Life In The Fab Lane: Homeschool Schedule And Curriculum (1st Year)

I wanted to do a seperate post just on my schedule and the curriculum I have chosen. I am new to the blogging process when it comes to education. I have had a personal blog for years, but this is completely different. I want to share my journey and help other people and I also want to be able to look back and see all the great things my children have done and learned. This first post still will not be as detailed as I will do in the future. I will try to highlight some of my favorite books and curriculum so that some of you can make the decision as to whether or not you will use it also. I may choose to do a Friday post every week about a different book or just use a week to highlight different things I'm using and loving.

I am hoping that this blog shows other moms that homeschool life is not as scary as it appears at first. I feared every single thing about being a homeschooler and that my children's education rested solely on my shoulders, but now, for the first time, I feel so confident in the teacher that I am becoming and the choices that I am making and I know all of you out there following this blog, will feel the same way, just give it time.

This is all of the stuff that I have purchased within the last week. I am trying to do homeschooling on a budget but I am finding that to be a struggle. I never realized how much stuff teachers have to have just to keep everything going. I have found some great deals at Books A Million but for the most part I am trying to either swap for free or buy used. Hopefully I can get a group of moms local that I can try to trade off items so that we stay under budget. I am also doing some babysitting on the side on some days to try to counter the money that is being spent because we have to stick to a budget.

I went to a local book store called Mr.K's Books in downtown Oak Ridge and I got a great deal on some older books. I have been reading the book below when I have some down time. It has given me some good ideas, but I am learning that I just have to do what's best for us and not what everyone else does for them.

For good behavior, I have chosen to do Incentive charts and "Free" Days. Once they have filled up one chart with stickers, they get a prize from a prize box. I have gotten toys mainly from the Dollar Tree and most of them are educational such as puzzles or coloring books. I also added crayons, markers, and pencils because the kids seem to really enjoy getting new supplies also. Once they have both incentive charts filled with stickers (see below), they can turn it in for a "free" day of no work. The ways that they receive stickers are - Random Acts of Kindness, being good a full school day, completing homework and turning it in on time, making an A on a paper, or exhibiting good behavior while outside of the home.

For bad behavior, we chose time out, sentence writing, paper erasing, and losing free time. Time out normally last 7 minutes per child in a corner during the time that we are doing something fun such as art or recess. Sentence writing seems to be the thing they dislike the most. I normally have the sentence either contain spelling words or something from the bible. Paper erasing is an idea I got from a local FB page. You find papers that you would like to reuse that have pencil writing and you make the child sit and erase all the writing. Normally I do five pages per time, but since I just started, I don't have much to be able to use this as often. In the future, I hope to have something better than all of this because the children are really outgrowing time out.