Pencils Frank Lloyd Wright

Another area of preparation for the school year comes from gathering our school supplies. This includes, of course, curriculum, as well as other school supplies.

Usually I start to purchase my curriculum each January, by looking on Ebay for used Curriculum. When you are shopping on an auction site around August, the prices tend to be driven upwards through the large number of buyers all shopping at the same time. When someone is selling in January or early spring, you'll usually get a great deal. Likewise, when selling curriculum, always sell it right before the school year, and you'll usually earn back more than what you spent on it.  Whatever I need that I couldn't find on Ebay, I buy directly from BJU Press (mostly).

Once I have my curriculum for the year, I take some time to look them over and decide what, if any, additional supplies we'll need. For example, many science projects require things that are commonly found around the house, but sometimes there's something on there that I don't have (example: a hanging scale, or a model of a pully system, as we needed a few years ago, which we've reused with each child). I like to have a list of odd bits and pieces to look for at garage sales over the summer. Last year, a local private school was closing, and like a kid in a candy store, I went shopping in their chemistry lab and their art supply room.

Regular school supplies, such as notebooks, crayons, pencils, and paper are all best found in August, when they are on sale. I usually stock up around this time of year. Normally a one subject notebook is just under a dollar (if you're lucky) but right now they are 15 ¢ at Meijer. Many other supplies are on sale there, and at other stores too.

Tennis Calendar

For the next few days, I'm going to be writing a series based on an email I received:

Hi Kimberly! I was wondering if you could share with me some resources for getting ready for homeschooling, and maybe some ideas or tips on how to prepare for the homeschool year? Also, what do you do as your kids get older? Do you change how you plan? TIA.

This is a great question (or set of questions!) and not easily answered in one post, so I'm breaking it up a bit.

I think preparation is a good thing. I tend to be a little bit of a preparedness freak myself. :-) This drives my husband batty, because he likes to just let things happen. Opposites do indeed attract.

Most importantly though: you have to find what works for your unique family dynamic. Just because something works for me doesn't mean it will work for you in quite the same way.

The first big area of getting prepared is to plan. The old adage says that if you fail to plan you plan to fail. This is true in all areas of life, including our endeavor to homeschool. Most of August, for me, is spent pulling together my plans for the coming school year. I am usually planning not just for our own homeschool, but for the art classes I teach once a week at the small private school at our church.

I admit that when it comes to planning, my OCD really shines on through. I love planners, charts, calendars, and basically all office supplies. A friend used to say that I had an Office Depot Co-Dependency Problem. 'Tis True. If there is one set of books I am a sucker for, it's planning books. I love reading the methods others use when planning their households and school years. I tend to prefer anything that is more relaxed and laid back, as a super tight schedule doesn't really work for our household and family.

I start off by filling in all of the major holidays and busy weeks on our school calendar. These usually include what I lovingly refer to as our "Fall Dental Holiday" and "Spring Dental Holiday" as well as our church's missions' conference. These are usually the weeks when school needs to be lighter, due to a busy schedule. The Dental Holidays are just those weeks in which we have all of our regular cleanings. We usually have a few days in a row of dental visits!

I also try to plan around the local school's schedule, since my children play with the neighbors. I find it easier if my kids are off on the same days when the neighbors have no school either.

I was so excited when I found some great school planning books to help me along in the homeschool planning area.

A great general ebook for planning for homeschool, as well as juggling both homeschool and household is the Ultimate Homeschool Moms Planner, which contains instructions and charts to help you get started planning your homeschool and household. Her many templates and tips make this ebook a real deal! She also includes a bonus ebook to help you train your children in common household chores. This is a great general homeschool planning book that I feel covers all of the basis quite well, while still being flexible and yet detailed.

I use most of her templates for homeschool planning, in addition to the calendar on my Android Phone, which I use for appointments and more general scheduling. Maybe someone should create an app for scheduling lesson plans for the Droid and iPhone!

I usually have pretty detailed plans made up only because this works well for our family. I find that if my kids know they are supposed to be at a certain point by Christmas, they are more likely to stay on top of their work without me being a slave driver. My rule is that as soon as you are done with your school for the semester, you are free. You have no idea how motivated this gets them! I have only had one child dawdle to the ponit of doing some school during summer vacation and over Christmas break. They never do that twice. This also helped us to stay on track this past year as we dealt with the ups and downs of the death of their grandmother (my mother in law).

As my children get older, and those high school years start flying towards me (did I mention we are going to be graduating our first student at the end of this school year?), I found Janice Campbell's books over at Everyday Education to be very helpful, particularly her book on preparing High School Transcripts (Transcripts Made Easy) and her book on earning college credit while still in high school (Get a Jump Start on College: A Practical Guide for Teens). We've benefitted from her wisdom and expertise in both of these areas! These books are all written by a mom who has graduated her 4 boys from their home school! You can find them at her website, Everyday Education.

Mrs. Campbell has taken quite a bit of the fear out of homeschooling through high school for me.

There is also a new planner through The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, which I have not personally used, though several friends all give it thumbs up. You can read more about The Schoolhouse Planner here.

For the next week, I'll be posting some back to school thoughts. Some of these are based on emails I've received recently. I recently received this note on Facebook,

Kimberly, we have decided that God wants us to homeschool this year, and I feel like everyone I know has an opinion about it. I am not even sure how I'm going to teach Algebra, but I do know that for right now, my son is only in Kindergarten. What do you do?

Family get togethers, when there are hoardes of school teacher relatives involved, can be interesting for the homeschooling family. I've heard it all.

I first became interested in homeschooling when I was in college, before I got saved. I was friends with a professor (a Buddhist) who homeschooled his kids. I loved their kids, and given that I always loved learning but hated school, I loved the very idea of homeschooling.

I became more determined to homeschool after I got married, because though my husband is the son of two public school teachers, he didn't learn to read until he was in college. If any one of my kids wound up with the same learning disability, I wanted to be able to provide them with one on one instruction. My high school years were spent being bored to tears, not being challenged enough. I wanted my children to have the freedom to learn at their own pace as well, and to move forward when they had a concept down pat, instead of waiting for the bulk of their classmates.

The decision to homeschool is one that I didn't enter into lightly. It's a huge responsibility. I knew I'd need to be committed to giving my time and energy to this task, and I knew that many things would have to slide, at least for the time being.

Every year, I pray again, asking God if this is still what He wants for our family. I know that it is. I always ask Him because He knows my children, and He knows what they need more than anything else.

I also know that there was a time when I wanted others to respect my choice to homeschool, but I looked down my nose at their decision not to. Maybe we do that sort of thing because we are insecure in our own decisions. If there's a possibility that a different option might be how God has led someone else, then it can feel unsettling during the hard times. God gives parents the responsibility to decide who instructs their children, though they ultimately answer for it. Homeschooling has worked well for us for 13 years now.

At first my family and some friends would ask about their socialization and my ability to teach them to read. I felt a lot of pressure, because this was all new to me too. "What if they are right? What if I fail?" I would lie awake at night and wonder. That's where it becomes so important to know the peace that comes with being confident what God led you to do.

Now, later, the questions have been of a different sort:

• "How are they going to get into college?" (seriously, how we are going to pay for college is probably a bigger issue right now).
• "How are they going to be prepared for the real world?" (at whatever point in your life you leave the nest and enter the real world, you have a learning curve, no matter what your parents' educational choices for you were)
• "How are you going to teach Chemistry, Physics, Calculus, Algebra, Foreign Languages, etc.?"

My friend Chelsey, over at www.WhateverIs.net just posted about this recently.  I agree with her sentiments. When you are around the homeschooling community long enough (and we have our own little sub culture and economy), you soon realize that there is about ten or more programs to help you with whatever area you feel a lack. I've even found free videos on You Tube this past year that explained in a very clear and concise manner different Chemistry topics that I wasn't familiar with, and which we didn't understand from the textbook. There's also always a possibility of utilizing others to help teach difficult concepts we don't feel confident in teaching.

Recently in our house, the box everyone looks forward to -- when the UPS guy drops off the BJU Press box at the beginning of the school year -- arrived.

On this particular day, my dear husband was home, and he immediately opened the box to look at what we got.

"What? Was there a sale?" He asked me.

I wasn't following at all. "What do you mean, honey?"

He held up the Grade Twelve Writing and Grammar book, and pointing to the 12, he said, "Because, you bought ahead. Or is this a mistake?"

Have you ever seen Father of the Bride, with Steve Martin? The scene where he has his little girl sitting there at the end of the table and she looks like she's 5, and she's telling daddy she is getting married? Sure, that was funny when I watched it when the movie first came out. It's even more funny now that I know that daddies tend to filter out the fact that their little girls are growing up.

"Um, dear," I said, biting my lip, and thinking about Steve Martin, "She's going into 12th grade this year."

Gulp. Even I have a hard time beliving it!