Our Venture to Homeschool

I have always wanted to home school. I started working with my older two before Kindergarten thinking I wanted to see if it was for me. We moved right at the time where we only had a couple months to decide before my eldest child was about to start Kindergarten. We ended up going to a church that had a private school as well and in the remote area there were no home school support groups. So, both my eldest children  (now 18 and 15) started their first couple years in a private Christian school.

Fast forward to now and I have one graduated, a sophomore, one entering kindergarten and a 3 year old who will be on his 3rd year of Mother's Day Out. So here we are doing it all over again, except we ARE choosing to home school. 

I am quite excited about this because one, it IS on my heart and I feel as if this is what God has called me to do. That is first and foremost. Secondly, my husband is on board as well. Having him in agreement is very important to me because he was very skeptical at first. I am excited for him to see what a wonderful choice this is for our family. Thirdly, we have had some pretty big changes going on in our lives that God has laid in front of us an AMA--ZIIIING group of families who also home school their multiple children. I can do this, and I know this is what God wants me to do. 

So with all that being said, I have to say that I was VERY overwhelmed with all the curriculum out there. I was planning on attending multiple classes available at the curriculum fair held in Arlington this last May, but I was encouraged NOT to go because it would just bring to a place of more frustration. So, I heeded the advice and did some research on my own. I decided at this point that I was going to dedicate some time to putting some lessons together for the first part of the year until I could find different types of curriculum for each individual subjects I would need. I sat down for about an hour doing so and became even MORE frustrated because it was so time consuming, and from what I read, it doesn't have to be THAT time consuming especially for KINDERGARTEN! In sharing that with my sweet friend Angela (who also home schools her daughters) she told me that I was SO over thinking it! She was VERY right. 

So, bringing back to my remembrance of being a 1st grade teacher's aid for a year, I remember that they used the A Beka Book curriculum and I actually LOVED IT! I was able to prepare the days lessons for the teacher and even on days she was out, I was able to teach the lessons. I certainly was NOT as good as she was, but she was a great mentor and even let me learn how to assist one on one with the students. 

So, I decided to ask some seasoned home school mom's what they thought of the A Beka Book curriculum and there was not ONE negative review. So, guess what?! I ORDERED! YAY! 

Funny side note, I had made my order on a Friday from the A Beka Book website. Completing my order I had an order number and it stated that I would receive an email confirming my order shortly. Well, all of Friday I was watching for it to ensure there were no bumps in the order. Saturday, Sunday, Monday came and still no email confirmation. I decided to call later Monday afternoon to see what the hold up was and the customer service lady had a hard time at first locating my order. She explained that when they receive and order they have to manually add me as a new user to the website and it takes a couple of business days to process the order information. My order was in, it just wasn't processed. Then, FINALLY patiently waiting, I received my confirmation email YESTERDAY!! WOOT! The email suggested that my order will be shipped in 1-2 weeks.

Happy Homeschooling!