How we started homeschooling

Raahub yasar!

Today I wanted to share with you how I got started homeschooling our kharadu,

This isn't the only way, the best way or even the Nuwaupian way, it's just how we happened to get started. But if I was to start again, I'd probably do the same thing.

In a previous post on why we decided to homeschool, I mentioned that I looked into sending our children to a Montessori school instead of a regular one, but there were none nearby and they were costly to send our children to.

Very briefly, Montessori is a method of child education which is 'child centered' which means that instead of you deciding exactly what your child is going to learn and when, you offer special learning tools and activities to your child and they will work through them at their own pace, until they have mastered them. This means a 4 year old is free to master something that a school would only have shown 7year old or they could be at a 3year old's reading level, but a 5 year old's level of maths . They also pay great attention to ensuring a child has what they call 'practical life skills' (washing dishes, tying their laces, dressing themselves, etc) which they say are very important for a child to learn even before their academic studies.

While researching Montessouri teaching styles, I found a book called "Teaching Montessouri in the home - Preschool Years" which you can get at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Teaching-Montessori-Home-Pre-school-School/dp/0452279097/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347539789&sr=8-1

When I read through it, the exercises they showed were so simple, straightforward and seemingly effective, it gave me the confidence to make a start on teaching her until we decided what we would do with her.

After getting into the swing of thing with Mut Tiy En Re, doing more research into teaching her myself and stocking up on learning materials, the thought of sending her somewhere else to be taught became further and further from my mind.

So this is from my memory of 4yrs ago (!!!), the steps we went through when we got started (this was when we just had our oldest daughter to teach), even if they were in this exact order:

1. We started buying loads and loads of books and kept some in each room - I'd heard that daily reading was the cornerstone of a good education, which also helped a child learn to read, write, spell and broaden their vocabulary, so we made sure we read to them several books daily.

2. We stocked up on the essential learning materials, which for us were: pencils, crayons, coloring pens, rubbers, rulers, sharpeners, plain white printer paper, colored sugar paper (craft paper), 7 colours of paint (red, yellow, green, blue, brown, black and white), glue sticks, sticking tape and a set of drawers to keep them all in. We also started collecting things to do craft activities with instead of throwing them away ( old cardboard boxes, egg boxes, washing up liquid bottles etc).

3. I joined or subscribed to the newsletter of as many homeschooling websites and forums as I could find ( I'll share my favorite sites in another post)

4. I started buying educational workbooks for her age and others that were too old for her but were on sale.

5. I created the learning space in the house, which for us was (and still is) the front room table.

6. I decide how many days and how many hours a day I wanted to homeschool her.

7. I decide the different topics I wanted her to learn over the next 6 months (i.e. butterflies, number from 1-20, colors, shapes etc)

8. I compiled all the worksheets, workbooks and activities that I'd found for the first topic of study for the next 1-2 weeks and decided which ones she'd do each day.

9. I got started on it as best I could and as the days went by, I'd change the plan as I needed to to make it work.

I'll go into more details on these stages and share the plans I use etc in the future posts.

Please let me know what you think and share this with anyone you think needs it.

Hatep yasar

Mut Bast.tet En Re