In our homeschooling journey, we have gone through various curricula. Ambleside Online, Easy Peasy All In One Homeschool, piecing it together, to everything in between! There have always been hundreds of options, but I figure it is easier to stick to one thing and go with it.
When I first started, I was just doing little projects and Bible verses with my son since he was the only one. I also did reading lessons with him.
Then I learned about Ambleside Online and decided to try their program. I loved all the rich literature we were able to read together. Once there were three of them doing AO, I felt like it was getting to be too much! That was also the year we stopped halfway through and enrolled them in public school in Panama to learn Spanish.
When they got out of public school after a year, I decided to try out Easy Peasy. I just signed up for the classes as they were and let the kids work through the assignments every day. It worked really well, as long as they did what they were supposed to do. Most of them loved the "Thinking" class as it let them play games on the computer. I would often find them doing "Thinking" even though it was a once a week class!
Today we started another year homeschooling. My oldest is now in 6th level - I had them repeat the year that they were in Panamanian school. I started researching Christian homeschooling sites last night and found some that sounded interesting. The majority of their school this year will follow EP, but I am also adding some extras.
Each day, we gather together and I lead them in some classes. This year, I also added a few classes that each of them will lead us in (by reading the assignment). I will be responsible for Early American History, Old Testament, Spanish, and Know Your Bible. I also will rotate and read once a week from Story of the World, Under the Home, Let's Talk About, and Created for Work (or the female equivalent when we finish it).
The kids will take turns teaching us from Zoology, Art, and Music. Art and Music are just once a week, so that should be pretty easy to deal with.
I also found some great resources for workbooks and full curriculum studies from a few sites. Most of the kids now have their own grade level math workbook from and Language Arts from Plain and Not So Plain.
I also got a lot of ideas of things to do from Freedom Homeschooling. The amount of free sites that she has on her page are amazing. I know I will be back to check it again and again!
As with any year, we will make changes as needed. I think this is a great way to start, even though I heard that today was supposed to be the easiest day since it's the first day...but apparently it was really hard. Ha!
We usually do year round schooling, so we take off when we need to. We also just do schooling typically Monday through Thursday. Fridays are already crazy enough around here!
Maybe I'll add a weekly craft project for Friday or Saturday this year or possibly something else fun. I also plan to read more to them in the evenings and spend less time watching shows or YouTube! Dude Perfect is by far their favorite channel! I also want to play more games and take nighttime walks in the dark around our neighborhood.
I hope to add a missionary study to our day as well, but I haven't found yet what I'm looking for! I really like the Christian Heroes Then and Now series, but we've already listened to all the free ones we can through Libby.