Getting into a Groove

This is day 3 in our journey to home school and we are definitely learning. The kids have been doing activities daily, but knowing how much to do and when is something we are working on. After researching and creeping home school groups for almost a year I knew this wasn't going to happen overnight. I have been told by so many people that we need to deschool. I thought deschooling was a decent size break between the public school setting and schooling at home. We took a break over the Christmas holiday and are starting out strong. J1 and C are adapting well and are actually really excited. The deschooling though, I am learning, is more about changing your mind set. Having grown up in the public school system and then my kids being in for a couple of years we have that 8:30-3 mindset. IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE LIKE THAT! I am working on getting us into a routine and right now we are doing about 4 hours of work before the whining starts and they are just done....and you know what, that's perfectly normal. We don't have to be buckled down all day. We don't have to learn every subject every day. We don't have to do the same boring work. We don't have to memorize, pound information in, test, regurgitate information, and compare ourselves with other kids and families. We are focusing on teaching our kids HOW to learn and to LOVE learning.

Monday (Day 1) was a slow day. They did journal entries, a couple of worksheets, and some reading. I was setting up our computers and getting virus protection installed (Hello-that is super important ya'll)

Tuesday (Day 2) hiccup number one. A couple of websites I had planned to use, one being an assessment test for the kids, that claimed to be free resources, in fact were not. They ended up doing a Science video, journal, I read 4 books to them, learning game, Art. hiccup number two- I discovered we can not do Art before our worksheets are done. C had a meltdown because she wanted to continue Art---so we didn't do workbook and decided to keep doing Art (because Hello, we can!). Also they both had Piano lessons so we are getting our music in too!

Wednesday (Day 3) MUCH SMOOTHER! Assessment tests are in swing but we are only doing a portion of it at a time. I want a test first for our records and something we can build upon. They also have fallen in love with (teachyourmonstertoread.com) awesome website people! We have accomplished so many tasks today because they wanted to. They wanted to keep learning and asking questions and didn't want to stop. I am so proud of them. So we are off to take C to tumbling, gotta get that exercise in!