Nature's Natural Mamma

Amongst many of the things New York seems to be sphincters about, homeschooling surprisingly is not one of them.

My 6 year old son is starting first grade and my 8 year old daughter is entering 3rd grade.

Now, I’ve chosen to try this homeschooling adventure because since COVID and the recent politics, I’m not okay with some of the things they’re trying to push on our children. That’s just me.

Also, my children have had recent experiences with bullying and some incidents that I’m not okay with and apparently the teachers didn’t find these incidents necessary to tell either child’s parent. I’m also a big fan of “if someone is going to hit you, you finish it“. I personally don’t think the kid that finishes it should be expelled from school for sticking up for themselves and or others.

I also feel like public schools have an unreasonable amount of time off. So if I could even get a job, most of my income would be spent on daycare because of all the time off from school. I would get so frustrated because every time I would turn around, I either couldn’t find a sitter and had to take off work or my whole paycheck would go into daycare/sitter. And as of 2022, with gas prices being what they are, it just wasn’t going to happen.

Okay, I’m going to talk about the vaccine thing and hopefully my page doesn’t get taken down, but here it goes.

I also used to work in healthcare and I didn’t want to get the vaccine for plenty of reasons, so I was fired amongst many of my coworkers… I bring this up because the mandate is still in the air for children in New York public schools. I don’t want them getting it either…. for plenty of reasons.

So far we are 2 weeks into our homeschooling adventure and we have settled nicely into our new routine. My son is currently in summer school and every day since he has chosen homeschooling over summer school.

I asked both of the children a few months ago if they would like to give homeschooling a try, they both said yes. So I did take my kids feelings into consideration, which I feel is important.

I’ve also consulted some of my friends and family members that also homeschool and they love it! They all love being able to spend all this extra time with their kids, it’s ending up to be an extremely rewarding and fulfilling experience.

I was nervous to get started, but we like the flexibility of it, the kids have more time with their neighbor friends (which are also homeschooled, so it works out).

It literally takes us 2-4 hours to finish up a school day. I say that because I will teach both of my kids at the same time.

According to New York

1. For purposes of this subdivision, a unit means 6,480 minutes of instruction per school year.
2. Instruction in the following subjects shall be required:
   1. For grades one through six: arithmetic, reading, spelling, writing, the English language, geography, United States history, science, health education, music, visual arts, physical education, bilingual education and/or English as a second language where the need is indicated.

http://www.nysed.gov/curriculum-instruction/10010-home-instruction#RequiredCourses

We complete daily units of English, US History, Health (every other day), Science, Reading, Geography, American Sign Language, Dance (lessons in neighboring town), and of course P.E.

ASL and Dance are extras we chose, you don’t have to.

Piece of cake.

Since I teach my kids at the same time (as mentioned above) it only takes us 2-4 hours.

When you think about it, how much time do the kids spend in actual school (and don’t forget all those holidays and breaks they have). How much time are they spending in recess + P.E + Lunch ? Etc. Activities easily done at home. I’ll send my kids outside to play…. Done.

For materials, these are some of my favorite books to work with.

I’m going to mention with the IXL books, they also have a whole online program that I pay $10/ month per kiddo, which isn’t bad. You can also use it for free. I pay for their own accounts and progress reports, but they can practice for free.

How I plan my days

I will usually prep the day before depending on how the week is. If I have a lot of upcoming appointments, I’ll do it day by day. If we are going to have a pretty calm week, I’ll plan that whole week. I personally like to use Google Classroom. But if you’re not into the tech aspect of things you can use a simple binding planner or print some excellent planner designs for homeschooling off of Etsy.

What I like about Google Classroom is that it’s cloud based and I can add youtube videos, schedule work and assignments up on certain days and have them due at certain times on certain days. It helps me keep track of grades, what we have done together and what we haven’t.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out!