Tag: early elementary

Socialization

~ wattlesandcombsfarm ~ Leave a comment

The hot-button topic! This is one of the biggest debated aspects of homeschooling. I encourage you today to not worry about it so much. The fact is that homeschooled kids can be, and mostly are just as socialized as their public school peers. In fact, I just dropped my kids off to go hang out with their friends for the afternoon. My two homeschooled children are currently at their friend’s house having a blast.

There are numerous options when it comes to homeschooling and getting your kids introduced to other children. We have homeschooled in three very different states now, and at every one there have been co-ops, homeschool groups, and all kinds of meet-ups for our children to attend. Especially in the younger years finding a group of moms to hang out with is really very easy. If you are looking for local groups facebook is always a great place to start. Here where we are, there are at least three different groups, tons of co-ops, and other speciality groups. Each one of them has a facebook page that will help you get connected.

As my kids have gotten older finding people that we all click with has gotten to be a bit more complicated. This is usually due to lots of younger homeschoolers and not as many older ones. Sometimes, one kid connects but the other one doesn’t. This doesn’t stop anything though because we have found other options that work for us. My kids and I train jiu-jitsu. One of my best friends from the gym is also a homeschool mom. I have found over the last little while that there are multiple homeschool families in our gym and have connected with a few of them. We have park meet-ups, library days, and our kids train together multiple times a week. Finding families with the same interests as you is always a good place to start. On top of that, my daughter is on a swim team. She makes friends wherever she goes. Her best friends however live right down the street. They go to a private school here in town, so we don’t school the same, but as soon as time allows they are here or she is there. My son has a friend who lives one street behind us and another on our road.

Of course, there were times when my kids struggled with friends. Especially after this last move. It takes a while to settle into a new place and get to know people. The kids in the neighborhood weren’t outside much because we moved right before winter. But, life usually works out and once the weather was nice again they made friends in the neighborhood. Over time they got to know their training partners and become friends there. Now, my kids definitely do not suffer from a lack of friends to hang out with. In fact, often times we struggle with having too many options. Between all the local groups there is an option to do something almost every day. We have to pick and choose because at some point we actually do need to get school done.

If worry over socialization is holding you back from homeschooling your kids, I hope this encourages you to do it anyway. It is 100% possible to make mom friends while homeschooling, and to make friends for your kids. Sometimes it takes a little bit of extra effort, but it is worth it and it is possible. Your homeschooled kids can have best friends, sleepovers, and every other normal thing that kids experience. Also, homeschooling is gaining popularity every year. This means more and more options and opportunities for your kids. They will not be missing out because they are homeschooled.

Organization

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Years ago when I first started homeschooling I scoured the internet for all the homeschool organization tips. After all, homeschooling does tend to come with a lot of paper. I found a blog where the writer used a plastic crate with hanging folders to organize each week of the year and the worksheets needed. We used this system for a couple of years and then stepped away from it for a while. This year we went back to that system and I fell in love with it all over again. I have 36 hanging folders in a crate and each kid has a folder for each corresponding week. At the beginning of the year, I sat down and tore apart the math notebooks, printed off the worksheets, and put everything the kids need for the week inside the folders. Now, on Monday they go grab the folder for the week and it has what they need. It also helps keep them organized. Whatever they finish goes right back into the folder and not all over the house. There are a few things that we don’t put into the folder, like Fix-It-Grammar. That comes in a spiral-bound notebook so I just leave those there, but everything that could easily get put into a folder gets put into them. At the end of the week, I throw away what we aren’t keeping and file what we are. I keep things like Math tests, note pages, and our schedule. Those all go into our binders to keep as a record of sorts for the year. The folders just get tucked into the back of the crate for use next year. If you’re looking for an easy way to organize all those worksheets for the year give this a try. It takes a couple hours before the school year starts and then it’s all taken care of and ready to go. This is one of the changes we made that will be sticking around for a while.

What a Week

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This last week wiped us all out. As I sit here typing this post my 11-year-old, who never takes a rest, is laying down for a nap. Like many people around the country, we got a lot of bad weather last week. For us, it was snow and about four days of constant wind. We have 5ft. tall snow drifts in our backyard and our poor neighbor had her entire garage and front door blocked off. For most of the week, it wasn’t safe to leave our house. The wind caused whiteout conditions and the roads around us shut down due to safety. Because we homeschool this shouldn’t have been a big deal but on top of the bad weather, we also had the crud making the rounds in our house. Tuesday morning my oldest woke up and didn’t feel well and then was down and out for the next 2.5 days. I don’t actually know if he had the flu or just a simple bug, either way, he did not feel well. Of course, as soon as he got over it my youngest came down with the same thing. She always gets it a bit worse and had a high fever for an entire day before it broke. I was hoping to get a good week of school done this week to make up for the last one, but it looks like we are going to need at least another day of rest. Mostly because no one has slept well in days. (I just took a break to go check on my son and turns out he has a fever again. So I guess here we go with round #2.) All of that to say we are once again off schedule for schooling. It’s beginning to look like we may end up needing to take the entire month of December off since Christmas will be here before we know it. Later today I am going to sit down with a yearly calendar and take another look at our homeschool schedule. At the beginning of the year I had planned for us to use a six-week on and one-week off schedule. This means there was plenty of time off worked into the year. We even started a few weeks early to help this schedule work. So, although we are off schedule we are not in any trouble for the school year. This is once again one of the benefits of homeschooling. A typical school year is 180 days of school but I get to decide how and when we use them. We can start early or go year round if we want to as long as we get our days in. It’s nice not having to rush through sick days or push too hard. Even though I don’t want to take this time off, and I feel a little stressed about having too much time off at once, it isn’t a big deal. I am going to use the rest of our sick time, however long that may be, to take care of the kiddos, our home, and rest. At least the weather is better than last week.

How We Got Started

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We started our homeschooling journey when my oldest was in Kindergarten. The previous year he attended an in-school Pre-K and at the same time, I was introduced to the idea of homeschooling by some new friends. The only thing I knew about homeschool was that my sister did Abeka’s video program for a few years when she was a high-level gymnast. Overall this was still a pretty new concept for me but in my heart, it felt right. Getting my husband on board was a whole other thing. He, like most people, only knew of homeschooling from outdated opinions and stereotypes. However, he trusted me and he let me try. We both kind of figured Kindergarten would be a good grade to test the waters. I hoped I couldn’t mess up too much at that point. That first year went really well and because she wanted to, our youngest joined in. She is only eighteen months younger than her brother and so it was really easy to find something for her to do alongside him. There have been hard days and even hard seasons over the years but it has never been a decision we regretted making. I am so thankful for all the extra time I have had with my kids. This school year will be our seventh year homeschooling and as of right now we plan to continue for the foreseeable future.

End of the first-year celebration