Our Homeschool Plan for 2021-2022

Let’s do this, girls! As of this week, River Lake Sunshine School is back in session for year 8(!).

We began this journey when my oldest started pre-K, and we’ve since homeschooled in 3 different homes.

We’ve spent thousands of hours reading and writing, studying world cultures, being moved by beautiful stories, doing crafts and painting projects, and yes, even wrestling through math problems. 🤪

The location doesn’t matter as much as what happens when we come together to learn and be inspired so we can contribute our best to the world. At the beginning of every school year, I re-evaluate and make sure we’re focused on our core values, which you can find here in this post: The Heartbeat of our Homeschool.

This year we’re using The Good and the Beautiful for handwriting, language arts, and math. Finding a math curriculum that works well for us (translation: actual learning without many tears) has been an ongoing challenge, so I’m super excited to try The Good and the Beautiful math this year. We’ve tried Math-U-See, Singapore Math (oh my word, so intense), and Math Mammoth. Ultimately, I wanted to find something that’s comprehensive but also not boring to look at. Math is hard enough for us, that having boring black and white pages doesn’t help things. When I saw that TGATB launched new math programs, I was ecstatic! My 2nd grader is doing level 2, and my 6th grader is doing level 5 so I can make sure there aren’t any holes in her learning from struggling through math in the past/changing curricula.

For history, w’re journeying back through early world history with The Precious People from The Peaceful Press and using tons of read-alouds from their book lists and themes for each month.

For Bible study, we’re reading through Marty Machowski’s The Gospel Story Bible.

I’m excited about also reading the new book by my friend Andrea Debbink, The Wild World Handbook: Habitats.

At a tutorial we’re now attending once a week, the girls will be taking enrichment classes in P.E., geography, U.S. history, writing, biology/anatomy, and art.

Our two most important goals are still: 1) greater connection to God, each other, and the world, and 2) a love of learning.

Homeschooling is hard, and it takes sacrifices. It doesn’t work for every family, and that’s okay. But I will never, ever regret this time with them. Above being a farmer and an author and business-owner, what happens inside these walls is my most important role and greatest investment.

So whatever our school plans are, let’s support each other as we persevere through the hard things this year. Even with so much going on in the world, this can still be a year of growth and thriving. Cheering you on! 💛

For some backstory, read about The Heartbeat of Our Homeschool here.

Read all the Homeschool posts here.

*All posts to Amazon benefit Peace Gospel International through Amazon Smile.