I must preface this by saying that it's getting better! The first 2 weeks were ROUGH! At the end of week 1, I couldn't even pretend it was fun.
Week 2, we had a good 15 minutes somewhere in there.
Week 3, a tiny piece of sunshine peeked through the clouds (or was that because we were at the park?)
Week 4, that part starts tomorrow.
I hadn't planned to start school until Sept. 6 because my 2 older girls would be going to Mother's Day Out that week. But, superT was so excited to start, that I decided to make all his dreams come true and start a week early.
That was a terrible, horrible, no good idea. The girls were into EVERYTHING ( 2 weeks later and my house still has remnants of the disasters from week 1). I had little workbooks for them that looked just like the stuff superT would be working on. That helped a little. But, then, heaven help us, if I had to stop teaching ONE MORE TIME for potty issues, making a snack, breaking up a lil' disagreement, or clean up a spill, I thought I was gonna lose my mind. And superT, too. In the midst of me trying to tend to the superGirls, he kept saying, "What next, Mama?" and "I'm done" and "Are you ready yet, Mama?" and "Is this school?" and "MAMA!" and "Can we get started yet?" and "This isn't fun."
I was so unorganized. And tired. And super super discouraged.
However, I did manage to squeeze in a little something fun so at least I'd have a cute picture or two to remember our terrible, horrible, no good idea of starting school a week early.
My peep Carrie made these cute "About Me" sheets for her kids to fill out on the first day. All I had to do was ask and voila, the file for this cute project was emailed! And now, we have a great memento for our 1st day of kindergarten! He was quite proud of his paper. Take note of the red hair he put on his self portrait! He drew himself in blue because that was his favorite color of the day.
We ended up calling week 1 our practice week and decided to start "for real" on the following Monday.
Then I realized that Monday really just wasn't any good either.
Tuesday came and I dropped the superGirls (only the bigger girls...kept superbabygirl with me) off at MDO and off to Gigi's house we went to have our 2nd 1st day of school. And that ended up being a little tricky, too, because Gigi & Pawpaw's house has alot of toys & a bigger tv than at our house. superT was very distracted. And I still had no idea what I was doing. So, Wednesday we decided to have Dad drop the superGirls off at MDO and we'd get the whole day at home. That was better, but did you know that when it comes to actual work time for kindergarten, school doesn't take very long? We had to work on what to do after we were done with all our lessons for the day. He was a little bored. But, we did have fun learning that early-day people chewed on animal skins to make them soft enough to be clothes. And, I learned a few tricks on what makes superT tick! Kindergarteners (at least mine does) must have something to do while doing things that require him to listen for long periods of time (long as in 10 minutes). He generally can sit through a story with no problems, but for some reason, during the day, he needs activity to be read to. Drawing, building, snacking, etc makes the world a better place for those 10 minutes!
Week 3: In the past 2 weeks, I've learned a few really important things:
- The freedom in homeschooling is both hard and freeing (duh). It's hard because no one is telling you what to do. It's freeing because no one is telling you what to do.
- With kindergarten, I really don't have to use too many textbooks and so much can be taught in the car, taking a walk, or hanging upside down off the couch.
- If I don't like something a book teaches, I don't have to teach it! Who knew?
- While I don't have to have an official schoolroom, I do need a place- somewhere- to display things we are working on. A regular kindergarten classroom is wall to wall with pictures of reminders of what's being taught. Surely I can come up with a little bulletin board somewhere.
Likewise, as I approach week 4, I'm still figuring out a few really important things:
- My son (and me, too) is having a little trouble getting past his preconceived notions of what school is. For instance, kindergarten really only takes about an hour to complete reading lessons, math, etc. We'll be "done" and he keeps asking me what else we are going to do. We'll move on to something he doesn't feel like is "school" and gets frustrated because we're not doing "school." I keep telling him that a great thing about homeschooling is that we can learn anywhere and that it doesn't have to go on all day.
- I'm on the search for creative play toys (most of his stuff is either a car or superhero) to make "centers" (his request).
- How to stay organized? I am usually organized for the first day, but then it's all downhill from there.
- How to do some of the things that put sparkles in my eyes when I thought about homeschooling- fun field trips (by the way, I absolutely could not convince my son that a trip to SteinMart this week was a field trip), creative projects, and beautifully photographed moments. [On the horizon- a Laser Tag day next week (thanks Carrie!), learning to paint like Eric Carle, and a least a few snapshots).
- I have to lower my expectations and loosen up a bit. One of the things I think that was so tough the first week was that I was putting alot of pressure on myself to do this and that and wound up frustrated which spilled over to superT. He would get frustrated in my own frustrated moments (at myself, not him).
Now that week 4 is about to start...
.... I realize that I just might survive, and might even like, being a homeschool teacher. Maybe I'm being partial, but I have the best kids ever in my class.
