Home School!!!

Well, September is fast approaching and with that, comes edu-ma-cation!
After much deliberation we have decided to homeschool again this year, or "home educate", as I prefer to call it.

There is so much work involved in planning the year. What are we going to do? What will she learn? Where do we want to go from here? How do we do it?

I've broken it down into a few areas:

#1 - What I absolutely want her to learn this year (goals)
~ to be comfortable reading very basic stuff on her own. We started with reading last year, and she did very well, but she is not excited about reading, so my goal for this year is *no pressure*, but reading every day. Enjoyably.
~ learn to tell time. Something we tried last year, but she just wasn't ready. I put too much pressure on her, and it was a struggle. I think this year, it will be something we review constantly, without forcing her to spit out the answers. My goal is that by the end of the year she can tell time.
~ counting by 2's, 5's, 10's. She can already count past 30, and count backwards starting at least at 10. We'll also work on counting all the way up to 100.
~ Work on the concepts of the days of the week, "yesterday", and "tomorrow". This still causes some confusion, so I intend to make more of an effort at doing our calendar every day to help her figure this one out, once and for all.

#2 - How I want her to learn this year
~ Field trips, field trips, and more field trips. We did some of this last year, but not nearly enough. We got bored with each other, and bored with "school", because it was, well, boring.
~ Games! Again, we did far too much workbook work, and it got to the point where she didn't want to "do" school. I hope to incorporate a lot more learning games into our repertoire this year.
~ Nature Walks. I am an indoor kind of person, and I have caused my children to be indoor people as well. I hope to change that a bit this year with a focus on going out several times a week for a walk around our neighborhood, to parks, and to what our family lovingly calls, "butterfly forest". I hope to come home from these walks with positive experiences that we can write about in a nature journal.
~ Reading. I put too much emphasis on her being able to read last year (as my mother would say, "She's only in Kindergarten!!!!). I spent too much time trying to teach her to read, and less time reading to her myself. Even though I still want her to read everyday, I'm going to make sure that I spend far more time reading to her myself.

#3 - My "Mother" goals:
~ I vow to completely set aside housework from the hours of 9am - 4pm weekdays
~ I vow to plan my meals out in advance, and thereby be more prepared the evening of.
~ I will have a basket of crafts, books, and games to keep the younger ones occupied during time I need to spend one-on-one with the Kindergartener
~ I hope to pray every morning for the strength, guidance, and patience I need
~ I vow to drop everything and go to the park if any of us gets too stressed out
~ I hope to go to the gym most weeknights as a way to release stress, and gain energy, and have time to myself to recharge.

As I plan out my school year, I get more and more excited. I'm looking forward to the time we will spend together as a family, and the things we will learn together.