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Originally Posted by muslimmama97
Thanks for your note...i'm nervous about not doing a good job. Their education is in my hands; what if i fail? plus, i guess i'm just confused about how to start. Maybe you guys can tell me about your first day of homeschooling. Once you sat your children down what was your first step.
Would love some guidance...
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You won't fail. You will make mistakes, learn from them, and go on to have many more successes.
We started gradually. The first day we did a history read aloud, took a break, did some math, ate lunch, and then did some reading, and took the rest of the day off.
Now, we usually do history first [RA, mapwork, narration & illustration--we're classically inspired doing SOTW]. Then reading; we're using the Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. It's a bit dull, so I try to get through it pretty fast. Then I bought the Modern Curriculum Press Phonics Practice Readers. They don't line up exactly with the OPGTR, but they're close, and DS has some skills that I haven't taught just from his experience in PS last year, so he does ok. We read one or 2 of those 3-4 days a week. Other days we might do some hand-writing practice. We're using the Getty-Dubay Italics series, but I'm having to retrain his muscle memory from bad habits he learned last year from their LACK of handwriting instruction, so we do a lot of gross motor and sensory work first before getting to the WBs.
Then we have a snack and break. The baby often needs a diaper or a nurse, sometimes he's ready for an early lunch and a nap. Then DS and I get back to work. Math is from Singapore 1A. We're zipping through that. DS knows most of the concepts, I'm just going through and making sure he knows the "Singapore way". Plus he doesn't have his math facts memorized yet, and they rec that he gets those before moving on. Then we might do a read-aloud, which could be history, science, math, art, or some other topic he's asked me to get books on [recently it was boats & helicopters; now he's asking for stuff on vikings]. Then lunch. Then if the baby isn't already down, I put him down, and then DS and I do other fun things that maybe we couldn't do with the baby around, projects and stuff. Or we work on our "home economics".
I recently added in calendar at the beginning of the day. I don't have room right now for a wall calendar, so I just got a freebie calendar someone had sent me, and we color in the boxes in a pattern, talk about the date, any patterns he sees, any holidays [I sorta like that we're using a pre-printed calendar with holidays on it], etc. I've also started reading a little blip out of "What Your First Grader Needs to Know" [or whatever it's called] each morning.
On Wed. and Fri. I take him to the PS for speech. Wed. he also started swim this week. In a couple weeks, we'll start co-op "class" on Monday. Tuesday will become our library day [we were going to a story time for all ages on Wed., but now that's not doable], and I'm thinking I may try to start a playgroup for first graders on Thursday at a local park.
It sounds a lot more scheduled and organized than it is in actuality. Mostly I plan for what I want to cover that day, and as the day go, I do whatever feels right for the time.
Does that help at all?