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| First Year Homeschooling |
You've made the decision to homeschool..... Ok, now what? What do you do? How do you decide?
Once we made the BIG decision to homeschool, I soon got bogged down with the tons and tons of curriculum choices. There were many options out there for curriculum choices and many more opinions from everyone of how we should go about it. The only thing I was certain of was that I wanted a Christian based program for my children and we began our search. It did narrow it down some but, do we buy new or get used books? How long would we have to school each day? Foreign languages? Music class? Co-op? What is that? I relied on the help of friends and other homeschool families for guidance and really just listened to take in as much as I could. It sure was easy to feel overwhelmed because I didn't want to make the wrong choices. My kids education was dependent on my decisions. I was loaned an amazing book that helped us sort through many of our doubts & questions.
Once we made the BIG decision to homeschool, I soon got bogged down with the tons and tons of curriculum choices. There were many options out there for curriculum choices and many more opinions from everyone of how we should go about it. The only thing I was certain of was that I wanted a Christian based program for my children and we began our search. It did narrow it down some but, do we buy new or get used books? How long would we have to school each day? Foreign languages? Music class? Co-op? What is that? I relied on the help of friends and other homeschool families for guidance and really just listened to take in as much as I could. It sure was easy to feel overwhelmed because I didn't want to make the wrong choices. My kids education was dependent on my decisions. I was loaned an amazing book that helped us sort through many of our doubts & questions.
This book helped us narrow down each of our children's individual learning styles and gave us additional information about different ways to homeschool. I would highly suggest anyone who is having trouble deciding to check this book out! It is full of treasures! You can find '102 TOP PICKS for Homeschool Curriculum' by Cathy Duffy on Amazon for a reasonable price and trust me the info inside will be well worth your purchase.
After months... Ok, it was maybe just a few weeks but, it seemed like months of back and forth on deciding what to use, we prayerfully decided to go with Heart of Dakota. Carrie and Mike Austin have a beautiful curriculum based on a Charlotte Mason learning style and intertwines a biblical perspective into history, poetry, art, and much more learning. You can find Heart of Dakota's direct site here.
After carefully reviewing the Heart of Dakota program placing chart, we were able to determine the perfect guides to get started with our children. I love the ability to share curriculum with my children. It made me extremely happy to unite the basic History, Bible, Music, story time, and Science for both our 1st grader and 3rd grader.
Heart of Dakota's Teachers Guides make teaching homeschool easy! It truly is an open and go curriculum. I love being able to check off the boxes as we go through our school day. One of the reasons we love it so much is because most of the supplies for activities are simply common household items.
I know your curriculum choice is personal. I think one of the hardest and best parts to grasp when we began homeschooling was that we can customize our schooling to fit our schedule and needs. Heart of Dakota was a perfect fit but, we did choose a separate Math program with Christian Light Publications. The spiral style learning in workbooks has been a great fit for our family. You may find in our units that I also love to add fun Pinterest projects, free printable, or links for youtube videos along the way.
Thanks for following our journey!
Jodie
Thanks for following our journey!
Jodie
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