{"id":130233,"date":"2025-04-22T10:34:12","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T10:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bestratefinders.com\/blog\/?p=130233"},"modified":"2025-04-25T07:59:40","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T07:59:40","slug":"our-homeschool-curriculum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bestratefinders.com\/blog\/everything-else\/our-homeschool-curriculum\/","title":{"rendered":"Our homeschool curriculum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sharing more about P\u2019s homeschool curriculum and how we structure our days. For more about why we decided to homeschool, check out this post.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Hi friends! How are you? I hope that you\u2019re having a wonderful morning. I have a couple of client calls today, homeschool fun, and we\u2019re going to take an afternoon hike. What are you up to?<\/p>\n

For today\u2019s post, I wanted to chat more about how we structure our days now that we\u2019re in week 3 of homeschooling. It\u2019s worth mentioning here that every day is different and these are just boxes we check each day. The beauty of homeschool is that it\u2019s flexible. It takes far less time than traditional school, and you have the freedom to pause, change things, or move things around, depending on what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also worth mentioning here that I\u2019m NOT an expert and have minimal experience in this area. I\u2019m the newb of the newbies and am seriously figuring this out as we go. I\u2019m so so thankful that there are homeschool experts out there and friends who have offered with help and advice; I\u2019ll take all the tips I can get!<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also SO thankful to Brittany from A Healthy Slice of Life<\/a> who jumped in, hopped on the phone with me when I sent her a super long voice message, talked me off the ledge, and helped me figure out a gameplan. Check out her blog for homeschool info, recipes, travel, and lifestyle – she is amazing.<\/p>\n

Even though I\u2019m still figuring this out, I wanted to share this post for my friends out there who are considering homeschool, but are super intimidated, just as I was.<\/strong> I thought I\u2019d have to be a *teacher* to be good at this. You don\u2019t need to have a teaching background. You just need to find the right curriculum fit (and know you can change at any time), have a little patience and flexibility, and continue to show love and patience to your kiddo. <3<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Our homeschool curriculum and how we structure our days<\/h2>\n

For the most part, here\u2019s how the day goes:<\/p>\n

We wake up and take Liv to school. We come home, P has breakfast, I give her a little bit of chill time where she can play with toys, puzzles, build things, etc. (this is where I\u2019ll catch up on a few emails or put out work fires) and we start *school* at 9. I sit at the table with her and eat my breakfast as we work together.<\/p>\n

Almost all of the curriculum we\u2019re using is plug and play, which means you open the book, read the lesson, answer the questions, and move on. (Almost everything below was recommended by Brittany)<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Math- 20-30 minutes<\/h3>\n

We\u2019re using Nicole the Math Lady and Saxon Math.<\/a> We used to use Saxon math at the girls\u2019 school (they had switched to Math in Focus) and I knew I wanted to go back to Saxon. Nicole the Math Lady teaches each lesson (about a 10 minute video with a corny brain break, which P loves) and then you have practice questions and 1-2 worksheets to complete. You input the kids\u2019 answers into the computer and it tracks their grades. Each lesson takes us about 2 days to complete.<\/p>\n

Grammar -20-30 minutes<\/h3>\n

For grammar, we\u2019re using Masterbooks, which is a faith-based curriculum<\/a>. It includes picture study, memorization, punctuation, spelling, vocabulary, observation, poems, psalms, letters, and practical application through creative writing. We just started but I feel like she\u2019s already learned a lot from this textbook. She learned cursive this year, so she\u2019s working on answering the questions in cursive.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Writing – 20-30 minutes<\/h3>\n

For writing, we\u2019re doing the Fables, Myths and Fairy Tales<\/em> writing lessons from IEW<\/a>. It focuses on their Structure and Style method. Right now, she\u2019s working on reading fables, making key outlines, and narration (being able to retell the story using her notes).<\/p>\n

Reading – 20 minutes<\/h3>\n

I just want her to enjoy reading for now, so we\u2019re reading something super lighthearted and fun together.<\/a> This book has held the test of time and she LOVES it. We\u2019re both often cracking up at some point while reading about Fudge and his antics.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Science + Social Studies \/ Geography – about 2x per week each<\/h3>\n

I\u2019m still trying to figure out a plan for this, but not so worried about it since we\u2019re close to summer. For now, she\u2019s working on memorizing the states, capitals, and being able to locate them on a map.<\/p>\n

For science, we do one project each week. The first week, we dissected owl pellets, matched the bones on the bone sorting charts, and talked about what we found. Week 2, she constructed an egg drop that we could drop from the balcony to the yard while keeping the egg intact. We talked about velocity, gravity, momentum, action and reaction. This week, she\u2019s working on constructing a roller coaster<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since we\u2019re just planning on homeschooling until 5th grade, I\u2019m going to reach out to Liv\u2019s school to see what the expectations are for rising 5th graders for science and social studies\/geography so I can make sure we cover the bases.<\/p>\n

Mid-day:<\/h3>\n

We take Maisey for a walk and have lunch together, catch up on a couple of chores, and figure out a plan for the afternoon.<\/p>\n

Afternoon:<\/h3>\n

When we made this decision, I told P that I loved hanging out with her but couldn\u2019t be her cruise director all day. In the afternoon before we pick up Liv, I\u2019ll have coaching calls, content creation, editing, podcast interviews, whatever I need to do work-wise for a couple of hours. I\u2019ve also shifted my work schedule so I\u2019m working more on the weekends or when the Pilot is home from airline training. (We started all of this when he left, so I\u2019ve been solo parenting and figuring all of this out along the way.) Saturday is a work blitz day now, and most of Sunday. Besides P\u2019s basketball game, I\u2019ll write\/work\/edit pretty much all day until dinner.<\/p>\n

In the afternoon, she\u2019ll play with toys, work on something she enjoys (music, crocheting, shooting hoops, etc), and if I\u2019m caught up with work, I\u2019ll take her to an indoor play place, to run errands, and sometimes I\u2019ll give her some screen time. Since she has basketball at night and we\u2019re chasing around with Liv to dance classes, she usually doesn\u2019t get screen time in the evenings.<\/p>\n

The days shuffle around. Sometimes I\u2019ll have an appointment in the morning, or teach a barre class, so we do school in the afternoon, and we\u2019re also exploring some of the Tucson homeschool activities. There are so many great ones here: parkour, gymnastics, art, co-ops, horse lessons, music \u2014 I\u2019m excited to check them out!<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s how it\u2019s going for now! I\u2019m sure it will change over time and my plan is to get her caught up with math (she\u2019s finishing the third grade book now and I\u201dm hoping to get 4th grade and most of 5th done next year while she\u2019s in 4th grade). The other books are 4th grade books, so we\u2019ll just move up to 5th when she completes them.<\/p>\n

Homeschool allows you to meet the kid where they are. If they\u2019re progressing quickly in a subject, you can progress along with them, or take more time on certain subjects if they need it.<\/p>\n

If you have any ideas for fun science projects or any social studies and geography resources, I\u2019d appreciate it so much! Also, if there are any questions I can answer in future posts, please lmk!<\/p>\n

xoxo<\/p>\n

Gina<\/p>\n

The post Our homeschool curriculum<\/a> appeared first on The Fitnessista<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sharing more about P\u2019s homeschool curriculum and how we structure our days. For more about why we decided to homeschool, check out this post. Hi friends! How are you? I hope that you\u2019re having a wonderful morning. I have a couple of client calls today, homeschool fun, and we\u2019re going to take an afternoon hike.\u2026
\nThe post Our homeschool curriculum appeared first on The Fitnessista.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":130235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":""},"categories":[20,1,21,22,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestratefinders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestratefinders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestratefinders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestratefinders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestratefinders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130233"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bestratefinders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130239,"href":"https:\/\/bestratefinders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130233\/revisions\/130239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestratefinders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestratefinders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestratefinders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestratefinders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}