Homeschool Update: Starting a (Somewhat) Real School Year

            Homeschooling is hard, y'all. Homeschooling a preschooler is ever harder than I thought too. It's hard teaching a little person things that you take for granted because you've been doing them so long and come as second nature to you, such as telling time, counting, learning and writing letters. Even writing that out it sounds so easy, but it's not!

             Maybe it's just my student. In case I haven't mentioned it a million times, she's very stubborn and head-strong. (Can't imagine where she gets it from. We're both guilty, John and I.) She seems to learn more like my husband, which makes things infinitely harder on me. They like to know why and how things work. I'm the type of person who could care less about that as long as whatever it is works. 

            She's also like my husband in the sense that she likes to “watch the world burn”. On more than one occasion, she will choose the wrong answer (for example, if we're working on our Reading Eggs program online) when I damn well know she knows the right answer, just to see what happens. -_- Do you know how insanely frustrating that is?! Especially in the instances where I'm really not sure whether she knows the right answer or not! Makes it very difficult to gauge what she really knows.

             Wow...With that being said, we are starting a (somewhat) more official school year this year. She won't be 5 until October, so we're still doing preschool. Plus, in Indiana, you don't have to have your child enrolled in any form of kindergarten until they are 7, at the most. So really, I could give myself TWO more free years, if I wanted to. But anyways...

             With the new baby coming next March-ish, I figured we really need to start getting into a routine, both in general and for school. I've been meaning to do this for the longest time, but I have put it off and put it off and put it off. Why? Because I am not a routine person. I am a “fly by the seat of my pants” type of person. I am hoping a routine will help with Myka's attitude problems and, you know, the whole asking every night, “What we doin' tomorrow?” issue. So yah. I am literally just doing this for her. I hope I don't go insane!

             The first day went better than expected. I jotted down a rough idea of what I wanted to get done when. For example, start off by reading some books in the morning, feed the animals and play outside for a bit, eat and have “free time”, and have music time. We, surprisingly, got through all that before noon and there was only one meltdown when I turned the tv off after we were finished eating breakfast. 

             In the afternoon, we ate lunch, cleaned up the sunroom so we could use it for doing school stuff like craft projects, and worked on said craft projects, which were letter and theme related. (We're working on letter “T” and somewhat still studying birds.) Oh. And I also managed to squeeze some letter learning in there too, even though my husband got home early. I was a little disappointed we didn't get to play outside more before the mosquitoes got bad, but you can't win them all. I think playing outside is just as important as learning the alphabet...Plus, I'm pretty sure neither of my kids would stand for not having outdoor time.

             The second day got off to a bad start. Nothing went like the first day. Myka had seen the tractor craft I printed out the night before, so that was the first thing she wanted to do. Letting her do craft projects in the morning was not a good idea. I try to give her options, but in this case, it didn't end well. After the tractor, she traced some numbers on a dry erase board. Then she helped me cut out some pieces for a train craft we were going to do...Then started getting an attitude and wanted me to glue the whole thing together for her. Um, no. So, that was all the school work we got done that day.

             I'm planning on using Thursday as a catch up day since sometimes we go to the library, sometimes we don't, depending on whether they have any of their kids programs going on that day. I will definitely be reinforcing the routine from the first day because it seemed to have worked so well...Besides me feeling like I didn't spend enough time with Ripley. :( I know we will figure out what works for us eventually, but routines in general are just hard for me to stick with and it's so easy to get discouraged on bad days too, isn't it?

             How long did it take you to find a routine that worked for your family, whether just a general day-to-day routine or homeschooling?