Homeschooling Q & A: My Father’s World and Required Yearly School Days
Hi there friends!
It’s a quiet afternoon around here on this rainy, spring weekday… I thought I’d sit down in my “writing corner” and indulge in a little blogging!
I started working from home for this nutrition company last fall, and I’m still trying to find a comfortable balance for my many hobbies, interests and responsibilities on the home front! So… yes, it’s been a bit quiet around the blog lately.
But back to today’s post. 🙂
When I logged into the blog this afternoon, I noticed a number of pending comments from readers.
This one in particular grabbed my attention, so I decided to do a quick Q&A:
I’m a new homeschooling mom, my 5 year old son is starting Kindergarten this year. I have not purchased curriculum yet but am really interested in My Father’s World. I see that there are 26 unit, 6 days each. My state requires 180 days of instruction – how would this work for us to meet our state requirements. Thanks for any help!”
Sarah
I love chatting about homeschooling, especially with new homeschool moms! Of course, I don’t have all the answers… but I’m willing to share what works for me, and what I’m learning along the way.
Sarah, I just love My Father’s World curriculum!
My five-year old son is doing the Kindergarten unit this year (we’re nearly finished!), and my older son did it a few years ago, as well. It’s been a great fit for us.
Personally, we take the 26 units and finish them in 26 weeks of school. We do a four-day school week, and I’ve never had any trouble fitting the six lessons into four days of school work.
Obviously, if we only did four school days for 26 weeks, that would give us a total of 104 school days. We plan about 30 to 34 weeks of school each year, which gives us about 120-136 official school days.
In Texas, where we live, we don’t have a required minimum of school days or school hours. I have a lot of freedom in planning my school year and homeschooling schedule.
My personal goal is to complete our units and goals for each school year. We are able to do that in 30-34 weeks with our year-round homeschooling schedule, and that works really well for our family.
For moms, like you, Sarah, who are required to complete a certain amount of school days per year, here are two, quick ideas:
Supplement with educational games, books, and learning activities.
Let’s say that you decide to use the My Father’s World Kindergarten unit with your little boy, and you finish a few weeks before you have logged in 180 days of school. Pick up a supplement book and let him work through the lessons for a few more weeks.
My older son absolutely loved the Never Bored Kid Book.
Write Through the Bible, Jr, is another excellent supplement that we use for our kindergartener’s copywork, in conjunction with the My Father’s World unit.
My younger kids are enjoying ABC Mouse this year, as well.
Don’t forget to count your extra curricular activities as school days.
Be sure and take into consideration any extra curricular activities. Is your little guy involved in sports, music lessons, or a homeschool co-op?
Special activities such as field trips, zoo days, play dates at the park, trips to the museum, church camp, swim lessons, etc., are certainly educational tools and part of your little boy’s well-rounded education. Include those in the mix when you’re scheduling your school days for the year.
I hope this offers a little inspiration on how to navigate your first school year as a homeschooling mom, Sarah!
I’d love to connect with you, and other homeschool moms, over in my private Facebook group– it’s just for homeschooling mamas!
Since I’m not in a state that regulates school days, I’d love to hear from some of the other moms around here who are.
Our state doesn’t require us to track a certain amount of school days either however even if they did we don’t actually have to register our kids as homeschooled until they are 7 ( soon to be when they are 6) in September. So in a lot of states even if they require 180 days of school most if not all wouldn’t require any proof for kindergarten. You can look up your laws for your state based on the grade. What I find is even if we’re not doing worksheets it’s pretty easy to get over 180 days of school in. Everywhere we go we’re doing something educational it seems. Coop, nature walks, reading about a science subject, poetry or literature, independent reading as the kids get older, art, geography. Homeschooling for us is about living a life of educating our children and that doesn’t always happen on an official school day even. In elementary school trips to the school library count during school hours so if you go to the library count that too. You don’t always have to be sitting at a table doing something that looks like school to be doing school!!
Thanks for this great post! I already made it through my Kindergarten year with my oldest, but I had some of the same questions when we began. I’d recommend checking in to your state requirements to find out what the compulsory school-age is. I actually found that for the kindergarten year (age 5) I didn’t have to worry about the regulations because the required school-age here in Ohio is 6 – meaning I didn’t have to send notification that we were homeschooling until this year when my daughter turned 6. We are currently using MFW First Grade which still falls short of the required days by 2 weeks (180 days = 36 weeks), but have found that with our co-op days and field trips we more than meet the required number of days for schooling. There is also a plethora of free printable activities online for supplementing, as well. Hope that helps!
Very helpful, Audrey! Thank you… I hadn’t thought of the compulsory school age. Thank you so much for sharing!