It’s hard to believe that it’s almost been one whole month since we started our school year!  The majority of our school day happens around our dining room table, which is a great size for 4 of us to work on.

 

As you can see, we stay pretty busy.  And Michael loves using the white board to work on his math.  We have a nice mixture of book work & computer work, which gives my kiddos with ADD and ADHD a way to change things up a bit, which is one of the reasons that we do some of Michael’s math on the board.  I know some people that I’ve talked with have said things like “I don’t know how you do it,” or “I look forward to my quiet time while the kids are at school.  I couldn’t teach my kids,”  etc.  Anyone who homeschools has also heard many similar statements.  And I tell everyone of them that I love having my children home!

Do we have days where they want to argue & fight?  Yes.

Do we have days where one or more child has difficulty focusing?  Yes.

Do we have days where no one really wants to work?  Of Course!

Do we have days where they just do wonderfully & get all of their work done?  Yep!

Our school days are full of good days & bad days – thankfully far more good days than bad, but everyone has off days!  We all love learning!  Each child has a favorite subject(s) & we try to build on those strengths as well as the weakness of their least favorite subjects.  Our goal as parents is to find a way to make all subjects interesting for each child, and sometimes that means having to change curriculum from the one we thought would work.  But, that’s one of the many benefits of homeschooling.  We have the freedom to tailor the curriculum to fit the child(ren) and not have to make the child(ren) fit the curriculum.  Homeschooling is a calling that a lot of people do not understand, especially those that have never homeschooled.  I know.  I used to be one of those.  Now, I wish I had been more open to the idea earlier in my spiritual walk. But, neither Brian or I were raised around homeschooling & really had no idea what the benefits were.  But there are too many to count!

One of the benefits that we have to our advantage this year is that Brian has started swinging 3 shifts, which means that if our children were in the public school system, they would only see their daddy 1/3 of the time (only when he was on 1st shift).  With us choosing to homeschool, we are actually kind of rotating with him.  No, we’re not staying up all night when he’s on 3rd shift, but we do stay up later than we normally would so that we sleep in a little bit the next day so that it’s nice & quiet when he gets home & he’s not tempted to stay up & not sleep because he feels guilty for not getting to spend the time with us that he would like to spend.  God is really blessing us with the calling to homeschool.  I am so thankful that He is.

Here’s a little sneak peek into our science class last week.  Melia is studying Marine Biology (& Chemistry – her choice to do both, mind you) this year & Michael is studying Exploring Creation with Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures of the 5th Day.  They basically run hand in hand so they will be doing some experiments together.  Last week, they were both studying fresh water & salt water.

The end experiment was to show what happened when you slowly mixed salt water & fresh water.  Can you guess which is which?

If you guessed that the yellow water is “fresh water” and the blue (it looks green) at the bottom is “salt water,” then you are correct!!  We actually ended up doing this experiment twice because it was so much fun!  We have so much in store for this year!

 

Even though there have been many road blocks thrown up in the last few months, we really do have quite a bit planned to get done this year!  One of those things will be to renew our membership to the Tennessee Aquarium so that we can go & closely study the animals that we are learning about!  But, before that, we’ve got our first field trip coming up this Wednesday!  Stay tuned!