Q and A Homeschooling Advice | Answering Your Questions

what is the hardest and most favorite thing about homeschooling for you um the hardest thing for me was the early years the foundation when you're just you're doing a lot of work and it's like building a building you're doing all this work you don't see the fruit and you're exhausted and at the end of the day you sometimes think what do I have to show for this but over time it gets easier and um my favorite thing is hands down around the time that I get to spend with my kids Welcome to our life homeschooling my name is Sherry Christian wife to my high school sweetheart Nelson and thankful mom to 10 incredible kids I'm the author of the blog and YouTube channel our life homeschooling where I share homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms I believe that motherhood is Ministry and homeschooling is simply an extension of parenting my passion is to cheer on other moms who are at home doing the most important work of all raising the Next Generation for the glory of God hi everyone it's Sherry I'm doing a Q&A I sent a question over to Instagram and to YouTube just asking people for homeschooling questions initially I had some questions that people have asked me on YouTube that I kind of wanted to address just because it's harder to write out a give a good answer it's easier to just talk about it and so I picked some of those and that was what I was going to start with but I got an overwhelming number of questions over on YouTube and on Instagram so there's I'm not going to be able to get to all of these I'm going to do my best to go through them but this is definitely something I will probably do again since I got so many questions if I don't get to your question I am going to try to do another one of these and I'll keep track of those and try to go through it then so stay tuned for that if you're question doesn't get answered and also I have done a lot of videos on some of the questions that were asked so questions about like screen time or how do you teach multiple kids how do you teach with an infant how do you keep your house clean I've done videos like this if you just search on my YouTube channel you'll find some of them um so you can also be looking for some of them on there if you haven't watch them okay so I have not done something like this in a long time I think I did a Q&A I don't know maybe even a year ago I'm not the best at just talking off the cuff I'm a thinker but I'm going to do my best to just keep going and answering these questions and I'm going to start on Instagram so the first question is when do you start grammar and what about spelling um I'm a former teacher as well with our oldest and spelling is just a struggle he's a great reader but for some reason all that I've tried to help them to be a better speller it just doesn't seem to be clicking so as far as grammar we start doing formal grammar lessons in fourth grade about or when I think that a child is ready so at this age they're pretty independent with Reading Writing they're doing copy work they can do narration and we start with ABCA grammar I start with I think it's language three is the first one I start with and then the next one I do is language a language B language C and this is very similar to how I do a lot of things I'm very relaxed about it I have the kids do I think one page a day for younger kids maybe two pages a day for older kids I don't plan to get through that workbook in a year we just do a little bit every day it's on their checklist and when they get to that day and that part on their checklist they just do a day so that's pretty much where we are with grammar the reason I picked a Becca there was nothing special about it other than the fact that I had it as a child it's the only curriculum I use from a Becca is for our language lessons our grammar I just think it's simple and I was familiar with it so sometimes in homeschooling it's really worth it to use something that's familiar to you because that's just one less thing that you have to adjust to one less thing you have to learn uh the second question the second part of this question was on spelling and this is something that I have wanted to talk about so I was glad this question came up I personally I don't think it's a good use of time to do spelling the way way that we were taught growing up in school where you write out all these words and then the second day you put them in a sentence I I like spelling to be taught in the context of when you're using that word so primarily for us we learn spelling through copy work and the second way that I teach spelling is to teach my kids patterns and rules and I have these at least I have half of the ones that we use in the simple morning time notebook for this year I'm planning to put the second half of the rules in next year's notebook but we do copy work the kids do copy work every day and then I am always going through these spelling patterns and rules because I just think this is a better way to understand spelling and especially when you're spelling words in their context um and if I if I had a child that was like I felt like this was a major issue maybe I would look further into a spelling curriculum it's just not ever been a major issue for us so this this has been working for us over you know for several years and when I say copy work I'm not looking for spelling progress in copy work in like a week or a month or even a year I have seen the benefits of using copy work over many years it's something my kids do every day it's a habit if you if your kids do it I think it's a super tool and they just pick up on spelling and many other things things as well okay the next question is picking a math curriculum this I do think is kind of important because I'm a big believer and sticking with the same math curriculum if possible so when I was looking at a math curriculum at the beginning I just asked all of my homeschool mom friends that were ahead of me I looked at what they had and it was a really tough decision but we went we went with um right start at first we did switch to Singapore but we've been with Singapore for a long long time since then and I did a video on this kind of explaining a little more if you look up practical tips or how I teach math on my channel that kind of goes into it a little bit more so we like Singapore when you stick with the same curriculum for math it trickles down to the rest of your kids so it's just a huge timesaver the next question this year I'm teaching four kids how do you manage who gets taught first or who gets taught together so in the earlier years of homeschooling our kids this was it was a Juggle there was no easy way around it we you just you get them all to the table it helps to keep them all in one spot but you just you work with one and sometimes kids have to wait and I think this is harder when they're all younger but it gets easier as they get older and I will also say that I always try to spend a little bit of time with my younger kids so that they can just kind of get in that play mood and start having ideas and then after they get a little bit of time with me then sometimes not always but sometimes they'll wander off and go do other things and that will give me time with the next child what is the hardest and most favorite thing about homeschooling for you the hardest thing for me was the early years the foundation when you're just you're doing a lot of work and it's like building a building you're doing all this work you don't see the fruit and you're exhausted and at the end of the day you sometimes think what do I have to sh for this but over time it gets easier and um my favorite thing is hands down the time that I get to spend with my kids I especially love this in the older years when they're getting into high school because this is the time when you really want their hearts and I start caring less and less about curriculum and more and more about my relationship with them so getting this time with them is the best part it's I'm so glad I'm not missing out on this okay what do you do when you feel overwhelmed I have felt overwhelmed many times in homeschooling and more typically I was overwhelmed when my kids were younger it was just a lot the learning curve of just having kids home all day and then on top of it homeschooling them it was just such a big change for me so I was overwhelmed and at the same time I was overwhelmed it was all wonderful and good and my kids were learning learning so much and I loved the lifestyle so like someone has said it's the hardest job you'll ever love that's the perfect description um when I'm overwhelmed in general I just cry out to the Lord I spend time alone with God in prayer and in his word and intimacy with the Lord is the source of your strength that's been the source of my strength that's where so many times along the way we've had problems that we've come to that I didn't know the answer I didn't know how to move forward or my husband you know together we just we couldn't come up with an answer and yet the Lord has been faithful to us so when I'm overwhelmed I usually will find a way to put the kids for a quiet time a nap time get some time by myself spend some time in God's word in prayer and then just spending time doing something I enjoy sometimes you just need a break taking a nap or doing something for fun okay I'm going to move to the YouTube question that I have here okay how do you homeschool multiple kids this is something I talk about a lot it's not something that just happens to you all at once we started with one child and one child at that time felt very overwhelming and then we got into a rhythm we found a new normal and then we had another child and you know it just slowly happened one at a time and we started out homeschooling one child and that was a big big jump for me for all of us and then slowly we added a second second so it's not easy homeschooling multiple children but if you can move them towards being independent as soon as they can read and write that has been the ticket for us and I at the beginning I thought that this was putting us behind I thought that it wasn't as good of a way to learn but what I learned was that it was better our kids have taken ownership of their work in fact sometimes when we're doing morning time they've said to me I have stuff I want to get done so can we finish up cuz I have stuff I want to get done they're motivated to do the things that they have set out to do so at the beginning of the year we get together and we make up each of their checklists they help me and we decide there's certain things that I want them to do or I have required and then they will put on there some things that they want to do and I give them some choices and they help put that together this is their work and they've taken ownership of it so if you can move them toward Independence that really helps but in the beginning when they're all little it is it can be a lot okay another question here is about science what do you teach for science in the middle and high school years or what I've had a couple questions what do you teach for science science is the one thing that I go a little bit off the map because um I don't know why but yeah I for the most part we've used apologia so when my kids were all little it was a lot simpler we did everything together our homeschool days seemed a lot easier cuz we just did everything together so I went through apology with my kids and we did astronomy we did flying creatures swimming creatures and that was really fun and that worked at the time as our kids got older now our high schoolers and well mostly just our high schoolers go to a drop off Co-op where they get classes for credit there and I think most of the classes they the science classes they've taken have still been apology and not all of them but I think for the most part um so they're doing those and what happens when you don't all have all little kids again it kind of breaks everything up whether or not you want it to like you can try to keep it all like your younger kids all doing the same thing but for example my 12-year-old asked me if she could do human anatomy from apologia this year on her own well I knew that wasn't a good fit for everyone just with the Dynamics that we have this year um but she really wanted to do it and so I said yes because if she wants to do it then she's going to really pay attention and she's going to learn so it's worth it um and then our 10-year-old he asked if he could do flying creatures cuz he just thinks that he that was something he was interested in and we hadn't done it in a while so I said yes to him so that left me with my8 and six-year-old now and with them I've been doing the Burgess bird book with the Peterson Field Guide coloring book if you've seen some of the recent videos that's what we've been working on with them so science has been a little bit more um a little bit more all over the place even though I would say we pretty much do use apologia sometimes I think last year I didn't do apolog at all we did just some amble side books and we watched some DIY science videos and the kids loved it I'm just a little bit more laid-back with science maybe it's just my personal preference do you follow Charlotte Mason amble side online curriculum I started out loving Ambleside online this is what I did completely for everyone and in fact with my oldest I followed side online most of the way through I did almost everything it was it was too much but um I still love a lot of amble side online and I do a lot of it however with our wide range of Ages and with how many kids we have I've been very loose with it what I've done is just pick the books that I love the best and those are the ones that we include so I have a post on the blog how we make amide online work for our large family and I share on there the books that are like our the ones that I still use so yes we do kind of in the high school years I definitely move more towards a an interest-led type of learning or Delight directed whatever you want to call it and less of an amble side online or Charlotte Mason curriculum time efficiency with boys they seem to take so long most days okay boys are are different and I think one big thing is that is realizing as moms that our boys are different from us they uh boys do not like to sit as long they don't like to talk they are completely physical they want to be moving around they want action so with boys it's really helped me to give them lots of breaks lots of out outside time and this just helps them to be able to sit and focus a little bit more and I I think too just remembering that they're not they are built differently than us and not having the same expectation um we had two boys first and then a girl our two boys had no interest in Coloring we didn't have crayons or coloring in our house until we had our daughter they had no interest like I would hand it to them they would scribble they just sitting and and doing work just does not come naturally to boys which I think is a great part of homeschooling that we can tailor things to their actual needs they need a lot of time running around doing physical things so if you can fit that into your day and of course then there is a time where they have to sit down and do some schoolwork but I think just making those adjustments for them really helps okay this question I would like to ask how rigorous you are with your high schoolers I'm not that I'm not there yet but kind of planning it ahead of time what do you require of them as far as grammar Etc and have you ever tried teaching textbooks any input I have not used teaching textbooks but I do know a lot of people that do and love it it's great if you want to do some higher level subjects at home because it just presents it in a way that's just really easy for them to pick up on but I have not used it um how rigorous am I with my high schoolers this is a great question because I started out being very academic and I was that way with our oldest I came from a public school teaching background so I wanted to make sure that we were meeting all those objectives I wanted to have all of our boxes crossed off I wanted to be ahead of everything and I quickly realized from teaching our son that he shot off in some areas and did so well and then in other areas he needed help and we would stop and take a little bit more time and I I quickly realized that was just not working but I was very academic focused and it's not that I have dropped that off or left it completely I would say in the in the elementary years I want them to have the foundations of Reading Writing and math I want them to have a rich curriculum of Art and music geography all those peripheral subjects as well but once they get into the high school years this completely changed for me with our son because I started seeing the countdown clock of how much time we had left before he was finished and before he was leaving our home and relationships became the number one driving motivator in our home school I started caring less and less about the curriculum more and more about the atmosphere in our home our time just family movie nights or spending time one-on-one whenever we could get it in so in the high school years we make sure that we're getting the the credits that are required by law and I give my kids a lot of free time to pursue their interests as much as possible so I would say I'm not very rigorous in the high school years because our time with them is winding down and my relationship with them is something that I want to be a priority so I am sorry I was not able to get to more questions but I am keeping some of these questions and we'll try to get to them in the next episode which is going to be 2 weeks from now so if I didn't answer your question wait and stay tuned for that you can also go ahead and just do a search on my YouTube channel if you haven't yet because a lot of these things I have answered in some other tutorial videos maybe a year or two ago I started off doing a lot of tutorial Style videos and have moved more towards Day in the Life videos but you can find a lot of those thanks for watching I'll see you next week