This mama bee is so FINALLY ready to kick off our first year of homeschool! Ahh!! I have all the feels to be honest! Our Lovéah Rose was so ready to hit the books for her first day of school, which was on August 31st. Our first day of homeschool was AMAZING!!
I wanted to just take the time to go over what curriculums & other activities I am using for her homeschool year.
These are the curriculums I’m using: Gather ‘Round Homeschool. This is our main curriculum. Lovéah is heading to Kindergarten, but we wanted to just start her off using the new Preschool curriculum called Letters + Numbers 1 since she is still working on her letter sounds, then we will continue on right up to the new Kinder curriculum! To learn more about Gather ‘Round Homeschool, check out the link here:
https://gatherroundhomeschool.com/
Next, Lovéah will be using the Rhyme to Read program to help her learn how to read! If you haven’t seen my post about it on our Instagram page, it is on our feed. More info about this program will be coming to our blog once we get to a certain point in the program. But, if you can’t wait that long, you can also check out the program here:
Next up, we have CTCMath online math curriculum. Now, math is not my strongest subject, so I had to find a curriculum that really hit the nail on the head! I am pleased to say we did a test run yesterday & CTCMath is AMAZING! They have it set up to where I can schedule all assignments under my account. I can even place a target grade for her to reach. I can set it up to where she can’t move onto the next level until she hits that target grade. Lovéah has her own login, but since she is 5, I have to help her until she knows where to go. ? It’s great! You can read about this curriculum here: https://www.ctcmath.com/
And last but not least, let’s talk about some Bible activities! The first one is from another homeschool mama named Nike Anderson. I have been connecting with Nike on Instagram (The Homeschool Genius) for years now. She created a fun way to not only say the alphabet, but to learn some Bible passages from the book of Proverbs! You can connect with Nike on her blog here:
https://thehomeschoolgenius.com/the-homeschool-genius-link-tree/
Going along with the Bible activity is something I also found on Instagram! The Instagram handle is called Teach Sunday School. I printed off 100 Bible coloring pages filled with dot-to-dot, cut & paste, color puzzles, color-by-number, learn-to-draw & coloring sheets! I used these whenever I’m having our morning devotions with Lovéah. She usually picks whatever she wants to do until I’m finished reading the Bible story. It’s perfect!
If you would like to check out all of the Bible related worksheets & more, click here: https://teachsundayschool.com .
We also use ABCMouse for computer time. Rosie loves ABCMouse! I look forward to having a stress free school year FULL of fun & adventure!
Now, it’s time to touch base on what I experienced today with our older kids. It was the first day of Virtual Learning for our 5th & 6th graders. Yesterday evening, I made sure everyone had their clothes laid out and their Chromebooks were plugged in so they would be ready to go the next day. Everything went so smoothly last night! They were even in the bed on time and they fell asleep super fast!
When my alarm clock went off at 5:45 am, I turned my alarm off and I immediately took a deep breath before my feet hit the floor. I just wanted everything to go smoothly today.
I would go into every single detail, but I will spare you. I do want to say that it was a VERY challenging day because the school system crashed because there were so many students & teachers trying to access Canvas. I had to try to log into Canvas every 5-10 minutes or so to see if my children could access their schoolwork. That alone stressed me out because I have 3 kids doing virtual learning. They kept getting booted out of the system and out of WiFi. Imagine how frustrating this was for me as their mom. Imagine how frustrated I was trying to tell them it would be ok.. but meanwhile I’m having a huge (tear free) anxiety attack right in front of them. My chest was hurting throughout this entire process!
Jeremiah (6th grader) was not able to get on any of his classes. Nothing was loading for him, which made him extremely frustrated. He wanted to meet his teachers and see which of his friends were in his class. I told him to just go outside and play basketball with his friends and I just called him in for updates.
A’Niyah (6th grader) was actually pretty successful logging onto Canvas. She attended one class and was able to get the first assignments completed! It got way easier to navigate through classes because her teacher sent us her class schedule which broke down what subjects she had to attend for her even and odd days (I later received the same for Jeremiah). THAT was a lifesaver! This is all brand new to us, so we were struggling trying to figure out what time she had to attend a class. We didn’t know if the odd & even days were based off of the calendar or just a random pick. Oh and I was also able to log onto the Parent / Student Canvas app and help both A’Niyah and Jeremiah complete one assignment! It looks as if they will be in at least one class together.
Ok, time for to talk about Réinah’s day. Réinah (5th grader) was the only one who was able to log onto Canvas right away today! Everything was going smoothly.. she was able to answer the morning question and hear the morning announcements with the Pledge Of Allegiance. Then, she tried to access classes and nothing worked. It was loading super slow and all of the information wasn’t on the screen. So, I told her to just take a small break and we will check back later.
We continued doing that throughout the day. My kids were sad, confused and frustrated, but imagine what all the teachers were going through! They just wanted to reach their students and it was just hard. I appreciate all of their hard work to get the system up and running. My son’s classes weren’t loading on his dashboard properly and I was emailing his teacher about it for a couple days before school started I believe. Then, this afternoon, everything was listed on Canvas! I gave out a shout of JOY and my son just smiled!
Oh, and you know after going through the challenges with my older kids, I still ended up homeschooling Lovéah today. But I it’s cool because once I opened up her Gather ‘Round book, I felt such a peace in my heart! It was amazing.
My prayer is that this week will be focused on getting rid of all the kinks so that next week, we can start fresh and be ready for this new school year.
Until next time…
xoxo
LaShona-