Back to School with Hands On Homeschooling ~ Review

This year, I’ve decided to embark on that journey called: Homeschooling.

I am not sure what kind of homeschooling mom I’ll be – program-directed or unschooling? Something tells me I’ll fall in the middle. Will I homeschool all twelve years? Who knows right now.

But we were ever NOT homeschooling? This year, I’m using several resources to guide our lessons (I have to stop putting the word “lessons” in quotation marks – they ARE lessons, I have an objective, and we are working towards mastery of skills and understanding! Just because it is early preschool should not diminish the work we’re doing!).

One resource on the table every day for the past two weeks is the Hands On Homeschooling curriculum. Today, I’m going to give you an overview, then in about a month, I’ll fill you in how how the program has worked over a longer time frame!

I love the description on their website, so I’ll let that speak for itself:

Hands on Homeschooling offers lesson plans and activities for preschoolers age 2 through 5 (kindergarten) that can bring purpose to your daily play. Some people will choose to offer the activities as a way to keep a child busy during the day, some are looking for a way to prepare a child to enter a “regular” school system, and others may see this as the beginning of a lifelong educational experience.

I think I am “D – All of the Above”!

I wanted to start some preschool with my son, but I knew having a new baby, I would not have time / energy to research and create my own plans. So I started hunting for a preschool curriculum for two-year-olds. They are hard to find! When I saw the Hands On Homeschooling curriculum, I knew it would be a good fit. We do a lot of play, reading, crafts, but I was being random about it all. The Hands On Homeschooling curriculum is carefully thought out to develop key skills each year of preschool. Exactly what I was looking for!

Here’s what I’m already enjoying about this currculum:

• Bible-based – Each month features a Bible theme and memory verse, and each week features a new Bible story to support the theme.
• Organized – The curriculum comes in a 3-ring binder with tab-divided sections.
• Easy-to-follow – Each week has an overview page, and then five daily lesson plan pages where the activities for the day are spelled out step by step.
• Flexible – Alternative activities are suggested if you don’t want to / aren’t prepared to do something in the lesson that day (always good to have something in your back pocket!).
• Affordable – Starting at $80 for a year-long curriculum, with no additional books to buy, this is a great price. Plus you can reuse the curriculum plan and worksheets for subsequent children.

We’ve only been using this curriculum for two weeks, but it’s working well for us. There are few additional materials to purchase (some craft supplies and maybe a snack that fits the lesson plan?), and no required book list.

I think not having required books is a plus for preschool years – while it can be nice to have suggested reading, it’s often hard to find all the books on a list at the same library. And buying them all yourself gets costly. Also, no list allows you to follow your child’s interest – maybe all they want to do right now is read Thundercake over and over… go with it!

Our son is two and a half, so maybe I could have gone with the three-year-old version for my son, as the two-year-old lessons have been easy for him. But I wanted to be sure we covered all the readiness skills recommended for age two. And the program is so flexible, it’s easy to raise the level of the activities to challenge him. For instance, the monthly Bible verse only asks two-year-olds to memorize the two keywords of the verse, but I had my son learn the whole verse, which he did by the end of two weeks. See?

So far the year is off to a great start! Little A loves “doing school” and often asks where the “school board” is if I don’t have it on the table. I’m feeling confident going into each week, there’s a plan in place – I simply gather the materials and implement!

Which leads me to my original question: Were we ever NOT homeschooling? As parents, we teach our children every day with what goes on in our home. Now we have this added structure, and less pressure on me to have to think of ideas every day! This curriculum dovetailed into our our days, speaking to the flexibility and clarity of the Hands On Homeschooling program. 

I’ll write more next month about long-term use of the curriculum! Meanwhile, I invite you to check out the Hands On Homeschooling website – you can view sample lessons, as well as download a few freebies!

Do you homeschool? What curriculums, programs, resources have you found helpful?

Thanks to Terri at Hands On Homeschooling for providing a curriculum for review! All opinions are 100% my own!