Reflections from a First-time Homeschooler

I interrupt the normally scheduled Thing Adoptive Parents Should Know .  Did you even notice that was a weekly Saturday occurence?  Probably not.

In case you’re wondering, we’re still having physicals corrected AGAIN for our home study.  I’d rather not talk about it.

Homeschooling.  There’s a happier subject.  At least today.  We’re doing really well despite a false start, a family vacation, and house guests. 

Surprisingly, I’m really not any more annoyed at my kids than I was before we started homeschooling.  I admit I was a LOT dreading all this together time.  I’m a mama who happily welcomes in September purely because it means the start of school.

The key to togetherness success?  Plenty of planning.  I firmly believe parents would enjoy their kids more (and be less annoyed) if they knew what to do with them.  I notice that I like my kids a lot less when I don’t have a plan.  Now when they ask, “What should we do?”  I have an answer.

The homeschooling mindset has kind of revolutionized my relationship with my kids…or at least PJ.  Let me explain.  I’m a teacher by nature.  I love acquiring knowledge and want my children to as well. Pretty much everything in our life turns into a teachable moment with some sort of trivia or expanded explanation.  This was all fine and well until full-day school entered our lives.  Then, PJ figured school was school and the rest of life was video games.  Teachable moments outside of school were not appreciated so much.  With homeschooling, the expectation is that anything can be a teachable moment because he sees my job as teacher…not just nagging mom.  Another benefit?  My control-freakish nature is satisfied.*

*Let it be noted that I do not condone homeschooling purely for the sake of satisfying said control-freakish side.  Actually, I think it’s a pretty awful, put-yourself-on-the-path-to-destruction idea.

I love that I don’t have to wake my kids up if they need extra sleep.  Even today which was a CC day, I had a kid still asleep at 8:15 and that was ok.  So far, we never have to be out early than 8:45AM which is great compared to our 8AM sharp daily routine last year.

I don’t love lugging 3 kids to run errands all the time but that’s what Amazon Prime is for.

I love that my kids will associate learning with songs, activities, experiments, games, and projects instead of endless piles of paperwork.

I don’t love having to deal with Ty while schooling but I love that he’s doing well at preschool (so glad we committed to that this year!).

I love watching them learn.  Not loving teaching reading to Mia.  PJ (who taught himself how to read when he turned 5) sure did spoil us!

Wow.  That was a random post.  Any questions for us?  I’ll probably continue the interuptive mode next Saturday and answer them 🙂