My Open House

Tiany over at Less of Me ~ More of Him is hosting a homeschool open house . Everyone has had such great posts . I thought I would share a little about us . My name is Nikki and you can read more about me here .

How We Homeschool ~ We are eclectic . We use a wide range of learning material . We use textbooks for English , Math and Spelling and unit studies for most other subject except for some of my DD's courses . Unit studies are a great way for us to learn together and of course they can be adjusted for various ages which is great because I homeschool 4 blessings . The best thing is about 99% of Unit Study material is free , most of the books and stuff can be found at the library or online . We tried doing all textbooks before and it just didn't work out for us . Being able to switch around is the great thing about homeschool though .

Our Homeschool Resources ~  Our local library gets to see us alot during the school year . There are so many great books and videos available there . I 'm sure most homeschoolers are like us and survive on one income and that can make us very frugal indeed . I love to shop at thrift stores and yard sales and used book stores for our curriculum . I have found some great deals at these places . I bought my daughter's Algebra books , TE included for around $ 7 ,her Biology and English for about $5 each (with TEs) . These books looked new , no writing in them at all and they were bought at a thrift store . The internet is of course the resource of all resources . There is so much free stuff that its hard sometimes to figure out just what you want to use .

Where We Homeschool ~  We dream of a room just for our school but for now we work either at our dining room table or in the living room , especially if we are reading together . Our hallway is filled with maps and posters that we get from the Dollar Tree and the internet . I sometimes refer to it as the "Hall of Knowledge"

Our Schedule ~ We have a rough outline but nothing that is down to the wire . Been there done that Waaaaaaaaaaaay to stressful . Now we finish when we finish and if it takes a little longer than fine . I find when one of my blessings begins to stress all hope of learning for the day is shot .  We try to get started by 9 am and are usually done no later than 3 or 3:30 . We break for lunch and other little moments . We  use our "books" Monday thru Thursday and Fridays are spent doing life skills learning . We clean the house , have cooking lessons , work in the yard and other things they need to know how to do . It also allows us to have a 3 day weekend which gives us plenty of down time to be ready for Mondays . It's not that we stop learning , we just slooow down . We take a break from June til after Labor Day . It gives us more family time with loved ones that live elsewhere and plus we have VBS and other stuff to do in the  summer . This schedule works best for us .

Well I hope you have somehow been blessed by a little peek into our homeschool . Have a great day ! ~ Nikki