Will finished his last few lessons and assignments, and we are calling it all DONE! The last ten weeks have been quite an experience for Will and me -- shorter school days, but more learning; exhausting, but fun; wearing thin our patience with each other, but bringing our hearts closer. I am counting it successful!
Since we began homeschooling with little warning, and not much time for planning, I went with a curriculum that had everything planned for me (except for math). We chose to use Singapore math; I ordered the textbook and workbook and hoped we would get all the way through it even though it was meant for whole semester (and we were only schooling for half a semester.) Surprisingly, we got through two sets of books -- one full year of math topics, in ten weeks! If we ever homeschool again, we will use Singapore math again because it teaches logic before it has the child memorizing facts. I love that Will was understanding how the concepts worked together. We still need to help him strengthen his mental math (no paper, or finger-counting), but Allen has been playing board games with Will to encourage him to think of shortcuts to calculations. Over the summer, Will has agreed to do math workbook activites weekly to keep his skills fresh.
As for the rest of the curriculum, after several weeks following the guide book, I started to break away from it and incorporate some other lessons. We read a few extra AWESOME chapter books because we finished the others early. We cut out some of the writing activities geared toward much older children, and focused on a few related activities that could also be checked off of his Scout electives. When Will seemed interested in particular Native Americans (tribes, foods, homes, heros) we took more time investigating them. I didn't like the way the curriculum handled Bible lessons, so I found another book that taught him how to study his Bible. I blended a few different art lessons and drawing lessons. Art lessons at the end of the lessons were often the carrot that encouraged Will to work quickly through his "boring" lessons.
People have asked me many times how homeschooling has gone for us, and it is often a difficult to answer quickly. I have to put my rose-colored glasses on before I begin to answer. When he was in school, he was often in trouble. He realized that trouble at school often meant more trouble at home, so he usually came home grumpy... really grumpy. We would walk through the front door at 3:30pm, and he would start yelling or picking on his siblings. I usually gave him a snack and some time to cool off, but then he needed to work on his assignments.... which he hated.... which led to more grumpiness and anger.... for both of us. Around 5:00, he would be done with his work, so he would go play while I worked on dinner. By the time dinner was over, it would be time to start heading for bed, so we really didn't have much happy-time after school. The next day, I would have to pry him from bed, and he often got up on the wrong side. Even if it was a cheerful morning, it wasn't long till he was out the door, heading to school with Allen.
Since he has been home, several things are the same, but many are different. He still started lessons at 8:00am, but since he didn't have to go anywhere, he got another 45 minutes of sleep. Usually, he woke without help and overall, he seemed to be in a better mood. Now, I'm not going to lie -- he hated the math worksheets and hated writing paragraphs. Getting through those assignments was TORTURE -- for both of us. BUT... it lasted about an hour, nearly every day, but then the crabbiness was done. I have so much more patience at 9:00am than I do at 4:00pm -- don't all moms? So, even though we still had the same disagreements over who would get their way, it was over early in the day. That left the rest of the day for us to learn together, read together, paint together, laugh together, talk together. I was blessed with several hours of (mostly) happiness with Will each day, that I didn't get when he was in school. I was in a position to explain more of the whys that busyness interrupted before -- why do I believe in God? why do I want him to learn to write well? why do I love Daddy so much? why is this one of our rules? There were some great benefits to schooling at home. When Allen went to long hours at work, we packed up the books and headed to Gramma's and Granddad's for a week or two. I wasn't as worried about bedtime and we did some things I wouldn't have considered on a real school night. Staying out late to watch a play signed for the deaf, staying up longer to go to an opera and get to talk to the performers afterward, going to Legoland on a school day when no one else is there, taking a day off to go spend a day with a friend whose dad passed away, spending a day fishing with Granddad, math and giggles at Starbucks -- all these would've been missed moments had he been in school. I loved the flexibility of doing our lessons when we needed to, where ever we were.
There were a few things that I was unprepared for, though. For most of the ten weeks we did home school, I was unbalanced -- or rather, my life was. The basic chores got done around the house, but there was always a layer of clutter (school books, papers, etc.) that taunted me. The younger ones still expected a lot of attention, and some days they were home, I felt I was being pulled to pieces. I still had appointments and grocery shopping that needed to be done, and that cut into learning time more than I liked. I didn't really figure out how to get the important things into my days: my Bible study, exercise, and personal down time. In fact, I had a lot of trouble getting some "down" time worked into even the weekends. That, for me, is life unbalanced. Too often I felt I was on the virge of being overwhelmed completely.
Will and I are glad to have a few more days to ourselves before the little kids finish school, and he is thrilled to be finished a couple days before he would've been done with "real" school. It doesn't look like we will do homeschool in the fall, but now I have a different kind of confidence about choosing a school for Will. I have a better idea of how he learns and what makes him tick. I have confidence in myself, now, and if the new school doesn't work out, no big deal -- we can do school at home again (but a bit differently than this time.)
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