Homeschooling Today Magazine | A Journal of Home Discipleship

(response from Kara Murphy):

Dear Liss,

I know how you feel, although my children weren't quite as successful with our natural methods as early as yours have been! It’s easy to search for the "right" way to homeschool and want to know what you are "supposed" to be doing.

It is good to be intentional in your teaching/learning times with your children. However, with a five- and three-year-old, there is no need to rush into a "curriculum" per se. You have obviously been doing a very good job of responding to their questions and interests. Real books are the foundation for many curricular choices.

Many curriculums will outline a daily schedule for books to read, when to read them, and what workbook pages to complete. It sounds like you don't need this kind of help! You are already choosing good books, and they enjoy learning skills at their own paces. From my personal experience as a curriculum developer, the schedules laid out are somewhat arbitrary to provide a guideline for the "average" child. Since your children are not "average," the schedules won't help much.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't use any curriculum for particular subjects.

For the age of your children, I love Five in a Row (by Jane Claire Lambert) which addresses social studies, language arts, art, applied math, and science using children's literature. You might check the review for Teach a Child to Read with Children’s Books: Fourth Edition by Thogmartin and Gallagher in the May/June 2010 issue of HST or read the article (“The Great Debate”) about the authors’ approach on the HST website.

If your five-year-old is ready for a more formal approach to math, choose an interesting one. We like Math-U-See (www.mathusee.com) and my review editors like RightStart™ (by Activities for Learning, Inc). But even those are not necessary. You can continue using discount store workbooks; just make sure your child understands how numbers work with real objects. Use toys or M&Ms to work the problems on the page first, then do them on paper. To this, we add copying. We choose a word or sentence from a book we read for the child to practice writing on handwriting paper. Through this, children learn handwriting, spelling, punctuation, grammar, and good composition.

If these suggestions resonate with you, you may feel more official if you record what you accomplish each day in a "planner." When the children were young, I used a simple spiral notebook with the date written at the top of a page. I listed the things we did labeled by subject area. (I did not write down what I wanted to accomplish until the morning I planned to do it.)  We no longer live in a state that requires me to keep "lesson plans," and I have six children all doing different things, so I no longer keep this type of notebook, but it does help to see what "school work" is being accomplished. Don't forget to include real-life opportunities such as cooking together, cleaning, organizing, chores, and outside observations.

For a mom like you, simply following the suggestions in the FirstYear e-newsletter (books, activities, and suggestions in articles) will provide an excellent elementary education (K-3rd). As your children grow older, you will probably choose a math curriculum. Keep your children reading and writing about what they are learning, and you will be providing an excellent knowledge base.

Have you read A Biblical Home Education (2007) or The Three Rs (1986) by Ruth Beechick? Both give concrete ideas for moving your children forward in their skills and content learning. These books present a common-sense approach to homeschooling that is adaptable to many family situations. A Biblical Home Education also addresses curriculum questions more specifically.