Terry, Deb, Christina (5), and Will (10) in the Black Hills where did some of our elementary homeschooling, 1995.
Although my children are grown up now, I love to look back on our years spent homeschooling. And I’m so thankful we homeschooled. Whenever you hear someone say children grow up too fast – they’re absolutely correct! I’m glad homeschooling allowed my husband and me to spend as much time as we did with our children.
I certainly could have been better organized in my homeschool planning and record keeping. Maybe I should have been more structured. But I’m happy to say that my children turned out great, and none of us ever regretted homeschooling. And after homeschooling through high school, at ages 20 and 25 my children, Christina and Will, both have bachelor’s degrees and still have a love of learning.
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Note: There are many more resources available for homeschooling now. These aren’t necessarily what I’d choose today. They’re just what we used at the time. I would definitely use some form of unit studies with a Montessori emphasis, though.
Here’s how we homeschooled:
Preschool Homeschool
During the preschool years, we used Montessori education, lots of reading aloud, and field trips. We had a separate room for our Montessori classroom. Our classroom actually looked like a small Montessori school because I had the materials, shelves, and furniture from the Montessori school I closed when Will was 3. It certainly wasn’t essential that I had such a complete Montessori homeschool classroom, though.
Elementary Homeschool
Christina (2 1/2) crawling through the KONOS-style model ear she and Will made in our Montessori classroom, 1992.
During the elementary years, we used KONOS unit studies for science, social studies, art, music, literature, reading, health and safety, and religious education. We all loved KONOS because it’s multi-level, fun, emphasizes character development, and uses a lot of hands-on discovery learning, compatible with Montessori principles. We also enjoyed using the KONOS timelines and timeline characters, at first on a wall and then in the Book of the Centuries when we moved.
We used some Montessori elementary materials from Montessori Research and Development, but we didn’t have access to all the wonderful inexpensive and free Montessori materials available online today. We still used many of our Montessori hands-on cultural materials for the appropriate KONOS units. Although the materials were used at the preschool level in Montessori, many of the cultural materials are actually appropriate for elementary ages as well. For example, we used our rock-matching cards and classifications-of-animals 3-part cards during our unit on orderliness with its associated studies of rock classification and animal classification.
We had some traditional subjects. KONOS doesn’t cover math, phonics, grammar, or spelling. We used Montessori math, phonics, and grammar in the beginning. Then we used Saxon math all the way through high school.
Note: If it were available at the time, I think we would have used the Life of Fred for our math program after our initial work with Montessori math materials. My kids loved books, and those types of kids seem to love the Life of Fred. That said, my daughter was happy with any math program (because she simply loved math). My son would have been much happier with the Life of Fred.
We used Bob Jones University Press spelling and KONOS History of the World – in an unstructured way. We had spelling “tests.” In Montessori education, children aren’t graded, and our homeschool didn’t have grades either. We had what we called spelling tests (our only tests other than the state-required standardized tests every other year), but then we just checked and corrected any mistakes without giving a grade. We liked the spelling books for going through spelling in a systematic way along with adding personal spelling words and weekly journal writing.
Note: I would probably use All About Spelling now (which wasn’t available when we homeschooled). Because it’s so much easier to find Montessori elementary materials, I would probably use Montessori grammar materials as long as possible.
Homeschool P.E. with Christina (6 1/2), Terry, Deb, and Will (11 1/2) in Vail, Colorado, 1996.
We did A LOT of reading. With KONOS, we were able to use library books or books we collected in our home library related to the unit we were studying. And we read numerous fiction books – classics, historical fiction, and just-for-fun fiction. We read a lot of books aloud, regardless of our children’s ages, and Will and Christina read a lot on their own.
We went on lots of field trips. Early on, we did many activities with our local homeschool co-op. We and the other homeschoolers in the group took turns hosting activities at our homes, at a local park, or at a local business. We studied everything from origami to German to horsemanship.
As a family, we went on lots of field trips as well. When Will and Christina were ski racers and then figure skaters, we combined competitions with educational and fun road trips.
High-School Homeschool
We continued to use KONOS in high school as well. During high school, we used KONOS History of the World. By high school, Will and Christina completed most of their subjects independently. We used traditional materials for subjects like biology (except for dissection, which we vegetarians did on the computer).
Christina’s first day as a concurrent high school/college student, 2005.
Will completed his high-school subjects at home, graduating at age 17. By the time Christina was in high school, I had learned about concurrent high-school and college courses which allowed high school and college credit at the same time. At age 15, Christina took College Astronomy through a local community college during the fall semester. During the spring semester, she took College Algebra through the local university. She graduated at age 16 from homeschool high school.
Will finished his 1st and 2nd grade work in one year, allowing him to graduate a year early. He became a part-time college student at age 17 (part-time in the beginning because of his skating schedule). Christina started 1st grade a year early and homeschooled year round the last couple of years, allowing her to graduate two years early. Christina became a full-time college student at age 16.
How we homeschooled worked perfectly for our family. Your family’s style of learning at home might be completely different, and that’s totally fine. What type of home learning works best for your family?
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Deb, each and every time I read your blog I leave feeling positive. This post was wonderfully inspiring – to know you homeschooled through High School and that your children not only graduated early, but are now successful adults, says so very much about the wonderful teacher you were and the dedicated students they were. Kudos to you all!
I would love to homeschool my son throughout his entire education, but my husband and I weren’t sure it was truly possible what with all the biology work that’s required during those later years. When you have a moment, I’d love to know more about how you accomplished that.
Thank you for sharing your story!
Warmly,
Mari-Ann
Thank you SO much, Mari-Ann, for your very kind words! Your comments always make me happy! I was surprised at how easy high-school homeschool actually was. Of course, my kids did a lot of the work themselves.
We used rather traditional courses for biology and chemistry, although the chemistry was through a homeschool supplier with all the laboratory materials included. We found the CD software that came with the biology curriculum helpful as well. It’s nice that as a homeschooler, you have the same access to buying teacher’s manuals and curriculum materials that any school has.
I know a lot of homeschoolers who have used tutors or enrichment classes through local homeschoolers for high-school subjects like algebra, biology, and chemistry. For children who are ready, concurrent classes (either at a community college, university, or online college) work well at the high school level. There are more and more opportunities and resources for homeschooled high schoolers all the time! I noticed a big difference in available resources during the five years between my son’s and daughter’s high-school work.
You’re off to such an amazing start to your homeschooling. If you feel called to homeschool through high school, I’m sure you’d be able to breeze through any level!
Isn’t montessori fantastic? As a parent of a younger child, I always find it interesting (and a bit reassuring) to read about parent who have negotiated the highschool years with their homeschoolers!
Thanks so much for your comment, Kristin! I totally agree – Montessori is fantastic! I’m glad our homeschool experience is reassuring for you. Homeschooling through high school really was easier than I expected!
Deb, thank you for sharing your family’s experience. We plan to homeschool Kieran, and I appreciate hearing/reading about the journeys of other families. If anything, it shows that HS’ing is flexible – no one style of learning is “right” or “wrong,” it just works for that family!
Thanks, Dionna! It’s so true that there isn’t one style of learning that’s right or wrong. I definitely believe there’s only a right way for each unique family.
Thanks for this post. I love having the perspective of the been-there-did-that mother.
Thanks for your comment, Laura! I hope my family’s experiences help parents realize it really isn’t that difficult and that they just need to find what’s right for their family – whether it’s homeschooling or a more traditional school situation.
I loved hearing your detailed recollections, Deb! You obviously put a lot of thought and joy into your homeschooling, and it sounds like it worked perfectly for you and your kids. I hadn’t heard of a lot of those possibilities for materials and other ideas (like concurrent college credit or dissecting a frog virtually — cool!), so thanks for all the great ideas. I will definitely be scouring all those links. 🙂
Thanks for your kind words, Lauren! It’s wonderful how many resources are out there for homeschoolers now – and more are becoming available all the time!
Thank you for this post! I love hearing about other people’s experiences. I also didn’t know about the concurrent college credit option–what a great idea!
Thanks, Amy! I’m really a fan of concurrent classes. I was so happy to discover them for my daughter. She felt proud to be at the top of her college classes (not unusual for homeschoolers!), and concurrent classes were a wonderful transition into college life. Also, it was great to get college credits and high school credits at the same time!
I found it really interesting to see how homeschooling can work year round. My girls are both in mainstream school part time and I expect will stay in mainstream primary school – the school we have chosen has 130 students and we chose it specifically because it is a small school with a family like feel.
But we are unsure if they will be able to function in mainstream high school – all the high schools in our area are big and the dept of education seems to be pushing for bigger and bigger schools all round. It is great to see a practical demonstration of home schooling at work and so successful 🙂
Thanks for your comment, Marita! I find it amazing how many different ways there are to successfully school or homeschool. Best wishes with finding what works best for your girls!
Thank you 🙂 It is wonderful having the internet available to look at so many different options and help me learn more so I can support my girls 🙂
You’re welcome! I wish I would have had access to the Internet back when I was first homeschooling. It’s fabulous how many ideas and resources are easily available today!
This was very interesting to me to read about how you were able to use homeschooling and the Montessori approach from pre-school to high school and that your children were successful in college as well. Thank you for sharing this.
Thanks for your comment! I hope some of our experience was helpful for your family!
Thanks for visiting my blog. Am going to follow you as it looks like you have a lot of home school knowledge to share. I am only in my second year but we love it because we can travel so much.
Thanks for your comment and for following me, Anna-Marie! I do often write about homeschooling and have a homeschooling category: https://livingmontessorinow.com/category/homeschooling/. I also have an activity of the week category: https://livingmontessorinow.com/category/activity-of-the-week/.
That’s really amazing. I’m thinking of homeschooling full time and I must say this is such an informative post. I have wondered about how we can follow old fashioned schooling subjects so will look in to those! Thank you (stopping by from the carnival list!)
Thanks for your kind comment, Luschka! If you ever have any questions, feel free to ask here, at the Living Montessori Now Facebook page, or at my Living Montessori Now community at Blog Frog or Mom Bloggers Club!
You are such a cute family!! What a great summary of your homeschooling experience. Very informative.
That’s so sweet, Michelle! Thanks!!
Pam, this is so informative. Thank you so much for sharing all you have learned. I am still not sure if this is the path for my family, but knowing that there are women like you out there willing to share your experiences makes it so much less daunting. Thank you very much.
Thanks for your kind comment, Melinda! I truly believe each family has its own unique educational path. Wishing you the best in finding yours!
Deb, I don’t know how I missed this last year, but it was a joy to read now. I grew up using KONOS too and am using it with my children. In the early years, especially, I’ve also incorporated a lot of Montessori elements. They just seemed to be a natural fit for me and I see that I am not alone in that!
I just found this, Heather! Thanks so much for your kind comment! How wonderful that you grew up with KONOS and are using it with your children now along with Montessori elements. That’s a great combination! 🙂
Always nice to know that it’s possible to HS through High School – everyone always assumes I’ll HS to 12 then send them to ‘normal’ school, now I just send them to your site to prove I’m not mad and it works 🙂
I just found your comment, Zelda! I’m so glad my family can be used as a positive example! We definitely have no regrets! 🙂
Deb,
Your writing has an amazing way of making me feel warm and fuzzy inside and it encourages me in my journey! I loved reading about the way you homeschooled and how positive your kids turned out!! I am praying everyday about what next year will bring and your blog is an incredible resource and encouragement in my professional and personal life! Thank you for being you!
Rachel 🙂
http://www.discoverykidzone.blogspot.com/
Thank you so much for your very kind comment, Rachel … your sweet comment made me feel warm and fuzzy inside! I love what what you’re doing with your blog and teaching. Homeschooling was a real blessing for my family … wishing you everything good on your journey, too! 🙂