Homegrown Learners

Tonight, as I was researching ways to enhance our study of George Washington, I had a revelation. My daughter learns best through reading quality literature. When she was in PS, she (and I!) were always frustrated because there wasn't enough time to read for pleasure. When she came home in the afternoons there was always homework to do -- most of it mind-numbing -- things like word searches, fill in the blanks, and copying your spelling words five times even if you know them already! By the time she could make it to a good book she was just too exhausted to read. When she did read a book (I will use the first book in The Little House series as an example), her teacher told her she needed to read it through twice before she took an Accelerated Reader test on it because it was worth so many points and she couldn't possibly have understood it all in just one reading. WHAT?!?!

Since she has been homeschooled she has read wonderful books such as "The Skippack School", "The Matchlock Gun", "Pedro's Journal", "Squanto Friend of the Pilgrims", "Pocahontas and the Strangers", "The Corn Grows Ripe", "A Lion to Guard Us". AND..... she has read the first five Harry Potter books! Wow. Talk about an education! This is just the list in the first five months.

I attribute a lot of this learning to our wonderful curriculum from Sonlight, and also from my research of the writings of Charlotte Mason.

Another revelation I had was that, in just a few short months, my daughter has come to like math. Today, she actually told me she loved a certain type of problem we were doing and could she just do a whole page of problems like this? WHAT?!?! Horizons Math is just fabulous... the lessons are broken up into six small sections that are achievable. The student is introduced to concepts slowly and over many lessons, and this repetition helps build confidence and mastery. The problems she liked today? The Distributive Property. Enough said.

I am kicking myself for not making this decision earlier. My soon to be homeschooled Kindergartner will benefit so much from the mistakes I made with my first child. I am just thankful God led us to this point and has provided for me to be at home and educate my children. I am blessed.