Homeschooling Jenna

I am homeschooling Jenna for TK this year, rather than sending her to TK through our school district. We have been in school for 2 months now, so I thought I'd share a little about how it has been going. Let me preface this by saying that if any of you reading are homeschooling Moms, you may be laughing at me. And I'm okay with that! I realize I am not getting the true homeschooling experience, and everything we are doing right now is really simple and zero-pressure.

Let me first explain why I chose to homeschool Jenna this year. Jenna is eligible to attend TK through our school district because of her November birthday. But honestly, I just wasn't ready to send her to school for a full day, 5 days a week. I don't feel it's necessary and emotionally I'm not ready for that! One of the huge benefit of homeschooling through a charter school (we chose Inspire), is receiving funds to use towards her education. This is not actual money in my bank account, but rather enrichment funds that I can apply towards things like art supplies, curriculum, extracurricular activities, field trips, etc. We received $1600 initially, and I believe there will be $1200 more in her account for the second semester. Again, this is not actual cash, but rather money available to use towards her education. Honestly it is such a huge blessing, but I am having trouble using all of it! I can see how it would go quickly for an older student who used actual curriculum. 

Doing school with your cousin is extra fun!

Jenna is almost 5 years old, and not in Kindergarten yet. So "school" at this point really only consists of some letters, numbers, colors, shapes, and whatever crafts or real life lessons I want to teach her. I picked this workbook up at Costco and Jenna absolutely loves working in it. She does attend an in-home preschool class a few days a week for a couple hours, so I try to follow along with what they are doing. For example, this week they are learning about the letter J, so I will supplement by having Jenna do the "J" worksheets this week at home.

As much as Jenna is content to sit and do activity sheets, I try to provide other opportunities for her to learn. I want her to understand that learning is so much more than worksheets, especially at this age.

I am not the artsy crafty type, but we stenciled some leaves this week and Jenna was thrilled with the results. For me, homeschooling means teaching her about leaves by collecting them outside, stenciling them on paper, reading a book about the changing seasons, and learning about their colors and shapes. Learning at home can be really creative and unique and outside the (pencil) box.

Jenna also uses dry-erase activity books from Usborne to practice pen control. I have seen so much improvement just in the last 2 months, which is so much fun to witness! She also loves writing grocery shopping lists for me, so I use that as an opportunity to help her with her letters and we practice sounding out the words together. "Mommy! The word banana has sooooo many N's and A's!!"

I have used some of Jenna's homeschool funds to pay for a gymnastics class, which she absolutely loves. I would love to get her piano lessons, but she may be a bit young for that right now. One of my favorite parts of being a homeschooler so far is the Inspire Lending Library. It is the cutest little library in Rocklin and just makes you want to curl up with a good book and learn. We meet our Inspire leader there, who meets with us about every 6 weeks. The books and other learning activities at the Lending Library are often brand new, and we are able to check them out for up to 90 days.

So far our homeschooling experience has been nothing but great!