Back to School | Why We’re Homeschooling

I want to preface this post by saying that whatever decision you are making for your family in regard to school during a pandemic is your choice. No one knows your kids like you and you’re the best one to make this decision. This post is my opinion on why we’re homeschooling with the BookShark curriculum for the 2020 school year.

I am working with BookShark on a series throughout the year. They graciously gifted me half of Sophia’s curriculum in exchange for my honest words on their program. The reason I’m working with them is that we enjoyed the BookShark curriculum so much when we homeschooled in 2018. We’re really excited to see what their Level B entails!

Homeschooling VS Virtual Learning

In our district, the choices for schooling were to do virtual learning until (at least) Labor Day, put your child in a private school, homeschool or unschool (that is what I’m calling schooling with no set curriculum while allowing your child to learn through curiosity and play). For a number of reasons surrounding the pandemic, we were not comfortable having our child go into a building for school.

Thankfully, we’d already homeschooled for a year when Lilly was born.
As a history of Sophia’s schooling:
-she started in Montessori at age 18months
-moved to a Montessori/Emilia Reggio style learning at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (pre-K)
-one year of homeschooling with BookShark (pre-K)
-one year in public school (Kindergarten).
At the time, each of these schools was perfect. I love something different about each one and she flourished in each location.

Why We’re Homeschooling

When we did BookShark for pre-K, both my daughter and I had a great year of schooling. She had fun, enjoyed learning, and really liked the flexibility. I loved not having any prep (aside from the supplemental schooling I chose to add), the free day on Fridays for adventures, and how well BookShark outlined everything in the instructor’s guide so I always felt confident in what I was doing as her guide.

Why BookShark?

There will be six posts in this series so I will go further in-depth about what I like about BookShark, how we organize our homeschool materials, what our schedule looks like, and more. Right now I just want to overview our love for BookShark from our previous year of homeschooling and our excitement for the school year ahead.

When I started researching I felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of homeschooling curriculums. I quickly realized that I needed to have priorities that were most important. For our family, those were:
1. A secular curriculum
2. A 4-day program (to leave time for adventures)
3. Very little prep

Narrowing those priorities down made my search much easier. Not only did BookShark fit each of these descriptions, but they are also literacy-based and had additional hands-on options. For Sophia’s 1st grade school year she will be in Level B where she will study history (with an added hands-on element), geography, science (including physiology, animals, meteorology, electricity, and biology), language arts, math, and handwriting.

Why Does Bookshark Use Levels Instead of Grades?

I really enjoyed that BookShark chose to differentiate with levels rather than grade numbers. Their levels have a suggested age range so you know where to start looking. For example, 1st grade could be level A or B because they’re designed for ages 6-8. My favorite thing about homeschooling is the ability to make sure my child is mastering a subject before moving on.

Growing up, I often got left behind in math because I did not understand. It was always so difficult to catch up because I hadn’t mastered the basic foundation. People learn at all different rates. They should be taught at the rate they need to feel confident and curious in their education.

This school year we will definitely need some time to adjust to our new schedules. After a summer of simple 1 hr/day homeschooling, we will both need to adjust to the amount of time we’re focusing on school work. But that’s the great thing about homeschooling. It’s so flexible. There are 36 weeks. We are welcome to spread that out over 52 weeks if we need it. And that’s ok. Whatever your choice is for schooling this year, just remember, it’s ok to slow down.

I would love to know what you’re doing in the way of school for your children this year. I’m happy to answer any questions about our experience of homeschooling and what our school year ahead will look like!

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