Minimal Mom Homeschool Update (Year 1, Week 1)

Tom and I made the decision to homeschool last year, prior to our world getting turned upside down. Facilitating public school at home was frustrating for all of us and I couldn’t imagine another year of that!

If you’re helping your kids with school at home I pray extra grace and patience over you and your household– it was NOT easy!!

Homeschool Update

What you’ll find in this post:

  • How I tried to get the year started off in a creative way
  • Curriculums we’re using
  • Our weekly schedule & how much time I plan to spend on schooling each day
  • My low expectations for the year ;)
  • Tom’s role in homeschooling

I have to say, that so far, switching from public school to homeschooling four kids has been fairly stressful. There has been a lot for ME to learn about how curriculums work and selecting the right one for each child. I can see how it gets easier over time (and maybe even fun)…but I’m definitely not there yet and that’s ok!

Video Update of Homeschooling

If it seems like I don’t care right now: I do care a lot about our children’s education, but I care more about preserving all of our sanity!

Main curriculum we’re using

We’re using Gather Round for our main curriculum (is that the right term??? :) I chose it because we can teach all of the kids at the same time. I just print off a workbook specific to their level.

We’re about 7 lessons into the Earth Science unit and so far I like it. I have absolutely nothing to compare it to, so my endorsement means nothing at this point! But, it has been straight forward and easy to use, so I appreciate that.

Adeline (5th grade) said that some of her workbook pages felt a little easy for her. And while it includes reading skills in the pre-reader notebook, it seemed a little advanced for Gage (kindergarten). But, overall, I think it will be easy to make adjustments as needed.

Math Curriculum

For Maggie and Adeline (4th and 5th grade) we’re using Masterbooks. We’re ordered the workbooks that corresponded with there current grades and they seem to be about right with where they were at coming from public school.

With Gage & Corbin (K and 2nd grade) we’re using Math U See. Some love it and I’ve heard others say that it wasn’t right for their child. I like that it comes with a DVD with lessons since I’ve never taught math before. We’ll give it a try and see how it goes!

Reading Curriculum

This is perhaps what I’m most excited about! My friend Janet introduced me to EZ Reading. She is an educational therapist, dyslexia expert and homeschooling mom and helped design this curriculum. It is meant to be fun and engaging and stress free.

I’ve just started to watch the instructional videos (which are very helpful and make it super easy to understand), and feel very empowered and capable to teach Gage how to read and to help Corbin build on the skills he’s already learned.

Tom’s Role in our Homeschooling Day

In my perfect world, since Tom works from home, too, I would have him teach math and help with field trips. My only hesitation right now is him having proper expectations with the kids (and I know I’m not alone in this ;).

In his perfect world, he would teach something once, a light bulb would go off over the child’s head, they would smile and happily complete their problem with no further instruction. Wouldn’t that be awesome if it really worked that way!?!


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