H is for Home…

I think it is quite important that the word home is the first part of homeschool.  I love that we are able to learn at home and be together as a family.  It is nice to be in a place where everyone is accepted for who they are.  Each person has value.  Each person is an integral part of our home.

We currently live in a smaller home.  And for the three of us, that is just fine.  Our home has charm, despite not being in perfect order.  We are in a constant state of remodeling.  Some days I don’t think we will ever finish anything in it.  I seriously do not have even one room in this house that is finished.  The outside seriously needs a paint job.  However, the house has character and is filled with many happy memories.  It oozes family.  It is my grandparents home and is about 100 years old or perhaps even older than that.  We have found the original log cabin that the house has been built around.  I have some of the hand hewn logs exposed and plan to leave them that way.  I feel it is an important part of history.

We have no room for a school room.  So we school in the kitchen, and the front room.  We have a bookcase filled with school books in the small hallway that encompasses the staircase.  At the top of the staircase, I have another set of bookshelves that are filled with more homeschooling items.  Then my “office” has a cabinet with school supplies.  Pretty much school is throughout our entire house. I have been known to say that our house looks like a homeschool threw up on it.  It is a pretty accurate assessment.

But even though we sometimes often have a mess around here, I can’t imagine not schooling at home.  H is for Home…

I have fallen way behind on this meme and I really want to complete my alphabet.  So I am going to try to catch up over the next couple of weeks and see if I can’t become current.

G is for garden…

Did you really think I would have another word in our homeschool for the letter G?

Gardening plays a huge role in our lives here.  My husband, Gary, has a degree in horticulture.  We are always gardening at our house.  Even when it is cold outside, we have a garden growing in our home.  He moves in all of the plants that will not survive and then tends to them.  I literally have a plant jungle in my home during the winter months.  LOL!

When I chose the name for our homeschool, it was natural for garden to be a central figure.  I like that when you plant seeds, and nurture them, that they grow.  I feel that this is what we are doing as homeschoolers.  We plant seeds of knowledge and nurture them and they grow into something amazing.  Our children become amazing fruit from the gardens we grow at home.

In our homeschool, G is for Garden…

In our homeschool, F is for FUN!  We like to have fun around here when we are learning.  In my opinion, if you aren’t having fun while you are learning, then you are doing something wrong.

There is nothing worse than being bored while getting an education.  I sat through too many classes in public school while growing up that I absolutely hated because they were so boring.  The sad part is that it wasn’t even just a lack of interest in the subject.  It was an inability on the part of the teacher to fully engage the students in the class.

The classes that I remember the best are the ones where the teacher made it fun.  This was done through creative learning activities and lively discussion.  The teachers who lectured in monotone voices nearly put me to sleep.

I want something better than that for my son.   He deserves better.  That is one of the reasons we homeschool.

Chandler says homeschooling is fun.  He says he doesn’t know exactly WHY it is fun, but it just IS.  I think it is because we try to find ways to learn that speak to his learning style.  We make an effort and we try to do more than just read the textbooks.  There is always something we can do to liven up our school day.  Sometimes it is through a field trip.  Sometimes it is an experiment.  Sometimes it is a movie that goes with our study.  Sometimes it is as simple as having a “Jammie Day.”  Sometimes it is just being silly.  But it is always FUN.

What do you do to make your school day fun?