Homeschool Friday

Well, I already told you about our fun day on Monday.  Although, I haven’t been blogging as much as I usually like to, I feel like all I’ve been blogging about is homeschooling, and I’ve tried to limit that to once a week.  This week I’ll have to make an exception.

On Tuesday the 3 kids and I went on a field trip with the homeschool group to the local county historical museum.  Silje went there last year with her kindergarten class, but it was a first for David and Elias.  It was fun, though exhausting, and ended quite a bit earlier than I expected.  Fortunately, Knut’s mom called me up and drove the boys back to her house for the rest of the afternoon while Silje and I stayed in town for her choir practice.  Both the boys were in meltdown mode by the time she called and I was more than willing to let Elias take a nap there and David have some down time.  God was totally watching out for me and this little baby that day!

I find myself feeling guilty over things that should not be felt guilty about.  I’m told that with the curriculum we’ve chosen, it’s a common feeling because there’s just so many options as to what we can do.  It’s set up where we pick and choose which activities to do, and I’m finding I feel bad when I don’t choose some.  I’m modifying things, and then feel guilty that I didn’t “stay the course.”

For instance, we’re supposed to read from our read-aloud book about a chapter a day.  Since we normally do this at odd times of the day, it can often get dismissed, or if we have an unusually scheduled day, it often gets forgotten.  However, Silje has been whipping through her advanced 2nd grade readers that came with her program to the point that I’m having to add books to keep her busy.  (That was the highest reading level available for the history program that I wanted her to start with, however her reading level is much higher than that.)  Her read aloud books are 4-5 grade reading level, which she can also read with ease, however the program instructs me to read these books aloud to her.  So sometimes when we get behind in this area, I give her an assignment to read a chapter or two of her read-aloud book to herself (instead of me reading it to her) and then I ask her the normal questions afterward and we discuss it.

Now either way, she’s reading the book.  I’m testing her comprehension both ways.  However, when I get busy, and have her read it to herself instead of me reading it to her just to catch us up, I feel so guilty about it.  I mean, several families who do this program don’t do the read aloud books at all during the year, and just have them be their “summer reading” books.  There are no hard and fast rules here that I’m dealing with.

When the spectrum of what to teach is so wide open, it’s difficult to allow myself to be satisfied with the fact that she’s learning, and not be down on myself that she didn’t learn it a certain way, or I didn’t make it more fun, or go all 9 yards.  There are very few rules to homeschooling, which is why we purchased complete curriculums this year to give us some structure in an area we’re so unfamiliar with.  All of the structure that we have in place is all self-imposed, and I don’t regret having it there!

Sometimes I love the freedom of being able to manipulate the lessons to fit our family, and other times I feel like it’s cheating.  For instance, Silje learned a new concept in English this week.  We added 2 more jingles about prepositions and objects of prepositions.  We also learned to label these 2 new parts of speech in sentences, as well as recognizing the prepositional phrase.  I picked a bunch of practice sentences because I was anticipating this being a very difficult concept for her to grasp.  I mean, come on…she’s in 1st grade.  Many grown ups I know don’t know this stuff. 

As we started the lesson, though, she picked up the concept of both instantly.  I mean, at least in regard to how to label these 2 in a sentence.  We’re going to practice different angles of these concepts in the next few weeks, but for the particular kinds of sentences that we were working on…she had it.  So half way through the practice sentences that we were doing on our white board, when it was clear that she had done it correctly over and over again, I just skipped the last sentences and had her move onto her journal writing.  Afterward, I felt so guilty and questioned myself for not making her finish each and every question.  How silly!  I was the one that picked that many to begin with and had obviously picked too many, and had adjusted on a whim.  That should be a good thing, right?

So anyway, today we’ll hopefully be doing an scavenger hunt in English before her test where she’ll get a pile of prepositional phrases as clues for the hunt.  Things like “under the table,” or “in the cupboard.”  I think I’ll have an actual prize at the end…something from my Target $1 aisle stash that she doesn’t know about.

I’ve been very very busy this week getting the last of the garden produce that is now in our garage into a more permanent place for the winter.  I used to be able to roast about 4 pumpkins a day, but I bought a new big sheet pan and can now handle 11 pumpkins a day easily (and in less time!) so I’m almost done!  However, the apples are already starting to soften, and I still have a few beets to cook and freeze up. I would really like to have all of this set for winter before the new baby comes.

Silje’s been begging for a “cooking class” but I’ve been nervous to let her too near the stove or knives.  So I’ve put her to work washing beets, or taking out the insides of pumpkins along with me.  I feel bad making her “work” like this during school time when most little girls are at school with their friends, but she’s having the time of her life and begs for more to do, so again…needless guilt.

There’s no particular conclusion to this blog post, other than to reveal the range of emotions that this homeschool mom deals with.  One day I feel such freedom, and then the other I feel guilty for using that freedom.  Maybe that’s just a pregnant homeschool mom…heavy on the pregnant.