I was blessed to receive an email via this page’s contact form. It was from a parent who is seriously considering homeschooling her child. I can totally relate to her because I had the exact questions and thoughts in my head a year before we officially started homeschooling. And her bringing up these questions, further affirms the purpose of Christian Homeschooler to minister to parents who would love to homeschool their child/children.
With our dear reader, Rheea’s permission, I’m posting her letter live. The purpose is for the benefit of other homeschooler-to-be folks who might have the same questions. For easier tracking, I incorporated my answers right after Rheea’s questions.
Hi.
I am thinking of homeschooling my almost-3 year old daughter and I came across your blog. The Ace & Christi curriculum sounds very interesting, and very doable. I hope you don’t mind if I ask you questions about your homeschooling experience with Ace & Christi. I actually have some listed down and here they are:
1. What’s your typical homeschool schedule? How do you incorporate it into your normal day? I work from the home, and I also don’t have a fulltime helper and no yaya, so I’m worried about how I can work homeschooling into my day.
Ideally, we start our class at 9A.M. But we are not rigid about our schedule. It is one of the advantages of homeschooling. 😉 We actually have the same sentiments back when we were still trying to figure out how on earth I could afford to squeeze in a homeschool class in my already packed schedule. I also do not have a helper or nanny. I’d say, it took me a month to adjust.
Homeschooling will pretty much eat up the rest of your mornings. But what’s neat about it is, I’ve devised a way to have things work to everyone’s advantage. Here’s to give you a picture of how our set up is. This allowed me to temporarily switch to online work from time to time, when the little guy is busy answering exercises on his paces.
I have since dedicated the mornings to homeschooling and lunch onwards to doing my jobs online.
2. Do you follow a school schedule like, well, in a traditional school? e.g. 8:30am-9am is reading, 9-9:45am is arts… If not, how do you accomplish what you have to teach?
No, we do not follow a rigid schedule. But we do follow the manual that is provided by the School of Tomorrow for the curriculum that we currently use (Preschool with Ace and Christi) and we work according to my son’s pace. I will later run you through how one school day is like.
For each day, in this curriculum, the subjects Word Building, English, Math, Social Studies and Science are incorporated in such a way that every single subject is related to each other.
3. Do you have to prepare much for the lessons? How much time does it take? Do you have to provide any materials?
This is what I am so delighted about School of Tomorrow, I barely have any preparation to do, save for the crafts material that I need to get ready for the day. Everything is right there in the manual. You basically just have to read it out and supervise your child.
Yes, we did buy some materials, like the globe, crayons, art papers and all those stuff that a regular student buys. Save for writing paper and notebooks. The Preschool with Ace and Christi curriculum has paces to do that job.
4. I haven’t got any teaching experience; does the curriculum make it easy to teach?
Neither do I. Here’s the news. I am licensed professional teacher but I have no traditional teaching experience. The only teaching that I have done are the one on one, group teaching and couseling that I have with the ladies in church. Yes, the curriculum is very parent friendly. You just have to follow through. No fuss. Easy but very effective.
I have to get this emphasized. Because up to this point, I still get amazed on the progress of my little guy. Why? Because in the Preschool with Ace and Christi, a student is not yet taught how to read. The focus is phonics and getting the child learn about the letter sound with ease and backed up with music and even character building. After a few months and we haven’t even finished all the letter sounds, my son is able to read even up to five letter words! My heart is thrilled and utterly blessed by such progress. I can say that the School of Tomorrow’s curriculum is a perfectly thought out curriculum.
5. I noticed in the pictures you seem to have a sort of classroom set up–what if I don’t really have space in the house, will it still work?
This is my exact predicament before we officially got down to homeschooling. We have a very tiny house. Read: 48sqm. With two bookshelves and quite a number of furnishings. Nobody would have guessed that a study nook could even fit in any of its four corners. But the old adage proved true, “If there’s a will, there’s a way.” We made use of that small corner in our receiving area/parlor/sala and cared less if people who visit will come in surprised by all those letters in front of my son’s school office. My son’s office basically just eats up a 3’x3′ space. Which isn’t so much, if you come to think of it. We just make use of the rest of the house and even the garage during physical activity time.
6. Finally, if you don’t mind me asking, how much did you spend for the curriculum? Can you buy it separately from School of Tomorrow without enrolling with them?
The Preschool with Ace Curriculum has 4 manuals, while the advanced curriculums have 2. This means that this is the priciest curriculum. Give or take you are going to spend around P30,000. But you can call Living Heritage Academy. It is the homeschooling body of The School of Tomorrow Philippines and ask for a quotation and break down. Their contact number is 822 9663.
Thanks so much. I really am encouraged by your blog. I pray blessings for you and your family.
Sincerely,
Rheea
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Thank you very much, Rheea, for bringing up these questions. I hope that I answered all your questions satisfactorily. Feel free to email me for follow up, if any. We are blessed to know that you are encouraged by this blog. It again is an affirmation of God’s faithfulness and our heart to minister to fellow homeschooling parents.
thanks for sharing this … i have been looking around for local homeschooling parents… we are thinking of homeschooling my 2 kids this june… i also dont have a helper at home.. wonder how we are going to to do this… i am also sure that my parents wouldn’t be very supportive of this…
Sis, I watched this learning documentary where it was suggested that READING actually has more to do with HEARING than SEEING 🙂 I guess that’s why the curriculum focused more on learning phonetics… and why the Deaf naman don’t like reading so much.
Thanks so much for this, Jen! I really appreciate it. I look forward to reading more of your blog 🙂 God bless!
hi , i will be resigning my job by end of May to take care of my baby she’s
just 2 yrs old
am a bit skeptical with regards to homeschoooling..
went through a lot of research and prayers before making the final decision. I believe that homeschooling is not for everyone; I believe that it is a calling.
Looking forward to reading more of your blog.
hello! i really enjoyed reading ur blog.. i’ve just started homeschooling my 7 y/o with living heritage as well.. it’s really worth it… given a chance, im really hoping to meet u personaly and also with other homeschooling parents. God Bless!
Hi! I’m a homeschool mom from Davao City, also using the SOT system. I started in the year 2000, my youngest son was then enrolled in Preschool with ACE and CHRISTI and the eldest was doing Grade 1 level PACEs. We stopped for five years when our Pastor requested me to help put-up the church-school in 2005 using the same curriculum. There was no year then that my sons would request us to bring them back to homeschooling even if the church-school uses the same curriculum. So, five years after (when our church-school finally received a recognition from the DepEd, and the church-school got a model school status, by God’s grace and favor; and my eldest son started as a freshman in college at the age of 15) that I’m back to my “first love”- homeschooling. Now, my youngest son is doing Grade 10 Level PACEs and is almost done for the school year. Praise God for leading me to this site. It’s refreshing and encouraging to know other homeschooling families.
Hello Mimim! I’m happy that you dropped by our page. I had my husband read your comment. We have the same desire for the church that he pastors. We have been praying to be able to set up a school as a ministry to the community the church is in.
Thank you so much for sharing your own homeschooling journey. It is indeed a blessing to read your testimony. It all the more affirms our choice to homeschool our son. Homeschooling is, up to now, not a very popular choice for some traditional thinking individuals, well meaning as they are.
May the Lord bless you and your family more! 🙂
i am really in awe at homeschooling parents + wonder if i can ever do it for my own child + be as effective… my son is two + he will be going to preschool very soon, I know that a lot of people may not be very keen on the idea but i would love to give homeschooling a shot…glad i came across this site, i would like to read more about homeschooling + learn how a non-educator mom like me can do it at home, too! thanks 🙂
I would really love to homeschool our little ones. I was a bit apprehensive at first as, like Rhe, I have no helpers also. They’re only 2 and 3 years old so that gives us a few more months to decide where to get the curriculum. We’re scheduling a visit to SOT soon.
Thank you so much for sharing your homeschooling journey. d
HEy Thanks ..it helped me a lot..:)
Hi. I’m from Iloilo and planning to homeschool my daughter starting next school year. She’s going to a traditional school now, incoming Nursery. I’ve spoken with SOT in Bicutan, and they told me that the curriculum starts at age 4, as required by the K-12 curriculum. So hubby and I just decided to enrol her in the traditional school again. I’m just a bit confused why some of the homeschoolers who commented here have already started homeschooling their children at age 3. Hope you can clarify. Thanks.
Some want to reply to your blog post, just wanted to decrease you a individual communication. Numerous thanks
Hi Aileen!
I think they mean informal homeschooling because I started homeschooling my son as early as 2 yrs old. Informal nga lang.:) Now he is 6 and I am going to enroll him with a formal curriculum so we can get accredited with the k-12 requirement of depEd. Hope this answers your question.
And Rhe, I am blessed with this blog of yours. I dont have a helper too when i started to informally homeschool my son. Now that I have a new baby, I hired a househelp so I can focus more on my son’s homeschooling and taking care of the baby as well. Plus.. doing my business (distribution of wellness products) after homeschooling:)
God bless us all!:)
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