Homeschooling

My dear Husband and I discussed homeschooling long before we had any hope of having children. We both had bad experiences in public schools, (refer to my earlier blog), and wanted to spare our children that trauma. But we weren't sure how to go about it. "We'll worry about that if we ever have kids." We thought. And being as we thought we were unable to have children, we thought we would never have to worry about schooling.

Fast forward a few years, our daughter is born. The pregnancy was a surprise and we both had many occasions where we didn't believe it was really happening. And in a blink of an eye, she was nearing school age and we had to re-address our home schooling. We grabbed up workbooks in book stores and drugstores. I spent many late night hours surfing the internet. I had a home daycare so I was limited in the hands on activities, (they had to be safe for the 18 month olds or be able to be put away quickly), and the amount of one on one time. She liked the idea of doing work books and print outs.

So we started official schooling a week after her fifth birthday. I thought to start a page a day would be good, to get her into the habit of sitting down and doing "schoolwork". The other "big kids" at the daycare had folders of "schoolwork" too, so it worked for awhile. But I wasn't happy with the limited choices in workbooks, (most were a page or two per letter/number/phonic or math concept meant to supplement kindergarten or first grade schoolwork but not as primary schooling) She romped through some of them and fought even looking at others.

Summer came and I had school age kids in the daycare as well. School work was left behind as we had twice as many kids and did more active activities. September came and all but one kid dropped from the daycare. And we had to move. So back to worksheets and workbooks, so I could search ads and make calls for a new house. I wasn't keeping track and I dropped the ball. She stopped doing the workbooks and I didn't push hard enough. Found a new house, packed and moved most of our stuff in a week. Then spent two months unpacking trying to find everything again. Searching the internet again I came across a yahoo group about Hogwarts correspondence courses, but I'll do a separate blog on that.