Homeschooling, Faith, and A Little Bit of Everything Else

We recently pulled our oldest (five) from school. She has a later birthday and wouldn't have been able to start Kindergarten until 2025-2026 school year so we were essentially paying for her to do the same curriculum twice. It just didn't make sense in my head and now that I am continuing my walk with Christ I also wanted her to start. She's shown an interest whenever I am reading my bible and I try to dumb it down for lack of a better phrase for her. I've looked into Minno (the faith based TV show app for kids) but I feel like that should be free for children. I get that everything has a price these days but that's just my thought.

Since re-kindling my walk, I've grown more and more weary of what she watches and reads and learns. I want to obviously teach her everything I can but also teach her about God. I know that once she starts traditional school our time will be so limited since I'm not in a position to quite my job and be a stay at home mom (although that is the dream) but I feel so fortunate to be able to work from home for a bit and do this with her.

One thing we have started is a Level K curriculum that is faith based and has reading-LA and math. We're also adding in one bible story a week that we focus on (for example, Daniel and the Lion's Den, Jonah and the Whale, etc) and we will be reading to memorize one verse. For some this might seem like a lot but I feel like she already knows most of what is needed for Kindergarten (colors, shapes, counts to 100, can write her name and recognize it, knows where we live etc) and this will just be additional. She has such a will to learn and know more and this is a much better use of time than her just playing while I work. I've been thinking long about this and I probably should have prayed heavily on it before jumping in head first but I am praying now that the Lord will guide me to be a great teacher for my daughter and to help her absorb this knowledge that she will need for her future.

I think this will also help once my youngest (8 weeks) is old enough to start school too since he has a birthday after the age cut off too. It's my hope that both my children learn and prosper in not only the needed curriculum for life and college but also their walks with the Lord. It is my hope that my husband and I lead by example and teach them to live by the bible and that he and I also better learn to live biblically as well. This new road is daunting to say the least but I am so excited to be able to spend time at home with my littles and teach them. This is the last year I have with my daughter before she starts school and then we will only have weekends and holidays together. How sad is it that we only have little kiddos for 5 years? The days go by so slow sometimes and the years even faster. I feel like I was just bringing her home from the hopsital and now all I have are the memories of her youngest years. I get to re-live all of that with her younger brother but it will never be the same as it was with her. Clearly I am emotional about her getting older and me not having much time with her. How do other moms balance working full-time, having hobbies and friends, and adding another child to the mix that they want to experience everything with? I feel like if I give all my attention to my son I'm missing something from my daughter. If I give all my attention to my daughter, I'm missing something from my son and he's not getting the quality time that he needs. Someone explain how I balance this!

This post has been a bit all over the place, but in the coming weeks I plan to get on a schedule and post on Monday's about the previous/current week's schedule and how it worked and then on Thursdays I plan to post my bible studies and what I learned.

If you're interested in what I am doing for homeschool this week it is below:

Homeschool Curriculum November 4th-8th:

Math: Lesson 41: Covers tally marks, addition using numbers 1-5, subtraction using numbers 1-5 and word problem solving.

Language Arts: Lesson 1: Vowels, the long and short sound introduction, categories, vowel big and small letters.

Reading/Sight Words: Book of the Week: I Dig - Sight Word: I

Bible Story: Daniel and the Lion's Den

Verse of the Week: We love because He first loved us. 1 John 4:19

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