I shared our curriculum choices for this school year a few weeks ago. I felt great about the decisions we made and I was ready to dive into our first year of homeschooling. I had my list and I checked it twice. My Amazon cart was full with books to be 'saved for later' along with a never ending wish list of children's books.
But, a week ago my husband asked me if I had everything I needed for homeschooling.
Yes. Sorta.
I had the Five in a Row books I needed for the first four weeks plus a few more for later in the year...
Let me give you a back story:
...For the past two years I have become slightly
Fast forward to last week and I can completely understand why my husband was so terribly puzzled with how few books I had for school. What were all these books I had found? Where did they go? Why do I still need more books?
All valid thoughts and questions that made me stop and really think...
What books do I have? Why do I need so many more books for this year? I have a shelf full of other FIAR books just begging to be 'rowed'!
In my original post I shared that we would be 'traveling around the world'. I was looking forward to 'rowing' books by country and creating a few units on my own using non-FIAR books. As I was thinking about the above questions I had an 'A Ha'! moment.
I have known for a very long time that my personality type would not work well using a boxed curriculum. I would feel too restricted by the teacher's guide and then go off on too many rabbit trails to make it worth the cost and materials. I am ok with that! I know many families who use a boxed curriculum and thrive. If you have read my previous posts you know that we use Charlotte Mason's methods for education as our main resource. I love the freedom I have to use her methods as a guideline and still personalize it for my children and myself as their teacher. In other words, I am not stuck in a box.
I realized that I put myself in a 'FIAR box'. I have had it in my mind, for well over a year, that we would 'travel around the world' with FIAR for the first year. The following year we would either start Year 1 of the CM history cycle or continue with the rest of the FIAR books that we didn't use this year.
Can I tell you that God has been so gracious to us as I have prayed about and planned our homeschool year. I have been given countless items from my sister (a former FIAR mom) and other resources from family and friends. I have been able to search and find used books that cost next to nothing. I have evaluated and reevaluated what we are doing this year to be the best steward of our time and finances that I could be. God has blessed that over and over again. He gently made it clear to me that I was restricting myself to only use books that were set in a foreign county, plus a few from the US, when He had already provided my family with more than enough books to use this year.
Why did I feel the need to buy 20+ books, even if they were used, when I have over 20 other FIAR books? I have no clue. :) I am thankful for a God who cares about my children's education even more than I do. A God, who cares about our budget and finances and wants to see us thrive this year.
So, what does this mean for our school year? Well, I scrapped most of my FIAR plans a week before school started. I took a deep breath and pulled out all the FIAR books I had along with the BFIAR manual as well as Volumes 1 and 2. Within 30 mins I had our entire year rescheduled and I am even more excited now for what I have planned.
I'll share our new plans later this week along with a look at our first 'row'. (Hint: We learned about the color purple :))
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