Featured Homeschooler: Carol

Posted by Nikowa Lee | 0 comments

Please welcome this week’s Featured Homeschooler Carol from My Heart’s Desire!

You live in my favorite place in the world, Colorado! Tell us about your nature studies.

Nature study for us is taking a walk on the 75 acres where we live, driving down the road to one of the lakes or hiking trails. We bring a sketching tablet, pencil and colored pencils with us. The kids choose what they want to study, and draw it. We look up the name of it at home in a book or on the Internet. We love to be outside, but this year we haven’t taken advantage of it like we should have.

You stay so busy with three ladies, one son, being a physician’s assistant and homeschooling! How do you keep from being overwhelmed?

Who says I am not overwhelmed? I am often overwhelmed! You forgot to mention that we work with a missionary organization called Youth With a Mission too. I try to keep my priorities straight, family always comes first. I do all my outside work in one day.

What is your favorite curriculum?

This year I’m using My Father’s World for the first time. We are enjoying it. Until this year we used Sonlight, which I still like a lot too. I am using a mix of both this year really. We homeschool with a Charlotte Mason flair using living books, narration, dictation, short lessons, etc. I love it and so do my girls.

Could you share with us what a day at your house would entail?

Weekdays we get up between seven and eight, try to eat breakfast, get dressed, make beds and straighten rooms and start school by 8:30. We always start with our Bible lesson. This year the two oldest are memorizing the book of James.

Next we do math (Singapore Math and/or Miquon), language arts (Primary Language Lessons by Emma Serle and/or Sonlight Language Arts 3 for my 9 year old, and Intermediate Language Lessons by same author and Writing Strands 3 for my 11 year old) and spelling (Sequential Spelling).

We take a snack break about 10 am and then the girls read their readers – mostly from Sonlight and MFW book lists. While they do this, I do some learning activities with my 4 yo daughter +/- my 2 yo son. I am using Sonlight’s PreK 4/5 program with her, plus Singapore Early Bird A math, Developing the Early Learner series and Before You Explode the Code books A-C.

After reading the older girls finish their assignments in the above lessons and then we may do our history reading or science. My oldest daughter will write a short summary of what we read into her history notebook. We usually then go to have lunch at the dining center with the rest of the YWAMers (see #1) where my husband is the main cook.

After lunch we come home and the older girls have a bit of free time while I read to the younger two and put the baby down for his nap. Then we do history and science if we haven’t yet, the girls take turns on the computer doing Rosetta Stone Spanish, and then it’s getting close to time to prepare supper. We have been having supper at home, lately, but six months out of the year we also eat supper at the dining center.

After supper the kids get ready for bed and I read a read-aloud to them – usually a fiction book, from Sonlight or My Father’s World. The kids can color or do play dough or just lounge while I read, and we often have hot chocolate or another treat to make the time special. We all love this time. Daddy often will read separately to the youngest two and put them down to bed before I finish the reading for the oldest two. I then pray with them and they go to bed around 8 or 9 o’clock unless we are really into the book and read late!

What is your favorite Bible verse and why?

That is a hard one! I suppose it would be Psalm 37:3-4. It has been an anchor for me when times get hard here. It isn’t always easy to live in community with other Christians, but the Lord has used this scripture to tell me to trust Him, stay put, and FEED ON HIS FAITHFULNESS. He has really shown us His faithfulness since we joined YWAM 3 years ago. I like all of Psalm 34 and 37 actually.

What is the one thing that you’d love to have for your Homeschool?

A piano teacher, a voice teacher, and nice kids who lived nearby that would play with my kids on occasion.

If you could take your family on any educational field trip, where would it be and why?

We would like to go back to Mesa Verde and stay for about 3 days, do their junior ranger program, camp nearby, and see all of it. We visited there last August and the few hours we had just didn’t do it justice. We’ve been studying a lot about the Native Americans and this would fit nicely into what we are learning. I also enjoy taking my family on missions trips, which are always educational too. Last time we went to Guatemala for 12 weeks.

How do you teach different learning styles?

My oldest daughter, 11, loves to write, draw, etc. and so I let her do things that require writing. My second daughter, 9, struggles with writing so I let her do much more orally. When she was younger I had to let her go outside a lot between subjects and run a lot of energy off so she could focus better. Now she has a much longer attention span, but she is much more auditory and oral than visual. She likes to draw some too, so she will more often illustrate what she is learning than write about it, and she will do oral narrations rather than written.

Interview by:

Nikowa is a 2nd year homeschooling mom to two boys. (Ages 9 and 5) With her “learning never ends” philosophy, they have an eclectic year-round approach to learning. When she’s not teaching, she enjoys photography, organizing, cooking, reading, and knitting. She is a #1 LOST fan and watches UGA football too! (Go Dawgs!) You can visit Nikowa at Knowledge House Academy.