Monday, August 15, 2011

Day 1

After a few years of going back and forth on the whole home school topic, I am happy to report that as of today, we are a home school family! After a lot of discussion, back and forth, research, chats with friends and some insights from Prasti (thank you for that), we have decided to not send Ben to preschool again this year. Instead, today was day 1 of kindergarten home schooling.

It actually went pretty well. I told Ben we were going to start school at home today and he was excited about it (although I haven't told him yet he wont be going back to his preschool). We are spending the first week reviewing writing his numbers and letters and we are getting serious about reading. His skill level hasn't caught up to his excitement level when it comes to reading so I'm hoping this will be the boost he needs to get him over the hump! I'm hoping the ease and excitement will be the trend and not just a short lived thing since its new and we are just reviewing. I've spent hours and hours looking at curriculum, work books, unit studies with and with out lap books, note books etc and I think I have found a nice mix to keep him excited and keep the stress level down.

Of course, once school was mentioned, Sam wanted to be right next to Ben. He was happy just to spend some time coloring, but I think I'm going to need to find some "school" things for Sam to do, or we're going to have some issues!
Wish us luck. 1 day down, only 179 more to go!

2 comments:

Scott Purdum said...

I am so proud of all of my family - especially Jenna and Prasti for being stay-at-home moms AND exceptional teachers. Their kids are blessed to have great moms and great dads too. I love you all.

Pap

Prasti said...

woohoo! i'm so excited for you guys.

i just read something last night about different things to keep the younger kids occupied while the older ones are doing school work. i think it was on facebook?? one of the suggestions was offering an activity box (or boxes) reserved only for school time. you can switch out the items in the box every so often to keep things fresh.