Home From The Library...

Me: Noelle, you can run downstairs to get that box of ice cream bars now.
Noelle: Uh, I don't really want to right now.
Me: Too interested in your new book?
Noelle: Uh huh!
Me: It's a good day when a child prefers a book over ice cream.

First Piano Lesson

Who needs lesson books when you can write your own song? Our lesson on how to find Middle C on the staff, how to jump down to A and jump up to E turned into this song. If you can't read it, the lyrics are: "I like pie. Chocolate pie!"

Mmmmm. yummy song.

Our First Day

What does homeschooling look like in our house? I'm sure it will be an ever-changing, developing and growing process. But for now, here's a look at our first day.

9:30-10:10 a.m.: swimming lesson. Yes, that counts! Imagine a personalized, non-team-sport p.e. program. Yea!

10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.: ran errands, cleaned the house, took care of the baby, made necessary preparations for first homeschool lessons, listened to Noelle read Ivy & Bean for an hour while we were driving (have to get in that one hour a day for our own language arts program as well as the library's summer reading program), constantly wondered when we were going to find the time to actually do lessons, had dinner.

5:30-7:30 p.m.: one hour of math (way more than I was going to do, but Noelle was totally into it and so we kept going), a little break while I tend to the baby, ten minutes each of copywork, narration from Ivy & Bean, Book of Mormon study and an introduction to finding Middle C on the staff, and several minutes of spontaneous conversation and other learning.

7:30 p.m.: "Mom, my stomach hurts." In other words, lessons are over for the day. Guess what? That's ok.

Why Homeschooling is Like Disneyland: Or In Other Words, an Adventure

Today was Noelle's first official day of homeschooling. I subscribe to the Charlotte Mason method. One of the components of her method is called copywork. Copywork provides handwriting practice and instruction in punctuation, spelling and grammar. When you are just starting, it may just be a sentence, but absolute perfection is expected. As the child gets older, the length of the passages will increase. Today I provided the following sentence for copywork:

Today I begin my homeschooling adventure.

Noelle: Why is it an adventure?
Me: What is the meaning of the word adventure?
Noelle: Disneyland is an adventure.
Me: What about Disneyland makes it an adventure?
Noelle: It's fun. It's awesome. And you could get lost.
Me: So it's a little bit dangerous. What else?
Noelle: You look around and say "Wow! I want to do that!"
Me: That sounds like homeschooling. What is awesome about homeschooling?
Noelle: We're Mormon, so we can read the scriptures and stuff.
Me: What is fun about homeschooling?
Noelle: We can go on field trips.
Me: How could we get lost homeschooling?
Noelle: You could lose your stuff.
Me: Yes, and we could lose our focus, our attention, and our purpose. But we won't let that happen. And we get to look around at all the cool stuff to do and learn and say "Wow! I want to do that!" as much as we want.
Noelle: That's cool.
Me: Yes it is.

Welcome to the awesome adventure of homeschooling.