Homeschool

So as I said in the previous post, we are really getting into homeschooling now. It was not intentional. It actually just happened very naturally. I try to do devotions with the girls in the morning, and we just sort of started tacking on other things after that, and here we are...a home school family.

I mentioned on FB recently, that a stranger asked Lara one afternoon at Wal-Mart why she wasn't in school (he thought her to be older than she is). Lara explained that she is home-schooled, and the stranger asked me, "Aren't you afraid that will make her shy?" I just smiled and said, "No, not at all." It is such a simple-minded idea, that home-school breeds socially inept children. You can't make blanket statements like that. It did not offend me; more than anything, I feel tired from the typical questions. If it is not a question, than it is a statement: Oh, I am choosing to not home school my children because I want them to be socialized and be a light to this dark world. To each their own.

So, onto our home schooling. First, we do calendar. Lara changes the day and weather on the calendar on our wall, and we talk about the month. Then we have devotions. We use this book. Lara helps me look the devotion verse up in her Bible (she just recently got a new, "real" Bible for her 5th birthday). If I have a good resource, we will also do a little Bible lesson, but I am having a hard time getting anything consistent.

Next, in no particular order, we do a reading lesson, a writing lesson, and/or math lesson. I have had people ask me what curriculum I use; I do not use any particular curriculum (now you know I am a true-blooded home school Mom ;)). I have several PreK and K math and word workbooks, and I just rip pages out and we work on them. Some of these books involve cutting, gluing, matching, categorizing, patterns, etc., so various Kindergarten skills (which I know to work on thanks to the internet) are used during the lessons. We also do crafts, and sometimes those are incorporated into the lesson. For instance, we put bats up on the walls for Halloween, but first I used them to teach Lara the concepts of "more" and "less," by putting the bats in separate groups. I am more creative in the moment, and am not good at really planning and organizing. So, depending on how I feel in a day, school might be a short 30-minute lesson, or a good 1.5 hours with all kinds of fun games involved. We move from one lesson to another pretty quickly to make sure things don't get too boring. The reading lesson is pretty long, lasting about 20 or so minutes, but with the other subjects, we don't spend more than 10 minutes on anything. On average, a home school morning lasts no less than one hour, and it goes by pretty quickly.

Lara does great with school. There is no forcing, discipline, or a great deal of re-directing. She understands that this is part of our day some days, just like therapy, or MOPS, or WOW, and she cooperates well. Also, I do not worry about skipping some days of school altogether. Next year, I will need to be more serious, but I feel Lara is too young to sit her down every morning and possibly miss other fun events, like trips to the pumpkin patch, play dates, or visiting relatives. I think this is a really important aspect of home schooling: that the teacher tries to be very relaxed and not get too worked up about everything progressing perfectly.

Another home school issue is younger siblings. This I have not at all gotten figured out. Sometimes I can involve Claire in the lesson or give her an activity to do on her own. But often she just plays around the play room by herself, or sits quietly in my lap with a book or puzzle while I teach Lara. Usually, it is okay, but some days, Claire really demands my attention in addition to teaching Lara, and that makes for a super stressful morning. Especially since I am not very good at multi-tasking. Another issue is that I am often wanting to take a break after school with Lara, so some mornings I feel that I devoted so much time to one daughter, and none at all to the other. This has helped me realize that I really want to invest in a curriculum that combines material for various ages, so I can teach both girls together.

So that's home school for us right now. Next year, we'll do the full-on curriculum, home school co-op and events. But we really enjoy it, and it really gives me a feeling of fulfillment and peace to do this. I want my daughters to be a light to this world also, and that is my daily prayer for them. But they need our constant guidance to learn what that means for them. I cannot leave their education and other instruction in the hands of a stranger. Nor do I want my children to grow in an environment where they might feel the need to separate their morals and Christian philosophies from their every day life at school. In this way, I know my children are growing with a more wholistic education...
... in a place where God is always the center.