It’s back to school we go.
I decided this year that it would just simply be easier to start school when the neighborhood kids did, so, yesterday, August 17, we cranked back up. I can’t say that the kids were especially thrilled, but they did understand that we had to start sometime!
Needless to say, home schooling with an infant poses some new challenges. My normal morning school routine was to listen to the Bible memory work, which is set to music, and, for this year, the patriotic songs that we’re supposed to learn, and to read to the kids while they ate breakfast. Well, with Jeremy, his breakfast time is the same as the older two’s, and he can’t feed himself! And he didn’t take too kindly to my taking breaks in shoveling his cereal in so I could fool with the CD player. So, this morning, I showed Charlotte and Elijah how to work the CD player, and now they’re responsible for playing the stuff themselves.
As far as the reading, I never got to it over breakfast yesterday, so I tried after lunch. Jeremy was up and having a hard time understanding why he was no longer the center of attention during his awake time. So, he screeched every time I opened my mouth to read. He wasn’t really unhappy, at least not at first; he just wanted to be up with me, which isn’t practical with a very distractible eight-year-old. We never did get that reading done yesterday.
We also ended up doing school until 2:30, when we had to leave for another activity. At this point, Elijah still had not finished his reading assignment, so he had to pack it in the car with him. In the past, we have always finished by lunch time, so this late of a finish was nearly intolerable for the kids!
There’s nothing like being behind after the first day of school. And that is nearly intolerable for me!
Last night, we did some major talking to the kids about working hard while the sun shines (or rather, while the baby sleeps), and I did some minor tweaking on our daily routine. We spread the reading throughout the morning while Jeremy napped and got caught up. I found a good system of alternating the kids’ independent work with their supervised work, and we somehow managed to get everything done before lunch, with the exception of one chapter that Elijah had to read on his own.
Not bad for the second day of school! We’ll see how long this continues. I’m sure we’ll be fine until Jeremy decides to stop sleeping in the morning; then, we’ll be back to square one.
Oh, well. I need something to keep my life exciting.
In a couple more weeks, we will start participating in the Tri-County Co-Op, a home school cooperative that meets on Fridays and offers enrichment courses for the younger kids and meatier courses for the older ones. Charlotte will be taking history, drama, P.E., and writing. Elijah will be taking life skills, history, music, and P.E. Jeremy will be parked in a well-tended nursery, and I will be teaching a high school essay-writing class.
We’re all pretty excited. The kids were dying for something like this last year when I was so sick that I could hardly get up to have school, let alone get prepared and out the door for a co-op. But we visited this one last March, and the kids begged to join this year. When the powers that be in the co-op realized that I had once taught high school English, they bent over backwards to make teaching a class for the co-op possible.
So, I’m jumping back on a horse that I haven’t ridden in 10 years, but I’ve found it’s all coming back to me as I prepare. Right now, I have 19 ninth, tenth, and eleventh graders to whom I will try to teach essay writing skills. I loved doing this when I taught in Tennessee, so we’ll see how it goes.
And, in baby news, Jeremy rolled over from his back to his stomach on Monday. He spent most of the day practicing every time I put him on the floor and, that evening, managed to get all the way over by himself. He immediately popped up onto his arms and looked us, bemused, as we all clapped for him. It’s only a matter of time before he’s rolling his way across the floor. He’s already figured out how to scoot off his blanket, so I’m not really looking forward to this increased mobility.
Ah, well, It had to happen!
Have a good one!
No comments:
Post a Comment