Our Homeschooling Journey

This is a post from my previous blog that I brought over.

We began homeschooling when our oldest (twins) were 2 years old. My husband had been hearing about homeschooling on Christian talk radio and provided me with information. I knew there was no way I could do that. After much prayer on his part, my heart was softened and I can't imagine not homeschooling and the freedom it affords us in educating our children. Rather than put them in a preschool program, we created one of our own. We added our third child shortly thereafter and continued on with early learning activities until it was time to begin Kindergarten.

We used Rod and Staff Preschool series workbooks with all the children the year prior to starting Kindergarten, which are inexpensive and give a solid and comprehensive skill set. We follow that up with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, combined with the Explode the Code series of workbooks for phonics. After recommendations from nearly everyone we knew who homeschooled, we introduced Saxon Math to our children and have been very happy with the results. We began handwriting instruction with A Reason for Handwriting, but have now switched all 3 children to Handwriting Without Tears.

I am very much the frugal homeschooling mom, so nearly everything we buy for school, I have been able to purchase used.

We follow the Classical Method (ala Well Trained Mind) for our history and science studies, but prefer to have something structured within that method. We use Story of the World as we study the 4 year history cycle and Living Learning Books for elementary science.