Today we started homeschooling. After a big move and at a temporary address, we decided homeschooling might not be a bad plan for our two girls. After all, we don’t know how long we will stay and it would be sad to put them in school and where they will learn new routines and procedures only to pull them out at some unknown point in the future This way we can continue on with as little interruption in our daily rhythm as possible. Plus, I’ve always wanted to homeschool my kids!
Homeschooling has intrigued me since I became a parent. While I had a great education from wonderful teachers in public school, I feel like I could have gotten more out of education had my learning been more individualized. I was pretty adept at doing the minimum to get pretty good grades, but I never really had to work at school until I got to college. Boy, was that a wake up! I’ve wondered what would have happened if I’d been allowed to work at my own pace in my learning. Would I have learned better study skills or found my education more interesting to me?
I’m starting out only teaching my 10 year old. I can work out some of the kinks with her first, and hopefully I’ll have something working in place before next Monday, my official start date for my 6 year old.
A synopsis of DAY 1:
The good
- We followed our daily planned routine fairly closely
- Ari (10) liked most of the activities and was wanting more of some
- Most everything went as planned
The bad
- Math was more complicated/ took longer than I thought – I need to make some changes!
- Without something “school-ish” to do, Abby(6) likes to be “in” on the action (distracting!)
The ugly
- Boiling a pot of soup dry when I forgot about it (luckily it was on low)
- The dog returned from a romp selling like horse manure (how?)
Ok, the last two weren’t homeschooling-related, but they sure didn’t make my day any easier!
I will tweak math tomorrow; it took so long today and part of it was just the sheer number of problems Ari had to do. Overall though, I like feeling so connected to my kids and really understanding more about how they are learning!