How We Homeschool Grade 1 & Preschool with a Toddler & Baby // Curriculum, Routine, & More

Hello everybody, good afternoon, and welcome back to my channel. If you are new here, my name is Delilah, and I make homemaking videos here on my channel every single week. Today's video I am especially excited about because we are talking all things homeschool. I shared a video similar to this last year, and I can link that one down below if you want to know what we were doing back then. I am in no way, shape, or form an expert, so this is only my second year doing homeschool. And truthfully, I never saw myself homeschooling in the first place. We personally chose to homeschool because that's what we felt was best for us. That's where we felt the Lord leading us. Homeschool might not be the best for your family. Public school might be a better option, or maybe a private school. However you choose to educate your children is entirely up to you, and there is no right or wrong answer. But as someone who has chosen to homeschool, I find it very helpful watching these videos and just seeing what techniques other moms are using. There are thousands of different ways to homeschool, and there's no right or wrong answer here. I personally find myself leaning more towards the Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling, but I wouldn't classify myself as that. I think there are bits and pieces of all different methods that are great, and there's a lot of learning I have yet to do about what all these different methods entail. It's also very important to us that we teach our children from a biblical worldview. We live in Saskatchewan, Canada, so our curriculum and the laws that we need to follow may not be the same as where you live. I think they differ quite a bit from province to province, country to country, state to state, and that's something that you're gonna have to figure out for yourself depending on where you live. Last year, I was teaching my daughter kindergarten. This year, I am teaching grade one, and I am teaching my oldest son preschool. On top of that, I also have a toddler, and I've got a newborn. So because my hands are very full these days, I am giving myself a lot of grace, especially as we're easing into school this year. Annabeth was born at the end of August, which was right around the time when we started school. So often I'm finding that we are doing three days a week, sometimes four days a week. That's a general overview of where we're at right now and what I'm gonna be sharing with you today. And so with all that being said, I'm gonna start off first with our curriculum and ways that we teach our children. And then at the end of the video, I'm going to go over what our mornings look like. ♪♪ First, let's talk about how homeschool works in Saskatchewan. So for us, we don't have to register our children until they're in grade one. So all of this is very new to me, and I haven't actually had to submit any reports or anything like that yet. That comes at the end of the year. But at the beginning of the year, you need to apply for home-based education. You need to send in an education plan, which outlines how you plan to teach your children, what you plan to teach your children. The subjects that we are required to teach and report on in grade one are science, social studies, math, and language arts. There's other papers that you need to fill out, but this is the big one. On the Government of Saskatchewan website, they actually have listed a number of different goals for different grades and different subjects. So you can go there and you can click on the grade that you're teaching, and you can click on the subject, and then there are all these different goals that you can choose from to add to your education plan. Some of them are a little bit more specific. Some of them are really vague. And ultimately, it doesn't really matter how you teach it as long as you are teaching it, as long as you have proof at the end of the year to submit to say, like, hey, this is what we learned in school this year, and we have reached the points that were required. Math and language arts are the big subjects. Those are the most important ones. Those are the ones we tackle every single day. I'm gonna be honest and say we haven't even touched social studies or science officially yet, but I find we learn a lot of social studies and science while we're just living our normal lives. For example, while the kids were outside exploring this year, they found some fuzzy caterpillars that we ended up saving. We put them in these jars with holes on top and just watched them eat leaves, and we fed them leaves every day. And then all of a sudden, one day they turned into a chrysalis. And after some research, we learned that these types of caterpillars actually hibernate over winter, and they emerge as moths in springtime. We're gonna do some deeper study on this. I actually found a downloadable curriculum that kind of goes over this stuff. We can get books from the library and talk about this stuff. It's very simple and very interactive and very real life. And we get to learn about something that they're interested in. In the coming months, we're going to start tackling some science and social studies alongside the rest of the stuff that we are currently doing. But I didn't wanna put that pressure on myself right in the beginning, right as I was trying to heal from giving birth and taking care of a newborn and getting into a new routine. I wanted to give myself a few months of grace before diving into all subjects that we needed to learn. As for math and language arts, this is what it looks like. We decided to go with the Good and the Beautiful for math and language arts for our daughter who is in grade one. Last year, we used Gather Round, and it was great for us in that season of life. But as we were going into grade one and I had a preschooler that I was also teaching on the side, I wanted to switch things up and do something a little bit different to take a different approach. The Good and the Beautiful is a Christian-based curriculum. I find it is a little bit advanced for our curriculum in Saskatchewan. It gives me peace of mind knowing that my daughter is learning everything that she needs to, and maybe even a little bit more. There are so many people that I know who use this curriculum and love it. Most of the homeschooling families that I know in our area use this, and we've been really enjoying it. It has just flowed into our homeschool routine so easily. Eloise is understanding everything that she's learning, and it's making so much sense, and it's very easy to teach. It's very open and go. The point of this is that you don't have to prep or prepare anything. All you have to do in the morning is just open it and read to the child what you need to read to the child, and there's notes for the teacher. It's very easy and beautifully laid out. The images are so fun and cute, and they take a lot of different approaches. They cover a lot of different bases. So math starts off with a little bit of a review. You kind of just ask your child some questions about things they've been learning, kind of giving them a mini test to see if they are understanding what you've learned so far. And then there's a teaching portion, and then an independent practice portion. Anything in blue writing is instructions to the teacher, and then anything in black writing is what you read to the child. Every day there's a small lesson. It's not overwhelming. It's just a little bit of new information, and then a page of review for your child to do on their own. Math takes us like 10 to 20 minutes. It's very short and easy. We've been really enjoying this. You also get this math box. It has a clock on the front. The book is gonna instruct you to reach for some of these tools from time to time. So we've got like some shapes. They get to play around with shapes sometimes. There's some clocks. There's little boats for little fun math games that she gets to play. There's a six-sided dice, as well as a left and right dice. Sometimes there's little games that she gets to play with these too. And then there are fake coins, except for us in Canada, we ended up switching out those fake coins for real currency that is our own currency. This is an American-based education. And so some of the things I just have to tweak a little bit to make it suitable for us in Canada. Now for language arts, there are a few more books needed for language arts. The big guy is this one. Again, it's all very easily laid out and it's open and go. It gives you instructions of what to start off with with each lesson. They want you to work on something that they call reading a booster cards each day, or you could choose to play some word games, or you could read books. When you order the language arts curriculum, you get these with it. So these are the reading booster cards. And then these are the reading booster books that go along with that. We've been breezing through this. We're actually almost through it and we're only three months into the year. So we've been switching it up and doing some other word games. She's got one from the good and the beautiful. That's like a memory game, but with compound words. Sometimes we don't even do this honestly, but basically each card teaches a different phonics principle. For example, it teaches about sneaky E is what they call a silent E. Right now she's doing I, G, H words. As you master some of these principles, then there are also these beautiful, beautiful, easy to read books that go along with it. One thing that I was a little bit hesitant about with the good and the beautiful is that there is a little bit more iPad usage. So there are a couple of apps. There's a homeschool app and then a letter tiles app. So for example, in this lesson, it says to use the letter tiles app. You can also use physical tiles or different ways of spelling. This letter tiles app totally isn't necessary, but one thing I really do appreciate about these is that the apps aren't overly stimulating. They don't have a lot of noises. It's very simple and to the point. Sometimes there's a short video to watch. Sometimes there's an audio book to listen to, but it's all very easily laid out in the book and also on the app. It's very easy to find and very easy to use. After we've done the booster cards and some spelling activities, then we go into the meat and potatoes of the lesson. We get into like the teaching part of it. And then there is independent practice as well. At the end, it also encourages personal or shared reading. Again, it's really easy. If I am able to focus on this with her, it takes maybe 10 or 20 minutes. Again, very short and very simple. In addition to the language arts unit, I also bought the handwriting for level one. So then every day she just gets to do one of these pages. It's basically just copy work and ensuring that they're learning how to write properly. There's fun little games and coloring pages. And sometimes you have to copy a picture or do a maze. I also went ahead and purchased a drawing book. This is the vintage images one for level one. And it just goes step-by-step on how to draw all these different pictures. And she loves drawing, she loves arts. And so this is a fun little thing. We haven't done a lot of it yet, but I really wanna start having little tea times with the kids, listening to some music, lighting a candle, and just doing some art together and enjoying being creative with our hands. Now for Theo, he is in preschool. He's not officially needing to learn anything, but I kinda wanted to get into the groove with him and to introduce a little bit of bookwork. He sees his sister doing bookwork and then he himself wants to do it as well, but he does get bored of it quite quickly. I mean, he's four years old. I don't expect him to be doing a lot of bookwork. I stumbled across For the Love of Homeschooling on Instagram. They're also a Christian company and they have the most beautiful printables for different, they don't have like official curriculums, but they have different subjects that they teach on. They have an alphabet collection that I ended up purchasing for Theo because the biggest thing that he needs to know this year is just his numbers one to 10 and then the alphabet. For the Love of Homeschooling doesn't have like physical copies of anything. It's a downloadable thing and then you print off what you wanna print off. So they do something different for each letter. For example, they do A is for apples, B is for butterfly, D is for dinosaur. So you kind of learn a little bit about a subject while also learning about the letter sounds and how to draw them. So what I ended up doing is printing a few papers from each letter of the alphabet. And then each week we're gonna do a different letter. To help him practice his writing, I actually slipped one of these papers into a protective sleeve and then we use dry erase markers and he can practice on there. Sometimes he'll actually use dry erase markers on the window to practice. I'm still trying to figure out different ways, more interactive, fun ways to get him to practice writing his letters and letter sounds. There are so many ideas on Pinterest of different ways to practice the alphabet, different letter games, different sensory activities. So I'm always looking for new and fun ways to teach, especially for my preschooler. Each week he gets to decorate a letter however we want to. There's different pages, different activities to do. There's some cutting things, there's some counting pages. They also have like a scavenger hunt and all kinds of stuff. There are so many different pages you get to choose from. We don't do all the pages every single week. Just kind of go with the flow and I'll let him do however much book work he feels like doing and then we move on to something else. And then I really like this part. With each letter pack comes a craft as well as a recipe. And this is something I really wanted to incorporate in our homeschooling this year. I wanted it to be a lot more fun and interactive and just to do stuff together, not just to sit at the table all day doing book work, but to actually do fun stuff together and learn practical life skills and different art techniques and stuff like that. We try and do a craft every week and we try and make something every week. We try and have it kind of go with the themes. When we did bees for Butterfly, he got to decorate his bee with a bunch of things that he found outside in our backyard, like leaves and sticks. And I'm just trying to be very relaxed with it. Let him have fun with it because he's four. The point of homeschooling for us is to make it fun and enjoyable and relatable and not to make it feel like a classroom. Like I was saying, I really want our homeschool this year to be very fun and interactive and hands-on. And that's where our video sponsor comes in. I wanna say a huge thank you to KiwiCo for sponsoring today's video. We are longtime fans of KiwiCo. We've been using them for years. So we've seen our fair share of crates and I swear they just keep getting better and better every time. Like each time crates arrive at our door, I get equally as excited as the kids about opening them because the projects are just so cool. KiwiCo makes the most fun and engaging and hands-on projects and activities that arrive at your doorstep every single month. Each crate has a different theme that is based off of STEAM, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math. They have nine different subscription lines to choose from. So there's something for your newborn, there's something for your toddler, your preteen, all the way up to adults. When you get a crate, this is what it's gonna look like. You're gonna get one to three projects to complete with a very easy to follow, kid-friendly instruction manual. You're gonna get all the supplies that you need to complete those projects right here in the box. There's no need for anything else. All you need is what's in here. And then they also include an educational magazine. Now I really like this because we get to dive deeper into the crate's topic as we're doing it. So there's stories in here, there's fun facts in here, there's different activities that you can do. I love how easy it is for me as a homeschool mom because the KiwiCo experts, they do all the work. They do all the research and the creating and putting it all together. And all I have to do is open the crate and do it alongside them. I don't have to prep or prepare anything. I get to learn with them. We get to learn about multiple different subjects in a fun and engaging way. For example, in Eloise's KiwiCo kiwi crate, she got to learn about maps and different parts of a map, about scale and how compasses work. They even teaches you how to make your own compass in here. For Theodore, he got the KiwiCo koala crate. He got the pirates one. And this is for ages three and up. He's gonna love this one. He gets to make his own costumes and he gets to play dress up and he gets to learn about pirates while he's doing it. He even gets to make little boats that he can float on the water and he can use the rudder to learn how it moves a boat. And then the panda crates. Well, those are just adorable. These ones come every other month instead of every month. Annie got the KiwiCo panda crate, let's sense. This is for ages three to four months. And William got the KiwiCo panda crate, let's sort. This is for 25 to 30 months. He's very into colors and just figuring out how things fit together. So that is so perfect for him. And of course I have a discount code for you. So you can go to kiwico.com slash Delilah linked in the description box below and use my code Delilah to get 50% off your first month with KiwiCo. Each crate is about $20. So if you use my code, you're only gonna be paying about $10 for your first month. For us, that $20 a month is very well spent and very worth it. Thank you again to KiwiCo. Now back to the video. Another huge part of school for us and maybe even in my opinion, the most value part of school for us is just learning life skills. And this is something you can do if your kids are in public school or wherever. I am bound and determined to teach my kids how to cook and how to cook well, how to do laundry and do that well, how to clean up after themselves and to take care of themselves in a home so that when they move out, they are more than capable of taking care of themselves. These life skills are so important and so valuable and we can even be learning subjects like math while we're doing them. So honestly, sometimes in our school morning, we'll just stop and we'll fold a basket of laundry and I'll show them how to fold laundry. Every day we have cleanup time and we make sure they know the importance of cleaning up after themselves. Part of our social studies this year is going to be making a chores chart and learning about chores and the importance of our role in our family unit. And I always try and leave the window open for when they want to come and join me in the kitchen or whatever I'm doing, I can have them come alongside me and show them what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. It's so fun to get them involved and I think it's so important too. In my opinion, with homeschool especially, I think it is very important to have some form of extracurricular activity. Not to be overwhelmed and burdened with a ton of extracurricular activities, but to do something outside the house where they're engaging with other kids, where they're doing something that they love to do, learning another skill of some kind that they are passionate about. Our kids are involved in extracurricular activities. I'm not going to go into that because that's personal and private, but I do think it's very important. Okay, now that we've covered that, I'm going to talk a little bit about our routine and what our days look like. They definitely look a bit different than what they looked like last year. If you want to know again what they looked like last year, I can leave that video link down below. And if you're watching this video and you're wondering where we got something from, I will leave my website link down below. I have all of my homeschool links there and a lot of other links as well. So all of our homeschool toys, supplies, tools, and even our curriculum is linked there. Our mornings start off after we have all had breakfast, after the kitchen is clean, after everyone is dressed and ready for the day. I'll call everyone into the playroom for circle time. This is a fun way that we get to engage together and to start our day off in a fun, relaxed setting. I actually have these, I think they're called flat cones or something like that. Every person gets a different color and then I'll just lay them in a circle. We'll all sit on our color. This helps keep their little bums seated where they're supposed to be. You can also play all kinds of fun games and stuff with those. Those are a really great homeschool tool. We like to start a morning off first with a prayer. So we will just pray over our day and over our morning. And then we'll talk a little bit about the letter that we're learning that week. This is more so geared toward my preschooler, but Eloise loves getting involved in this too. Then I will read a book to them based off of the subject for that week. So like last week, we were doing F is for flower. And so we were reading books about flowers. And if we don't have books on that subject, I'll go online to the Wheatland Saskatchewan website. You can look up any book that you want to read and then have it sent to your local library. And then when it comes in, you can go pick it up. This is a fantastic way to read a ton of books and get a ton of literature without actually having to spend a dime. All you need is an account with your local library in Saskatchewan and you have access to all of their books. After we read our book, we will do our memory verse for the week. Now, last year we did this as well, and it was so good. Having that Bible memorization was good even for me because it's so important as Christians to be memorizing the word of God and to have that written on your heart. And it is insane how well the kids memorize this stuff. Like their brains are just sponges and they can memorize things so much easier than I can, honestly. Last year we used PIP and J, ABC memorization cards. This year I did the same method, but I made my own. I just kind of started writing down different verses that I felt were applicable to our family and our life right now. And I organized them into the alphabet, printed them off onto cards. So for example, letter A, we learned the verse, a cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Verse C was cast all your anxiety on him for he cares for you. The kids love doing this. We'll do silly voices to help memorize them or we'll do different actions. And all of them get involved in this, even William. Then we'll get up and we'll get some wiggles out. We'll often do a little song of some kind. Their personal favorite is the Hokey Pokey. We'll do like the ABCs, head, shoulders, knees, and toes. We'll sing the months of the year, days of the week. We'll switch it up day to day just to do something different. Learning through song is so fun for kids and it helps them get those wiggles out. After all that is done, we'll move away from our circle and we'll come over here and we'll go over our calendar. We talk about what day of the week it is. What month is it? What year is it? What day of the month? Then we'll go over to our weekly schedule. Again, we'll discuss the day of the week, what's happening that day. Then we'll look ahead to the week and see what's happening throughout the week. It's nice for them to know what to expect too because I think a lot of the time we as parents, we kind of have our week planned out, but our kids have just no idea what's going on. I feel like it can be really overwhelming for them just not having any clue of what's happening next. It's nice to have this here so they can visually see it and mentally prepare for what's ahead for them this week. Then we'll go on to our weather board and we'll talk about the weather. We'll look outside. We'll talk about what it feels like. What season it is? What's the temperature? And then we all go over to the table. This is where the book work happens. Sometimes I'll set up sensory activities. I always try and set up something for each child. So for Eloise, who is in grade one, she mostly just does her book work. We usually start off with language arts for her. So she'll start off with some reading, a page of her handwriting book, some fun games to get into it. And then we'll do the language arts lesson. While she's doing that, Theo's usually doing a few of his own book work pages. Lately he hasn't been super interested in that and so I've been trying to find different ways that are fun and interactive to get him involved and learning. Sometimes that's a sensory activity or crafts or honestly, you know, sometimes I just give him some kinetic sand and let him have fun. Most of what he's learning at this age is he learns through play. And then William, sometimes he wants to do what the other kids are doing, but a lot of the time I'll just set up some toys for him or something that he can get messy with. So I feel like we've got some Play-Doh here, we've got some slime, we've got kinetic sand in there. Those are big hits in our family. And then we also have some other toys that we reach for like building toys or color sorting toys. Something that will keep him entertained for a period of time. After Eloise has completed her language arts, we take a break. We call it recess. If it's nice enough, they'll go outside for a little while. Sometimes they'll go downstairs and just run around or build Lego or play, read books. Sometimes we'll do crafts together or maybe this is when we'll have our craft for the week or we'll do our recipe of the week. We take a break from sitting down and doing book work to do something with our hands. Our school mornings have been starting pretty late these days. So a lot of the time we don't get around to finishing up math with Eloise until the afternoon or even later on in the day. But if we have time after recess and before lunch, we will try and squeeze in her math lesson as well. And I mean, this only takes 10 to 20 minutes. So it doesn't take long. It's very simple and very easy to do. And that's it. That's what our school days look like. Sometimes if we're out running errands in the morning, we do all of this in the afternoon instead. Sometimes on a really rushed day, we'll skip the circle time altogether and we'll just go straight to some book work. We're trying not to be too rigid with routine and to keep it flexible and fun. I'm sure this is going to evolve more and more as the year goes on. And then in the years to come, I'll definitely be sharing more updated videos like this in the future. But if you have any questions for me, leave them in the comments down below. And if you want to share something that you really enjoy about your own routine with homeschool, let us know. Let's use the comment section to encourage one another. Thank you all so much for watching and I will see you in the next one. Bye.