First Day of Home School 2012-2013

Today we start our first day of home school.  No school room, no desks, no bus, no shiny new tennis shoes.  Our home and our world becomes our classroom.  We will all learn many new things in many new ways.  I began the year with excitement and a little bit of fear.  Fear mostly of the unknown and my own short comings.  But from what I have read my children will learn in spite of me and they will become as much my teachers as I am theirs.

We have decided to school year round.  Our schedule doesn't have to change with the seasons.  For some of our children, me included, the transition is difficult.  There is comfort in the familiar.  We never take a break from learning.  Our schedule may become a bit more relaxed during the summer and P.E. may include pool time but learning just becomes life and life becomes learning.  My favorite part of learning year round is that we are taking Mondays off from formal school work.  Mondays become an extension of our weekend, a day to catch up, regroup and start the week ahead instead of behind.  We will learn life skills :) (laundry, cleaning, cooking, yard work, grocery shopping etc. etc. etc.).

We will not try to re-create a school classroom in our home.  Our home is our classroom.  Learning will happen on the porch swing, the couch, at the kitchen table.  Where we live is where we will learn. 

Many things went well today.  We learned.  We got in a bit of Bible reading, math, spelling, History/Geography, and more reading. The kids were well behaved and look forward to school tomorrow.  Oh, and we made our clipboards look fun with Mod Podge! 

Some things did not go as well.  Most of school was at the kitchen table.  I will need to work hard at making school less school like and much more relaxed and home like.  We did not get through everything I planned to get through today and my lesson plans were not as organized as I wish they would have been.  I want to be and feel more relaxed so that learning does not become a chore for any of us but instead is fun for all of us (at least most of the time).  Oh yes and lunch was late (sorry honey).

Looking forward I can see success is all in the attitude.  Most days perfection will not be achieved.  The sooner I am able to let go of perfection the better I will feel about our day.  We WILL learn and tomorrow we will try again.  For now we are together and we are where God is asking US to be.

To read about why we decided to home school click here.

"Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." Deuteronomy 11:19