Aug 21, 2009

First week of school under our belts...

and it's been a good week. I did not realize how much we were 'unschoolers' until we started following a preplanned curriculum. I love Heart of Dakota! http://www.heartofdakota.com/

I can't say enough about it. It is steeped in the Bible, I think the only class that doesn't use God's Word in some way is math. In fact yesterday on of the kids noticed that everything we read and did pointed back to scripture and commented about it. When I assured them that this was indeed the case, they wondered if it wouldn't be confusing, so I pointed out that everything followed the same timeline, Creation to Christ and now they are seeing how it all ties together.

We are using resources by Ken Ham, Ruth Beechick, and Diana Waring to name a few. We are studying the geography of the holy land and we are using Apologia for science and learning all about zoology.

I do have to admit, the first 2 days, I taught like I was used to doing, and I was exhausted. Then I realized, this curriculum is designed to be done more independently, and why am I making it so hard on myself? With that in mind, the last 2 days have been easier.

We are still not doing everything that is scheduled. One reason is I just discovered that I overlooked the dictation assignment for this week in our Language Arts section. And we are also waiting on the student book to arrive for our reading program. I think that by week 3 we will be up to snuff so to speak.

Even though I'm tired, I'm really pleased with how the kiddos have taken charge of their learning this week. They are getting started on their individual classes on their own, not waiting on me to say 'get to work'. I have a 2-page excel spread sheet that I fill in for them to check off their assignments, it is semi-detailed and has them refer to the teachers manual for specifics. So far this is working well, I'll probably tweak it a little, but my thought was to give me a printed record of what we did this year and also be able to sell my teachers manual to help finance next years books if it is in His will that we continue homeschooling.

Now the only thing I really need to figure out is how to create a spreadsheet for grades. I think David can help me there.