Homeschooling in the New Year-Part Two

Bright and early on Monday morning Liam and Morgaine knocked on our bedroom door and said "Mom, today we would like homeschool to be like 'pretend real school'. We could have all the subjects and recess and lunch, too." So, without any plan at all, I was thrown into a full day of "real" school.

I got up and set up a "classroom" and then packed lunches while the kids packed school bags (or the closest things they could find to school bags in our house).



We had a scheduled day of classes with regular breaks (a lot of them.....I hope they don't get the impression that "real" school is like that) for free play, recess, snacks, more free play, more recess, more snacks!! It worked really well and despite I had NOTHING prepared we got a lot accomplished. The children insisted on calling me Ms. M. and they were MUCH more willing to listen to Ms. M. than they were to listen to plain ol' Mom. The next day Liam said to me, "You know Mom, it was really fun to learn from Ms. M. She's a really good teacher."

Ms. M. came to help with school again yesterday and popped in again this afternoon. The kids are having fun and are eager to learn again and Mom has come to realize that which SHE thrives on chaos perhaps her children do not. Having a bit of routine and plans will likely greatly benefit them (and probably help Mom not pull her hair out too much once the new baby arrives).

The plan for the rest of this year is to build up a more regular schedule for school while still keeping it fun and light. We've gotten more accomplished in the last 3 days than we have in the last month so it can't be a bad thing. We've worked on English/reading (Liam is writing a book for Daddy's birthday in April...Morgaine is doing Rocket Phonics). we've done geography with Liam taking the reins and teaching Morgaine about the different places in Canada we have lived and visited. Liam has started on multiplication and Morgaine is still loving Right Start Math (combined with Ray's Arithmetic). They've started asking lots of science questions again and experimenting with things around the house. All is good. They haven't given up on their education and Mom as a teacher *lol*.

In the next week, I plan to come up with a general idea of where I want to be at the end of the year (September in this homeschool because my favorite time to teach is actually in the summer under the trees) and an plan on how to get there. I can see Ms. M. coming in to help out from time to time and maybe a scheduling tool like Sue Patrick's Workbox System being put in place. I'm sure I'll be sharing more about our plans in the weeks to come as we adjust to a different method of homeschooling.

I'll also get my fill of fruit as Ms. M. because, according to Morgaine, "students always bring their teachers a banana, apple or mango!"