Oh man, I went into this adventure with very little knowledge (which is so weird to say as a teacher.) What do you mean, I don’t know what I’m doing… I literally have taught hundreds of kids. Eh.

I knew I wanted to homeschool my kid and I knew I wanted her doing more hands-on work than what she was doing in the classroom.

I had the option of putting her in online classes through a charter, but I didn’t like that. I didn’t want her glued to her computer all day. So, I chose to buy her curriculum and facilitate it myself. More of a homeschool approach versus an independent studies approach.

I decided to try Oak Meadow. It’s a Waldorf inspired all-in-one curriculum and seemed perfect for what I was looking for. I started going through it and I was so excited. Going out in nature, art projects, cool assignments. Well…I didn’t realize how much parent involvement it required. I needed to lead her through more of the work.

You see, I work full-time. I’m home with her, but I can’t school my kid for 4–8 hours a day. There has to be independent work, a lot of it. So, I cherry-picked through Oak Meadow and used what worked for us:

• Grammar ✅
• Some language arts stuff ✅
• A very small amount of history ✅
• All of the math (too easy for her) ✅
• The rest? Nah.

I also bought some supplemental stuff:

• Llamitas for Spanish
• Workbooks for spelling and financial literacy
• Outschool for American Sign Language and Spanish (her favorites by far)

Fourth grade wasn’t the best. We made it through, but it was…meh. So I took some time over summer break and did a shit ton of research to prep for 5th grade. And wow, things are different now.