How The Family School is Teaching Me

I can’t believe how much this curriculum has blessed our families life.  I struggled for the past 3 years in knowing how to teach my kids all at the same time. My family that lives 4 hours away does group school with 3-4 families.  They do their individual subjects at home (like math and spelling and phonics) and then get together in a group 4 days a week to do the core subjects (ie history, geography, science, art and literature)  I have wished I lived closer so I could do this with them to make it easier on me, but that isn’t an option. 

I did K12 with my oldest and that was fine, but it was missing something.  I knew I couldn’t do 3rd grade core subjects with her and different lessons for my sons.  We would be homeschooling until 7:00 at night.  The Family School has lessons set up in a way you can challenge your older children with ideas to get your younger children involved in the lessons also.  They use a method called 4R’ing where you Research (which they have done all this for you) Reason, Relate (which relates each subject to gospel principles) and then you Record. 

 

I have a 3rd grader a 1st grader and then a preschooler.  Preschool is easy for me, but to teach the core subject to my 1st grader and 3rd grader separately would not be easy.  This approach to learning as a family is awesome!  I absolutely love it.  But the thing I love the most is when we apply the subject to us and our lives and the gospel.

 

A couple of weeks ago we were reading some fairy tales for literature.  The fairy tales were “The Rough Faced Girl” and “Cinderella”.  I had been struggling with life having just had my husband loose his job and circumstances surrounding that.   I felt frustrated and was nervous about our situation.  I remember reading from the lesson about how it doesn’t matter how much  you have in life, it only matters who you are inside.  The Rough Faced Girl, and Cinderella both didn’t have much to start with, they had hard lives, they were treated very cruelly, but they got through it because of the people they were inside, not because of what they had.  I read the lesson to my kids, with my husband in the room and as I started to tear up while reading the lesson he said “I guess that was your answer to your prayer, you needed to read that today”  And almost every lessons since then, be in Science, History or any subject, I always feel like the lesson is for me.  It is something I need to hear that day.  In science we have been studying Zoology.  I, for the life of me, could have never come up with lesson that apply to the scriptures regarding Mammals, Reptiles, and all that stuff, but the Family School lessons do.  They open up your mind and really help you relate all things to God and life.  They teach what we need to know scientifically or historically, but then they teach lessons we need to know about God and our own life.  It is amazing, and I couldn’t be happier with this curriculum. 

 

Anyway, there you go!  So if anyone is considering getting this curriculum, be it to homeschool your kids, or just use it as supplemental material for after school or summer time, it is amazing and well worth the money!