Friday, August 20, 2010

Her Call

Yeah, it doesn't look like I'll get the chance to write here anymore, at least for awhile.  My daughter decided she wanted to try public school for a year.......so I am letting her.  Next year we will re-asses and figure out what to do but for now I will not be homeschooling her.  It makes me sad, angry, frustrated, scared, and anxious but part of my belief for my daughter is that I need to let her make decisions........live with them........and learn from the experience; so we will see what happens. 

I hope to come back every now and then to update on what she is doing, how she likes or unlikes school, my feelings on the subject and so on.  So stay tuned for "colorful" posts ahead!!

Friday, June 4, 2010

Ugh

It's only week one into her kindergarten year and already I am doubting myself and whether or not I can really do this.  I'm always tired, never have any energy, seem to have lost my ability to organize and plan, and I don't know why?  I'm on new medication that has been taking me for a loop, I'm not eating right, I'm not exercising, I'm not getting out of the house, and I'm feeling very overwhelmed.  How can I be a good teacher if I'm so tired to even do it?  Plus it's not helping that I teach her something and literally 2 seconds later she has no idea what I'm talking about, doesn't matter how many times we go over it, she can't or won't concentrate nor remember what I teach.  Maybe I'm just having a bad week and it will get better; plus everyone always says it takes around a year to get used to homeschooling.  I am not a quitter by any means but I don't want to sacrifice her education for me not being able to get my shit together.  I don't know what to do, mainly cause I don't know why I am feeling bad all the time?  Guess I'll just press on and try and pull myself together.

BTW Aurora drew a VERY good picture of a peacock today!  So proud of her!

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

The Day from Hell!

The hubby is at work, the kid is finally in bed, and the day is almost over........THANK YOU!  A combination of me still adjusting to my new medication, my husband and I still adjusting to his new night shift schedule, my husband and daughter ticking me off every time I turn around, and numerous things going wrong today don't equal up to a very happy mommy.  I wanted this day over from the moment I woke up.

We didn't even start school today until around 3pm and actually didn't finish till around 8pm (it was a little here and a little there).  We did art, reading, and math today (I actually had a couple of others things planned but like I said, it was a bad day).  She got a wooden stool for Christmas last year and has been dying to paint it ever since so today she finally got to start on it.  For reading she and I sat down with the TAG system and read The Cat and the Hat.  During the story I told her how important it was to pay attention and listen to the words because that tells the story.  I kind of gave her a mini quiz on the book at the end of what it was about and what happened and she actually did really well with the answers (even making some rhyme like the book).  Then at bedtime I read her another chapter in Charlotte's Web.  We are at the part where Charlotte is getting ready to make her egg sack and Aurora asked what an egg sack is and how Charlotte makes it, so I explained what it looks like and that it is made out of a spider's "silk" used to make webs with; she thought that was pretty cool.  And for math we reviewed numbers 0-20.  She has 0-11 down but has trouble with the teens and especially number 12 for some reason.  So we did some hard studying with some flash cards and countable's and I think I'll be assigning some homework tomorrow on it and over the weekend just to keep it fresh in her memory until she has it.

Well I'm off to take a nice long relaxing bubble bath and let the stress of the day melt away!

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

First Day of Kindergarten

Well we had our first day of kindergarten today, something I've been waiting to do for a very long time now.  It feels really good knowing that I only have one thing to worry about in my life...and that is my daughters education.

Today we did history, science, reading, and writing.  For history/social studies we looked at what it means to be a family and the different types of families and she worked on learning her address.  For science we discussed the difference between living and non-living things; we watched a video and played a game all online on the subject.  For reading I read another chapter in Charlotte's Web to her, she read one of her books using the TAG system and then we briefly reviewed letters A-E just to make sure she still remembered upper and lower case forms, sounds, and a word or two that started with the letter.  And finally for writing I just had her write out the letters A-E in both upper and lower case form just to refresh her.  We were going to make homemade donuts today for "National Donut Day" but we just didn't have time and we were both very tired.  My husband Chad started night shift tonight so we wanted to spend a little time with him before he went to work.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

I am finally a college graduate!!

As of May 14th I became the proud owner of an associates degree in applied science in Emergency Preparedness Technology!! Yes I am officially done with school..... now its time to focus on my daughter in full!

Ever since school ended I have been in plan mode for all her lessons. We will begin on June 1st with kindergarten material. I actually thought that we would just take the summer and do pre-school review and start kindergarten in the Fall but when I researched all of what is usually taught and learned in pre-school I found that Aurora all ready knew all of it........so I graduated her too! I made up a really cute pre-school certificate and put my graduation cap and gown on her and took a picture of her holding her certificate.

I planned on using Saxon homeschool math K but I just received it today and I don't like it at all. It moves WAY to slow and Aurora already knows half of what is covered. So I will be making all of her lessons from scratch for every subject, which is fine cause I feel like I have more control over what she learns from where and how. And I'm almost done planning all lessons for the first 2 weeks.

She is so excited to start homeschooling; she practically begs me to do it everyday and it really hurts to say no (cause I'm not ready) but I usually give her something small to work on to satisfy her appetite. I'm so lucky to have a daughter that loves to learn......and learn from mommy at that!