Curriculum

Okay, not that I really did this but did you know that if you googled kindergarten curriculum you would be overwhelmed?? Did you know that if you asked anyone who has done any kind of home schooling you would get a wide range of curriculum?? It is amazing how much stuff is out there. You can get curriculum for FREE though downloads and following tons of blogs or you can pay a ton of money and have everything arrive in a pretty box. (Okay maybe the box is not pretty but you have everything you would need for that year.)

I've been doing my research on curriculum for my family for awhile now. I thought I had it all decided and then I felt the Lord telling me to keep looking. So, I've been looking and looking, praying for peace and that God would show me what He wanted us to do.

I ordered the Foundations book from Classical Conversations early in the spring. I'm really excited about the memory work we are going to do. I've decided that we are only going to do the History, English, Math, and Science portions this year. If we continue through the cycles, we will cover this cycle 4 times so what we skip this time around we will catch in three years.

I also decided that we will, together as a family, learn about the Biblical Holidays. "The Biblical holidays were instituted by God as an integral part of the divine worship system of the church. They are, as He intended, a remembrance and memorial in honor of what God has done for His people."

This is what I'm most excited about! I know that as we work through the holidays we are going to learn more about our Lord and Savor and for that I know we will all be rewarded. We are going to start in August by studying about the Sabbath. We will then take a holiday each month. September will be The Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah); October, Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur); November, Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkoth); December, Hanukkah; January, Purim; February, Passover (Pesach); March, Feast of UnLeavened Bread (Hag HaMatzah); April, Firstfruits (Yom Habikkurim); May, Feast of Weeks, Pentecost (Shavuot).

Our core curriculum will be with Epi Kardia. Epi Kardia is a Christian literature-based unit study curriculum that uses Charlotte Mason methods. I'm excited about the 'living books' that we will be reading along with the fact that history will be chronological. I also love how there will be fine arts woven into each unit.

Lastly we will be using Singapore Math.

I'm excited to get things started. It is going to be an adventure. It would not be honest of me to say that I'm ready. I have a lot of work to do these next few month in getting 'prepared' and getting things organized. It will come. I need to work on a schedule and learn grace. Let the adventure begin.

**The purpose of this blog is to help me keep my thoughts straight as I go through this process. As we start school in the fall, I will update with what we do and what we've learned. I've heard that I will learn more than my kids and for that I'm truly excited!!

Thanks for reading, I hope maybe along this journey I'll be an encouragement to you. Feel free to share any of your ideas or encouragement along the way. If something I say or do brings an 'ah ha' to your mind, please share.

Blessings,

Elizabeth

From the Beginning

Okay not really 'from the beginning', but this is a place to start.

A little bit about me...
I come from a long line of public school teachers. My Mom's parents taught for many years, my mom has a bachelors degree in education, and my aunt recently retired from teaching. When I was asked what I wanted to be when I was growing up I would always say a marine biologist (I wanted to work with marine animals). People would look at me funny and then ask me, in a come back to reality sort of way, "Where do you live?" You see I'm a Colorado girl. Grew up in the mountains and had only been to the ocean a handful of times. That dream was stripped away from me and when graduation from high school neared I decided that I would venture into education.


Funny side note... I currently live in San Diego, CA. I could have had my childhood dream, however I didn't make it past my first college biology class and funny enough, I can't swim. Maybe God knew what He was doing by putting some of the naysayers in my life.


So, I graduated from a small public high school and headed off on my own to a small private university. I then pursued my degree in math education. After two years at the first school I transferred to a small state school and finished my degree. I got married and then moved to California!!

Here was the plan... Go to school; get good grades, get into a good college; get good grades, get a good job. Well, I moved to California and thought it would be EASY to get a job, California was in high demand for teachers, right?!? I got my foot in the door in a 'renowned' district by substitute teaching. I landed a long term subbing job and eventually got a contract that lasted for one year. During that year I started working on my Master's degree in educational technology. When I was not rehired things started to change in my paradigm of education.

Here is the kicker though, I was not even a mom!! Our daughter would not be born for another year and I started having thoughts of what am I going to do when we have children and they become school aged? I was not impressed with our neighborhood public schools or the public school system. I was being lead down the road to home school.

Fast forward a few years. I'm now a mom with two children. I remember having conversations with some of my mom friends about schooling when our kids were old enough. I would tell them that I had my degree in education but that I was looking into home school. I would get these looks of confusion, how can a person with a teaching degree not be excited about putting their child in a traditional school?? All I can say is that God was planting a seed that was soon to grow and blossom.

December 2011... The magic month when kindergarten registration begins. In my area a parent spends a lot of time going from school to school finding out what forms need to be filled out so that they can register their child into a school. If you want to do 'school of choice' there are more forms to fill out. It is like applying for college, seriously, and we are just dealing with kindergarten. So, I did what most parents in my community do. I applied to the two charter schools in our area. Then I started to pray. If God wanted us into the schools he would get our daughter in, if not the answer would be clear.

Here is what happened. We applied to Heritage Charter school. There are 66 spots available for kindergarten. We were number 247 (there were over 285 applicants). I took this as a 'no' from God. We also applied to The Classical Academy. The Classical Academy is a little bit different. It is still a lottery to get into but two of the 'tracks' are 2 days in school and 3 days home, while the third track is 5 days home. We got our letter stating that we had not been selected for the part home school but could do all 5 days from home. I got my answer and now the journey will begin...