School Starts

Yesterday was our first "official" day of school. Nevermind the fact that we've been doing school for the last year or so...we took a long break during the move, and now we're back to school. Mr. Blue-Eyes is doing Kindergarten this year and is quite excited about it. Boo-Boo is hanging out with us, too, and likes to listen in during story-time. His favorite activity while we do school is checking out the farm page in the First 1000 Words book.

This year we're using Sonlight's P4/5 curriculum which is essentially a pre-K curriculum. But we've beefed it up for Mr. Blue-Eyes by adding in reading/phonics instruction as well as Math-U-See Primer level. He's been learning reading for the last year or more, though we've been taking it rather slowly.

And he loves doing his math. We started it back in the spring, and it's probably his favorite part of school. Just today, he got SOOOOO excited when he finally made his '8' correctly for the first time. I think I was almost as excited as he was since he'd been having difficulty with that number and I've been telling him again and again that we just have to be willing to try and practice in order to learn it. He finally got it - I'm glad I didn't miss that moment.

When people comment about our decision to homeschool, they usually either think I must be crazy not to want to send my kids off to school or incredibly organized and brave. Well, I'm none of those things! I just love these "moments" and don't want to miss any of them. I'm learning along with the boys and learning to know my boys better too. We want to make sure that their education is centered around an understanding of God's world and our place in His world. We want to make sure that their education is customized for them...allowing them to excel in areas where they are gifted and giving them extra help in areas where that's needed, too. And we don't want to miss those moments when something just "clicks" for the first time...those moments of discovery.

So when people wonder about our decision to homeschool or comment on my bravery or craziness and I'm not looking to get into a deep discussion over it, I mostly just tell them that it's fun...'cause it is.