Week 1: Kindergarten

We started our home-school journey one week ago! Elisha started Kindergarten! I've known we would home-school since before we had children. It was something Matt and I both agreed on. Although, last summer when I was pregnant with Eisely we realized we had a year before Elisha would be Kindergarten bound, and we started to consider public school. I thought I would be too overwhelmed, I had lot of self doubt and honestly I was starting to chicken out. I had one year to make up my mind and the decision was was making me ill. I didn't want to make the wrong choice and ruin my kid. I know it's just Kindergarten, but I kind of want us to stick with whatever decision we make and not have our kids weaving in and out of public school and homeschool. I realize some families face that situation and it works for them, but I wanted to avoid it as much as possible. I prayed about it and I consulted family and friends to gain some insight and wisdom on what to do. Finally I decided we would send him to public school...but I had no peace with the decision! So, my husband works with a man who home-schools his children with his wife. They invited us over to talk and look at their curriculum. That really helped me to reconsider our decision. When I changed my mind to home-school again the peace was there again. I let doubting myself and fear of the unknown influence my decision! Little did I know at the time that bravery would be a huge theme in my life this year (more on that later). Anyway, I'm really glad we made this decision!


  We use My Father's World for Kindergarten. It's a Biblical based curriculum with Charlotte Mason philosophies on education. LOTS of nature study. We supplement with other materials if I feel that Elisha needs more of a challenge. So far, I have supplemented the Language Arts with a program called Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. So far it's going well. Just the right amount of challenge that Elisha needed and I'm confident he will be a good reader in just a few months!

Our lessons that come with the curriculum only take us a little over an hour to complete and I add in a few other activities. But we still have a lot of the day left to play and explore other things. I also make sure that screen time is very limited so he must play with toys, blocks, board games/card games, go outside or read together for entertainment. Sometimes a few of our education resources are on the iPad and I don't usually count that against his recreational screen time.

 

 On our first day of lessons we finished up our work in time for me to work a MOPS booth at the Organizational Fair at the college in town. This firetruck was parked right in front of our booth so and the friendly firemen gladly let Elisha take a tour and try on different gear. Elisha was intrigued. Then on Wednesday while visiting Matt at work a firetruck was parked out front because of a fire safety class taking place that morning. A fireman saw Elisha and asked if he wanted to take a ride in the firetruck and of course Elisha agreed. I really thinking that things like this will be one of my favorite parts of homeschooling- all of the spontaneous learning moments and explorations that can come about because we aren't stuck in a classroom and we are learning while living our daily lives.

Eisley is pretty good about entertaining herself for the most part while Elisha and I go over his lessons. I make sure she has plenty of board books, puzzles and of course things that are not toys like broken remotes and wooden spoons.

 Elisha is getting SO good at using scissors! I didn't realize how much progress he was making with scissors until this week. Earlier this year he was still using the scissor as a way to rip the paper, he couldn't quite get it to cut right. I did have him practice with play doh scissors and play doh to help build those fine motor skills/muscles, but had no idea I would being seeing this kind of progress right now.                                                                             This week we started going over the beginning of Creation. This theme is incorporated into our math, reading/ language arts, science, art/music and of course Bible study. After the 7 days of creation we will move on to other themes that will be incorporated into all of our subjects and it will always have a Bible lesson to go along with it as well. Getting to learn more about Christ along with his educational studies is just another perk to home-schooling!

We made a parking garage out of old boxes. He loved it!

One of my favorite things about homeschooling is watching Elisha learn things and see a new concept click. If we had put Elisha in public school I knew I would get so jealous of his teachers being the ones to watch the initial turning of the gears and the pride he would feel when he finally mastered something. I didn't want to hear about it second hand, I wanted to be a part of his experience.  I also like that I am with him all day. Don't get me wrong sometimes I would like a little break, but I always think about how I only have these little people in my home for a short while, then they will be grown and my break will come sooner than I'm ready for. I know there is a stigma with homeschooling and socialization, but I'm not at all concerned about it. Elisha is extremely social!

 In fact, between MOPS, church/AWANA and the library Elisha has made quite a few friends with whom we take a few times each week to play with whether it be in a church class, a play date, MOPS meetings or story hour. We also joined a local home school group, which I'm SO excited about! It's up there on my list of happy places which includes MOPS. Last week was also our first home school group play date in the park. Elisha saw old friends and made new ones. He had a lot of fun and  didn't even care that it was 90 degrees outside.

And for the record I have no problem with public school in general or people that send their kids to public school. There are some things that have changed since I was in school that I don't necessarily agree with. I do appreciate people in the education field so much, I have several friends that are excellent teachers. It's a thankless job and can be very stressful. Families have to make these decisions based on what works for their family, and I really do not think one way is better than another, however I think this is best for US.  I think our town has good public schools, but this was just a personal choice for our family. After weighing the pros and cons, shadowing home-school families, researching  and accepting the huge commitment of it we made this decision and it wasn't made lightly.  Anyway, I just thought I would throw that out there just in case my enthusiasm for our home-school journey is mistaken for educational snobby-ness ;)

Well, that pretty much wraps up our first week of Kindergarten! :)

So, What's New?

It's been a while. Like, well over a year since I have posted anything. I mean, I was still growing a tiny human inside me the last time I posted. That tiny human is now a 19 lb, 9 month old! The reason for the unintentional  hiatus started out by being busy getting everything ready for the new baby. And then she was here! And man, no one prepared me for how difficult it would be to adjust to having two kids. There is 4.5 years between my kids, but I hadn't had a baby in the house in 4 years and I was used to taking care of ONE child, whom at this point is pretty independent. I got a touch of the baby blues and my spare time was spent nursing and napping. I'm not sure exactly why I was having a hard time adjusting. Eisley's birth was absolutely perfect and natural (unlike the terrifying experience of her big bro's birth). She had no problem getting the breastfeeding thing down. When we brought her home she only woke up 2 times max in the night to eat; I was easily getting 4 consecutive hours of sleep between feedings (most moms are lucky to get 2 hours!). The "catch" was she would scream every night between 9pm and 1am. She was inconsolable. I would usually end up crying as well. That all finally ended when she was about 4 months old. I kind of feel like I'm getting the hang of it all now.

I have found our local MOPS group to be a major help. When Eisley was 3 weeks old I started attending MOPS. It took me a few meetings to make new mom friends, and once I did I really started looking forward to our meetings and being able to get out of the house and chat with other moms. This summer I ended up joining the MOPS leadership, helping with publicity- so on that note, if your a mom of preschool age kids or pregnant, I want to invite you to MOPS of Green Hills (if you're in our neck of the woods, if not, try to find a group near you-you'll love it!). I will include some more info on that below that you can click on. :)

 Let's see...what else is new? Oh, in February I signed up with Young Living Essential Oils. If you know me, I am excited about this stuff. I'm always looking for healthy and natural alternatives for health. It's been another good outlet for me also. Not only do I love using the oils and have a lot of success with using them, I also have enjoyed working the business aspect as well.

So, between MOPS, Young Living, trying to keep our house in order, enjoying my babies,  and getting ready to home school our 5 year old son this year, I've been keeping pretty busy-- and it's not about to slow down. AWANA will be starting up at our church soon and I'm looking forward to helping out with that. Hopefully, I will be able to keep up with posting on here as well... :)