Homeschool: jumping into the unknown!

Well, we are going to bite the bullet and take the plunge. Next year Henry will be homeschooled. Archer will go to kindergarten at the school, but will basically be homeschooled, also, since it's only half-day. I'm going to write a number of posts with my thoughts about how we are going to be doing things, and they may not be very exciting, but I just want to have a place to put down some of my thoughts in a more narrative form than all the lists I am making in OneNote! You know, for the record :) Yeehaw! 

Right now I am being inspired by this wonderful book by Lori Pickert - "Project Based Homeschooling." I have heard that the key to homeschooling successfully is truly knowing yourself and your kids. As soon as I started researching this method, everything just clicked in my head. THIS is how my kids learn! It is how they operate, and if we set it up right it can provide me with the structure I need to stay sane! 

Basically Project-Based Homeschooling is a Reggio-inspired method where you provide a lovely learning, encouraging environment and become a mentor for your child to learn through doing his own projects. Very child-led and open-ended. I love it!

We will still use a math curriculum (Saxon), and do handwriting and writing work, plus we will have read-alouds, a history curriculum (which we will use loosely), and we will attend Classical Conversations, a Christian co-op that is one day a week. 

The plan right now is that the mornings will be dedicated (read: I will be dedicated) to "school." He will get his math and writing done first (roughly an hour or so), and then we will have a couple hours devoted to projects we are working on. Any of the kids can have projects. Then the afternoon will be relaxed - down time, maybe some science or art projects, or a history lesson. The frequency of those, and how structured they will be, remains to be seen. 

That's my overall plan in a nutshell!