Home 'Schooling' Willow

Today we started 'seriously' homeschooling.  On top of our normal reading, art activities, and everyday life we will now spend 30-90 minutes a day doing activities designed to teach lessons.  Math skills, language skills, science.  In other words, we're going to sort buttons, trace lines, and hunt down animals and bugs in the yard.  Yep, homeschooling.   

 

 

Today we worked on sorting, colors and fine motor skills. I gave Willow a large plastic bowl full of rice and hidden multi-color and size buttons. Then she hunted out the buttons (fine motor skills) and sorted them first into colors and then into size (BIG and little).  She did this for about 30 minutes STRAIGHT.  Which at 3 years old I'd say is pretty good.  :-P  We did end up with a bit of a mess of rice all over the table and floor, but I think it went well overall.  I'm going to have to search down some different shaped buttons for another challenge.

I'm thinking tomorrow might be a field trip day since we have to take the Daddy to the airport in San Francisco anyways.  Who knows where we'll end up. ;-)  I think it's amazing that I get to 'stay home' with my girls and teach them everything they need to know to succeed.  I worried about many things when we first started talking about homeschooling our kids.  Will I be able to keep up with the skills they need to learn (Willow is almost at kindergarten level without even formally doing homeschooling so obviously this worry is not even an issue yet).  Will I have the energy to teach each child while meeting the needs of the younger ones and the household (so far having a 'lesson' planned has given me some extra time to work on other things nearby).  Will I get tired of having my kids around 24-7 (though I DO get tired of them occasionally, so far it's not enough for me to want to send them away ;-P ). 

We may change our decision as time goes by.  If we get in a better school district or can afford private school.  But for now, this is working for us.  :-)