We are now 11 weeks into Helen's kindergarten year. Wow! We are having a great time. Even before we moved to Thailand I longed to home school. Now, it is nearly a necessity. I do think that I might be just a bit more excited about it all than Helen. Daniel hangs out with us for as long as his interest lasts. He's only 3 1/2 so some days that's not long at all.


Here is a typical day for us:

* Bible story, one hymn (we usually spend about 3 weeks working on the first verse of a well known hymn), and Bible verse for the week

* Read Alouds: this usually includes a Mother Goose poem and a fable or another short story

* Either a Science or a Social Studies read aloud. We are currently reading from a Berenstein Bears Science book, and an Usborne book about different kinds of jobs people do

* An early learning worksheet

* And occasionally, a fun hands on project/game

This lasts anywhere from 30-90 minutes, depending on the interest level.


After lunch when Sam and Daniel take naps Helen and I work on:

*Handwriting

*Math

*Thai

*Spelling

*Reading

*Art

*Memorizing Poetry


Though it looks like a lot, we don't usually spend more than 10-15 minutes on any one thing and we certainly don't tackle everything everyday! Our afternoon session is about an hour.

We are using Sonlight and though at first I had other plans for home school, this has turned out to be a great fit for us now. It is a literature based history program, meaning that history is the base of the curriculum with lots of period literature added in. For the most part "living books" (books written by one author who is knowledgeable and writes from his love/interest on the subject) are used instead of textbooks. Also, it does a great job with world cultures and missions. It is a curriculum well known for its excellent choice in books. If you love to read to your children, the Sonlight catalog is a great resource for finding books worth reading.