finding what works

This is our fourth year home educating.

Okay, third.  We really didn't do much around here for Kindergarten with Sugar.  I freaked out about this for much of the public school year.  Just sure I was ruining her.  I had my veteran homeschool mom friends telling me to chill and to read and to enjoy her.  Oh if I could go back to sweet Sugar at age five.  I would soak up all that time with her and stop stressing about ruining her.

Five year olds want to be read to and played with.  They want to cook with you and help you with chores.  They want to snuggle up real close.  They want to play in the dirt.

I know because I still have a five year old.

And because I've learned from my mistake with Sugar, I let Spice have a lot of free time doing the fun things a five year old should do.  However, she's much more studious than her older sister and actually enjoys sitting at the table for a couple of hours to work on math, reading, etc.

The learning situation in our household has been more calm these last several weeks than ever.  I'm sure part of it is that Sugar just realizes school is part of our day whether she wants it to be or not.  But I believe the biggest part of what's helped settle down our days is that I'm not trying to shove every subject into her.  I believe reading, writing, spelling, punctuation, and grammar are a big deal (not that you could tell from my writing) so that IS something we work on daily and for the most amount of time.  Other than that, I kinda just let her tell me what she's interested in learning.  We spent about a week and a half learning about sharks.  And she just informed me that next she'd like to study dolphins.  This kid may not be able to multiply but she can tell you some amazing facts about a multitude of animals and bugs.  I love it.

Spice is much more interested in learning to read than Sugar ever was at her age.  She's sounding out words, writing, adding and subtracting, etc.

Something that I notice I have a hard time with is keeping up on housework with school or school with housework.  If I'm working on something with one of the girls and see that the dishes need to be done, it's hard for me to concentrate on just teaching the girls.  I get overwhelmed thinking I need to be doing all of it at once.  Or, I found that if I went to throw a load of clothes in the wash, the girls would scramble from the table and all focus would be lost.  For all of us.

Last week, for something new, I decided to load up our books and head to the library to do our school day.  It was amazing.  I didn't have to think about laundry or cooking or dishes.  I could just focus on the girls and what we were learning for the day.  They don't have the distraction of the animals or toys or our playground outside.

So.  We went again Monday and Tuesday.  It's been working out fabulously.  When we get home I can clean and cook without school related questions.

The girls have really enjoyed it and so have I.

I'm not sure how long we'll do this, but for now I see this lasting awhile.