First Week of School

I thought I would jump on and give a quick update.  I feel like my life is now devoted to school, and if anyone happens to call, I usually get down to business, and get off the phone as quickly as possible to finish up all that I have to do right now.  No chit chat.

This first week has been very overwhelming.  Right now, my two oldest are attending a virtual academy that follows the K12 program.  They are required to do 5 1/2 hours of school a day.  One of the biggest issues we have had, is getting enough hours of school in each day.  When we first looked at the amount of school required, it looked like we would be doing less school.  So not true!  We log every minute that we work on each class.  When the kids are attending school, there is some time spent goofing off, or wasting time, and with this program, there is none of that.  The lessons require the the kids to do the work in order to understand the concept, and then they are graded on the quiz that shows their comprehension, not on the actual assignment.  We are still trying to work out the balance.  Hopefully we will get it soon.  Allen is also taking seminary at our local high school a few times a week.  He has several friends from school who go to class the same time as he does.  He said it made it hard to homeschool, and he really wanted to go to high school.  He is also starting speech services in a couple of weeks.  He will attend once a week.  His sessions are 20 minutes away from our house, and they are during our schooling time.  That is going to be another tricky scheduling problem to work out.

I have really enjoyed teaching Makenzie and Morgan, but it has also been overwhelming.  Some of the programs that I am using are programs that I LOVE, and some are just things that I am doing because I am not sure what else to do right now.  Morgan HATES to write, and he also will not do anything unless I am sitting right by his side guiding him along every step of the way.  I have some definite goals with him.  He is most likely going to be my most time consuming student this year, but hopefully by the end of the year, we will see some real progress with him and he will be set up to be much more successful in the long run.  In spite of how overwhelming this first week has been, I am loving it.  It still definitely feels like the right decision, and although it is definitely not going to be the easiest thing I've ever done, we are having fun, and learning a lot.

We also canned peaches this week.  We got our first peaches off our own tree, and my mom gave us some from her tree.  It was a horrible week to try to can peaches, but we made it through and we now have 76 quarts of peaches.  I still have to get my kitchen cleaned up, and get my house back in working order, but it feels so good to get done with the canning.  Now I am glad I have a 3 day weekend to catch up with things before we get back to school.

We worked very hard this summer to get my kids to help out with the house jobs.  By the end of the summer, they were helping out so much.  It was great to have a clean house, and it was great to see them take pride in their work.  We have not figured out how to do schoolwork and house jobs both in the same day, but hopefully as we get better at scheduling, that will come.  I'm also hoping that this next week will seem super easy since we won't be dealing with canning peaches and homeschooling.

 

Guess who learned to open the flour container?

Larry has been pretty uncooperative this week.  He spends his day spreading school supplies from one end of the house to the other.  He always wants to be working with the exact supplies we need at the moment.  He has becoming very good at repeating the phonograms, and he is adorable repeating everything in his little one year old voice.  He is 15 1/2 months now, and he finally began walking this last week.  He is very uncoordinated, but determined.  He can say quite a few words, and he signs like a champ.  He is pretty good at getting his needs taken care of.  He will even ask to take a nap when he gets tired!  Sometimes.  He loves bananas and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and we can no longer use the word cookie in our house.

Finally, some big news.  Allen got his learner's permit this last week.  He had his first driving experience yesterday in a local church parking lot.  Hubby said that he did really well.  It is kind of scary, but kind of exciting to have an almost driver.  He has grown up so much, and is such a great kid.  I'm so glad I get to be his mom!

Overall, we are doing well.  But we won't be planning ANYTHING but school for a while.  Hopefully, I will get a chance to update again next week.