We are three weeks in to our new school year. I think I FINALLY have all the kids correct curriculum (missed a few things I when I ordered it this summer) and their books organized in a way that works for them, me, and their tutors at the tutorial. I’ve done things a little differently this year, and SO FAR, it has helped our days to run more smoothly. First of all, I’ve committed to waking up before the kids every day.
Lately, I’ve been asked several times what I do with my 2 year old while I am teaching the older 3. Here’s your answer.
Yes, that would be pen mark up and down the corner of the walls in my dining room. Yes, he did that yesterday morning while I was working with the big kids in the other room and thought that scraping sound was the sound of him scraping oatmeal of his cereal bowl with a spoon.
Scott commented the other day that he feels the passage of time more noticeably at the beginning of the school year, rather than on the kids birthdays. I think he’s right.
Especially this year, when I packed up three backpacks and three lunch boxes and lined up 3 kids for pictures at the front door. We have our Kindergartener, on her very first day of school ever.
Followed by our first grader.
I love to read. I love when you get to that point in the novel, where you literally can not put it down and find yourself speed reading/skipping words just to quickly make it to the next part and find out what happens. One of our goals in educating our children was to make readers out of them. This was hard at first with our son as reading didn’t come naturally to him.
I don’t homeschool because I hate the government. Nor do I homeschool because I think the public school system is all evil. Nor do I homeschool because I want my kids to be smarter than yours. In fact, raising super smart kids isn’t even my main goal of education.
I homeschool because I want to spend the time with my kids. That’s it, in a nut shell.
But, if I may be honest and come clean with you, it’s hard.
Education is about so much more than book smarts. I’ve known this for awhile and believed it to my core. In fact, this fact alone has dictated so many decisions we make in raising our children, especially since we home school and want to make sure that they are learning more than just “reading, writing, and arithmetic.”
Yesterday and today our school time was “interrupted” so that I could spend time one on one disciplining a child for behavior.
Now that my oldest 2 are at their tutorial two days a week, I find myself with just 2 children at home on those mornings. It is a truly odd feeling and a dynamic I am not yet used to. Though I am sure it is nothing compared to the strangeness I’ll feel next year when I am left with only my lil man two days a week. I am hoping to use this time to
While we’ve been “doing school” at home for the past few weeks for the purpose of reviewing and getting used to the routine, today was the first official start of our new school year.
We homeschool, but also use a tutorial. The kids attend the tutorial twice a week and study at home with me three days a week. So far, I feel it provides the balance our family needs between homeschooling and traditional schooling.
Dishes piled in the sink, pjs on till 2:00 in the afternoon, laundry waiting to be folded, counter cluttered…
But today, it doesn’t bother me. (ok, it doesn’t bother me too much anyway)…
because…
Today, I finally took the time to snuggle on the couch with my almost 5 year old and work with her on reading… and today that precious light bulb went off as she first went up and down the blend ladders and then graduated to three letter words.
“You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have The Facts of Life, the Facts of Life.”
Blogging is funny, as many of you bloggers know, because when you write a post, you’re really writing a snapshot of a moment in time. And as as the author (or photographer, if you will) you get to choose which moment in time you post and thus you can largely shape the perception of your self and your family life that you present to the world.