Week Two: Gah! What was I thinking?!

Before you start to laugh at me, I should say that I feel much better about our decision to homeschool now than I did the week after we got back from holiday when we started our new homeschool routine. It took about 2 weeks however for me to work out many of the bugs and for most of our more official "first week" I was tortured by the guilt-demon for denying my poor five year-old the experience of running around in a playground with kids his own age and singing songs with a fun teacher.

Our new schedule, luckily, was not so much of a problem, largely because it wasn't really all that "new." Our morning routine went almost as normal except that instead of the kids watching Blue Planet after breakfast while I "worked" on the computer, they got dressed, brushed teeth, said prayers, had a Bible story, and we had "calendar time" before I directed them to the school shelf to choose an activity. Not a massive change. After a couple hours of "school" (which our morning prayers, Bible story, and calendar time ate up half an hour of) we had lunch and/or left the house on errands, many of which were familiar afternoon activities for the kids. So there wasn't a lot of resistance by the kids to this routine. I, however, had to resist the temptation to mess around writing "pleasure email" to friends and checking Facebook instead of teaching. But the kids adapted quickly and happily to the new routine. They behaved better and better at prayers and Theo started reading some of his own from his prayer book. He also LOVED the Melissa and Doug Magnetic Calendar. I use the bottom half as a white board on which I write the day of the week and the date and Theo chooses the appropriate weather magnet. He quickly memorized the days of the week and figured out how to tell which day of the month it was.

However, a number of problems became quickly apparent to me. First was the curriculum we picked out and spent a fortune on. I hadn't prepared much more than the level one Language Arts material which Theo was too advanced for anyway: it bored him stiff. It was obvious that Theo was not just distracted by the cable television while we were on holiday. He hated our Primary Phonics workbook. It was tedious to work through and visually dull and his reading level was far beyond three letter phonetic words. I abandoned it after a few days, but wasn't sure how I felt about giving up on something just because it bored him.

Another problem: he hated colouring and practicing his printing, and he couldn't draw. Drawing and colouring is something I have never done with the kids so I really shouldn't have been surprised. But it became clear that I would have little for him to do if he couldn't do any of those things and if the other Language Arts material wasn't challenging enough. And while I knew that it wasn't really important for him to be printing in kindergarten, I was nervous about getting into habits we couldn't change. I didn't like letting him off "work" because it was dull, but I also felt fearful of school turning into a daily battle.

Georgie was another issue. Her attention span was simply not long enough to manage sitting at the table colouring with us but Theo was too easily distracted from his dull printing work if left alone while I entertained Georgie with puzzles or something else educational.

Nevertheless we got several things "done" that week. We started a holiday scrapbook for which I downloaded some colouring pictures of deer and grasshoppers (this was our Saskatchewan holiday, not our Tofino holiday). We did our Map of Canada puzzle and I pointed out where we went on the map for our two holidays. The colouring sheets were a pain to get through, but if I coloured with him Theo worked harder at it and Georgie could join in a bit.

We also coloured icons for the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross and made some paper crosses as well as learned about the feast and who the saints in the icon were. That's a tough feast to explain to kiddies. I took them to the evening service for the feast as well and learned that my kids do NOT function well and focus on school after a late night, which has given me the choice to either take the day off of school for church feasts or skip the services.

We had a library day as well and took out a National Geographic Atlas which Theo became obsessed with. His ability to read was incredibly helpful for him in reading the atlas and he would pour over it for hours and regularly bring it to me to show me Madagascar and Africa (his favourites) as well as how to read the key. I also introduced the Montessori continent nomenclature cards which he quickly memorized and I found that when he read his dinosaur books, which featured maps of where the dinosaurs were found, he was able to point out the different continents on the world map even though they weren't labelled. By the end of the week he knew all the continents by sight and the oceans and their placement on the world map.

He also learned the parts of the fish with the Montessori nomenclature cards, though it became clear that the cards were not all that interesting to him. He was equally bored by the Primary Phonics readers though he read about 4 of them on his own that week.

We continued with our usual weekly routine of tea with my friend and sushi lunch--something my kids adore and I think the regular inclusion of raw fish in their diet is very good for them as well as the experience of eating in a restaurant. We shopped for groceries which they helped with and began the weekly routine of Theo visiting with his Grandma while I take Georgie to Strong Start--something which the calendar helped reinforce.

Our second week was quite a struggle in spite of how much Theo managed to absorb on his own without my encouragement. I found myself feeling very bad about our boring curriculum and pressed to find more interesting things for him to do to make up for missing out on the "fun" of public school kindergarten. He mentioned more than once that he wanted to go to school without me. I spent the weekend stocking up on craft supplies and planning "fun" activities that didn't include so much colouring and printing and I vowed to take it easier on him in the following week and try to be "Nice Teacher" rather than "Grumpy Mummy," not only because I felt really guilty but because I was exhausted after trying to squeeze in so much activity.