Our Homeschool

This summer has gone by SO QUICKLY! I can't believe it's almost fall. With the impeding change of season, also comes a new school year. This will be the first year that I have any kind of plan. I've tried in the past to have a schedule but it's never worked. My daughter just wasn't ready. But now she practically begs me to "do school". So we've decided to let her lead! Great plan, right? :o)

In case it can help someone else, I'd like to share with you our homeschooling approach and some things we'll be doing. First let's start with our purpose and focus. For us the focus is on our faith and passing it to our children. While learning facts and figures is important, to us it is more important to pass on our faith. There are two verses that we use as our homeschooling model. The first is:

And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. -Deut 6:6-7

and the second is:

And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. -2 Peter 1:5-7

My plan is to focus on faith, by having time in the Word and through daily interactions {Deut 6:6-7}; on virtue by spending time together and building our relationships; and on knowledge, by working together. Now that's not to say we won't be doing any thing that resembles traditional learning. Just that our main focus isn't to learn a certain amount of facts in a specific amount of time. I believe that this is the direction the Lord is leading us in, and I also believe this is best for my child. When we've sat down to learn X she very quickly lost interest. But when she initiates learning, or when it just flows naturally, she is very interested. Because of that I've had to get a bit creative in how we learn certain things.

I've been struggling with how to teach her letters because going "this is A, B, C" wasn't working. But as usual  YHVH answered my prayers and, after watching a message, I was given in awesome way to teach reading and writing. What we will be doing is copying Bible verses! At this point it doesn't really matter what her letters look like but just that she does it. There was a study conducted that shows writing is directly related to reading. So the plan is to read a passage and then write it. We started practicing last week because I wanted her to get familiar with the idea. It worked out pretty well, and she did better than I thought!

Copying John 3:16

What I did was print out a verse so that it was large enough for her to clearly see the shapes of the letters. I read the verse to her out of the Bible and showed her that the words on the paper where the same as in the Bible. Then I let her begin to copy them. She really enjoyed it! Our goal right now is 5 minutes a day. This way she is getting the Word and learning a skill :o)

Other than the copy work I'll just continue to let her ask questions and explore. We have a preschool workbook that we use if she asks, and also Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. My plan is to just relax, which is not my normal mode of operation, lol. But she learns so much better when I let her do her thing. I think that's the best part of homeschooling, being able to let your child learn the way that works best for them. 

What are your plans for this school year?