Well, today we completed our first official week of homeschooling!
* Whew. *
Monday, I was nervous and eager to begin. So we began our day at 7:30 am.
When we ended at 4 p.m., I told Jason I was re-enrolling them in school.
But, thankfully, the rest of the week has gone better - and ended a little earlier. :-) They are learning - and report that they're having fun. But I'd guess the biggest learning curve is mine. I'm one of those people who said they could never do this... and I meant it. Funny though how sometimes you can find motivation that's bigger than your fears.
My patience and flexibility..... well, even using a possessive pronoun like "my" for those words seems like hypocrisy. But... they're stretching and growing. I might grow into some yet. My seriousness is learning to loosen up a bit. My gentleness is getting a much needed workout. My listening ability is perking up. I'm learning to let my kid bounce a ball, swing, and spell all at the same time. (Even though it drives me crazy. ) Just proves he's already smarter than me.
Ultimately, these are all the things I wanted God to grow me in, but didn't want to take the time to let Him. And the time with my kids is so worth it. I'm still learning how to educate them well. But they're certainly losing no time on me.
My favorites this week?
Julia - praying one night after we'd studied about creation, death and sin:
"And God, about Adam and Eve. I sure hope they learned their lesson."
Eli - (This one needs explaining - but it's worth it.) We'd been studying about Jubal and Tubal-Cain in Genesis 4. Short references about them show they were master teachers of iron and bronze making, and flute and harp playing. Iron making alone is a very dangerous and complicated skill... and these references are significant to show that historically, early man was intelligent - something that stands in contrast to evolution, which would assume lesser intelligence of early man, and often where we get the picture of cavemen from.
As we wrapped up ... Eli was to summarize what he'd learned from the week's lessons. When he got to this one he stated: "Jubal and Tubal-Cain teach us .... that Geico must have it all wrong."
And so ended our week. ;-)
