The First Year

First, let me start with the planning aspect. Before and after we moved to Washington I researched (and made a folder with) what all the standards were for each of the kids’ grade levels. Honestly I looked at the grades below and above as well since we all know that kids need review and challenging. I learned that the standards and homeschooling requirements were higher than they would have been in Texas, and I respect that. The one thing that was really difficult for me to wrap my head around was that children under the age of 8 here in Washington are “educationally free.” But since Kaiden had Kindergarten under his belt already I wanted to keep him moving forward. What the heck else was he going to do anyway?! I knew my kids would likely return to public school after the pandemic was over and we were settled into a new house, so I wanted to make sure their transition was pretty seamless.

I also took a little time to check out the local elementary school’s website and see what event they did so we could try and replicate some. I printed their school calendar so my kids would have the same days off as their neighborhood friends. Since we were from Texas, I also printed out the school calendar from their old school so we would know when friends were on break.

I’m a huge spreadsheet maker to organize information, so once I gathered all the details I made an Excel document with all the curriculum goals for the year broken down by month for each kid. We worked in broad themes with books that matched up. (Until I update the info here for the 1st year, see examples of year 2 here.)

I decided that for the first year I would just try an online subscription homeschooling service that would cover all the main subjects and then I would supplement what was needed for other subjects they didn’t include. The service I chose was Time4Learning. It was a flexible program so that they could complete the lessons on the computer, or we could print out worksheets if we chose. Sometimes printing them was nice because we could take them on the go if we were spending the day at the park or something. Some days we just wanted to sit out on the back porch and enjoy the weather, so we would put down a blanket and have school outside! It really was a good start to help keep everything organized and to help me learn the kid’s learning styles. They have a lot included.

The positive aspect of the online curriculum was that everything was covered over the course of our determined amount of school days, yet we could skip what they knew and take longer on what came as more of a challenge. I was also able to just jot down what the learning goal for the subject/day was and just find our own way to cover it.

The negative aspect was that it didn’t fit both kids. The social studies for 3rd grade wasn’t exciting enough, so we supplemented with a lot of Youtube videos and shows. The math for 3rd grade was not organized well for my kiddo, so we ended up using another program altogether for that, like IXL or Khan Academy. The 1st grade lessons were mostly engaging, but Kaiden ended up getting annoyed with some aspects and characters.

For Language Arts I found and printed all the spelling lists for the grade below, at, and a year above each of theirs.

For math the kids used the Prodigy program in public school, so we continued using that for practice at home in addition to their regular lessons. The second year they didn’t really use it much at all because they lost interest and felt like they aged out of it.

I learned that the kids each have specific strengths and challenges that I may not have been in tune with if they were in public school. On the flip side though, I learned which aspects of being in the public school setting really helped them.

I’m proud of what we learned and accomplished, not just academically, but as a family! See how things were different in year two here.