Over the last two years, I think we have gone through every schooling option possible due to this pandemic. We have gone from school being completely canceled, to assignments being sent home and turned in at the end of each day or week, hybrid school where half of it was online classes, to fully online. Then the kids were allowed back in person, Ellia only a couple of days a week, Arias 4 days a week.

And now???

We’re back at home. At the end of Christmas vacation, we were advised that schools would not be re-opening as planned on January 03. Instead, the kids had to wait another two weeks to return. We’ll see what actually happens come January 17th!

 

We’ve Kept It Steady

We’ve been fortunate enough that all of these schooling changes have not “rocked our boat” too much, and we attribute that to two things:

  1. The girls have me with them full time. I taught back in the day (TEFL and Montessori preschool). I have a few tricks and an understanding of how this whole teaching thing works. 
  2. The girls are not new to HOMESCHOOLING. When we lived on the sailboat I homeschooled them both full time. When we moved to Todos Santos we sent them both to public school but I continued to supplement their education by homeschooling them in certain subjects in the afternoons to make sure they didn’t fall behind in the subjects they weren’t getting in their schools.


Our CORE Resources

Over the years we have tried quite a few different homeschooling curriculums. We’ve landed on some resources that we absolutely love.

Gather Round Homeschool: “It’s a curriculum designed to be all your subjects but math for every grade from Preschool to Grade 12. t comes with 6 individual student notebooks that vary in level and give targeted grammar, spelling, writing, art, reading & comprehension, geography, science, social studies, history, Bible, and MORE lessons.”

I read to BOTH girls out of the Teacher’s Guide but they have individual student workbooks for their grade levels. This makes teaching kids at different grade levels SO MUCH EASIER. No more jumping back and forth between them. It’s a game-changer.

Singapore Math Standards Editions: These math workbooks have always been a good fit for our girls. They are easy to understand and challenging in a good way.

 

Fun extras:

On top of homeschooling the core subjects, and doing the school work (homework/assignments) the girls receive from school, I have a few extra resources that I use to keep schooling different and fun. Here are some of the ones we use:

Story Of The World, Yum-schooling baking (or this cookbook), Journaling, freewriting, online typing games, online spelling games, and plenty of worksheets that I find online.

 

We’re Hoping For School

All in all, we can’t wait until the girls can go back to school full-time. Not because we’re tired of teaching them at home, but because we see how much they miss being with their friends on a daily basis. We miss the social aspect that going to school gives them. I continue to be hopeful that things will find a normal soon.

But I’ve also been hoping for that for the last two years!