Homeschooling is going better than I hoped. I wasn’t sure when we started how it would all turn out and like most beginners I was a bit nervous. Would Buddy adjust well to a more intentional school time? Would he accept me as his teacher? How would the girls handle school time? We had started working with him on Kindergarten stuff last January when he turned 5, but we had been fairly relaxed about the whole thing (mostly because I was pregnant) and he was very resistant to ‘doing school’.
Well, Buddy has more or less finished Kindergarten. Although the Hooked on Phonics program was not a good fit for us, we did make use of the readers. He was very excited to put the last sticker saying ‘I did it’ on his chart last week. He has also learned all of the recommended sight words for Kindergarten. So far he enjoys reading and is eager to learn more. He asks almost every day if we have new words to learn, so I guess I need to print out the first grade sight words. He has also finished his School Zone Kindergarten workbook and we have moved on to the Math 1-2 and Phonics workbooks. I’m just concentrating on the 3Rs right now. That’s about all his attention span can handle and with 3 other little ones it’s about all I can handle. I’m just pleased at how well he is doing.
We haven’t been following a normal school schedule – Monday through Friday, taking weekends and holidays off, etc. Life keeps changing things around and I figure he doesn’t really know the difference anyway. So far we’ve ended up with days off due to sickness, a trip to visit grandparents, and when I have various projects that need to be done. We’ve made up for it by doing school on Saturdays a lot. On the days when we’re home and I can’t do school with him I try to make sure he spends some time working on his Jump Start games. Sometimes I think of taking a day off due to whatever holiday and then he starts asking if I’m ready to do school. Then I remind myself I need to take advantage of his eagerness to learn while he still has it (and pray that it continues).