Even better

Everyone keeps saying the first year of homeschooling is the hardest. Maybe it will be. But for now it's downright delightful. I haven't quite figured out how to keep The Bean busy (safely) in a way that doesn't involve binge watching Batman, but we've had a couple of surprising moments where he's sat contented at his Lego table while I work with The Bug.

Breakfast of champions. We've eaten a lot of doughnuts since I started blogging.

I went to Walmart to buy this.  That's LOVE.

The Bean gets to participate too.

The entire student body.

I'm also still nervous that our curriculum isn't rigorous enough, but then I have a bit of chocolate and remind myself that my kitchen table is a safe haven from meaningless common core buzzwords. Sure, our first week was a bit of review. The Bug got a pretty good head start in VPK last year, and even in public schools they don't jump into challenging new material right away. We are at least saved from having to teach classroom management guidelines: she already knows where the bathroom is, she works with a bottle of water right at her seat, and doesn't have to worry about finding the right bus to get home because she's already there. Besides a slower first week gives us the flexibility to set up our day and see which routines work for us without the pressure of having to get to all the very-very-important-things-right-now.

Our delight-driven curriculum is a lot of "create as you go."

So this week we've been using the LifeWay devotionals provided by our church to start our morning. We pray and update our calendar and then practice our memory verse (Psalms 119:11). We created a prayer lapbook and talked about when and where to pray and who and what we can pray for. We've got a Books of the Bible lapbook in progress to learn about the Old and New Testaments and how to use scripture references to actually find things in the Bible. We'll try to memorize the order of the books (using the "right song" from Matthew's childhood via YouTube) which is something I failed to do as a child.  I did however master the slow page flip which is good for searching without looking totally clueless.

We've done a Pop Bottle Science experiment everyday. A la Sid the Science Kid, she's drawn the experiment in a journal and then dictated the process step-by-step for me to write down. She's suddenly seeing molecules everywhere and I learned that a cup of rubbing alcohol added to a cup of water takes up less space than two cups of water. (I also need to buy more rubbing alcohol.) We took a field trip to the zoo which I failed to document because it was SO INCREDIBLY HOT OUTSIDE and all I could think about was getting donuts after we finished sweating off every last vestige of body fat.

See? It was educational!

I swear we learned stuff even if I just took pictures of them being cute.

We reviewed phonemic sounds and writing letters A-X in preparation for beginning reading lessons next week. We checked out 30+ books from the library, including two on The Bug's very own card, with no discernible theme except that the kids seem to like them. We've read the first two chapters of Little House in the Big Woods and pondered life before electricity ("but how did they watch TV?!?") and made ourselves a Lincoln Log cabin, a wonky little rag doll named Emma, fresh homemade bread, and "churned" sweet cream butter. 

Emma!

Our tasty little loaf of bread! 

We created a passport and started learning about our world: the names of continents and the cardinal directions. She's learned how to log on to Little Passports and play some of the games, though she still needs help reading the questions. We've read about four of our seven continents and made corresponding crafts and dinners based on the least offensive stereotypes I could find. The Bug can find them on a map and knows her cardinal directions. 

Learning about Asia

Learning about Europe.

Creating necklaces for Africa.

A Mexican sombrero for North America. 

We've made math as hands on as possible with collecting and sorting and classifying shapes, colors, objects, and sizes. We've worked on sequencing and ordinal numbers and competed two weeks of worksheets in our first five days and blazed through three "chapters" of Brain Quest worksheets during week two.  (Really, matching?  How does this count as math?)

But my very favorite had been starting her memory book, a way to document the wonderful person she is as we begin this school year.

For the most part I feel pretty good.  Exhausted and doubtful of whether I'm doing enough and doing it right, but we're having fun. My kiddo is asking to do school work and enjoying most of what we do together. It feels small, these little lessons, for just a few hours one day at a time, but I'm trusting someone much bigger to bring it all together. Today I'm enjoying the kids and this adventure which is even better than I had hoped for.

So Long Summer

As a kid I could always count on two nights a year when I would get no sleep: Christmas Eve and the night before the first day of school. Now that we’re a homeschooling family (we had orientation this week so it’s official), I've been looking for ways to make start of our school year extra special for my own kiddos.

Even though I still feel a certain amount of freedom that comes with doing school at home, I still felt like this was our last week to squeeze in some summer fun. We had an impromptu library trip and picnic with our neighbors and spent the day at SeaWorld with my mom. 

Grammy is the best teaching assistant. Also, it was brutally hot... how does she always stay so put together?

This kid loves whales.

Not so put together. But The Bug is beautiful.

That's my daughter, hugging the KILLER whale. 

To celebrate the end of summer we hosted a Back-to-School Party for The Bug and some of her friends.  We've been blessed to be part of the First Years Preschool at our church for the past two years, but kindergarten means our friends will be going in different directions. We ate lunch and played a few Minute to Win It style games, all courtesy of my friend Pinterest. All in all it was a nice opportunity for The Bug to play with her friends and for the moms to sit and catch up before we get back into a busy school routine.

Invitations courtesy of Pinterest.

We used our new school supplies as decorations.

I painted the box to hold our favors (which is impressive because when I draw apples they usually look like tomatoes) and made pencil shaped boxes (again, Pinterest) and filled them with Smarties for the kids.  The moms got lunch box notes (Pinterest, see the theme?) to use for their kiddos.

Lemonade and fresh apples. You know, for the teacher.

 

Managed to fit all seven kids around my table.

Apple plates! Do the cups look like chalkboards? I hope so.

School lunch: PB&J, Cheetos, applesauce, and string cheese.

And cupcakes, of course.

The games were so fun to watch, especially as five-year-olds raced to eat a donut hanging from a string, but my phone was playing DJ so pictures of the actual party will have to wait until they get emailed to me. The Bug loved it though, declaring that throwing parties are her favorite part of school.  Who says homeschooled kids aren't socialized?

EDIT: I got a few pictures of our party guests! No game pictures yet, but that's what happens when (a) they only take a minute to play, and (b) the moms are too busy laughing/cheering on their kids.

Hey there, Samantha! How do you like that apple plate?

And that's a McCutchen face.

And now, with lessons planned and resources organized and printed, I feel like we're ready to start the year.  I'm excited about the opportunities ahead and the time I'll get to spend with The Bug and The Bean. So long summer, this teaching mom is ready for the school year!

Butterflies

You guys, it’s AUGUST. In Florida, you can count on at least two things in August: miserable heat and back-to-school everything. No lie, I get butterflies in my stomach when I see store displays of backpacks and binders, stacks of single subject spiral notebooks, and all those perfect yellow boxes of Crayola crayons. SWOON. Even as a student (heck, even as a TEACHER) I've always loved back-to-school time.  It’s just filled with so much possibility!

But now I’m sitting here at midnight, 7 days before our official first day of school, and I've got the other butterflies. The ones that echo doubt and uncertainty and flutter around until you’re too nervous to sleep. Because in 1 week my daughter starts kindergarten and I’m so excited for her.  She is, of course, a genius. Straight up Mensa material. She’s creative and inquisitive, attentive and intuitive.  She will be great at school. It’s the teacher I’m worried about.

You see, with Marzano and Common Core and assessment after assessment after assessment creeping into even the earliest of grades, we've decided to homeschool this year. That means the buck stops here. I can’t blame district policies, or imperfect assessments, or the teachers, or the distracting influence of her peers if there’s some critical gap in The Bug’s education. It falls on me. And Pinterest assures me that without a dedicated homeschool room, I have no reason to believe we will learn anything at all this year.

Ryan understands.

But of course that’s ridiculous. First of all, we don’t need a homeschool room. In fact, aside from the fear that my house will be overrun with school supplies and science experiments, I kind of like the idea of NOT having a dedicated learning space. What better way to enforce the organic experience of finding teachable moments than to look for learning around the kitchen table or cuddled on the couch reading books or walking with a grocery list and a budget down the aisles of a Publix? Five-year-olds will learn simply because they are five.  They don’t need a classroom setting to tell them it’s time to pay attention.  Kids are paying attention all the time.  That’s what makes parenting such a challenge.

Secondly, it doesn't ALL fall on me.  Yes, I’m the teacher.  Yes, we have goals for the year.  And yes, we will try to stick to the plan. But you know what? I don’t have to do everything THIS YEAR.  It’s kindergarten, not college. I have the privilege of being home with my children every day and seeing their eyes light up when they learn something new. I can enjoy delight directed learning and nurturing curiosity in my children’s individual interests. I don’t need to feel pressured to try to implement every curriculum or mirror every system I read about.

So those bad butterflies?  I figured out how to get them to shut up. I’m going to remember that I homeschool to meet the needs of my family, and that I’m not competing with you, your child, the public school system, the expensive private school down the street, or every blogger on the internet. I’m going to pray for our school year, lean on God’s grace, and keep my freezer stocked with dark chocolate. And at the end of the day, I’m going to fall into bed exhausted and thankful for another day with these precious children because I know in my heart this is what I’m supposed to do.


And because it's late and I like to laugh please enjoy this video: