Hard Part of Homeschooling

The hard part of homeschooling is when:

• you realize that you have bought the wrong curriculum and it is not working for your child.
• when money is tight so the thought that you bought something that isn’t working right now (even though it may work later as a review if nothing else) causes you major consternation.
• when you don’t feel like you’ve had enough time to plan so you feel behind from step one.
• when it is “half-way” through the year and you still feel like you are on step one.

Sigh….

I think I’ve decided what will work better, now I just have to figure out how to implement it while trying to keep the kids occupied and not just in front of the tube while I work furiously (if I can keep my mind on task). Which is not easy being so tired.  Miss F finally slept 6 hours straight last night, but I was only in bed for 5 of them since I was trying to help Michael get ready for his classes today.

Some of my ideas that I want to implement:

Workboxes

I think the girls will function better through the day if I have activities for them all setup for them to pull and go work on.  I definitely do not have the space or the desire to setup the system exactly like Sue Patrick does.  There a ton of posts on the web if you type in workboxes but I think I’m going to base mine around something like this, this or this.

A New Phonics/Reading Program

I’m currently printing out sample lessons from All About Reading to see how they would work with the girls.  Horizons Phonics was not working for us and we will see how the sample seems to go, modified a bit to try it out.  Granted Miss C is the only one that is officially being schooled but usually Lia wants to do things too.  And really she knows stuff, she is way too smart for me and I need to help her keep the love of learning going like I was unable to do for Miss C while I was so very pregnant with Miss F two years ago.  I want to get that back into Miss C for more than just math and keep it going for Miss L.

Calendar Time

I know, I know many are probably wondering why was I not doing a “formal” calendar time?  For so long the kids were asking the questions and just doing that on their own.  Now that has gone down and I’ve noticed that not all of it stuck.  So I’m going to implement something, just have to figure out where, with some of these ideas.

We will see how things go… Right now I’m a bit overwhelmed but I’m trusting that God will help me figure out what works best with us right now.  And now it is time to make dinner to get ready to go to handbells.