If you’re new here, you might not know that I am a homeschool mom.

I am homeschooling a fifth grader (my daughter) this year since my oldest (my son) graduated last year. We have homeschooled since 2018.

For the sake of the blog, I refer to my daughter as Little Miss.

Little Miss and I started some lessons in early and mid-August this year and then jumped into lessons more earnestly in September. In Pennsylvania, school can begin any time after July 1. Some parents homeschool all-year-round and then take breaks in the middle of the year around the holiday seasons. As long as students are taught for 180 days or 900 hours throughout the year, then homeschool parents are meeting the requirements under the law.

I started lessons early to allow for a longer break around Christmas and in case our school days were thrown off at all by my parents health, which has been steadly getting worse lately.

Part way through September I rediscovered Outschool and signed Little Miss up for a  painting class, which she absolutely loves. I say rediscovered because I did purchase one class on there for my son years ago. I’m not sure why we never tried it again.

Little Miss loves her painting class so much I added a drawing class last week with the same teacher.

First, though, what it is Outschool? Second, I am not being sponsored in any way by Outschool to mention it in this post. I’m simply sharing what we are doing for homeschool this year.

Outschool is a site that offers online, live or pre-recorded classes, for students of all ages.

Classes are held through Zoom and there are a variety of topics and subjects offered.

The teachers are independent contractors of sorts so it’s important to really study what the teacher is offering and if it is a good fit for your student.

Each teacher requires they be able to see the student at least once at the beginning of a live class to be sure that they are really talking to a student. There are other security measures in place to keep the learning environment safe. Little Miss likes that the classes are live and she can interact with the teacher and other students during the classes.

We do have to pay for the classes. With my son I took one class and paid for the class I wanted to take. Now the site offers a monthly credit program and then you can purchase extra credits as you go along and each class is worth a certain amount of credits.

The credit program works okay but sometimes some of the classes are quite a few credits and that can get a bit expensive.

In addition to the art classes, I also signed Little Miss up for an animal club that meets Thursday nights. She liked that class so much we went with a Zoology club that is held earlier in the same day, with the same instructor.

I also added a hands-on science class which features a very enthusiastic teacher and a lot of information. Little Miss enjoys the projects but not listening to why the experiment works.

So, altogether Little Miss is taking five Outschool classes, mixed in with the subjects I am teaching her — three science classes and two art classes.

I am also teaching her math (well, actually CTCMath out of Australia teaches her math), English (reading, grammar, spelling, handwriting), and history.

For history we are using the Beautiful Feet curriculum, which focuses on teaching history through literature. I’ve gone a little rogue for the Civil War section of the curriculum because the book they recommended seemed very, very depressing. But, in their defense, the curriculum is aimed at children a couple years older than Little Miss. She’s a bit advanced in her literature, though, so I decided I could use the curriculum as a jumping off point and make it our own. I remove books or supplement with additional books where needed.

The Civil War-themed book we are reading is about two young girl friends — one from the South and the other from the North — who exchange letters during the war. It’s called Secrets of Civil War Spies by Nancy LeSourd.

We also will have classes with our local 4-H once a month, but they haven’t started yet. I tried to get her into more classes or programs in other 4-H programs, but the 4-H program from the county next to us won’t pick up the phone or return my calls. I looked at 4-H because I liked the idea of “clubs” that would meet once a week or even a couple of times a month. Instead, the 4-H in our county holds clubs that teach one thing only for a couple of months. In the winter certain classes (which they refer to as a club) meets maybe once a month. It doesn’t really make it possible to form friendships, but I am sure it will still be nice to attend them anyhow.

Little Miss also attends a church program once a week at our former church.

Writing all of this out helps me to feel a little less concerned about our homeschooling line-up this year. I sometimes worry we are not doing enough for school but when I really look at what we have planned, I realize we are.

What I like about how we homeschool is that we participate in a variety of different styles of education while also having the flexibility to spend more time with Little Miss’s grandparents and for her to spend time exploring the subjects she enjoys. Right now, that subject is art and animals.

I’m excited to see what other subjects she will like to expand on as the school year continues.