Homeschooling this year

The last two years have looked a lot more like unschooling than homeschooling. With Silas' illness and passing it was a necessity to be more relaxed. Don't get me wrong, the boys most certainly got an education! Michael had testing at the end of last school year and aced everything except math, they definitely learned.

We started our school year the 16th of September. Since we are homeschooling we can set our own school year and school days as long as we have 180, 4 1/2 hour school days during a 12 month period.

We have started out slow and are working towards a regular schedule. So far we have only had 4 days of school per week since we have been so busy on the weekends lately. I'd like to get to where we are doing 5 days a week most weeks though. I do love that we can take a day off when we need to though! I really like homeschooling year round rather than taking months off at a time. It seems to work better for us.

Michael and Gideon were up in the tree house doing math and handwriting together today! I loved that! Michael is in 7th grade this year but for him I am teaching 6th and 7th grade math this year. Gideon is in 5th grade but I am teaching him 5th and 6th grade math this year. Jason is in 2nd grade but with all of the laughing that is going on when he does math I think we may need to move on to something more challenging for him. He laughs because he just can't believe how easy his math work is! I might end up doing 2nd and 3rd grade math for him this year.

All of them need work on their handwriting. Michael and Gideon both are doing cursive and Jason printing. I think Gideon and Jason will both have readable handwriting but it is much more challenging with Michael.

Michael is reading a lot! He can read books at an adult reading level and has an extensive vocabulary. Gideon reads at maybe a 2nd grade reading level but I think he is improving a lot and will "catch up" before much longer. I think that it will help a lot that he can see better now and isn't in vision therapy anymore. Jason is probably still at a Kindergarten level, mostly because its hard for him to be still long enough for a reading lesson! I am still teaching him reading of course and I think eventually it will click when he realizes the benefit of knowing how to read. I am not too worried about him as I was still at his level when I was 3 years older than him!

Science has always been a favorite subject with the boys so I do not worry about that too much. History is something I want to get more serious about, as well as Geography.

My main goals for this year are to get all of the boys up to grade level in math, handwriting, language arts and reading. My other goal is probably more important, for them not to complain about doing school work. They don't always but they often do. That is something I want to see stop. I want them to love learning AND enjoy "school".