First Days Homeschooling

Wow!  I really haven't blogged in a month and a half!  Time flies....
So we started officially homeschooling this week.  After trying it out on my own this summer I decided to go with an online K12 program.  It's been good, for the most part.  I earned mother-of-the-year with my patience when I tried to teach Jack how to read an analog clock.  Those hands sure are confusing! But I lost the award when it came time to compare and contrast a couple of fables and he started sliding off the sofa, quite fish like for about 20 minutes instead.  I really don't know what to say about the 3 year old.  I'm sitting here breathing deep just thinking about her.

Please understand I love her.  I adore her!  But she's driving me crazy!!!I made her a "school box" which consists of copies of my son's worksheets so can learn along with us or other activities to keep her occupied while I teach.  The problem: she CANNOT color without singing.  It is SO distracting.  I have no solutions.  If I put her in her room (with TOYS!) she feels left out and cries.  I don't want to punish her for wanting to do school with us, but Jack is fairly environmentally sensitive and it's just not working. I hope I find a solution soon.

Today was chaotic.  I had pack meeting tonight which means stress and shopping.  How the heck was I supposed to do 5.5 hours of school when we were only going to be home for 2??  But you guys, I was brilliant! I really was.  I brought our clock so he could play with it and just see how the hands move.  I brought the language arts worksheet with me and had him do it verbally, and for music we listened to the songs in the car and practiced there.

I am honestly amazed I made that work.  We were actually done by 3:00, whereas Monday we finished right before bed time.  So that's some pretty good progress, right?  So Munchkin might be struggling and I need to figure that out (maybe some special one on one time), but for the most part we all seem much happier having Jack home for school.  He LOVES being able to work at his own pace.  He skipped Unit 1 (numbers to 500) in math Monday, aced the test and went to something he didn't know yet (Time).  And we need to spend some extra time on it.  Thank goodness we can!
I really like teaching them too.  I feel much happier as a mother with this expanded role.  I actually enjoy preparing for the next days class and finding new ways to help them understand something.  I never would have suspected that about myself so it's kinda cool.

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