We recently pulled the littles from our public school system and began Homeschooling. The littles were continuously coming home bruised and beaten up. Everytime anything was questioned, I always recieved the same responses of no knowledge of an incident, or of them blatantly being harmed by other children. Anytime this was questioned I would be told how those children came from "troubled homes". My question was "Don't you think if their parents had been held accountable, instead of excuses, that these kids wouldn't be coming from "troubled homes?" If their parents were held accountable now, things would be different. Make them get a job instead of mooching off the government while staying home doing drugs.
Anyway, back to the subject- Homeschooling
We are brand new to this and still have a lot of learning. Our back room was empty so we made a classroom.
We tend to be a little on the thrifty side so I made sure to look into getting items I needed for the best value. My first need was a large white board. I checked several stores and websites, but they were all so expensive. I checked about paints and what-not. Then it dawned on me: White bathroom paneling. Off to LOWES I went! I paid $11 for a 4x8 sheet. It works great for my dry-erase board. We actually framed out one of the windows for it and then added cheap 1x3's for trim. I made our calendar with the left over piece. I drew out a calendar grid in permanent marker and used stick-on numbers and month. This also gave me the option to fill in weather with my dry-erase marker.
Every classroom needs tons posters and visual stimulation. I found some great posters at Dollar Tree. You get 2 for just $1! I then laminated them so I can use dry-erase markers when teaching. We found their desks at Big Lots for $9 and I hotglued their name tags and supply baskets (pencil dividers from Dollar Tree) to the tops. Oh, and my desk came from our local thrift store. $6 for the locking desk, and it even had the keys!
We still have a long way to go, but today was our first day of school, and it was extremely gratifying to teach the littles and see them respond with excitement. They did awesome! I am thankful that I am able to do this with them. We decided to do this because of horrible circumstances, but it has turned out to be a gift to our family. I will be posting more on our system in the future. Right now we are figuring this out. I have a couple of ciriculum resources that I'm using, I'll let you know which work best.
Happy Homeschooling!
