The Homeschool Mother’s Journal 2011-2012 — Week 1

In my life this week… we’ve been crazy busy trying to get me over a raging case of bronchitis and getting ready for Ben’s sixth birthday party. Hardly an ideal setting for starting homeschool, but we wanted him to feel like his friends when they talked about their first day of school. It’s been hectic and discovering that some things I counted on working didn’t threw more wrenches into my carefully laid plans. Such is life. People plan. God laughs.

In our homeschool this week… We have been working on getting used to having a 1st grader and a tot schooler. The tot schooler part has been blowing my mind, so she’s pretty much just been playing and having stories read to her while I try to figure out this whole tot school process. We’ve added some new subjects and are tweaking some old ones. Some things Ben seems to love while others he’s fighting, more on that in a minute. Organizational plan for the homeschool seems to be working which is a plus, but the planner I used to make it all organized just wasn’t working, so I’ve been playing, tweaking, and hopefully creating something that will work for us.

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing… our big outing of the week was for Ben’s swimming lessons. Florida weather being what it is, we’ve missed more lessons than made this month. The first one this week was rained out, but we left early for the Thursday lesson and the kids got to play at the splash park. Ben does a lot of chatting with the lifeguards. He likes to know what they do and how they do it. Katie braved the splash park and seemed to enjoy it, which was nice. Ben swam the full length of the pool (25 yds) for the first time. I think this bodes well for future swimming success. I read about the book Fifteen Minutes Outside and decided that we’re going to try to incorporate that. We also met an air conditioning tech who was willing to explain what he was doing to Ben. Our neighbor lost a tree to a storm, so Ben got to spend a great deal of time.

My favorite thing this week was … finally figuring out how to document what we do as a homeschool. I have a 36 week plan (which we’re already a little behind on), but finding a way to document and record what we do and how that is school is going to make the rest of my life feel a lot easier.

What’s working/not working for us… We’ve been here before. Math is not working. He loved RightStart for a while, but now he’s not so happy with it. And by not happy I mean screaming tantrums from my sweet child when he sees the book come out. So, we took a little time and looked at the elementary section of Life of Fred. I’ve ordered Apples and expect that it will be a bit too easy for him, but will help him get his math confidence back. I hope. What is working, miracle of miracles, is Story of the World, vol. 1. He was exceedingly resistant last year, but this year, he’s interested in the stories and engaged in the projects. What a difference a year makes!

Homeschool questions/thoughts I have… Being organized is half the battle. I drew a ton of inspiration from Sam’s post on planning. All my materials are set to go.

A photo, video, link, or quote I want to share… Here’s the book that’s going to influence us this year 🙂

Make sure you check out the other journals linked up at The Homeschool Chick’s blog.

*Links to books are ALWAYS Amazon affiliate links.I make virtually nothing for linking there, but maybe someday I can buy one of my books that way :).