First Week- Homeschooling Down!

What a week! Brian has been working out of town for most of the week and we started our first week of school. It has been a tiring and busy process but, I feel good about our accomplishments.  And although our schedule looks better on paper than in real life, we have faithfully started each day with prayer, Bible Reading and our character traits study. So,we have focused on the important stuff all week. Another miracle? Everyone has been out of bed before 8:30am!

With 1- PreK, 1- 1st grader, 2- 4th graders and 1- 9th grader, I am a little frazzled at times but, that means it is NEVER boring!  We are starting with the basics this week and adding new subjects in the following weeks. So this week's schedule looked like this:
      8:00am wake-up with all gathered on couch for family prayer and Proverbs reading
      9:00am Breakfast
      10:00am Study of this week's trait- Gentleness, older ones do their Kay Arthur Bible Studies, all work on their AWANA
      11:00am Language Arts (Total Language Plus for the olders and Click n' Read/Spell for the 1st grader), Reason for Handwriting for everyone except the 9th grader
      12:00pm Lunch Break
      1:30pm Math (Teaching Textbooks for olders and Math-U-See for the 1st grader)
      1:30pm PreK Workbook from Costco
Next week we add History (Beautiful Feet- US History) and US Geography (Trail Guide to US Geography) and the week after that we add Science and Spanish and finally we start Piano lessons again for the older girls. That's the plan anyway.  Our days will get longer but I hope we will be in a rhythm by then and it won't get too crazy as the other subjects are added. We will see.
It is fun to watch the youngers learn just by hanging out while the olders work through their lessons. It makes my job way easier in the long run. The whole one room schoolhouse thing is alive and well here. My olders are great helpers and the little ones love being taught by their big sisters. I feel very blessed to be able to homeschool these awesome kids! I do have a few kids that are more challenging then others. However, this only adds to the reward when I see them finally "get it" or when they actually complete the lesson without me sitting right next to them the whole time.

In the evening, when they are in bed and I am grading papers, I get to reflect on the day and what we covered. I get to thank God that I am able to be here, right now, right at this moment, doing exactly what I am doing. I am so grateful. There are many times where I feel like I am not able to do this stuff; where I feel so "unqualified". I thank God for those moments however and I pray they continue because they keep me focused on Christ's ability and my inability without Him. I am reminded constantly that I can't but God can. God is so good. He will always be there guiding, teaching and encouraging me. Praise the Lord!

So, what will happen next week? I am not sure but, I do know that we will keep Christ as our focus and start our day off with Him every day. With His covering we can't go wrong!

PS- Next post I hope to have some pics of our homeschooling life (can you say LAUNDRY piles?) :)