Christmas break officially begins today!  Brent and Callie won't be returning to school until January 12.  They will still be doing a little reading & writing during their time off.  If we don't at least do that, restarting is very difficult.  

Callie is healthy again, so back to school for her.  No more days filled with books and Christmas movies.  Well actually, vacation starts on Saturday, and she will probably fill it with books and Christmas movies.  

Callie woke up under the weather today and promptly asked for tissues and homemade chicken noodle soup. The tissue and soup has been delivered and she hasn't come out of her room all day. She has been reading though. This is one of her favorite pastimes. When she is sick, it is always hard to tell when she is feeling better, since she would never complain about lying there reading a book.

Brent started a new journal today. We use the composition notebooks. He double spaces and has to write in complete sentences, but he can write about anything. After he has finished a page, we go over it together, looking at spelling and grammar. Each journal is a record of his growth as a writer and it is truly amazing to see the first entry compared to the last.

Brent and Callie recently ordered two magazines that we will be using for school.  Muse is for Callie and is a magazine on Art, Social Studies & Science.  Ask is for Brent and it focuses on a single topic each month.  The first one was on dinosaurs.  Both magazines have a regular contest with an art and writing assignment that the kids will be doing as part of their school work.  

James Bond (the kitten) has given me the signal to take the night off.

We took a week off for the Thanksgiving Holiday; we take our turkey seriously here. We returned to work yesterday, but somehow today felt like the first day back. It can be hard to return to routines. So many lessons to complete before we get to the next holiday! Callie is breezing through the first few lessons on sentences. It will get much more difficult in the weeks ahead. Brent is also doing sentences and isn't finding all the grammar that difficult. Lucky him.

After much searching and frustration I finally found a math curriculum. I dare say I have high hopes for this one. It teaches a level of understanding that I don't have and I really hadn't thought about my kids having. I love the idea of it being visual and tactical. It is Math-U-See. I am starting both the kids on the Alpha, Callie will go through it really fast, but I think she needs to understand math this way before she works on the higher levels. Brent needs this curriculum anyway, and the review will be good for Callie. I can't tell you what a relief this is. I have an outline finished for this year.

Not so much an update, but a starting point. Summer is here, not Summer, but schools out anyway. Which is a very good thing. I spent the last few weeks of my first homeschooling experience blundering around like an idiot. I'm sure it wasn't all that bad, but it felt like it. I am thankful for a summer to get my bearings and refocus for next year.I'm reading about unschooling and deschooling. Apparently these are terms familiar to established homeschoolers, but I am still getting used to them. I think I have more of a grasp on the deschooling.

I am finding myself trying to recreate school at home and failing miserably. For one thing, this isn't school, there isn't a classroom, teachers, principles and tons of kids. I should know better, I hate role-playing. I feel silly and contrived, how can I teach anything in that state. Not to mention that no one is buying it. My children asked me to pull them out of school and teach them, and the best I can do is make a rudimentary pretend school in my home. Pathetic really.What they wanted was what I had been doing all along. Facilitating their learning of things that interested them. Our out of school experiences were filled with them asking questions and me helping them find the answers. Why did I dumb it down and make it school? Probably because I lost the confidence that I initially had. I had been volunteering regularly and I knew exactly what a disaster school was for my kids. I knew for a fact I was teaching my children more than they were learning there. I even went so far as to say that I could change nothing I was doing and they still would be better off out of school.

So what happened? Fear, second-guessing and self-doubt. Not to mention I could no longer see into the classrooms to make sure I was ahead of them. Maybe they got their act together and were learning behind my back? So I did what comes naturally. I did what I know. I wasn't homeschooled as a child. I am the product of our educational system. Not a traditional one, but we'll get into that later. I started trying to recreate the school experience in my home. That is when the learning slowed and the frustration began. Luckily, no irreversible damage has been done. There is plenty of time.Step one is this blog. I almost forgot what I had been thinking when I yanked my kids from the school system and brought them home. Clearly I need to keep better track of my thoughts for times when things aren't so clear. I'm going to do for myself, what I used to do for my kids. Help myself find answers.