Homeschooling

I’m excited to teach my son web development this year 🤩

Today I need to write homeschooling progress reports for the school district. Sigh. I’m going to need a bunch of coffee. One would think that after five years I would remember to do it piecemeal during the year and not wait until the last minute. Oh well…

One drawback with homeschooling and working full time. If you don’t get done teaching and helping the kids until 1pm and you have to drive them to sports in the afternoon, then you’re stuck at your computer until 10pm to make up the work hours. 😴 ☕ 👩🏻‍💻

Ninth grade homeschool schedule: 8 credits

• Honors Geometry
• Honors Biology
• Writing, with tutor, and Literature
• World History: Africa and Asia
• European Portuguese
• Falcons: Integrated Humanities
• Elective: Contributing to Scientific Understanding (semester)
• Elective: Astronomy (semester)

Seventh grade homeschool schedule:

• Prealgebra
• Spelling, Melancholy Grammar, Creative Writing, and selected literature
• Co-op: Geography and Poetry
• Microbiology and Genetics
• Online Falcons
• Ancient and Medieval History
• Art Projects
• Swim and Gymnastics
• Health: The Chat: Stanford Medicine

Homeschool prep for this coming school year has begun! 😄 I love getting new books and curriculum in the mail.

Looks like this year I’ll be back to homeschooling two kids. 9th and 7th grade here I come ☺️

A big pile of books arrived today that I was going to tuck away for next year’s homeschooling and my son has already snuck one away for reading 😂

When I started this whole homeschooling journey I really only anticipated it lasting until High School and then off to school my kids would go. But my son really wants to homeschool high school and… I kind of want him to, too 🙀

My son cracks me up 😆. Of course he sends this 20 minutes before his science class when I'm stuck in a long meeting.

Finally finished back-filling some pages for our previous years of homeschooling. I also added links to them on the homeschooling category page of my blog.

I took some time to update my homeschooling page “Eighth Grade for 2023-2024” with what we’ve done so far this year. So far he’s 50/50 on continuing homeschooling for high school next year or trying out the local public school.

My son and I have had friction homeschooling this year. So yesterday morning we spent two hours brainstorming what to do and when he was last really happy with school. Turns out he was happiest when he read all the time. So we’re adjusting and adding in his wonderful choices ❤️📚

It’s that time of year when all my homeschooling plans start to unravel and I need to pivot our materials 🙄. One day I will learn to only plan out a semester at a time.

And the busy season begins: homeschool, work, kid chauffeur, keeping active, keeping the house in order, and finding time for my hobbies.

Probably not its intended use case, but the Micro.blog bookshelf feature made it a cinch to put together my son’s free reading list this year.

It’s full on homeschool prep today. My poor printer has its work cut out for it. Tomorrow starts 8th grade for my son and my daughter starts 6th grade at the local public school.

I wandered over to my company’s shared office space today. They are really making the outdoor space nice. If I didn’t have homeschooling/kid responsibilities I could see myself coming here more often.

Whew! Homeschooling this year is officially done! Since I had to go through all the trouble of writing up progress reports I decided to toss them up on my blog. Except not bullet lists but prettier and with pictures. Check it out if you’d like: Seventh Grade and Fifth Grade 🥳

At the end of the homeschooling year I’m often panicking because I worry that I haven’t done enough, covered enough, to give my kids a well-rounded and rigorous secular education… but then I have to sit down and write a progress report for the school system and I’m in awe at all we covered 😮‍💨

Whew. For the last month I’ve been prepping for next year’s homeschooling. I can’t believe it’s time for eighth grade already. Tentative plans are set, deposits are in, and I’ve even posted them on my blog 😁-> Eighth Grade For 2023-2024

I started homeschooling my kids with the pandemic and now my daughter wants to go back to public school next year. So I was psyching myself up for this change and how to support her. But all these horrific school shootings… They have me broken hearted and second guessing everything.

I’ve been using this layout for the last six weeks and it’s a keeper. I’m not splitting aspects of my life across different apps, excel sheets, or notebooks and that’s helping me stay on top of it all. Plus, stickers! Most apps don’t have them and I love them.

One thing I’ve learned about homeschooling classes and summer camps. Enrollment happens way sooner than you’d expect. I’ve snagged a few classes for my son and I’m glad that’s off my to-do list. Next step… find bargins on all the required textbooks and materials.

I got a Hobonichi Cousin journal for the new year and I’ve been been trying out different layouts to keep track of homeschooling, work, and my personal tasks. This is my favorite so far. Homeschooling log in the center and color coded.

Someone is helping my son with math today 🐱. One overlooked benefit of homeschooling, lots of cat breaks 😂

It’s been so grey and rainy here this week. Plus going back to work and ramping up homeschooling has left me extra drained. I needed something lovely to look at. My favorite vase and bright flowers are just the ticket.

One of the benefits of homeschooling: I get to decide when there is a snowday! It might be just an inch but the kids are outside having fun and I’ll make hot chocolate when they wander back.

One of my biggest homeschooling wins this year was finding Falcons for my kids to join two days a week. My daughter needed more peer interaction, my son needed his creative muscles stretched, and I needed to not burn out.