t any textbooks to be followed for those so those subjects will be something that I’d have to teach on my own. For arts, I was able to download some Father’s Day coloring sheets which Ziya colored and will give to her dad and stepdad tomorrow. I guess, the most challenging so far is teaching Filipino and Civics because the textbooks are in Filipino. Though Ziya and I speak the language, Ziya does not understand the really hard Filipino words, which I think most people don’t use anymore anyway. However hard they are, though, I think that they’re important to learn.

So far, so good, I think. Ziya said that she’s having fun so that’s a great start. Here’s to more homeschool adventures!