First week of homeschooling

 I began our first day, of our first year homeschooling, very hesitant. I had spent so much time looking over curriculum, making lesson plans, going over lessons, gathering materials, and making copies, now it was time to see if the work would pay off.

 The night before Chris asked that I wake the kids later, so he could leave for work without them crying. I agreed, this would be better, since this year we wouldn't be walking out the door with him. Between, that and Alex waking and needing to nurse we started 30 minutes later then planned.

  By 8:00 am, C.J. and I were sitting at the kitchen table. I introduced the concept of a spelling list and we went over the words. I told C.J. to write his words 2x, then I set Jase up with her "school work", she was matching uppercase with lowercase. Alex was sitting in his high chair happily eating veggie puffs. I began a pot of tea, and started unloading the dishwasher. When C.J. was finished with spelling, we began a science project about deciduous trees and what causes them to lose their leaves.  From there we all sat on the living room floor, while C.J. read aloud, Jase listened and Alex played. Upon completing the reading he sat at the table to do the phonics pretest and a couple phonics worksheets. Then a handwriting pretest. We had our first break while I nursed Alex and laid him down for his morning nap. We reconvened in the living room and started English learning about complete sentences and phrases. Then Math, where we snacked on marshmallows that we used for counting, and so forth. 11:00 am and we were done. The kids ran outside to play, I tidied up and made lunch. The whole morning was relaxed and productive.

 Day three brought our first challenge, C.J. was told to write his spelling words and 45 minutes later had only written 6. He was obviously not focusing, having been told to specificlly do this, he was also being defient. I had him look me in his eyes and explained,  "Mommy is your teacher now and I need you to listen and respect me. When I tell you to do something you need to listen. Now, I am going to set a timer to help you stay on track. If you choose to continue playing around, our school day will be very long." He chose to listen and completed his words very quickly. After that, we took a break and went to story time, where he found several big foot books. Both my kids showed amazing independence at the library. Jasey sat with other girls on the craft room floor to do her craft, while I showed C.J. where the librarian was. C.J. then went up to the librarian and asked about big foot books and then followed her to the shelf and gathering his desired books and went back to the common table. I could see both kids at all times, I just stepped back and observed.

 Today, wrapped up our first week of homeschooling. I'm in love! I love watching my child learn and love learning. The whole morning routine is a wonderful 180. This morning he took his first spelling test and aced it! I am so proud. I took the kids to Mcdonalds for lunch to celebrate our first week. They played so well and burned off a lot of energy. It was a fun ending to a great week. It's so perfect that when I see him getting bored or restless, I can break and let him go run outside for 10-15 minutes. I love how we have the extra time to do fun things like the 2 science projects we have going, and the cave paintings we made (like how we read in history).  He played outside probably on average 2 hours each day, we have had a lot of afternoon rains. He did two 15 minute sessions of piano, where he is learning how to hold his hands, middle see, and the quarter note.

 I love NOT feeling rushed, pressured, stressed out. I love NOT feeling like I'm always compromising what I feel is best and sacrificing the family.