The Elementary Years

 Hello again. It's been a long time since I posted here, over a year in fact. I am now a retired homeschool mom and thought I'd try my hand at blogging again now that I have more time in my schedule. As a new homeschool mom, I was so hungry to hear and learn about simple, natural homeschooling and the resources were few and far between, especially for the higher grades. I hope to encourage those of you out there who are feeling now the way I did those many years ago, and in the spirit of that hope, I want to share with you a bit about how we homeschooled during the elementary years. If your kids are older, don't worry, in future posts I plan on sharing how we handled middle and highschool  in our home as well.

When my kids were in elementary school, we mostly read a lot of good books! Armed with a good math curriculum (I love Math U See for this age) and a library card, we began this journey of a more natural method of homeschooling. It really was very simple. We didn't have a big homeschool budget at the time so the library was a dear friend and a great help to us.

For history, we read real books like biographies and historical fiction or a book on a particular topic, like the building of the Panama Canal for instance. I found some of the best books to be the older ones. Landmark history books are well liked by homeschoolers and we really enjoyed them. We also just looked through the history section of our library and chose books that looked good to us. 

For science, we simply chose real books from the science section of the library that looked interesting to my kids. I also used good book lists to choose books to read together. I perused homeschool catalogs and web sites to see what books they recommended as well. We did nature study very informally most of the time with a bit of more formal nature study thrown in here and there. Mostly we just paid attention to and appreciated the beauty and wonder of nature all around us. We saw new birds and plants and insects and looked them up in field guides to identify them. We enjoyed visiting nature parks whenever the opportunity presented itself. 

For language arts, we read great literature together. My kids narrated orally when they were very young and slowly transitioned to writing some of their narrations as they grew older. They did copywork at the appropriate age and added in dictation around 3rd grade. Dictation is great for teaching spelling skills! We played around with a bit of informal grammar but mostly saved that for middle school. We also used a bit of spelling curriculum. My son didn't seem to need it as he was a natural speller so we stopped spelling instruction for him. My daughter wasn't as strong in this area so we used a bit more with her but kept it to a minimum. Dictation did work wonderfully for her and her spelling improved dramatically with consistent studied dictation.

We read the Bible and discussed it and prayed together each day. We also enjoyed reading some devotional stories together.

We used Math U See for math in the elementary years. We listened to classical music and appreciated great art with a little bit of formal picture study thrown in throughout the years.

This is what the bulk of our elementary homeschooling years looked like. If you have questions about any of the areas or methods I mentioned, please just ask me to explain more and I would be glad to. You may not be familiar with copywork, dictation, nature study, etc. I would love to share more about each of these things but have chosen to keep it brief in this post so as to give an overview without overwhelming you with information. I plan on continuing this series with separate blog posts overviewing homeschooling the middle and highschool years. After that, I will delve into the different subjects and methods more thoroughly.

Until then, may God bless and keep you as you walk this homeschooling journey. 

Blessings,

Melanie

P.S. Here are some of the books that influenced my educational methods:

The Three R's by Ruth Beechick

A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola

A Pocketful of Pinecones by Karen Andreola

Happy reading!