Home School Revisited

After doing lots of thinking and talking with family, I've realized that I don't have to have a strict school schedule for Joseph, which is what I had planned. I don't think Joseph is ready for something like that anyways. As I get more pregnant, I because less able to do something that strict. I have a tendency to go either too far or not enough; I'm terrible at balance. I've always felt like I either have to follow a very strict schedule for things and then I burn myself out and do nothing at all until I've recovered. I think that working on home school is going to be the same for me. I need to find the proper balance for me and my kids. Joseph has forgotten a lot of the stuff that he knew, so he isn't even ready for the program that I had planned. That lets me know that we need to take some time to review and work on the basics again. I think I'll just take time to help him remember his basics, but do it in a way that will be enjoyable for him. Today we played Go Fish! with alphabet cards. It was good seeing that he at least remembers his uppercase letters. Next week, we will start review lowercase. He also did a page in his tracing workbook. His lines aren't as neat as they were and he's forgotten a bit about how to hold the pencil properly, but he's slowly getting better. We also had fun playing Uno and he's good with knowing his numbers. I think I'll just gather a lot of fun ideas for reviewing things and getting him ready for higher level stuff. I'm glad I didn't go out and spend money on a phonics primer and handwriting workbook because it's definitely not time for those. I think we'll review through the end of this year and then see where we are. That will also give me time to get through this pregnancy and have time to get used to another little one in the family.

Home School

For several months, I've been planning on starting a home school Kindergarten program for Joseph. Yesterday was our first day. I don't have the curriculum that I originally planned on starting with, but it turns out it's fine because he's forgotten a lot of his letters and their sounds. He seems to think that school means "playing games", so yesterday he was annoyed when we were reading and practicing letters and their sounds; he was constantly asking, "What game are we going to play now?"

This morning, I had the hardest time waking up because I was so tired. Mitchell doesn't get home from class until after 9 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but he leaves before 9 in the morning. We obviously wanted to spend time together last night, so we stayed up late. Also, spending the entire day with the kids by myself really wore me out. Today, I have no motivation for doing school with Joseph or really much of anything else. I think I'd be content spending the morning in front of my computer eating a box of Poptarts.

I don't know if taking on the task of schooling Joseph was a bad idea, at least for now. This school semester is going to be trying on Mitchell and on me. I'm also having a baby in 2 1/2 months. But I keep thinking, "If I can't do a simple Kindergarten, then maybe I'm not cut out for homeschooling at all..."

One thing that's good about home schooling for me is that it gives me things to do with Joseph and Annabelle. I've never been very good at spending time WITH my kids. Planning school activities helps me come up with things to actually do stuff with them instead of just letting them do their thing while I do mine. There seem to be a lot of pros and cons for me with doing this home schooling thing, the real problem is deciding what to actually do.

Labor Day

We had a good Labor Day weekend. We did a few fun things today since Mitchell didn't have to go to work. The kids let us sleep in pretty late, which was nice since we usually have early mornings with Mitchell working and going to school. We went and browsed around the mall for a bit and had some lunch in the food court there. We went to a park in the afternoon. The kids had fun playing while Mitchell drew for some assignments and I worked out homeschool lesson plans. We had a nice quiet time and I read a Sherlock Holmes story in my book. We were excited about getting some awesome new Star Wars shirts from Baby Gap with a 30% off code we had, but after not getting the code to apply, we realized that line is excluded from coupons. :(  Later, we took the kids to another park and they had fun playing there. We also did a mini photo shoot to get some pictures for the invitations I want to make for Annabelle's birthday party. That was pretty fun. The kids are so hard to get pictures of because they are either moving around like crazy or they are making really stupid smiley faces. It doesn't help that our camera is TERRIBLE at taking pictures. I was surprised at how many I got. We ended the day by watching new episodes of 2 of our favorites shows, which happen to be cartoons on Cartoon Network. They are Adventure Time and Regular Show; we love watching them together.

Here are a few photos that I really liked: