July 1, 2012 Renovations and Homeschooling

I'm so excited, I could almost...well, y'know.  We're finally getting some rooms finished in this house after working on them for two-plus years.  I think I'll take pictures of our hall bathroom this coming week to share. Just for the fun of it, I'll dig out the before pics as well.  We still have a lot of little projects to finish up, like painting closets, a little drywall and tile patch work, painting a couple of single walls, and hanging a few lights, but we're finally wrapping it up on the interior house renovation.  WOO HOO!!!!  Of course, at this point, we could probably lose a child in the weeds that have overtaken the back yard, but we'll get to that soon enough.

We're now starting into the next phase of child rearing-school.  E and I have been dabbling a little with Sing, Spell, Read, and Write for about 5 months now, and she's now on lesson 19 of 36.  I'm amazed at how fast she's soaked it in.  She doesn't care for rote spelling exercises, so I've decided to put that off for a while.  She's now reading mid-1st grade level books with little help, and seems to remember words after having read them only a handful of times.  I figure if we focus on reading first, it will help her learn in all other subjects, even if the learning is self-directed.  I raided our local library on Thursday to stock up on homeschooling reading material.  I've been reading a book called "Homeschool Open House" that gives a glimpse into the typical day at each of 55 families' homeschools.  It's interesting to see the broad range of ways to homeschool.  Some homeschools use a scripted curriculum, some take on a thematic unit approach (where you focus learning in all subjects around a common theme), and some use a style called "unschooling" which, from my understanding, allows the student to guide learning around his or her own interests.  I have a little more studying to do to determine what route we will start out with, but I'm getting so excited to moving on to science and math, especially.