Homeschooling Day 1

hahaha!  Just kidding.  Her glare is the result of me taking her photo, not her opinion on homeschooling day 1.  We loved it, both of us, absolutely loved it!  I’m so thankful to have the first day knocked out.  We got a bit of a late start because we overslept but once all our boys were out the door for the day and we got started, it went so smooth.  She listened well, I didn’t have to correct behavior or remind her or even redirect.  She worked diligently through math, reading, writing, spelling, English, geography, civics, art/music, science, animal sciences and computer.  We are still waiting on her Latin curriculum to arrive but will start it later this week.  And I’ve decided to create my own nutrition curriculum that I am so excited about.  That will be a work in progress and not a daily thing though.  We got it all done before noon, had lunch, ran by Mardel to pick up her math manipulative’s and then picked up Teagan.  We hit the park for “recess”, as she called it, on the way home.  Then a nap for Teagan and Taryn had some quiet time reading while I picked up the house, ate a late lunch and finished putting dinner on.  Very productive, but easy, day.

T looking through her new Silly Starters Writing Book.  This is seriously the funnest thing.  Ty and Jase spent a good 30 minutes flipping through it tonight laughing.

What I loved:

• Watching her face light as learning something new clicked.

• Seeing her perfectionist side peek out, she attacks problems just.like.Jason.does.  Genetics are freaky.

• Experiencing her curiosity.  It’s so huge, it filled the room.

• Doing the pledge of allegiance, we got the giggles and couldn’t stop laughing.  It was a great way to start our day.

• Seeing our workbox system in action, worked like a charm to keep her on task.

• Putting my phone away and turning everything off, just to focus on my girl.

• No carpool today…..I feel so freeeeeeeeee.

• No morning stress rushing her out the door.

• No fights over itchy clothes.

• No forcing her to put shoes on and fighting about socks.

• No stress or worry over food exposures or allergic reactions.  It feels like a 1,000 lb weight lifted off my shoulders.

• Hearing her read to her brother.

• She was easy and agreeable and so pleasant to be around, which is kind of a huge thing for her, and for me to get to experience.  I usually get the meltdowns about 5 seconds after carpool because she’d been holding it together all day.

• She and Teagan played so well together and enjoyed being together because she wasn’t exhausted from stress by the time they got to play.

• The hugs, I got a ton of hugs today.

• Seeing her looking to be engaged long after our school day was over.  She’s a sponge.

• Hearing her say how much fun she had today and that she can’t wait for tomorrow.

What I didn’t love:

• Our late start.

• The quiet and having to sit still and focus.  Apparently I like noise in the form of music on in the house all the time.  It was hard for me to just sit at the desk with her and focus.  I tend to multi task A LOT.  I’m always doing 5 things at once.  This is going to be good at making me slow the heck down.

• My husband not getting home on our first day until after 9 pm.  It made for a very long day (he had to go to a function at Ty’s school).

• Not getting any work done today.  I’m just sitting down to start my work day at 12 am and all I really want to do is go sit the in the bathtub.

Tomorrow is my first day homeschooling both little kids and I’m a bit nervous about the added dynamic of the duder and keeping him busy.  He has his own workboxes but I don’t have all his curriculum printed just yet.  So, he has lots of busy work for tomorrow.  After lunch we’re going on our first field trip to the museum and we found a park meetup group that meets on Fridays.  New friends await!