Wednesday, September 19, 2007

everything in its place

we officially started the homeschool preschool curriculum this month. we're in week 2. don't ask me how but we survived "intro to the alphabet" and "cow" theme week. don't be fooled - homeschool is not the easy way out. homeschooling is tough. teaching is tough. even with a good, zealous learner like babyhall. and homeschooling is demanding on a mama. between housework, family management, playtime, volunteering, church, and earning a living, try fitting in structured lessons! i dare you!

there are a zillion resources online for homeschooling families like us. maybe even more. i'm just now finding them all and compiling a list. i went from feeling alone and lost in the homeschool realm to feeling relieved to find some great links, to now feeling overwhelmed at how many resources there are. but i'm so thankful. there are a lot of mamas out there who put a lot of time and effort into passing along their tips and tricks.

i am now a member of about a dozen Yahoo! groups, each focused on homeschooling but with different areas of expertise: preschoolers, printables, curriculum swap, co-ops, legal stuff... oh my.

so, be as it was, i was drowning in worksheets and schedules and lessons. i had to do something, so i organized our classroom. babyhall's desk, an antique school desk salvaged (stolen?) from daddyhall's elementary school, was in what we call the 'front room' squished between a wall and the piano. the piano became teacher's desk, and during lessons i tickled the ivories providing ambient background music. yeah right. really, during the lessons i sat on the bench and jumbled papers to figure out what we were working on next.

look at that mess. it just wasn't conducive for learning.


yesterday we skipped school altogether to get ourselves in better shape for school. not physically, but organizationally. [sure, that's a word!] and now it is much better! we were able to fit 2 days worth of lessons into one day, thanks to our new, organized space.
gold star for mama!