Homeschool Prep

I talked in passing real quick that we decided to homeschool the kids.  I’m starting out with Mallory in Kindergarten and Max in Pre-Pre-School. 

I have always had this high interest in home schooling.  I thought about it years before Mallory was school age ready.  So I have been following home school blogs and home schoolers on instagram.

When we finally decided to do it – I felt some what prepared.  I had a ton of on-line resources.  However not a one of these knew me personally and could answer some of questions.  We found out that one of our pastors homeschooled all of his children so we went to him and they told us everything they knew and gave even more great resources. 

I felt totally prepared and ready!  These are the books that I picked for us to work on this year.

Then one of my home school blogs was having a sale on her site and I couldn’t pass up her Kindergarten Curriculum.  So I bought it.  It is a downloaded curriculum and I have to print and laminate and cut and… totally fun stuff!  I’m loving her curriculum.  She has a pre-school one that I will get for Max next year. 

It has been a lot of prep work getting this curriculum ready so I have been storing it in this binder so when it gets handed down to the next child it won’t be so much work.

This blogger is one of my favorites so I went a bit hog wild during her sale.  I also purchased her lesson planner.  Went to Office Max and found a binding kit and printed the planner at home on the special paper.  Otherwise I’ve heard you can print it on regular paper and take it to a printing place to have them bind it for you.

My goal was to get 4 weeks pre-planned before we started.  It didn’t happen. I was only able to prep out 3 weeks.  I bought an accordion file folder and I store each day’s papers in side here.  I’m hoping that I’ll get a night or weekend morning to keep prepping through out the year.

I’m an office supply / school supply geek!  So when it was time to get their supplies I was giddy!  Mallory highly dislikes shopping so I went by myself.  It was more exciting for her to come down and see it all in her special little area. 

Of course Max had to get one too!

A daily notebook for Mallory to work on each day.  She fills out a calendar each day.  Counts to the 100th day of school.  Writes her name each month to see how she improves.  Learns about tally marks.  Keeps track of the weather each day and charts it.  Also the three sheets on the right that are laminated and she can do each day.

This is Maxwell’s area for Mother Goose Time.  I had it all set up and the Friday before we started his lesson arrived with a whole new display for the year.  So it no longer looks like this and I haven’t taken a new picture of it.

I still ordered Mother Goose for Mallory too.  They have lots of good projects and Mallory still enjoys it.

Here are some of the books we will be reading together. 

Our first book is Stuart Little and (on my favorite blog) I found lap books for most of these books. 

I’m feeling prepared and ready and excited for the first three weeks.

My goals for this year:

~ Be prepared.

~ Relax.  I want to have a schedule yet if the schedule needs to be broken – I don’t want to freak out about it.

~ Enjoy it and have fun.  I’m sure there will be moments where I will feel more stressed then anything else.  I need to stop and enjoy the moment we are in.  This is something totally special I get to do and I need to remember that and let loose with the kids.