Homeschool Resources- Part 1 : Math

When I started homeschooling , NumberOne was only about 2. I didn’t actually know that I was homeschooling, in fact I had never heard of it. One is a super-smart kid and totally in to everything so I was just trying to keep her occupied and out of trouble. By the time she was preschool age she was reading and knew her numbers and all that jazz, just from playing. She also could speak quite a bit of French thanks to the wonderful French family we befriended at the park. Hubby and I were starting to wonder where we should send her to school. At this time we were living in the bay area in California. We looked into the local schools and we even tried out a Montessori Academy. She already knew all the stuff that they were teaching, but all kids have to go to school, right? Honestly I felt like she was too little to be off at school all day. I missed her. At this point I had heard the term homeschooling but wasn’t sure how it all worked. I really started looking into it. I went online for most of my information because I didn’t know any other homeschoolers. In fact there weren’t any around! I gradually built up the courage to talk to Hubby about giving it a shot. At first he thought I was nuts. Seriously, I will never forget the look on his face. He was not going for it one bit. But I laid out all of the pro’s I could think of and quoted all the statistics that I had read online about how much better that homeschooled children fare on standardized test and such. That had his interest. Who doesn’t want their kid to be the smartest around? He finally conceded and decided to let me try it for one year.

That first year was pretty great. I didn’t have a curriculum. I didn’t know there was a such thing. I just made up little activities teaching her what I thought she needed to know and it was great! Hubby was convinced that this was the best way to educate our children. He was very pleased with how things went and was totally sold. The only problem was that it took a lot of time to plan all of the lessons. The next year I learned about this fancy thing called curriculum and I picked one up. That was the worst year ever. We decided to hang in there and try to find a curriculum that would work for us. I started curriculum hopping (for the next couple of years) and hated most of what I picked up. A lot of them were intended for schools and require too much preparation for just one student. Some of them were boring, some of them were too “New Aged” and some were just plain stupid. I spent hundreds of dollars on so many different programs that were supposed to make it easier for me. After all ,I was spending a whole lot of time planning all those lessons and by our third year I had four children so time was at a premium!

I spent many a sleepless nights planning out our schedule. I would plan for weeks in advance, and then someone would get sick and we would miss a few days and I would have to revise the whole schedule! On the other hand I didn’t want to unschool. I am really too much of a control freak for that! I just had to find something that would work for us and not be totally stressful. So after many trial and errors, I would like to share with you what has worked best for us.

Here are some of the things that have stuck and that we absolutely love to use:

* italics indicate quotes from the publisher

Math:

1) Rod and Staff This is a bible-based curriculum that is our top choice. It is hands down our absolute favorite. It teaches in the old

fashioned way. If you want your children to be able to understand math in a practical way, this is the way to go. And is also extremely

inexpensive in comparison to most others. Especially if you plan on using it for more than one child.

2) Switched on Schoolhouse Switched-On Schoolhouse is a comprehensive, Bible-based curriculum that offers computer-based learning

for grades 3-12. With 3-D animation, video clips, and other fascinating multimedia, Switched-On Schoolhouse is the perfect

homeschool curriculum for today’s generation. With this flexible, best-selling curriculum, you can customize student learning to fit

individual educational needs. This is great if space is limited or if you spend a lot of time travelling because all you really need is a

computer. It even keeps up with the amount of time children are spending on the lessons and most importantly it keeps up with grading!

We also like this website for fun, free activities:

www.arcademicskillbuilders.com

Part 2 is coming soon with tips on teaching your children to read and our Language Arts curricula.