Yuma Sorensons: Homeschooling week 1 and 1st grade times 2

A friend and I both started homeschooling this year and we both started with just our oldest kids for the first year...so we could get the hang of it before attempted it in mass. We also started a homeschool co-op with 2 other homeschool families where we will share our talents/abilities/ and preparation once a week in special classes we will prepare for all the kids. We will also do field trips together every two weeks. Our first one was to a local pizza shop - Da Boyz pizza - where they took us back to the kitchens and let the kids make their own pizza. SOOOOooo good by the way...gotta go back!

The first 3 weeks of homeschooling has been...eye-opening. I already laugh at the visions I used to have of Autumn sitting studiously at her homemade desk in the toyroom as I stood at the white board and instructed her in in reading, riting and rithmatic (why is it they call those the 3 R's??). The first day, Austen and Isaac's naps lined up perfectly and I actually sat at a desk next to Autumn for 3 hours. I sat next to her and critiqued every single letter she wrote, every word she read...everything. I was gonna teach her everything I knew...in one day. At the end of the day I realized it wasn't quite as magical as I was thinking it was gonna be but I was hopeful that day 2 would be a little better. So the next day, the Isaac and Austen's naps again lined up well enough and I sat next to Autumn again for 3 hours and "helped" her with every single assignment I had put together. This one on one tutoring thing was really gonna be a great blessing for her. Only, at the end of the day, both she and I knew that something needed to change and that the change should probably happen quickly or the poor girl was never going to be able to form a letter a without cringing for the rest of her life.

Things are better now. We still do a lot a sit down work together - mostly our devotional prayers, singing, scripture study and some of the introductory grammar/math lessons. And then, I try to leave her alone to work though her book work. Strangely enough, she does much better without me tutoring her every move - imagine that!

I love that I now make time for all those things that before I thought would be nice to do but now are imperative to our character application lessons. I can't teach about charity and service and not actually go out and do it. So we have visited the nursing home to see a sister in the ward and helped another sister in the ward by shovelling horse manure (which of course made Lauren cry at the fact that we would "go to a place with horses with out her)(we will be doing that again on a weekend here shortly apparently). We even built a volcano (though that had nothing to do with either charity or service...we just needed to get dirty). Building a volcano had absolutely nothing to do with the life science lessons we are currently covering in science, but we wanted to do something messy and different so who cares if it fits into our "curriculum" or not! Little Q had a great time too and we waited for the girls to get home before we erupted it.

So two weeks in and my vision has already totally changed. I also see that next year, when I have all 3 girls I will need to make some different curriculum choice, but we will figure all that out when we get there. Right now I should probably go to be since it is 1 am and although Austen has slept 8-10 hours for 4 nights in a row, it would be just my luck that tonight would be the night he decides to eat 3 times!