Why Do We Homeschool?

You know this is a question that most families ask themselves before they start Homeschooling and our family was no different, but now on our fourth year of Homeschooling I realize that I should probably question it more often because inevitably as we learn more, grow more in this process we realize that we can add more and more reasons to the initial list.

We Homeschool Little V for many reasons, these are just some of the reasons as to why we Homeschool:

Because we wanted: I just couldn't wait to start teaching her and since she was a baby I was there helping her to explore the world around her. Looking for the best educational and fun toys. If you think about it, almost all parents already do some Homeschooling. When you teach your child to recognize the Alphabet, the shapes, colors, number and so on, you're teaching and guess what?You're Homeschooling, even if you don't think you are.

Safety: loving parents care so much for their child safety and we are no different. We also child-proofed the entire house, we made sure we read all the reviews before buying the high-chair, the car seats, toys and the list goes on and on. We lived in a big city and we just didn't have the heart to send Little V to public school. The bullying, the stress and the peer pressure, not even to mention that nowadays when you send your kid to school you pray that you'll see him/her/them alive at the end of the day.

Quality of Education: it's no secret that one-on-one teaching is the best, and to be honest I never felt like I lacked qualifications to teach my daughter, I have a love for learning and I love to teach and that in my opinion is the best qualification I could have. There are great teachers out there and I see some of them on Instagram and they inspire me but with the one-on-one teaching I can tailor the lesson to her needs and likes, I can help her if she's struggling with something by trying a different approach to it, we move on at her pace.

Develop a love for learning: because I have the ability to to teach and guide her in learning what she wants or what interests her the most she can develop a love for learning. It's not learning only because she has to learn to achieve a certain grade or to fulfill the requirements, she's also learning about things that she's curious about it, things that she's passionate about it.

Freedom and Flexibility: we can choose what we want to learn about, when we want to learn it and how we want to learn it. Do we want to make a field trip? Do we want to make an experiment about it that wasn't planned? Do we want to add something else to the list of interests?  Do we want to grab our stuff and go outside because the weather is great, we can because we have the freedom to do so. We can choose the books, the curriculum, the amount of time we spend in each subject. If we have something fun to do in the morning, we can do school in the afternoon, or in the evening. Or we can start school in the morning, do other things and resume it later. That is a huge perk of Homeschooling, but my favorite of all the reasons is the next one!

Be present at the best moments: it's priceless to be there when they read their first word, when they learn how to write their names, when they spell their first words, see their faces light up when they grasp something, when they read something funny and just burst into laughter. Be there when they feel they can't do something and be the one giving them the encouragement needed  to keep on trying and then see how proud they feel when they get it right, oh well, no report card can give that moment.

Faith and Values: we live in critical times hard to deal with (2 Timothy 3:1-5), and teaching your child how to be a true Christian requires time and energy. The Bible admonishes us to teach them in every opportunity we have (Deuteronomy 6:6,7) and Homeschooling gives me the opportunity to do just so. We can together draw closer to God and he will draw closer to us (James 4:8). She will learn what the Bible really teaches and make sure her thinking and her actions are in harmony with Jehovah's righteous standards and not man's.

There are many reasons why a family would decide to Homeschool their children, these are just some of our reasons, what are your reasons to Homeschool? We would love to hear from you!


Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki

Piano Lessons and weekly highlights!

Since last week we were having a school break I'll be sharing the Highlights for the previous week and some other cool things that happened.

How was our school break? It was excellent! The weather was great and we got to spend lots of time outside and had lots of fun.

If you follow us in Instagram you already know Little V started piano lessons. If you don't follow us, please feel free to follow us @athometeachingv. Karen from Teach Your Child Piano, invited me to participate in this free challenge she was offering and since we always wanted to learn how to play piano we decided to accept it. We are enjoying it very much. I can't believe yet that I'm actually feeling equipped to teach Little V how to play the piano, far from being a professional, but I do feel like I have the tools needed to teach her the basics and that's what made me decide to give it a try.It was a different proposal than any other program I had seen before because it enabled me to teach her, that gives us more time together, and we get to learn something cool together. I'll have another post sharing more details about this program.

Tracing the Treble Chef

Playing Mary Had a Little Lamb

Little V successfully completed her All About Reading Level 3 curriculum. Instead of starting Level 4 right away, I decided to dedicate some time for Poetry, again more details at a later post because I have lots of fun ideas in my mind right now and I'll share them as they happen.

For Math we use the Math U See curriculum and we love it, but since it's a mastery curriculum Little V doesn't get to learn in Math what kids her age are learning in public school, so I purchase on Teachers Pay Teachers website some activities to make sure she's learning the basics requirements for her grade, it's not necessary but it's something I feel I need to do it. I find so many cool activities there that it's almost impossible to not want them. I love hands on learning and Amy Lemons has it all. I purchased the Magic of Math Unit 3 - Geometry and Fractions and we are having  so much fun with it! There are no worksheets just really cool hands on activities.

Here's some of the cool activities:

Something else we have been doing for a while now is giving Little V more chores around the house. We started with 30 minutes of cleaning on Mondays and 15 minutes all the other days of the week, sometimes during the weekends we stick to the basics chores needed.

She likes helping and it also makes her feel good, she sees that she can also contribute and on top of all she's learning important skills.

That's it for today friends.  Hope you enjoyed our post, feel free to leave comments below, ask questions or share this post to your family and friends.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki 

New Homeschooling Schedule!

Since Preschool, we have basically followed the school schedule of the public school, but I was never really pleased with the long summer break. So this year, something interesting happened. During a gathering with friends I mentioned about the fact that I do not like the long summer breaks and that I was trying to figure out a way to solve it, my friends then mentioned to me that a school district near their house has 6 weeks of school and 3 weeks break. Do I need to say that I loved learning about it?

Once I learned about this different type of schedule, I researched more about it on some Homeschool forums and groups and I found out that there are many families that adhere to a scheduling like this and some made it to fit their needs such as having breaks during family vacation and other scheduled trips for the family, others simply do shorter breaks throughout the year.

So, we started with 3 weeks of school and 1 week break, and once we moved it was a blessing being able to use 2 weeks for moving and getting settled in the new place. Thus far we have nothing to complain about this type of scheduling and to be honest it seems like it will be a regular feature of our homeschooling journey from now on. Little V will still have her summer break but not as long as she used was used to have before, and for that I'm happy.

This week we are on school break and we started by going flower shopping and getting some things done around the house.

While flower shopping she was able to learn a little about perennials and annuals flowers, and when we were ready to plant the flowers she wanted to help too.

Hope you'll have a great week and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki