Beginnings!!

Here it is, the first post.

What is this about?
We are a "homeschooling from birth" kind of family. When I started our preschool adventure, I was anti-school-at-home (boxed curriculum) and much more of the unschooling philosophy. As kindergarten approached, I began to soften toward school-at-home. I read everything under the sun about how to teach reading, when to teach reading, or if reading should even be taught at all. It zapped a lot of my time and energy to search the web for games that teach, songs that teach, activities that teach. In short, I was already feeling burnt out on homeschooling before we began. My mind was loaded with so many different opinions on the right or wrong way to teach. We attempted a few ecclectic methods with my own thrown together teaching philosophy for about 6 months. Despite all my research, I felt like I didn't know anything about teaching. And so...I thought...let's just pick one single curriculum, where everything is planned for me, & put my first year in their hands. I'll squelch all of those thoughts that keep saying "don't teach reading that way" and squelch all of those doubts, and we'll just follow this through for a year...see what happens. I looked at a few boxed curriculum. When I saw Bob Jones, I knew it was the one! This journal is to track our experiences with Bob Jones K5 Beginnings. My hope is that it gives a little light to all the other moms asking "what is the right curriculum for us?" My goal is to offer a glimpse of day-to-day home education using BJUP's K5. When I was researching BJUP, I heard the name mentioned everywhere, but I still felt the support was lacking. The goal here is to fill that need for other moms wanting to know what a typical BJUP day looks like.

Why BJUP?
I picked BJUP for many reasons-

• it was mentioned EVERYWHERE
• I was actually able to see the product before I bought it
• The workbooks were bright & colorful; very similar to what I liked about what we were currently using before BJUP.
• It offered more of the repetition & practice that I felt we were lacking with our pieced-together method
• It stressed Understanding the material more than Memorizing. It stresses Memorizing, too, but after Understanding.
• It had fun kindergarten school type activities that I didn't feel I could pull together as well, on my own (puppets, games, songs, etc.)
• K5 Phonics incorporated a lot of Unit Study. The 2nd week's lessons incorporate firefighters in the Community Helpers unit.

Is this blog supposed to convince other homeschoolers that they should use BJUP too?
No. Absolutely not. I haven't even decided if we will use it again next year. It is simply to chronicle our experiences with it: the good, the bad, the ugly. After a year, I can review my own journal to see if it is worth repeating. Or I can review what I learned throughout the year about teaching and then fly solo. It is also for moms that want to really know what BJUP looks like when taught in the home (at least from one other family's experiences!) I also hope to compare BJUP to what I have learned about other popular homeschool products, or homeschooling philosophies (such as the Unit Study method, as mentioned above). In the end, you might read this & decide that Sonlight is for you. Or you might decide that, "yup, school at home is definitely the wrong approach". I will also provide tips (usually learned the hard way!) that make working with BJUP a little easier.

-bjupMoM