If you were wondering if I was ever going to post about homeschooling…seeing as how my blog is supposed to be at least partly *about* homeschooling….well, wonder no more!

Actually, I have purposely NOT been writing or even thinking about homeschooling. We homeschooled through 2 1/2 straight years, with no break…and got burned out. So this summer, I put all the stuff away and made myself not even think about it all summer long. It’s been great! We really needed that, and I am (finally) starting to feel excited about starting the new school year.

We are using several different curriculum this year, one is K12. K12 is actually a public homeschooling program in our state, several states offer this program (click here to see which ones). You get a whole ton of supplies, an online program for each class, a teacher to help you if you need it, and credit for the classes you take. There are a lot of great things about the program and also some not so great things, which is why we’re only using parts of it this year. The great thing is, we can pick and choose classes to use…and our tax dollars pay for it! I couldn’t believe the amount of “stuff” you get with this for ‘free’. We have to return it at the end of the year, but for the most part it’s all brand new and in great condition!

This will be Rachel’s first year as an official schooler. She’s starting Kindy! She was so excited about getting her supplies, she cried every day this week when they didn’t come. Today, on our doorstep were boxes and boxes from UPS full of all these fun things! As a Kindergartner, she could choose 3 classes. We chose Language Arts, Math, and French. Here’s what came in the mail:

Literature supplies: All these great Newberry Award books!

Language Skills: Handwriting Without Tears, Junior Great Books, special HWT writing paper, and a ton of worksheets. Plus, a big book of fairy tales and some great books of poetry.

Giant math workbook. Um, I hope we’re not expected to do *all* these pages?!?

More workbooks!

Math supplies! Look at all this fun, hands on stuff.

We got it all out, looked it over, discussed how much fun it will be…and then I made her put it all back. I know it sounds mean…but I told her it was all school stuff, and school doesn’t start until September. I let her choose one book to read, and that was it…she has to wait. I’m hoping that the suspense will add some excitement to the idea of school, and she will be looking forward to starting up in September. She seems OK with that and we’re both excited to start kindergarten….this will be the first year I’ve done kindy with one of the kids, so it will be a new experience for both of us!

I’m not sure how much of the K12 curriculum we will use on its own and how much we’ll add…I’m thinking we will also be doing Explode the Code and of course we’ll be adding Bible. We also have a new science program I’m excited about, and we’ll be doing some art with friends.

Well….that’s it for the homeschool discussion for now. I’m putting it all back in the box and not opening it until September…well, at least until it’s time to get organized the week before school starts. We still have some Summer left!