The Best Things About Homeschooling Our Elementary Children

By Vicki on 13 January 2012 / News, Stories / 2 Comments

We've been thinking about our elementary homeschooling years. Today, Marilyn, Allison, Sara, and Kym will tell about what they loved about homeschooling those  elementary years.

 

Marilyn and Granddaughter

Marilyn:

My homeschool journey didn’t begin with a conviction that this was the best option for our family. My oldest son got by in kindergarten and first grade, but second grade was not working well. The classroom was large and students were expected to do projects amidst chatter. Assignments were rarely sent home, but we ended up spending a significant amount of time each day trying to learn math. It was frustrating to have to spend so much time at the end of a tiring day (for both of us) while an infant and toddler were tired and cranky. Around this time, we moved and decided to take on the schooling ourselves - and we could work when we were fresh.
Homeschooling allowed us to take things at a pace that worked for us and to cater to my oldest’s learning style - mainly kinesthetic. As the others came along, it just made sense to add them in. Homeschooling had become just part of our lifestyle.
Some of my favorite things:

  • teaching according to each child’s learning style
  • hands-on projects
  • field trips
  • reading lots of good books together
  • our support group and co-ops
  • our homeschool “family” - those who joined us on the journey and allowed us to homeschool in community
  • the flexibility to start late when we’d stayed up later than usual, stop and play in the snow, or take school with us on vacation

 

Once they were elementary kids

Allison:

I loved home schooling my kids in the elementary grades.  There were so many great benefits, but the overall best part to me was just being with them all the time in those crucial early years with so much learning, developing, and changing going on in their minds and lives.  I am so glad that I did not have to miss any of it.  They also learned so much from each other by schooling together everyday and developed very strong sibling bonds.  We had the privilege of being in a weekly co-op with my sister and her kids during those years as well.  Great memories were made as we learned, shared crazy projects, ate lunch together, and made messes of each other’s houses.  My kids remember things they learned in those co-ops better than they remember things they learned in college.  I wouldn’t trade those memories and bonds for anything!

 

Homeschooled all the way through

Sara:  

I look back fondly on the years my boys were in elementary school.  There's so much that could be said in so many areas, but I'll just focus now on the history studies we did at home during the years we weren't in a co-op.  (The co-op years were great, too, by the way!)

Because my boys were BOYS in the fullest sense, they loved cowboys and Indians, the Wild West, explorers, and battles!  It was such fun pulling together books to read, videos to watch, and projects we could do together to bring these exciting times to life for them.  I'll always remember the boys in their Davy Crockett coonskin caps reenacting the battle at the Alamo (and every other battle we studied, too!).  We enjoyed biographies of great heroes and traced the journeys of explorers on maps. We tried to get a sense of how the Native Americans might have felt as they experienced Europeans settling their lands. We purchased educational coloring books on the topics we were studying which the boys worked on as we read adventures.  Watching my boys in wide-eyed wonder drinking in the lives and times of great men ...  ahh, I'd do it all over again!
 

Kym:

There are so many things I love about the elementary years of homeschooling.  Field trips have always been a family favorite that provided both the fondest memories and the most profound learning!  I loved our KONOS co-op experiential learning - crawling through a life-sized ear canal, creating sugar-cookie maps of Antarctica, trying on all the gear for a mountain-climbing expedition, dissecting cow's eyes, etc.  I also loved the flexibility to focus more on the kids' passions and less about jumping through academic hoops.

What are your favorite elementary memories? Why do you homeschool your elementary children?
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2 Comments

  • Mary

    January 14, 2012 4:22 pm

    These are all such wonderful memories. I am holding onto these years because I know they go by quickly!!

    Reply

    • Vicki

      January 14, 2012 5:08 pm

      You are right, Mary! Each memory is a treasure, each moment is a blessing for good or growth- on a tough day:)

      Reply

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